NEWS 

Weird news (December – January 1st)

UK

23rd December:  Could Disney Princesses be bad for you?  Child psychologist Jennifer L Hardstein believes that the ever-popular Disney Princesses could have some damaging morals.  She outlines her concerns in her new book ‘Princess Recovery: A How-To Guide to Raising Strong, Empowered Girls Who Can Create Their Own Happily Ever Afters’, stating that she feels traditional stories such as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty promote the idea that attractiveness and material gain are important and will bring you love and popularity.

She has named this occurrence ‘Princess Syndrome’.

She goes on to say that young girls can be affected by this in later life, feeling that their self-worth is based on how they look and not on other traits such as intelligence or personality.

She also believes that celebrities such as the Kardashians are excellent examples of what ‘we should not be’.  Her opinions have proved controversial as many Disney fans reject the implications and others point out that more recent Disney Princesses such as Mulan deliver empowering messages, arguing also that older Disney productions are subject to zeitgeist anyway.

‘

 

International

17th December:  Authorities in North Vancouver are searching for two Santas after they got into a pub brawl with another unidentified individual at the Rusty Gull Pub at 11pm on Friday night.  The unidentified individual had to be taken to hospital for his injuries though they were minor and he was released soon after.  He says he does not plan to press charges even if the Santas are found.

RCMP Cpl. Richard de Jong stated that “This time of year I think people get into the spirit of the Christmas celebration and it’s a pretty good disguise to have considering the ‘Christmas cheer’ that probably enabled their behaviour to get to the point where it did.”  He jokingly added, “Somebody asked, ‘Were they regular patrons of the pub?’ and I said, ‘No. I think they just come once a year’”.

18th December:  The citizens of Juzcar, Spain, agreed to have each and every single building in the village painted a positively luminous blue for the filming of the Smurfs movie six months ago.  They had been assured their houses would be returned to their original and more traditional white, but now that the time has come to banish the blue, 250 locals have decided to put it to a vote as to whether or not it should indeed be returned to its former colour.

Since the village underwent its makeover, they have received over 80,000 visitors, resulting in “…a boost to the local economy, it’s increased our happiness, our dreams and our levels of employment,” according to Mayor David Fernandez Tirado, who has even apparently been nicknamed ‘Papa Smurf’.  More than a dozen painters and 1000 gallons of paint were used to decorate the village and special permission was sought from the regional government of Andalusia and the local bishop so that even the church got a paint job.

21st December:  Sam Schmid, an Arizona college student, has made headlines everywhere after his miraculous recovery subsequent to a five-car accident in October.  The 21-year-old’s brain injuries were so severe that the he had to be airlifted from the local hospital to the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Medical Centre in Phoenix and treated for an aneurism, also suffering haemorrhage and a stroke.

His coma showed no signs of improvement and Doctors began considering taking him off life-support and discussing organ donation.  Shortly after these options underwent consideration Schmid began to respond, holding up two fingers on command.

Now he’s up and about, walking, talking and improving with the aid of time.  Even the Neurosurgeon involved in Schmid’s case, Dr. Robert Spetzler, agreed that his recovery was almost beyond belief, stating that “I am dumb-founded with his incredible recovery in such a short time.  His recovery was really remarkable considering the extent of his lethal injuries.”  Schmid himself says that “I feel fine. I’m in a wheelchair, but I am getting lots of help.”

ALCHEMY – A Primer by Catherine

Alchemy

Edward Chalmers Werner, late member of the Chinese Government’s Historiological Bureau in Peking, wrote a book while studying old Chinese records that took note of the study of alchemy in China in a pre-Christian era: “Chang Tao-Ling, the first Taoist pope, was born in A.D. 35 in the reign of the Emperor Kuang Wu Ti of the Hari dynasty.

His birthplace is variously given as T’ien-mu Shan, Lin-an-Hsien in Chekiang, Feng-yang Fu in Anhui, and even in the “Eye of Heaven Mountain.”

He devoted himself wholly to study and meditation, declining all offers to enter the service of the state. He preferred to take up his abode in the mountains of Western China where he persevered in the study of alchemy and in cultivating the virtues of purity and mental abstraction. From the hands of the alchemist Lao Tzu, he received supernaturally a mystical treatise, by following the instructions in which he was successful in his match for the Elixir of Life.”

The Taoist monks in China searched for both the outer elixir and the inner elixir.  The outer elixir took the form of minerals and plants that had the ability to prolong life.  The inner elixir was the use of ‘exercise techniques’ to influence and manipulate the chi of the body.

The origins of alchemy as it is understood in the West seem to stem from Egypt according to most sources.

The word itself may come from the Greek word for Egypt – Khemia. In the 7th century, ‘al’ was added by the Arabs that occupied resulting in al- khemia which means ‘The Black land’.  Other possible origins of the word include the Greek for fluid: khumos, the Greek for infusion: chumeia, which apparently accounts for the old-fashioned spelling of chemistry: chymistry.  The former seems to have first appeared be in an essay by Julius Firmicus, a writer of the 4th century, but without the prefix ‘al’.

The exact origins of the theories of alchemy are difficult to trace.  One of the main stories goes that Neoplatonists drew comparisons of the Greek god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth and gave him the new name of Hermes Trismegistus.  ‘Trismegistos’ is the Greek for ‘thrice greatest’, from ‘tris’: ‘thrice’ and ‘megistos’: ‘greatest’.

Hermes Trismegistus was meant to be the individual who told the secrets of the gods to those who sought sacred gnosis as well as the one who guided the souls of those who had died through the underworld, the psychopompos.  His roman name is of course Mercury, protector of merchants, gamblers, liars, and thieves as well as his previous titles and he is usually illustrated with winged sandals and a staff entwined with snakes or serpents of wisdom, the caduceus.


