Chapter
15

The Spagyric Process

In This Chapter

• The hidden signatures in everything

• The kinds of medical cures

• The inner star or true identity of a substance

• The Three Essentials in spagyrics

• The times of planetary magic

• The genius of Paracelsus

Spagyrics (pronounced spa-jeer-icks) is the applied alchemy of isolating the essences of plants and herbs. The Swiss alchemist Paracelsus invented the word by combining the Greek words spao, “tear apart,” and ageiro, “gather together.” So the term spagyrics literally means to tear apart and bring back together again.

In spagyrics, the plant is dried, ground up, or pressed to concentrate its essences, which are then separated and brought back together in a more purified and potent form. The object of spagyrics is to isolate the living essences of the plant and preserve them for later use while at the same time getting rid of the useless or impure parts. “Spagyria,” said Paracelsus, “teaches you to separate the false from the true.”

Alchemists use the spagyric process to make all true alchemical tinctures and elixirs, and they must meet very specific conditions to say that a compound is spagyric. In general, spagyric compounds take much longer to make than normal chemical compounds, because spagyric preparations must be made during certain alignments of the planets that are determined by the signatures of the plant itself.

The Doctrine of Signatures

The doctrine of signatures originated in ancient Egypt with the idea that divine correspondences can be found in the manifested world. This concept was inspired by the Emerald Tablet’s dictum of “As Above, so Below.” According to the ancient text Archidoxies, signatures are the hidden archetypal patterns in things that “have the power of transmuting, altering, and restoring us.”

Alexandrian alchemists started categorizing plants by their signatures. They defined signatures as the characteristics plants and other objects shared with the planetary powers and astrological events in the heavens.

In Eastern philosophy, Chinese alchemist Lao Tzu was the first to clearly elucidate the doctrine of signatures. He stressed the fundamental relationship and corresponding signatures between heavenly powers and earthly manifestation, an idea that pervades modern Taoist thought. He also stressed working only with the true signature of a thing, what he called a substance’s inner virtue.

In the West, the alchemist Paracelsus expanded the doctrine of signatures into every aspect of human life. He taught that man should carefully consider the inner essence of a plant for what it tells us from its properties, structure, color, odor, and habitat. These signatures reveal the resonating correlations between plants and human beings. Paracelsus created a whole new system of planetary and astrological correspondences between plants and human organs that allowed physicians to prescribe herbal remedies according to the symptoms of their patients.

Types of Medicines

The art of spagyrics is very different from modern pharmacology, primarily because modern druggists ignore the spiritual or esoteric properties of plants and herbs. In the view of spagyricists, modern physicians rely entirely on the gross or chemical properties of drugs to treat disease and forget they are really dealing with the life force of a person.

Allopathic Medicine

Contemporary medicine relies on the allopathic approach, which means it uses medicine designed to evoke the opposite symptoms from the disease it treats. One example would be the use of the powerful laboratory chemical phenolphthalein to treat constipation. The chemical provides very fast relief by leaching water from the intestines, and was the ingredient in most popular laxatives for over 50 years. Unfortunately, it was later found to be carcinogenic and toxic with continued use and was quietly withdrawn from the market.

This physically aggressive, overkill approach to fighting disease focuses more on acute symptoms and less on preventive care. The guiding principle in allopathy is that the more powerful the medicine and faster the cure the better. As a result, physicians are caught in a never-ending spiral of developing new drugs as the life force adapts to the gross effects of the previous wonder drug.

Homeopathic Medicine

While allopathic medicine uses compounds that elicit symptoms directly opposite to those produced by the disease, homeopathic medicine uses minuscule doses of a compound to treat a disease in which large doses of the same compound would produce similar symptoms. This is done in the hopes of eliciting a healing response from the body. The German physician Samuel Hahnemann, whose motto was “like cures like,” developed the homeopathic approach in the early nineteenth century.

For example, the homeopathic preparation Nux vomica is given for constipation. This nut from the strychnine tree contains a powerful poison that causes dehydration, constipation, and binding of the bowels. In extremely small doses, however, it relieves constipation.

Spagyric Medicine

In spagyrics, the key is to learn to increase or redirect the life force itself by using living essences with the relevant signatures or properties to cure the disease. Spagyrics is careful not to use allopathic chemicals, which are considered gross or dead remedies.

Spagyrics is also different from homeopathy, though both systems make use of the essences of plants and treat disease as disturbances of the life force. The primary difference is that plant essences are not diluted but concentrated in spagyric preparations.

So in practice, spagyric medicine is a middle approach between the extremes of allopathy and homeopathy. For example, to relieve constipation, a spagyricist might prescribe a few drops a day of a tincture of Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium. Oregon grape is ruled by Mars and stimulates the liver and gall bladder to increase acid production in the stomach to cure chronic constipation. In other words, the tincture slowly induces the body to cure itself.

