The Alchemical Path of Light

      

By Arthur Versluis

A friend of mine who has worked with the alchemy of light for many years reminds us that by putting our attention on the light, by relaxing into the light, we are becoming more and more familiar with it, and it is the light, he says, that unburdens us. Gradually, it dissolves our fears, attachments, anger, and anxieties. We acclimate ourselves to it.             In the ancient Mysteries, the initiates would go into darkness and experience intense emotional suffering. They would experience fear and be lost in the darkness. Then they would experience the light in the darkness, the great joy and illumination of freedom. This light was also immortal, beyond the vicissitudes of mortal attachments and aversions, beyond time. They experienced paradise, and because they experienced it for themselves while alive, they would experience paradise after death.             Alchemical lightwork can be Pagan, as the ancient Mysteries were, or it can be Christian, because Christianity also can be understood as a mystery religion. The alchemical path does not belong only to one religious tradition. It is an individual path of awakening, a symbolic way of understanding that is fundamentally human and can be understood in terms of the ancient Mysteries, Platonism, Christianity, Buddhism, and other religious traditions. It provides an entryway and guide to the path of illumination, but we must each walk the path ourselves.             Of course, the alchemical path means understanding Christianity, for instance, in new ways. The alchemical path illuminates what otherwise remains hidden in Christianity. Christ’s harrowing of hell, Christ as lightbringer, Christ as the Sun, Christ as the revealer of mysteries and initiator into eternal life . . . these are all there in Christianity, but we see them more clearly with the aid of the alchemical path. Invoking Christ awakens the light in us so that we can gradually overcome and be free from the burdens we once carried.             It might seem we can pursue the alchemical path on its own, to some extent, without reference to a particular tradition. We can rest our attention on the light and allow it to gradually dissolve our burdens. After all, the reason the alchemical path can appear in different religious forms is that it reflects fundamental truths about who we are, and how we can become better and wiser human beings. These truths are not a matter of opinion but rather are inherent in who we are, and we can each discover them for ourselves.             If this is so, you might ask, Why would we need a particular religious tradition? Why should alchemy incorporate particular religious symbols, like an image of the resurrected Christ? The answer is probably not what you think. The answer is because finding and staying on the path of light is difficult for us because we are caught in the burdens we carry.             We are blocked by our preoccupations, our distractions and addictions, our habitual responses, our greed, jealousy, anger, and fear. Light from the other side reaches out toward us, but we must reach out toward it at the same time in order to make the connection, and revealed traditional religion helps us do that.             Each of us has individual burdens and a unique path to follow beyond them, but at the same time, light by its very nature illuminates, and that illumination is not ours alone. This is why in the famous Hermetic trea- tise Poimandres, we find a revealer figure by that name. The treatise begins with the narrator being beyond the bodily senses, when a vast being announces itself as a sovereign mind that is always present. This vast being in some sense then becomes the portal through which the nar- rator is able to see in infinite vision, light and joy, as well as darkness and the interactions of fire, air, and earth. Poimandres, the revealer, identifies himself as the light itself, and when the narrator looks him in the face, he sees immeasurable light powers. By the end of the treatise, the narrator is deeply happy and able to share the path of light with others because his mind was receptive to Poimandres, inspired by the sacred breath of truth itself, identical to the light.             Here we see again what we see also in the dream alchemy of Zosimos: there is a revealer figure of light in dialogue with the protagonist or narra- tor, a kind of syzygy, or outward manifestation of light, that the narrator experiences as an angelic or divine revealer-other, yet what is revealed is the narrator’s own light-nature itself. This process of light revelation is depicted in visions or dreams—hence in a condensed way—but is almost certainly gradual for us as expressed in our daily lives, in the process of invoking the light, of becoming light.             We are, in a sense, in a dialogue with our own light-nature, seen as outside of us as our angelic light guide; not us, yet, in a profound sense, also us. This is what the Poimandres depicts. And of course we each expe- rience this for ourselves in our dreams, when we see in our mind’s eye ourselves and others who we experience as others, yet exist ultimately in our own mind, both “other” and “not other” at once.             The alchemical visionary texts we have been drawing on are like this—dreamlike—because this is how our mind naturally moves toward illumination, aided by light narratives with a revealer of light. The revealer may be Poimandres or Thrice-Great Hermes or Christ or Guru Rinpoche. It is through the revealer, the light within the darkness, that the darkness is overcome and vanquished utterly.             There may be a few very unusual people who are able to be illumi- nated at once, in one fell swoop like a bolt of lightning, but the alchem- ical path I was taught by a long-time practitioner is a lifetime process of invoking and allowing the light to gradually penetrate and illuminate our darkness, trauma, and negative emotion. This is not necessarily easy work. We have to face our flaws, our weaknesses, our vanity, and our delusions. And of course we don’t want to see these, but the light by its very nature illuminates them.     https://arthurversluis.com