Christian writer Tertullian called him the ‘master of those who occupy themselves with nature’ which henceforth led to alchemists calling their work ‘hermetic art’.  Additionally, the seal of Hermes (Or the Seal of Solomon, Solomon was regarded by some as the incarnation of Hermes) was often placed upon alchemic vessels and led to the phrase ‘hermetically seal’. Interestingly, you may recognize this as a medical symbol as the caduceus is often mistaken for the Rod of Asclepius, (Or Asklepios, Aesculapius or the asklepian) Asclepius being the son of Apollo, practitioner of medicine in Greek mythology.


The philosopher’s stone was highly sought after by alchemists as it was believed that base metals could be transformed by it into gold.  Pursuit of the Philosopher’s stone was known as magnum opus and it was illustrated by the alchemical glyph of the squared circle, not unlike the symbol used by JK Rowling for the last Harry Potter book.  This symbol also which included the Philosopher’s stone. Arabian belief was that metals consisted of differing proportions of mercury and sulfur and that gold was, in essence, a perfect metal.

The squared circle, when viewed fully, contains alchemic symbols for varying metals.

The concept originated from Islamic alchemist Geber (8th century).  He analysed each Aristotelian element (Earth , Air , Fire , Water ) in terms of qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness.

So fire was hot and dry, water cold and moist, earth cold and dry and air hot and moist.

He expanded this theory to include metals, believing every metal to be a combination of these four principles, two interior and two exterior.

Thusly, he brought about the concept that the transmutation of one metal element into another could be achieved by the rearrangement of its basic qualities.

Such a thing would have to involve a mediatory substance, which gave rise to the notion of an elixir, or ‘al-iksir’ in Arabic.

This elixir would involve the use of the Philosopher’s stone.

Varying theories tweaked by Latin alchemists led to the development of the notion of ‘prima materia’, (the philosopher’s stone) being the one thing that all substances contain in varying amounts.  Alchemists attempted to obtain pure forms of prima materia and subsequently add things to it that would result in whatever he was trying to create.

The prima materia was branded as a special form of mercury ’mercury of the philosophers,’ which was the essence of mercury after being extracted or freed from the four elements of fire, earth, air and water.  Thusly, ordinary mercury had to have an earth type article removed from it, a water or liquid article removed from it,  then it had to be fixed (In chemistry, to fix something is to render it non-volatile and stable in form) by removing air (Or a ‘volatile principle’).

The resulting prima materia had to be treated with ‘a principle derived from sulphur’ to bestow upon it the qualities that were missing and the philosopher’s stone would be the result, made from the white mercury that signified silver and the yellow sulfur that signified gold.

The belief that metals were composed of differing amounts of mercury and silver differed through the ages as follows.  Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) Speculum Naturale outlined the concept  that there are four spirits, being mercury and sulphur as before, and also arsenic and sal ammoniac, as well as six bodies, being gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron.  Gold and silver were of course considered pure, and the latter four were impure.

Pure mercury, fixed by white non-corrosive sulphur, ‘engenders in mines a matter which fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced’.

Furthermore, the theories summarised copper as being potential silver, and that to make it thus all that needed to be achieved by the alchemist was the extraction or removal of the redness.

This idea holds true for many other things according to 13th century thinking and the Greek alchemists.  The main theory being that all things with one outwardly visible quality also possessed a hidden quality of the very opposite in nature and can be made perceptible using fire.

Alchemy split into two factions after it led to the discovery of amalgams and improved and advanced many chemical processes and equipment needed to run them.  The first was the foundation of what we know as chemistry, making alchemy a predecessor to the modern chemistry.  The second was the continuation of the metaphysical side of alchemy, the pursuit of immortality and the transmutation of base metals into gold, the last of which is entirely possible, but not quite worth the energy needed to make it.

The Leiden museum contains a number of papyri discovered in a tomb at Thebes and written in approximately the 3rd century AD.  One of these gives a number of receipts for ‘the manipulation of base metals to form alloys which simulate gold and are intended to be used in the manufacture of imitation jewellery.’

The author of said receipt is not of the belief that the process therein involves transmuting metals, but some suggest (M. P. E. Berthelot) that the workers involved in said processes, though initially aware that what they were creating was not gold, were deceived by their own success and eventually believed that they had mastered a form of alchemy.

In a commentary dating from around the end of the fourth century on this work by Synesius to Dioscorus, a priest of Serapis at Alexandria, changes are noted as receipts begin to omit the more practical details of the process and become vague.  The processes whereby alloys are prepared and metals tinted or coloured, start to sound less scientific and more mystical, suggesting transmutation (the transformation of the atom of one specific chemical element into the atom of another specific chemical element by nuclear bombardment) is achieved.

SOME IMAGES TO SUPPORT THE DISCUSSION IN THE SHOW

A “Romantic view’ of the Alchemists Lab Perhaps

The Monas Hieroglyphica (or Hieroglyphic Monad) is invented and designed by John Dee, the Elizabethan Magus and Court Astrologer of Elizabeth 1st . It is also the title of the 1564 book in which Dee expounds the meaning of his symbol

The Hieroglyphic embodies Dee’s vision of the unity of the Cosmos and is a composite of various esoteric and astrological symbols. Dee wrote a commentary on it which serves as a primer of its mysteries. However, the obscurity of the commentary is such that it is believed that Dee used it as a sort of textbook for a more detailed explanation of the Hieroglyph which he would give in person. In the absence of any remaining detail of this explanation we may never know the full significance of the Glyph.

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
TRTZ 43 Alchemy Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (495)