The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 65 - Alchemy's Sacred Science: Linking Ancient Wisdom with Modern Particle Physics

September 12, 2024 • Paul

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Could modern particle physics be the fulfillment of ancient alchemical dreams?

Join us on the fascinating journey from chemistry's materialistic roots to the profound spiritual wisdom embedded in alchemy. Far from being outdated pseudoscience, alchemy offers a rich, integrated view of reality that aligns beautifully with a Christ-centered cosmic perspective. We scrutinize how the ancient and medieval people's interconnected worldview can enrich our understanding of substances and their spiritual interrelatedness, setting the stage for reimagining contemporary chemistry.

Dive into the holistic essence of alchemy, where the spiritual and physical realms are intertwined, and personal transformation is just as crucial as chemical transmutation. We trace the historical lineage of alchemy through Greek, Chinese, and Indian traditions, spotlighting influential figures like Ko Hung and seminal texts such as China's "Great Secrets of Alchemy." PJ joins us to provide deeper insights into how these ancient traditions mesh with Biblical teachings and Christian history, laying a foundation for future explorations in our series.

We challenge conventional wisdom by exploring the intriguing contradictions between alchemy and Greek philosophy. Discover how early Christian thinkers, like Bardaisan, rejected Greek syncretism and forged a unique alchemical path, distinct from Platonism and Aristotelianism. We even delve into the secret alchemical pursuits of Isaac Newton, whose experiments with creatures like cockatrices were pivotal for his groundbreaking work in theology and science. Discover the astonishing parallels between alchemical concepts and modern particle physics, suggesting that today's scientific endeavors are echoes of ancient alchemical quests, continuously building upon their foundational ideas.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, and I'm hoping to do a series on fairy stories and the stories like CS Lewis, narnia, tolkien, harry Potter stories, all that kind of thing, and why and how to understand those from a Christian perspective. But I'm still working on all that and doing more reading because I want to go further than I've currently prepared on that. So what I'm going to do is look at chemistry for a while, is look at chemistry for a while. But in order to get to chemistry as we would call it in the modern world and we think of chemistry as something because it relates to what we did about Pharmacon, the pharmaceutical industry and the nature of substances we've touched on that and that transitions well into an examination of chemistry. But to do that we have to uncover really more of what's going on with chemistry and why the way we think of it is obviously false and a hugely reduced view of the world. So we're going to make our way eventually to what a modern person would call chemistry. But to do that we're going to go via alchemy, which is the really fundamental, bigger subject that contains within it the shrunken thing that we would call moderns call chemistry. So why do I say that?

Speaker 1:

It's well as we know on the Christ-centered cosmic civilization that the modern prevailing view is really something like nothing is spiritual, that there are just material things that have no real interrelatedness apart from physical reactions that happen in a fairly superficial way, and even people who would claim to be Christian basically hold that, particularly in the Western world, and that if there is something called spiritual and in that category it's a kind of dustbin category, the word spiritual into which is dumped almost anything that deviates from an incredibly shrunken and flattened view of reality. So spiritual can contain, like anything magical, mystical, genuinely spiritual, angelic, demonic, even just feelings. Emotions can even be put in the spiritual category as things which are extraneous to a strictly material, flat view of reality. So it's almost almost the idea is spiritual things don't really exist, but if they do exist, they exist in some other dimension that is utterly cut off from separate to irrelevant to what is really real, and the really real is material things understood in a very simplistic way. But ancient and medieval people had a much bigger and more integrated view of reality, and that's, of course, really what this whole podcast is about reacquiring and exploring that, the idea of reality as an integrated hierarchy that cascades out from the throne of God, where the Father has appointed Jesus to be the divine emperor, and from him flows out the spirit of life and light and fullness, and out of that source, which is the Father, comes the Son and the Spirit eternally, and then from them the heavens and the earth and this hierarchy with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven and meaning, and a very, very complicated view, complex view of reality, not view. Reality is that Now, modern chemistry then, is really thought of in fundamentally materialistic, flat ways. But behind that lies something much more sophisticated and subtle and complex and something that took a place within that bigger view of reality, so what we would call alchemy. It's even difficult to know what that word is, because chem the chem bit is hard to know what the roots of that is.

