My early steps on the alchemical path occurred when I was less than ten years of age. That would have been, at the latest, 1962—the year that a German alchemist, Albert Riedel, opened a now-legendary school in Utah, the Paracelsus Research Society. In 1984, I entered the beginners’ class of his school, to take further steps on this path, and was initiated into the oral tradition of alchemy by Frater Albertus.
I was led to his school by the book Praxis Spagyrica Philosophica.1 It was the first—of perhaps a hundred books concerning alchemy I had searched—to show that the author had personal knowledge about how to actually do anything. By way of comparison, this book is much more open and direct, and it provides a step-by-step plan for study and work.
Like Albertus’s Praxis Spagyrica Philosophica and his later work, The Alchemist’s Handbook, The Path of Alchemy shows you how to grind medicinal herbs with a mortar and pestle and create tinctures that help to heal and balance mind and body. Certainly this is a practical book, as hands-on as you can hope for. It is also a comforting book. By this I mean that it does not contain hard-to-place symbolism or just hint at things that really could be said directly.
If you can brew a pot of coffee, you can begin doing the laboratory work detailed here. If you can afford the few dollars needed to buy a copy of The Path of Alchemy, you should be able to assemble all of the tools you need to perform experiments. If the fact that the experiments are not complicated suggests to you that they cannot be very revealing, then please hang on for a great ride!
The Path of Alchemy is quite positive and affirmative, but there are a few “no’s”: no oaths, no secrecy, no gurus, no master, no limits on your imagination and freedom. No guarantees, either, save one: no effort, no result. Making this book is exactly right for today’s student—it packs all of the transformational dynamite that Frater Albertus’s classic The Alchemist’s Handbook delivered in 1960. However, unlike that wonderful little book, this revealing book satisfies our culture’s need for speed. The Path of Alchemy is designed to be useful now, for anyone willing to give a bit of joyful attention and effort.
This book is a tool for personal transformation. The style and format are contemporary, which makes it easier to begin working on your alchemical realization than if you were reading what has previously been available. I say this with the greatest respect for those teachers who have gone before on this path, for without their previous efforts it would not be possible to open wider the doors to the Alchemical Temple.
The author of the book you are now reading owes much to Frater Albertus as well as to other generous teachers, most notably Jean Dubuis.2 Great teachers intend that those who come after them will accomplish even greater things. As alchemy is the work of evolution, one should not be surprised that changes come one after the other, and with increasing speed.
Alchemy is transformational, healing, balancing. This Great Art has not yet been fully revealed in its implications for planetary harmony. Do you imagine that this book or another one will describe how to change the planet with alchemical healing, or that somehow it is necessary to get all of the presidents, kings, popes, and potentates to embrace an ancient art and science in a modern wrapping?
The legendary Stone of the Philosophers is said to be such in its power and nature that only a few grains are necessary to change a mass of lead into the purest gold. If the potential for such rapid evolution exists in the metallic kingdom, can we imagine that such a power might exist in regard to the human condition?
The culture in much of our planet today is one of increasing information; in fact, it has increased so much that we risk being overloaded to the point that we become lost and detached from what is real. The speed of discovery increases moment by moment, and it seems that the stresses in our lives accelerate at a similar rate. Our families, our countries, and our planet seem to be bursting at the seams with pressure, with no desirable end in sight.
The need for urgency and tenderness in planetary transformation seems necessary when we survey the widespread pain and suffering that is the human condition. There is so much to hope for when we experience true love and friendship, those treasures beyond price, and as we reflect on the beauty of nature expressed in each tender flower, in the awesome grace and power of a lion, in the delicacy of a butterfly, and in the system and order expressed in a crystal grown within the skin of our planet.
The harmony transcribed from the celestial spheres by Beethoven and others, the sculpture and paintings of the master artists, the great dream-stories of Native American shamans, which bring the heights of human aspiration one step closer to earth—each suggests that creative transformation is something that we are inherently skilled enough to accomplish to satisfy our need for spiritual sustenance.
Yet the myriad effects of ignorance, deprivation, disease, and greed bear evidence of our imbalance and suggest that our creative realization is not yet complete. Until such time, the alchemical fire will not be extinguished. The drama of creation, transformation, evolution, and healing will play out in your own heart and mind as you dare to discover your true nature and role in this Great Work. Perhaps then you will become a vehicle for accelerating evolution in the four kingdoms.
I have been very fortunate at every step on my own alchemical journey to have found those generous individuals who were willing and able to help people. Others who had gone before these teachers had helped them, and they in turn continued the chain of good deeds and service. The Path of Alchemy is one visible expression of a tradition of care and concern for the well-being of humanity. It is my sincere hope that you will share my fortune, not measured in gold or material accomplishment, but rather in a sense of purpose and of daily revelation and affirmation of the goodness of life and the infusion of hope and purpose.
Carry on, and keep up the good work that you have already begun!
Russell House
Wheaton, Illinois, 2005
1. The book Praxis Spagyrica Philosophica was an English translation by Frater Albertus of an eighteenth-century German alchemical manuscript with footnotes regarding alchemical theory and practice, as well as contact information for the now-defunct Paracelsus College.
2. Jean Dubuis is a French alchemist who founded an alchemical school, Les Philosophes des la Nature, which also had an English-language school, the Philosophers of Nature. Both are now defunct, although the written courses are still available in both French and English through Triad Publishing in Winfield, Illinois.