TREAD CAREFULLY

In general, spagyric compounds work on very subtle levels, and using them either allopathically or homeopathically can have unpredictable results. Unlike nearly every other type of medicine, true spagyrics are living essences that grow stronger with age and maintain a characteristic ability to adapt to changing conditions. More importantly, they are considered reactive spirits (that is, they possess a kind of primitive intelligence) and can be influenced by the conscious intent of both the patient and therapist.

There are also differences between spagyrics and general alchemy. Alchemy is a unique melding of philosophy, religion, and science the goal of which is to gain knowledge of matter and perfect it on all levels. Spagyrics, on the other hand, is much more practical as it addresses the present human condition and the problems of everyday life with minimum philosophizing.

The Planetary Signatures

The spagyric remedy works by healing people of systemic blockages or imbalances in their life force. The spagyricist seeks to produce a specific medicine based on its signatures that he can use to cause the body to cure particular ailments. Here are the signatures of the planets:

• The signatures of Saturn are associated with fate, structure, and the passage of time. Saturn rules the bones, teeth, spleen, and slow chronic processes such as aging. The therapeutic effects of Saturn are drying, coagulation, and mineralization of tissues.

• The signatures of Jupiter are associated with general well-being and overall health. Jupiter rules growth, the metabolic system, the liver, and the enrichment of the blood from food. Jupiter’s therapeutic effects preserve the body and promote healthy growth and organ function.

• The signatures of Mars are associated with stimulation and action. Mars rules the blood, adrenal glands, genitals, and the immune system. Mars’s therapeutic effects are toning the blood and stimulating the immune system.

• The signatures of Venus have to do with refinement of energy in the body and mind. Venus rules the face, skin, and kidneys. Its therapeutic properties are detoxification, improvement of sense organs, and reversing impotency and sexual dysfunction.

• The signatures of Mercury are associated with mental clarity and creative energy. Mercury rules the vocal organs, throat, lungs, and lymph glands. Its therapeutic effects are physical and mental adaptability and improved regulation of bodily rhythms.

• The signatures of the moon are growth and fertility. The moon rules the stomach, womb, and fluids of the body. The therapeutic effects are sedative, cooling, moisturizing, balancing, and breaking of bad habits and physical addictions.

• The signatures of the sun are general vitality and improved overall systemic function. The sun rules the heart and circulation, metabolism, and the distribution of bodily heat. Its therapeutic effects are balancing, heating, and energizing in a steady and controlled way.

The Star in Plants

In spagyrics, the opposing operations of “tearing apart” and “bringing together” are the main processes of working with herbs, flowers, and other plants to make medicinal elixirs, tinctures, balsams, and powders. First, the plant is reduced to its most basic essences, which are further purified and recombined to make the new exalted compound.

The inner essences or strengths carry the signatures of the plant—what Paracelsus called its “inner star.” By the doctrine of signatures, “As Above, So Below,” a plant’s inner star or essence is closely related to the stars in the heavens. Heavenly bodies rule plants because a plant’s inner, microcosmic star corresponds to a universal, macrocosmic star, and the star of a plant is what gives it its signatures.

In general terms, then, the “star” is the truest part of anything, the divine thought or image that gives a thing its form and being. By opening up a plant and revealing its star, the spagyricist hopes to use its incorruptible power to affect other things in predictable ways. “One must understand,” elaborated Paracelsus, “that the medicine must be prepared in the stars and that the stars become the medicine.”

The Three Essentials in Plants

A spagyric medicine is made by deliberately opening up the plant and separating it into all three of its component essences of Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt—the Three Essentials (see Chapter 8). The work of the spagyricist is to separate and recombine these three basic principles as often as necessary until they are in perfect proportion and harmony with each other.

In plants, Sulfur resides in the essential oils, the most concentrated essences of a plant’s chemistry and properties and the carrier of scent, the most soulful attribute of the plant. Essential oils burn slowly, like a fuel, and are the plant’s Sulfur or energetic essence. Sulfur carries the properties that differentiate one object’s chemical reaction or behavior from another.

In spagyrics, Mercury is the spirit, mind, light, or animating life force of a plant. Mercury is found in the “spirit” or alcohol of a plant, its volatile juice derived by fermentation or added as part of the processes of extraction. In labwork, Mercury is the intermediary life force that animates Salt and Sulfur, acting from the middle to connect the two principles of body and soul.

Salt is the form that locks the other two principles of Sulfur (soul) and Mercury (spirit) into a body, allowing the plant to exist and function in the physical world. In plants, the Salt level resides in the mineral components and hard structural tissues (stalks, roots, leaves) that fire reduces to ashes.

