I should say, alchemists are devoted to this form of black magic. It is unfortunately extremely popular, and taught to children via the Harry potter series.

There are hundreds of thousands of pro-alchemy sites on the Internet. I checked a few, but it is probably not advisable to read them. They claim that many Catholic monks were alchemists, the Mass is alchemy...it's all associated with the Beast.

At the risk of turning this thread into another discussion on heliocentrism and geocentrism, the Father of heliocentrism was Isaac Newton, alchemist supreme.

What we know now is that by the time of his death in 1727, Newton had amassed one million written words on alchemy. The Royal Society, who published all his other works, prudently deemed Sir Isaac’s alchemical thoughts ‘not fit to be printed.’ But in 1936, the cat leapt out of the bag when a wealthy industrialist John Maynard Keynes purchased a case of Isaac Newton’s writings found hidden away. Expecting to find Newton’s scientific notes he found instead his writings on alchemy. After reading these papers, Keynes coined a new identity for Isaac in 1942, ‘the last of the magicians’. Westfall, who researched and produced one of the most interesting biographies of Newton, writes:

‘The order of development of Newton’s chemical notebook is significant. He did not stumble into alchemy, discover its absurdity, and make his way to sober, “rational”, chemistry. Rather he started with sober chemistry and gave it up rather quickly for what he took to be the greater profundity of alchemy.’ ------ Richard Westfall: Never at Rest, Cambridge University Press, 1980.

So this is the man destined to supposedly comprehend the true order of the universe and here he is abandoning the scientific method in order to pursue the secrets and magic of alchemy.

‘Solid evidence shows that however it began Newton’s alchemical activity included his personal introduction into the largely clandestine society of English alchemists. His reading in alchemy was not confined to the printed word. Among his manuscripts is a thick sheaf of alchemical treaties, most of them unpublished, written in at least four different hands. Since Newton copied out five treatises plus some recipes, the collection appears to have been loaned to him for study but then, for whatever reason, not returned.’ ---R. Westfall, op. cit., p.286.

Newton, who preferred to remain alone in his room, isolated from his colleagues in Trinity College Cambridge; even discouraging correspondence from scholars and friends in London, apparently had an open door policy for fellow alchemists, from whom he received many manuscripts.

‘In 1696 an unnamed and shadowy figure…visited Newton in Cambridge to discuss on alchemy. They did not meet by chance; the man came to find him. Newton recorded the conversation in a memorandum.
Alchemy formed the initial subject of a correspondence with Robert Boyle [a founder of the Royal Society] that commenced in 1676. His friendship with John Locke and Fatio de Duiller involved alchemy, but both of them began only in the late 1680s. Otherwise nothing. One of the major passions of his life, as testified by a vast body of papers which stretched over thirty years, a pursuit which included contact with alchemical circles as attested by his copies of unpublished treaties, remain largely hidden from public view and remains so today.
The experience of another collector, Elias Ashmole helps in assessing Newton’s manuscripts. In the preface of Theatrum chemicum brittannicum, Ashmole declined to name the source of his treaties because they preferred not to see their names in print [like certain other Rosicrucians we know]. His diary records a visit, not wholly unlike that which Newton received in 1696, when an unknown and mysterious man appeared at his door ready to reveal the art. Meanwhile, against the background of deliberate secrecy, we can at least speculate that otherwise unexplained events in his life were alchemically motivated.’ ---R. Westfall, op. cit., p.288.

It was this obsession too that led Newton to Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, another alchemist and devotee of Francis Bacon’s philosophy. Then there was the hermetist Henry More who taught Newton how to find the hidden secrets within the texts of Hermçs Trismegistus. Of importance however are the links between this occultism and the conspiring freemasonic Earthmovers of the Royal Society. Since then, and especially today after his notebooks were found and read, Newton’s mania for alchemy has come under microscopic study, literally, for even a strand of his hair has been examined only to find it contained enough mercury to kill a cat, and we all know what mercury is used for, don’t we?

The Hidden Alchemy

Here it gets very interesting. I will continue if anyone is interested.

Yes, please, cassini!

It is not The Hidden Alchemy we should be interested in or concerned about but the The Hidden Teaching which turns material into spiritual - jimc

The Hidden Alchemy
Now it is here we had better know what alchemy really is. First though, look up your sources and you will find it described as mediaeval chemistry, the forerunner to modern chemistry.

‘White (Michael White: Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Addison Wesley.)
has little time for alchemy, regarding it as the providence of the unscrupulous and deluded. But alchemy has a long and honourable tradition, which persisted alongside the workaday chemistry of the dyers, tanners and brewers well beyond Newton until the late 18th century.’ ---The Sunday Times Bookshop, 28 Sept 1997.

