My interest in alchemy came from a dream I had as a five year old; a king was being dismembered and ground up with a mortar and pestle. When I read the tale of the Alexandrian alchemists and saw my dream in a third century text, the study of alchemy became my obsession. The alchemists were not simply chemists; they developed a symbolic language to describe psychological transformation in a time before psychoanalysis. In the most general way, alchemy has to do with incarnation, bringing spirit into matter. Alchemy is a way of projecting psychological material onto matter. The circulatio means that the process is circular. In a person’s life there will be periods of depression, suffering, knowledge, etc. that will reoccur. The alchemist embraced the dark as well as the light and by bringing the opposites together, created a new third path.
Ovum Philosophorum
Alchemical Works
The Pfaueninsel Project