Speaker 1:

We've got PJ with us. I'll say that and he may help us with that. His voice is weak at the moment because he's suffering quite a lot of illness, so we'll try to avoid having him unnecessarily speak, but we do want his insights on this. But it could mean just something like art, like the art. Alchemy is the art, and that is this fundamentally holistic view where the spiritual and the physical are fully interconnected and interdependent, but not totally identical, because the ability to transform from one into the other is all part of this vision of reality that there is what is called. We'll see that this transmutation not just transfiguration, changing appearance, but transmutation, changing what a thing is is very important. And this more ancient view of alchemy, of what is when I say alchemy there, let's say this older view of what is, what is the nature of reality and how to interact with it and what its potential is, um in that there's also the idea that you kind of need a correct theology to have correct science and correct technology and you yourself need to be transmuted in order to bring about results. All this perhaps we'll be able to explore as we go on. Now, before I bring PJ in, I would like just to have a little bit of a history of alchemy, just briefly, just to orientate us slightly, and then we'll turn to PJ, who I'm hoping can show us, take us deeper, I'm hoping can show us, take us deeper and also eventually over. Maybe the next two or three episodes show us more about how this relates to the Bible and Christian history and great Christian theologians and so on.

Speaker 1:

The Greek alchemy goes back quite a long way and you get texts from even in Egypt and the Greeks seem to have some idea about this stuff. The Greeks seem to have some idea about this stuff, going back certainly to the 4th and 5th century BC, and that's interesting because there's a whole European tradition of alchemy and that's what we're going to focus especially on as we, as we bring pj in and look at that. But you also get this alchemy in china and india. I've heard that it's also present in south america, the entire tradition but I don't. I I haven't been able to acquire very much knowledge about that, but I've been reliably informed that the same principles and ideas can be found in texts and traditions there also.

Speaker 1:

But in the Chinese history of alchemy, taoism from the 6th century BC, there's a thing called the way of power, a book or text or tradition called the way of power, and there's a collection and then that embodies this view and that you get a text that has been dated to the second century AD called the classic of changes, second century AD called the Classic of Changes, and a commentary on I Ching, and so it contains within it mystical mathematics of where you've got 64 hexagrams that are used for divination laid out on a grid and that is considered to be a way of understanding the substances of the universe. We might think in terms of, if you know a chemical table where you've got all the we're going to think about this in more detail when we get to chemistry where all the chemical elements with their atomic numbers and things are laid out on a big table and we might have something like that. So something like that you find with this Chinese system with 64 hexagrams that correspond to things, and that is part of this tradition of alchemy, is part of this tradition of alchemy. So that goes back to that text is 142 AD. The first really well-known Chinese alchemist is a guy called Ko Hung and he lived from 283 to 343 AD, so he's sort of the end of the third century into the fourth century, so sort of at a similar time, as you've got things like the Council of Nicaea, which is huge in church history, and he lived throughout that period and he's in China and he produces a work that's very big on mercury and producing elixirs and the most important element to them is mercury. Now PJ will help us understand why that is. That's by no means insignificant, that's important, so he does that.

Speaker 1:

And then the most famous book so it seems to be in the Chinese tradition of alchemy, a book called the Great Secrets of Alchemy. That's a cool title for a book, the Great Secrets of Alchemy and that's from the 7th century AD, possibly late 7th century AD. And again that focuses on the production of elixirs using mercury and sulfur. Mercury and sulfur remember these because these substances are super important in this bigger vision. But also this book talks about the production of what are called precious stones, stones that have power to produce transmutation, and the goal is immortality. In that tradition there's also another I'll just mention one more thing from the 11th century AD, a collection called and again super cool title called Seven Tablets in a Cloudy Satchel. That's the English translation of it, seven Tablets in a Cloudy Satchel Cool name. And that's another collection of alchemical works from China. So I'll just mention a little bit more about the Indian tradition, just so we've got that in our thinking before we bring PJ in on all this.