White of course is absolutely correct. The true nature of alchemy involves the pursuit of the legendary ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ a ‘formula’ or agent used for the transmutation of base metal into gold or other precious metal or stone, a magic that modern chemists assure us is impossible.
(Why gold? Because gold is more than just a beautiful metal. It has power, and this power has been utilised for good and evil as in the Ark of the Covenant and the golden calf. It also became the standard for money, a curious phenomenon.)
But this form of alchemy also has its esoteric side, the mission to transmute human nature into the divine by means of knowledge, philosophy and meditation. This quest had its origins in the Garden of Eden):

‘And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death….
‘And the serpent said to the woman: no, you shall not die the death, For God doth know in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ (Genesis 2:17/3:4-5)

Lord J.B. Cravan, in his book ‘The Life of Michael Mayer’ (1910),
(Michael Mayer was named by Diana Vaughan as Grand Master of the Rosicrucians from 1617 to 1622)
confirms that alchemy as practiced first by the Socinians and then the Freemason occultists was a veil for ‘the great work’ of turning - or rather trying to turn - human nature into divine nature. This knowledge, they believed, could be found in the writings of Hermçs Trismegistus, the Gnostics and the Cabbala, the 'holy grail' of heliocentrism. Further development of the various themes then flowed from the occultists within the secret societies, the likes of those who met and supplied Newton with various occult theses. Indeed, didn’t Newton himself compile his own thinking in this field, those documents found by John Maynard Keynes.
Thus the two-faced alchemy indulged in by Sir Isaac Newton, a dual pursuit of mammon and esoteric knowledge, two favourite instruments used by the Devil himself. What is not commonly known however is how Lucifer uses the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ to entrap new recruits. In Diana Vaughan’s account of 1895 she describes a typical initiation into the ranks of the alchemists identical to what occurred in the case of Newton and Ashmole.

The Secret of Alchemy and the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’

The best bit I will post for you tonight Faber, and it is on the lines requested by Jimc.
Trouble is, when you associate alchemy with heliocentrism and the revelations of Diana Vaughan, you loose the vast majority of Copernicans. Like geocentrism, their minds are programmed to reject it and to believe Diana Vaughan never existed. Satan knows how to manipulate the mind, after all Christ called him the 'Father of lies,' and for Christ to call him FATHER means a lot.

What is the hidden teaching all about?

As I popsted above Elizabeth, alchemy has two sides, one trying to turn base metal into gold or other precious metal, and another trying to make man devine by way of knowledge.

Let us first deal with Alchemy (1). The following was recorded by Diana Vaughan, supposedly a non-person, but in fact a real person.

The Secret of Alchemy and the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’
‘Satan always requires conditions before operating.’
‘The adepts that read this book will know easily, that it is written by a brother [Rosicrucian-Luciferian], and I humbly say that I am their equal. With regard to the others led astray by the sophisms of our adversaries, they have yet to receive the light that will bring them safely to the truth [Catholicism], and perhaps they will open their eyes to receive it, and I hope to illuminate many of them with my book. Every adept will see that I do not treat of fables, but real experiments, things I have seen, studied and practiced fundamentally. On this account it is enough to say, that no one ever wrote so clearly on our art as I do now, for the good of my neighbour. I often wanted to drop my pen, feeling myself tempted to reveal the truth, but that god whom I could not resist, who alone knows the hearts, and to whom alone glory is due, for ever, made me take it up again. I have no doubt then that in this last age of the world, there are many capable of the happiness of possessing these secrets. There are many I know who possess these same secrets as well as I, and I am persuaded there will be many more every day, who will study my book in order to know them. Let the holy will of god do with me then what it likes. I acknowledge myself unworthy to be the instrument of such good things, even though I adore in them the holy will of god, to which all creation is bound to submit, as all intelligence has been created and preserved by him. Oh, good God.

