Jeffrey Grygny - Alkemy & the letter K

Let me stroke your mind. Or at least rub you the wrong way. The first alKemical action is to irritate the base material with somewhat corrosive, enflaming it and provoking its impurities. This is not even my conscious intention; that of which I write is intrinsically irritant to the skin of contemporary American so-called "realist" sensibility, hypersensitive and reflexive as it is, tuned to a hair's vibration to its satisfaction. alKemy is bound to annoy almost everybody.

How can I possibly explain how alKemy is the most necessary philosophy for the future? I feel that you already know it without recognizing it in the antique word (but it must be an antique word). If I spoke just right, in the right tone of voice, with the right pauses and the brow crinkled just so, you'd say ah, of course, that's it.
My goal seems most questionable, as alKemy has ever been, except maybe as a trope for some kind of radical material transformation upon the soul and the soul of the world; that would indeed not solve all problems, as life is ever problematic, but would go to the root, the radix, of the excess problems that our culture has accidentally developed on the way to objective knowledge, the systemic suffering whose roots are described in the history of the Western lands. alKemy is ever forward-looking, optimistic that art can refine away suffering and turn it into beauty.

Not a utopia, but an alKemical world, with alKemical billboards, alKemical magazines, schools, clubs, games, political parties, artistic academies.

An alkemical culture.

Seems most unlikely right now, but the funny thing is -- is --

it already is- we mostly don't recognize it.

So I want to remind you. To re-mind, recollect yourself. Each breath that you take in through the retorts of your nose into the bellows of your lungs pumps into the iron atoms in the hemoglobin molocules of your blood, an by an unknown mutation, fans the oxidizing flames of microscopic alembics, the mitochondria, with the occult energy of the stars, the cosmic fire that becomes or already is awareness, , feeding and floating every thought-- of ice cream, of love, of money--driving your finger to click as if with a thought the next mouse-click; welling up into your very luminous mind, lighting up the twin lamps of your visual cortex, outward into the horizons of the ten thousand things of the world.

Ah, yes, alchemy--
Tao, chi elan vital
the philosopher's stone
the marriage of Science and Poetry

"Don't try to change the world-- you will only make it worse" John Cage

That's the dilemma of alKemy:to accept the world as it IS or to change it? The dilemma is obviously false-- just as dreaming of drinking water will not solve your thirst, there are times when the obvious thing to do is something-- relative world IS absolute, baby! There is, however no hope of achieving heaven, perfection, enlightenment, an end to the enterprise-- there is only journey (and i don't mean the band!) Hopelessness is not disheartenment, it's an honest open heart, as great and vast as the sky over the Himalayas. (That's the actual, practical meaning of nonduality, by the way).

"K"

AlKemy repairs the dualism of the old hermetic alchemy, which got so bad it could result in global warming and the extinction of species, not to mention the colonization of the human body by advertising and technology-- a fate that we all suffer, and to which practical alkemy offers only the good remedy. The old hermetic alchemy was dualistic, theistic, sexist, heirarchical and imperialist, leading the alchemists Descartes and Newton to conclude that numbers were the mind of god, that the absolute was somehow superior to the relative; that quantity could be effectively separated from quality--(powers of ten are real but the colors and sensations of the body are not!)-- and that nature is a suburb of man's desire. DISASTER! (for an antidote to science think that all things are their own platonic ideals, expressed in the calculus of qualities, like the medieval humors, aristotle's tactile elements of dry, moist, hot and cold. Masculine and feminine energies generate and pervade a cosmos of erotic sensual energies-- the emotions we feel are not foreign to galaxies nor protozoa.) or, to put it another way:

alchemy: The letter C is male the letter H is female the friction of their juxtaposition creates the vibration of CH, which we no longer pronounce. "K" is the union of these energies, the male is detatchment, blue, white, cool, centrifugal, effusive female is passion, red, warm, centripedal, absorbing

"K" is one hard-soft hermaphroditic sound the first letter of the Tibetan alphabet the nonduality of male and female, high and low, body and spirit, mind and matter, master and slave (all problems of the old alchemy, first promoted by the priests of Egypt)
Therefore, alKemy resides in the crucible where all phenomena are realized to be all-pervasive basic space, the mercurial mirror whose tremblings set the cosmos into being, only to be stilled back into lucid, self-luminous quintessence. Whoso recognizes this quintessence as the basis of all phenomena has achieved the transformation.