Speaker 1:

The challenge with all these things. If you notice, the Chinese stuff claims to go back as far as the 6th century BC, but some people dispute that it is that old. Some people think it might not be quite that old, it could be 4th century BC and so on. But in India also you get it in this kind of 3rd century BC, possibly 4th century BC In these texts from that period.

Speaker 1:

But there is a whole view that those texts that are in India were actually brought by Alexander the Great, who invaded India in 325 BC at exactly that time that these texts start to appear, these alchemy, alchemical texts, and the idea is that's where they came from. It was alexander the great that brought them from egypt. You know, the idea is, is egypt the underlying source of all the alchemical texts actually? And that alexander brings them? They're brought to greece and then he brings them to india, and then there are some who would say that is even the source of the ones that are in china also, although some people think china brought some to india and so on. But you can see the complexity that it's within a very similar time frame that these texts are appearing in China and India and possibly in Greece also. But you've got this factor of this guy, alexander the Great, who is a commonality there, that he invades, sets up a kingdom and in that kingdom you've got, there's a source for these alchemical texts.

Speaker 1:

So I don't know what to make of all that, but it's interesting that it may. In other words, the traditions may not be completely independent, but may actually have a common source, possibly from Egypt, babylon, greece, don't know. Pj will have more to say about this, I'm sure. But it's India. You've got these texts, and there it's not so much obsessed with. Immortality is not as obvious in that tradition. Later, it gets associated with what is called tantrism, which is a kind of mystical system of philosophy, and that's from like AD 1100 to 1300. And there's a famous work called Razanava, which again means it's on metallic preparations. That's what it's about, metallic preparations. Now then, that's enough.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot more we can say on the history of all this, and I might do some more in another episode, but I don't want to overload us on it, and what I'm really trying to indicate is that this is a perspective, a tradition that is very big is all over the world, and what is? There are differences between all these different continents. How they do it, uh, huge cultures, but what is most remarkable is how similar everything is, whether it's European, african, chinese, indian, huge different cultural traditions, but what they share, the fundamental shared assumptions, ideas, working principles are far more obvious what they share than their differences. And that, I think, is a good starting point for us to get into with PJ. Pj, tell us, what do you think we need to know about? Alch it? But even based on some of the things I've been saying, what? What is it? Why is it important? What do we need to know to start us off on this?

Speaker 2:

so I think a key part when we're looking at, um, how alchemy was used in christian circles, and that's really its proper use. Really, one of the key things that was, especially in europe, was a rejection of greek syncretism. So you have a lot of christians who and oregon quite you know says quite plainly like, oh yeah, I'm taking ideas from greek philosophers, um, and loads of other Christians do it in a less self-aware way, but it became quite a common thing for Christians to do. Alchemy, though, contradicts two of the main schools of Greek philosophy in really their most crucial ways.

Speaker 2:

So, for Plato, one of the key things to realize is that the material world isn't real. Your substance, your underlying reality, is in your mind. So there's a realm of forms. He calls it everything. That's the realm where thinking happens, that's where your substance is, and then things that manifest in the material world are less real, um. So alchemy totally rejects that, because it says your substances are precisely seven substances the four earthly elements and the three heavenly principles, so the earthly elements, and they're slightly different. As Bardaishan, he's one of the main Christian alchemists. He was an Arab, slash Babylonian in the second century we're going to have to do.

Speaker 1:

I think we'll have to do quite a lot on Bardaishan, won't we? Because people don't always appreciate the scale of this guy country. We're gonna have to do. I think we'll have to do quite a lot on by daishan, wasn't he? Because he people don't always appreciate the scale of this guy.