At the beginning of that year, 1667, Helvetius, a doctor, was converted to occultism. This Luciferian conversion throws light on the pretended sceptics of the 18th century, some of whom pretended to be atheists. Helvetius was a disciple of Thomas Vaughan, but his real name was Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, who came from Switzerland to Holland, to practice medicine, hence called Helvetius. Being head doctor of the Prince of Orange, he was thought much about, and got to be head doctor of the General States. He was 42 when he joined Philalethes. Helvetius was a declared enemy of alchemy. In 1650 he criticised his brethren severely, who were looking for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, and the universal solvent, and published a book against them called “De alchemiae opuscula comptura veterum philosoporum”. Later he wrote against Sir Digby, a rossicrucian, and his powder of projection, of which he made great fun. He had to meet Philalethes before he changed round completely. This is what he says in his book “Vitulus aureus” Amsterdam, 1667.
“On the 27th of Dec. 1666, I had a visit from a stranger, dressed as a Dutchman of the middle-class who did not want to let me know who he was. He said he was induced by the noise created by his discussion with Sir Digby, to submit to me the proofs of the existence of the Philosopher’s Stone, and after a long conversation about the principles of Hermetism, he opened a small ivory box that contained a metallic powder of the colour of sulphur, saying he had there enough to make 20 tons of gold. I asked him to demonstrate by means of the fire the virtues of this powder, but he did not do so, only said he would return in three weeks. In examining the powder, I took care to fix some to it under my nail, and as soon as he left, I proceeded to test it myself, melted lead and made the projection with the powder. It was all dissipated in vapour and nothing remained in the crucible but lead and vitrified clay. In three weeks he returned, and refused to operate as before, but gave me a grain of the stone, about the size as a grain of wheat. I told him I did not believe in the efficacy of so small a quantity, to do anything. Then he divided it in two, and said the half was enough to transform an ounce of lead into gold, but told me that at the time of projection, I should cover it with wax to preserve it from the fumes of the lead. Then he said he would call on the following day to see how it turned out. The day passed and the stranger did not turn up, so I began to work myself. This time the experiment turned out admirably. After a quarter of an hour the fused metal became golden coloured, and being strained, and cooled, its fineness was thought very high, by the goldsmiths at the Hague.”
So far Helvetius in his “Vitulus aureus”. Then being astonished at the result, he dedicated his time to find out the method of producing the philosopher’s stone, but without success, until he was initiated as a rossicrucian, and was advanced to the 9th degree by Thomas Vaughan. You remark that he says nothing about the name of the mysterious stranger, and in none of his other works does he speak about the adventure of the year 1666-7, but all his contemporaries believe it was Thomas Vaughan, as they knew the intimate relations between the two men. Lenglet Dufresnoy gives this opinion as the one generally believed. So does Louis Figurier, who does not doubt its truth. The main fact is, that Helvetius became one of the rossicrucian society, and was its Grand Master from 1693 until he died in 1709. The proofs of his initiation are seen in the notes of Philalethes, for the perfectly initiated, notes, which Figurier could not but know, as an occult Freemason. I will return to this point, and show from these notes, especially, where he gives advice to magicians only, as to how to get the philosopher’s stone, and how a rossicrucian who arrives at the highest degree, can have as much gold as he likes….'

Miss Diana Vaughan then intervenes to tell us a truth known to her: ‘The philosopher’s stone was only a bit of diabolical jugglery, the devil supplying the gold or silver like a clever juggler.’

‘Let us return to the tricks of the devil, by which he keeps the adepts of the rossicrucians, in the hope that they may discover by themselves, the secret of changing lead into gold, and after 1,000 experiments, which result in failure, keeps them until the day they become magicians, and receive the 9th degree, and then he tells them “I am he that gives the philosopher’s stone, do you want any bits of it, miser or avaricious man? Well then, invoke me, from the conviction in your heart, that I am the good God, and that the God of the Christians is the bad God. Call on me, pronouncing affectionately the names of all reprobate, all the accursed. Bless Cain. Exalt Simon the Samaritan; reverence Judas Iscariot. Find out in your imagination the sacrilege most pleasing to me, in order that I may think you worthy of me. Then I will come and appear to you, and you will prostrate yourself at my feet, and adore me. I will give you a few mysterious grains the same as Philalethes showed to Helvetius, and these grains are infernal talismans, they will be a guarantee of your alliance in the abyss. They will produce the transmutation of the metals. Before your knowledge, men will be stupefied, and confounded, there will be others too who will seek it out, and many without success. Adore Satan, avaricious man, and say like Philalethes, “I have the philosopher’s stone, that I stole from nobody, but I received it from the only good God.”

Next is the alchemy of the hidden teaching, the way to becoming divine.