It is then obvious what to do.

2000

			Alkemy & the Letter K Let me stroke your mind. Or at least rub you the wrong way. The first alKemical action is to irritate the base material with somewhat corrosive, enflaming it and provoking its impurities. This is not even my conscious intention; that of which I write is intrinsically irritant to the skin of contemporary American so-called "realist" sensibility, hypersensitive and reflexive as it is, tuned to a hair's vibration to its satisfaction. alKemy is bound to annoy almost everybody. How can I possibly explain how alKemy is the most necessary philosophy for the future? I feel that you already know it without recognizing it in the antique word (but it must be an antique word). If I spoke just right, in the right tone of voice, with the right pauses and the brow crinkled just so, you'd say ah, of course, that's it. My goal seems most questionable, as alKemy has ever been, except maybe as a trope for some kind of radical material transformation upon the soul and the soul of the world; that would indeed not solve all problems, as life is ever problematic, but would go to the root, the radix, of the excess problems that our culture has accidentally developed on the way to objective knowledge, the systemic suffering whose roots are described in the history of the Western lands. alKemy is ever forward-looking, optimistic that art can refine away suffering and turn it into beauty. Not a utopia, but an alKemical world, with alKemical billboards, alKemical magazines, schools, clubs, games, political parties, artistic academies. An alkemical culture. Seems most unlikely right now, but the funny thing is -- is -- it already is- we mostly don't recognize it. So I want to remind you. To re-mind, recollect yourself. Each breath that you take in through the retorts of your nose into the bellows of your lungs pumps into the iron atoms in the hemoglobin molocules of your blood, an by an unknown mutation, fans the oxidizing flames of microscopic alembics, the mitochondria, with the occult energy of the stars, the cosmic fire that becomes or already is awareness, , feeding and floating every thought-- of ice cream, of love, of money--driving your finger to click as if with a thought the next mouse-click; welling up into your very luminous mind, lighting up the twin lamps of your visual cortex, outward into the horizons of the ten thousand things of the world. Ah, yes, alchemy-- Tao, chi elan vital the philosopher's stone the marriage of Science and Poetry "Don't try to change the world-- you will only make it worse" John Cage That's the dilemma of alKemy:to accept the world as it IS or to change it? The dilemma is obviously false-- just as dreaming of drinking water will not solve your thirst, there are times when the obvious thing to do is something-- relative world IS absolute, baby! There is, however no hope of achieving heaven, perfection, enlightenment, an end to the enterprise-- there is only journey (and i don't mean the band!) Hopelessness is not disheartenment, it's an honest open heart, as great and vast as the sky over the Himalayas. (That's the actual, practical meaning of nonduality, by the way). "K" AlKemy repairs the dualism of the old hermetic alchemy, which got so bad it could result in global warming and the extinction of species, not to mention the colonization of the human body by advertising and technology-- a fate that we all suffer, and to which practical alkemy offers only the good remedy. The old hermetic alchemy was dualistic, theistic, sexist, heirarchical and imperialist, leading the alchemists Descartes and Newton to conclude that numbers were the mind of god, that the absolute was somehow superior to the relative; that quantity could be effectively separated from quality--(powers of ten are real but the colors and sensations of the body are not!)-- and that nature is a suburb of man's desire. DISASTER! (for an antidote to science think that all things are their own platonic ideals, expressed in the calculus of qualities, like the medieval humors, aristotle's tactile elements of dry, moist, hot and cold. Masculine and feminine energies generate and pervade a cosmos of erotic sensual energies-- the emotions we feel are not foreign to galaxies nor protozoa.) or, to put it another way: alchemy: The letter C is male the letter H is female the friction of their juxtaposition creates the vibration of CH, which we no longer pronounce. "K" is the union of these energies, the male is detatchment, blue, white, cool, centrifugal, effusive female is passion, red, warm, centripedal, absorbing "K" is one hard-soft hermaphroditic sound the first letter of the Tibetan alphabet the nonduality of male and female, high and low, body and spirit, mind and matter, master and slave (all problems of the old alchemy, first promoted by the priests of Egypt) Therefore, alKemy resides in the crucible where all phenomena are realized to be all-pervasive basic space, the mercurial mirror whose tremblings set the cosmos into being, only to be stilled back into lucid, self-luminous quintessence. Whoso recognizes this quintessence as the basis of all phenomena has achieved the transformation. It is then obvious what to do. 2000
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