The spagyric operation, which begins with the destruction and breaking up of the plant, is not complete until all three basic parts of Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt are reunited in a purer form that is actually closer to the true signature or inner star of the original plant. In order to accomplish this, the spagyric work, like the Great Work of alchemy, takes place simultaneously on all three levels (the physical, the mental, and the spiritual) and requires the purified consciousness of the alchemist to succeed.

Planetary Influences in Spagyrics

Paracelsus taught that the star (or astral) energies of each visible planet affect plants on Earth in predictable ways. Each planet influences some plants more than others, depending on the inherent astrological and planetary signatures within the individual plant. He described this active connection between plant and planet with the term “sympathy.”

Spagyrics advocates that sympathy governs most of the basic characteristics of the living things on our planet, and each of the seven visible planets affects plants, animals, and humans in specific ways because of this underlying sympathy. For instance, as each planet rules an organ or organ system in the human body—and by extension, its diseases—similarly, each planet rules the plants that support the organ or are able to balance it with the corresponding planetary energies.

According to this theory, all aspects of spagyric processing, including harvesting the plant, cutting and sifting it, drying it, wetting of the plant material with alcohol for extraction or distilling it, and adding its salts and other separately extracted materials, should take place during the times ruled by its corresponding planet.

Planetary Hours

The planetary powers are greatest when the planet is visible in the sky, which is called the planetary hour. Traditionally, the planetary hours are determined by using charts originally developed by Trithemius, Paracelsus’s teacher. Three types of planetary charts are used to determine the proper time to work with a spagyric compound.

The simplest planetary chart is the Mercury Level Chart, in which a single planet rules each day all day. A Mercury level preparation is directed toward disturbances and depletions of the life force, such as chronic fatigue or lethargy.

To attune a spagyric to the Mercury level, a highly refined alcohol is used for extraction, which is elevated before use in a process called animation. Animation of the Mercury is a method of spiritizing the material worked on, making it volatile so it can open up and receive the universal life force and then close again and hold that life force.

THOTH’S TIPS

You can download the charts of planetary hours from www.crucible.org/PDF_Files/Planetary_Charts.pdf.

To attune a spagyric preparation to the Sulfur level, the essential oils are extracted separately using steam distillation and other alchemical methods. The Sulfur Level Chart changes each hour, beginning at sunrise, and each planet rules several periods in a single day. A Sulfur level preparation is directed toward physical or mental aberrations and deep-seated disturbances of the soul.

To attune a spagyric medicine to the physical or Salt level, a concentrated extract is made with all the mineral components extracted and included in the remedy. To accomplish this, all the plant matter that would have normally been discarded is burned to an ash. From that ash, the Salt essences are extracted in alcohol. These operations must be performed at the time of day indicated in the Salt Level Chart, which divides the day into seven equal planetary periods. A Salt level preparation is directed toward specific bodily injuries and ailments.

Paracelsus the Great

Paracelsus was a vigorous and unyielding proponent of a new order in both alchemy and medicine. As such, he aroused vigorous opposition from the physicians of his time. Some evidence even indicates that a group of physicians from Vienna murdered him in his home in Salzburg. Paracelsus’s provocative actions certainly did nothing to calm his detractors.

For instance, in 1525, he publicly burned the works of the revered physicians Galen and Avicenna before the assembled citizens and physicians of Basel in Switzerland. Such actions were typical of this stubborn genius. He expounded his ideas with great vigor and seasoned his words with biting sarcasm.

Paracelsus.

Paracelsus even upset the alchemists of his time with his frequent criticism that they should give up trying to make gold and instead should assist physicians by finding new cures. His determined efforts to liberate the incipient science of alchemy from the “narrow and sordid domination by the multipliers and bellows-blowers” gave alchemy a new and nobler direction.

Paracelsus’s contributions to the development of alchemy in the late Middle Ages were immense. Besides developing the theory of the Three Essentials and applying it to all levels of the Great Work, he invented the art of spagyrics and gave the world a powerful new healing modality. His spagyric methods would gradually develop into what he called “iatrochemistry,” (literally healing chemistry), which gave birth to our modern practice of medicine. Today, Paracelsus is recognized as the father of modern medicine for his revolutionary practical advances in medicine.

The Least You Need to Know

• Spagyrics is the art of breaking open a plant to release its fundamental living essence and preserving that essence for purposes of healing.

• Signatures are the archetypal correspondences between the manifested object and its divine image or origin.

• Remedies fall into the three general categories of allopathic, homeopathic, and spagyric.

• Planetary hours are the times of the day and week when the powers of a certain planet are at their peak.

• Paracelsus completely reorganized the theoretical and practical basis of alchemy and changed its emphasis from making gold to making cures.