Process Imagining

link: http://www.aaroncheak.com/alchemy-as-a-hieratic-art

I would like to thank Aaron Cheak for this wonderful translation from Henry Corbin. The selections get to the heart of Corbin’s understanding of alchemy. It resonates with the process of concrescence in Alfred North Whitehead. It breaks from any materialism and from any spiritualism. It seeks what Roland Faber writes as the intermezzo, the in-between. It is wholistic, in each different, with resonances when we relate with one another.

A wonderful quote on defining/experiencing/participating in alchemy:

Not only does it contain a mine of information, it is eminently representative of a conception of alchemy that is neither a simple dramaturgy of the unconscious or psychological allegory, nor a simple manipulation of materials practiced in the manner of a mere chemist or pharmacist. It is an operation at once material and spiritual, the juncture between the two aspects remaining the hidden secret underneath the symbols of the “Philosophers” (as the alchemists designate themselves). And because the ars hieratica integrates the two operations, its locus is in fact a mesocosm (intermonde), of which the ritual form and the cadre of a temple are the best means of imposing the integral representation.