Speaker 1:

And, uh, because if you know church history from a mediterranean perspective, like north africa, um, like turkey, italy, greece, you know, and northern europe, a lot of church history concentrates on that perspective. And so for us who are like I call it Mediterranean church history, we have these big hitters like Augustine or Athanasius, and we're like, oh, they're the really big thinkers who've really sort of understood things. And then Aquinas later we might have someone like him. Unfortunately, anyway, me and PJ are not totally agreed on how helpful Aquinas is, but we'll save that for another time. But if you're in, you know more of. I'll call it Asian Christianity, though, of course, like quite a, quite a you know a lot of that is asian christianity. What is like, um, the levant is asia, and and what turkey is asia, and so on, like that, but nevertheless going much further, where you've got persian, babylonian, indian, chinese, um and so on that kind of christianity.

Speaker 1:

This bardaishan is like a huge figure, huge figure for them and in terms of providing this massive fundamental view of the of the universe. Well, we won't get into him too much immediately. I mean we can talk about him if you wish, but, um, but I think he's going to require quite a lot of unpacking. But let me let this you're saying that, like for Plato and that kind of view of the world, there's a he. He is more like the modern chemistry, where there's physical things that are totally separated, there's physical, spiritual things, and he would say absolutely, whereas modern chemistry would go probably not, but they have a shared view in having a totally two-tier system of reality. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, and that's the yeah, that's so. That's really the key of platonism. So, because alchemy rejects that um, then it totally rejects, uh, yeah, platonism as a thought system. So, but then it also rejects, um, aristotelianism in also like key ways, in that it and we see this particularly when we get into Isaac Newton he is a very clear alchemist. He wasn't allowed to publish his stuff because it was illegal to be an alchemist, we have to remember, at that time, alchemists like, in order to make a philosopher's stone, you need, like, cockatrice eggs, and so alchemists would create cockatrices and other dangerous things.

Speaker 1:

So it was often made illegal and like so, uh, isaac newton had to keep his alchemy quite secret and we we've covered in earlier episodes the dangers of cockatrice, um, and why and how to make them, and things we covered covered that in an earlier episode.

Speaker 1:

And I went to Isaac Newton's house just recently and it's like a very we were thinking, liz and I, when we were there we were like why on earth is he? Because it's like a little farmhouse, far away from everywhere, and he just had his study there and did all his research and work in what is really like quite a small farmhouse, little compound, not in London or in a big city or anything like that. And we were thinking why would one of the greatest minds ever be doing all his research so far away from everybody else? And of course this is the reason because if he's going to breed a cockatrice, which he requires to do this sort of thing, he has to do it where he isn't observed, because of course, in fairness, breeding is an extremely dangerous thing to do and whereas we'll trust him with doing it, you can understand why it is generally illegal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, and so yeah. So then we think about, like as he, when we look at all his works then together and really take serious is alchemical works, because loads of people think are to get to what newton's good with we have to just look at what he writes about physics. But then he cared, he defined himself primarily as a christian theologian, secondly as an alchemist and then only thirdly as a scientist. So he considered science as merely the basics that he could express legally in England at that time. So a very watered-down view, a version of what his views were. But then that fits into alchemy, which really fits into his theology, which is primarily. Really the only thing he's concerned with is his theology. And so when we view all of that, we get a very clear view of how he considers substances and everything. And then we can compare it with other alchemists and really understand what they're trying to say. And so one of the key things and one person who makes this probably a bit clearer is Paracelsus obviously and he's one of the most famous.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hohenheim. So he, yeah, when does he exist? He's in the late medieval, early modern period. He's, yeah, and he also. He also like carries on this sort of thing of trying to break from greek syncretism. So he gives some of the fey creatures and elemental creatures and more neutral names that aren't rooted in greek mythology. So he comes up with the word gnome instead of pygmy, because obviously pygmy is this greek word. You have them in greek myths. Uh, he comes up with gnome instead like a meaning like rock dweller, uh sort of thing, um, so he's quite a key figure. He describes, um, the substances, the seven substances, and their categories really well. So you've got the earthly elements, and again, this all builds on Bardaishan. But you've got the earthly elements, which are fire, water, light and air, and then you've got the heavenly principles, which are salt, sulfur and mercury, and so those are your seven, and so what those are are macroscopic things that represent fundamental particles in key ways.