The path to the deification of man – the main purpose and aim of alchemy - Helvetius writes, is knowledge as obtained in the following chapters of his book:

‘ “I. On the need of mercury of the Wise, for the work of the elixir.
II. The principles that compose the mercury of the Wise.
III. The steel of the Wise.
IV. The magnet of the Wise
V. The chaos of the Wise.
VI. The air of the Wise.
VII. The first operation for the preparation of the mercury of the philosophers, by the flying eagles.
VIII. The work and weariness caused by the first preparation.
IX. On the power of our mercury over all metals.
X. On the sulphur contained in philosophic mercury.
XI. The way in which perfect mastery was discovered.
XII. How to attain perfect mastery.
XIII. On the use of ripe mercury sulphur in the work of the elixir.
XIV. On the circumstances that occur, and are required for the work in general.
XV. On the accidental purification of mercury, and the proper weight of each.
XVI. On the amalgam of gold and mercury, and the proper weight of each.
XVII. On the crucible, its shape material and how to cover it.
XVIII. On Athnor, or the stove of a philosopher.
XIX. On the progress of the work for the first 40 days.
XX. On the form of blackness in the working of the sun and moon.
XXI. How to prevent the burning of the flowers.
XXII. On the government of Saturn, and why it is so called.
XXIII. On the different governments of the works.
XXIV. On the first rule of the working, which is that of mercury.
XXV. On the second rule, which is Saturn.
XXVI. On the third, which is of Jupiter.
XXVII. On the fourth of the moon.
XXVIII. Fifth, Venus.
XXIX. Sixth, Mars.
XXX. Seventh, SUN.
XXXI. On the fermentation of the philosopher’s stone.
XXXII. On the darkness of the stone.
XXXIII. On the multiplication of the stone.
XXXIV. How to make the projection.
XXXV. On the different uses of the stone, to convert into gold, silver, diamonds, and precious stones.”

‘Thomas Vaughan says in his preface, that it is necessary to have received the first initiation in order to understand this book. In reality he wrote it for those initiated in the golden cross degrees, and in order to attract the profane to alchemy, but even these initiated cannot understand it all. No one but a magnus can understand these words of Chapter XIII “I have the philosopher’s stone, that I stole from nobody. But received it from our only God.”.. We will leave it there then, and I will only select a few notes, reserved for the Magicians, or perfectly initiated, which will explain at the same time, the conversion of Helvetius to Luciferianism, and will show for what crime of crimes, you can get as much gold as you like.’

And finally we come to the key symbolism inbuilt in alchemy.
[The Vitulus aureus continues] “How admirable your [Satan’s] works. You are the only one that produces this miracle, viz: THE TRANSMUTATION OF METALS. I give you thanks, oh Father of the Lord of heaven and earth, for having withheld such wonders from the wise and powerful, and manifested them to your little children.” ’

And what is this secret ‘miracle’. Well as you know the mainstay of Catholic faith on earth is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass wherein the Melchisedech priest performs the miracle of changing bread and wine into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ Himself. This miracle is called transubstantiation. Inherent in alchemy however, is Lucifer’s attempt to mimic the miracle of transubstantiation with a transmutation of base metal into gold or whatever. Sulphur represents the bread, Mercury represents the wine and the addition of the Salt (the Philosopher’s Stone) represents the transmutation. As we see above, only when man has capitulated to Lucifer’s ‘priesthood’ does he finally discover the real purpose of the exercise.

Thank you very much, cassini.


Galileo Galilei had friends who were alchemists. In Bologna he and his friends examined a strange, remarkable stone, that gleamed in the dark after being heated or exposed to sunlight for a while. In 1615 Galilei wrote to Pietro Dini about his theory of light: a most spiritual, most subtle and most rapid substance, which propagates through the whole universe, penetrates everything unresisting, heats, animates, and makes living creatures fertile. Confirmation for his theory he found in Ps 18,28 For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. As the primary source of this most spiritual substance emanating out of the stone he identified the body of the sun.

Something about Mr. cassini and friends reminds me of:

I will gladly give away my copy of Malleus Maleficarum but I think it's available on the web. It's a truly chilling story of malicious mind-bending... the Protestants loved it and went on a spree of burning "witches" for hundreds of years.

Yes faber, there are other such connections with Galileo. Note the Copernicans try to undermine this information any way they can. They like to portray heliocentrism as a matter of science, whereas it was always a matter of belief, the pagan heresy called Pythagoreanism condemned by the Holy Office in 1616:

In 1609, the story goes, on a visit to Venice, Galileo heard of the telescope, a Dutch invention. Dig a little deeper however, and even this ‘chance’ happening has ‘Illuminati’ stamped all over it.