Speaker 1:

So before you go on to that. Oh no, do you want to do that? Fundamental particles yeah, do that first and then yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because this is quite crucial for really understanding how much Newton knew and how incredible it is Because in like post-Newtonian stuff we're now thinking we're for the first time looking at fundamental particles. But once we understand what he believed fundamental particles were, we see that he's already figured it out. So salt, the fundamental particle not the macroscopic thing he claims that gives mass and particularly you think about like crystals, like lattices and things that's all like mass related, and salt seems to represent that in a key way. And then mercury gives like motion, so it has a kind of like energy. And they picked Mercury because Mercury is slightly magnetic but it also is like liquid, so you can see it move. So all this idea of motion and magnetism and electricity, that you can electrify it, that is all key.

Speaker 1:

And it's worth noting because it's a metal, mercury and it's easy to forget that it's a metal and that people think, oh no, but metals are not liquid and movable. And that's what we think, because things that we, that we have, that are very, very hard, we'll go, oh, that's a metal, but metals are in fact extremely plastic and that you melt them and shape them. So if you step back slightly and go, oh yeah, like metal is not a hard, un unchanging thing, it's, in fact, all the metals around you are very the word that we would use is plastic, meaning extremely liquid and extremely changeable. So metal is, whereas you can't like rocks, you can't just so easily shape them in a way that metals are easily shaped. So mercury is like a perfect metal because it's revealing its, its liquidity and its energy and movement and plasticity. It's just obviously that, whereas all metals are actually like that and and have this liquid character to them, movable character is that what I've just said?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and so Newton says yeah mercury is the metal that reveals the true nature of motion and movement plasticity energy.

Speaker 2:

And electromagnetism, quite crucially as well, that it has those characteristics. And then you've got sulfur, which gives this release of energy. So like gunpowder has, like sulfur, and so that was very key in Newton's time. People were really getting to grips with sulfur. And so those are the three heavenly principles.

Speaker 1:

So it's like mass motion energy, yeah. And then he's saying those are the three heavenly, like unseen elements. Those are underlying powers Mass motion energy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. But then when you look at fundamental particles and how they're categorized in the modern world, they are remarkably similar to those categories, but we've given them much more scientific names. But they do correspond. So we say there's a Higgs boson. So we say bosons like especially Higgs bosons, they're responsible for mass in particles, just like salt. So you've got a fundamental substance. So not like an idealistic form, but there's like a fundamental substance that produces mass caused by fundamental particles. So newton would totally agree. So then first of all we think well, that's really interesting, because think how absurd it would be before we've seen all this stuff to say you can have massless particles and to actually say most particles have no mass. That would be a crazy thing to say. But newton was saying it and we say it now.

Speaker 1:

Um, so that's alchemists knew, most particles have no mass, but there is a fundamental kind of particle substance that does have mass, and that's what gives everything mass.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right, it's amazing when you think about it. And then, like mercury, you've got leptons which carry electromagnetic force. So again you think, like all the like, the character in which the substances we know macroscopically have the ability to be magnetic or electrical, that is caused by a fundamental particle. I mean, that is crazy, isn't it? Again, so he's right on that and that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then, like sulfur, you've got quarks, which carry the explosive nuclear force, and you know so again, so you think so. Um, you know so that again, so you think so. How uh, newton would break down these fundamental particles is today you've got one that gives mass, one that gives electromagnetic fields, uh, the other one causes explosions. We say that now, but we call it, you know uh, bosons, leptons, quarks, but we're saying the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, now that's brilliant. Maybe that's enough for our first episode to give us this sense that the idea of fundamental substances, elements, elementalism, the idea. So what we're doing is we're trying to grasp this much bigger view of reality that has gone before us and that we've accepted what is an apparently shrunken version of it, these. It's like as if the alchemists are still with us saying see you, you're trying to get to where we were long ago and you're not as far as us kind of thing, but you're trying to get there in your own way. Well, we'll get. I think we're only just beginning on this, so please join us for another episode very soon.