‘Prince Christian of Anhalt [was] a keen student of esoteric and mystical topics, particularly alchemy, cabala and the occult…
It was under Anhalt’s influence that the Hidelberg court came to be frequented by well-known Rosicrucian sympathisers – among them the English Hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd, a pupil of John Dee and the German alchemist Michael Maier [who succeeded Cremonini as Grand Master of the Rosicrucian 1617-1622]. Interestingly, Anhalt is known to have been in close contact with the great Italian reformer Paolo Sarpi, the latter a Venetian theologian and statesman who, other than his intensely anti-Catholic sentiment also wanted to turn Venice into a Protestant republic. Sarpi was in turn a close friend of Galileo and is often credited with having been the first to introduce to this great astronomer the primitive long-distance sighting devices – telescopes – that were then being developed in Holland.’

In April 1611, Galileo went to Rome to spread the good-news of his new discoveries to all and sundry who would listen to him. Once there, he renewed an old acquaintance with the Jesuit astronomer Fr Clavius where he was treated as an honoured guest by the Jesuits, and Pope Paul V even granted him a long audience. It was at this time that Galileo was elected the sixth honorary member of the Academia dei Lincei, the first of many scientific societies devoted to philosophical and scientific studies prone to excluded Revelation. Influenced greatly by the anti-Catholic philosopher and occultist Francis Bacon, the Italian aristocrat Federico Cesi (1585-1630), who was only 18 at the time, gathered four like-minded men in his house under the title of the Lincean Academy. They called themselves ‘Lynxes’ because they believed, like the lynx that could see in the dark, the learned of their academy could see what others could not (like a fixed sun and moving earth?). This odd title, for those with a sense of esotericism, is Gnostic, with its doctrine of secret knowledge, privy only to the select few of course. Cesi’s father however, fully aware of the goings on, including alchemy, did not approve.

‘The Lyncean Academy was steadfastly opposed by Cesi's father and other Roman aristocrats. Its members were accused of black magic, opposition to Church doctrine, and living a scandalous life.’ --- The Galileo Project

Here Faber, for you, is another interesting piece this time from Albert Pike's Faith and Morals pointing out the source of heliocentrism:

‘It is not in the books of the philosophers, but in the religious symbolisms of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and rediscover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The priests of Egypt knew, better than we do the laws of movement and of life. They knew how to temper or intensify action by reaction; and readily foresaw the realization of these effects. The causes of which they had determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law of the Equilibrium; and the science of Equilibrium or balancing of forces had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the centres of Life, Heat, and Light. [Note that Pike - while freemasonry had begun to promulgate the supposed billions and millions of years of existence for homo consensus at the time - addresses his peers using the 6,000 years as revealed by Scripture] Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that the Earth revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this generally known because to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This truth was ridiculed by the Christian Lactantius, as it was long after sought to be proven a falsehood by persecution, by Papal Rome.’

Could anything be clearer? Consider the balancing of centripetal and centrifugal forces that formed the core dynamics of Isaac Newton’s solar system, accepted and offered by the freemasons of The Royal Society almost 200 years earlier to secure the illusion of a heliocentric world and we must see how the very concept is based on religious equilibrium and not on empirical science.

‘The secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the secret of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of God. “Ye shall be like the Elohim knowing good and evil,” had the serpent of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death. For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil and die at the foot of this tree, that it may again become the tree of Life. The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and found by the Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON of the universal equilibrium!
Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of Contraries….
Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity.
Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity.
Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power.
Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the scintillations and rays of the Intellect.
Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections: Beauty is harmonious proposition in Forms.
The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the magnificences of Nature are an algebra of graces and splendours.
Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just.’

The highest degree of masonry is the 33rd degree. It is an administrative degree. Once promoted to this ultimate degree of the ‘Prince of the Royal Secret,’ selected initiates are shown that the deepest royal secret in the ongoing war is that of equilibrium.

‘The Royal secret, of which you are Prince, if you are a true Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable, and philosophy is for you, radiant with a divine beauty, is that which the Sohar The Mystery of the Balance [a book of the Cabbalah], it is the secret of the Universal Equilibrium:
Of that equilibrium in the Deity,….
Of that equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine Justice and the Infinite Divine Mercy…
Of that equilibrium between Necessity and Liberty…
Of that equilibrium between Good and Evil…
Of that equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action…’ ---Albert. Pike: Morals and Dogma, pp.858-860.

notice the preference for materiality over and before spirituality for the hankering to turn base metal into gold rather than base materiality into spirituality - hidden alchemy all the rage but no mention of hidden teaching - winc

You're getting more and more loony as you go on, cassini.

Now you're trying to intimidate my friends by inferring that anyone who believes that Creation is intelligent, orderly, consistent, intelligible, is some kind of Freemason worshipping the Egyptian sun-god Ra.

Still, I suppose your only hope is to try to bury Faith and Reason in a pile of absurd inferences.

One could begin to think that you are, indeed, a reincarnation of Heinrich Kramer.