The Alchemical Dream
A 2008 documentary featuring Terence McKenna on John Dee's Bohemian mission and the alchemical transformation of matter and society. McKenna traces Dee's 1580s journey across Europe to establish an alchemical reformation, culminating in Frederick V's short-lived reign as King of Bohemia. The film explores Dee's collaboration with the scryer Edward Kelly, their angelic communications, and the Hermetic dream of Astraea that sought to unite magic, science, and politics in a utopian state.
transcriptmachine-transcribed, unedited
to do is to be part of a film making effort and I want to describe the project to you a little bit
simply because it's what's on my mind naturally. It's not a film about rave culture, it's not a
film about Albert Hoffman, it's not a film about body piercing or any of these things that great
films need to be done about and have been done about. It's about one of your local heroes who is
a great hero of mine and I'm talking about Frederick V, Elector Palatine, Prince of Heidelberg,
King of Bohemia, who was not content to sit back and let things happen but was willing to launch
a chemical dream of a reformation of human society. Okay this is a prophecy in the Hermetic
literature. A day will come when men will no longer care for the earth and at that day the
gods will depart and everything will be thrown into primal chaos. This prophecy was strongly
in the minds of the strains of non-christian thought that evolved at the centuries of closure
of the Roman Empire.
A world whose psychology was very much like the psychology of our own time. A psychology of despair and
exhaustion. LSD was not sufficient even coupled with rock and roll. It only brought oppression. It was
like a failed alchemy. Instead of the dissolving and recrystallizing at a higher and more angelic
level,
thousands of prisons were built and the entire thing failed. But this spirit is the spirit. The spirit of life itself. The spirit of novelty itself. And it will not be suppressed for long in any time or place. So now again it comes. It's a spirit of dissent that will not be suppressed for long.
It says we will not
The values of materialism
the values of the ito and the values
Separate and break down the community
in the two hundred and twenty years from fifteen hundred to beginning of the thirty years war
Europe was caught in a number of conspiracies and political intrigues directed toward moving Europe
toward a magical and Unvaccinated world
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chemically-based society.
The Protestant princes of the Northern League of Germany,
especially Frederick the Elector Palatine,
came to culminate this movement,
but its roots lie further back in the 1580s of the 16th century.
It was in this period that the English astrologer, astronomer,
mathematician, navigator, and expert of espionage, John Dee,
launched his famous and mysterious mission to Bohemia,
a little-known incident in European history
which holds clues to understanding the fate and evolution of modern science
and the nature of a lost world of magical and alchemical thinking
that once claimed the attention of the European imagination.
John Dee, the greatest mind of the Elizabethan era,
friend of Queen Elizabeth,
colleague of Sir Philip Sidney,
converser with angels, mathematician par excellence,
determined, under the influence of the mysterious Edward Kelly,
that he was to be the center of a now-chemical renaissance
and a secret society that would lay the groundwork
for the continuation of the dream of Astraea,
the dream built...
around the Elizabethan Queen Elizabeth I.
He associated himself intensely with the Arthurian mythical and mystical side
of the Elizabethan idea of British Empire.
He was a welshman, like the Queen he was so intensely devoted to,
and like her he shared the renaissance mood of Saturnian melancholy.
A collector of books, a builder of scientific instruments,
a collector of books, a builder of scientific instruments,
composer of codes and ciphers, fascinated with alchemy. Dee was both the figure of the
introspective melancholic and the world-planning, empire-building political visionary. Dee was
under the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland, and it was Northumberland who looted the Catholic
monasteries at the time of Henry VIII. We have reason to believe that John Dee had
a virtual carte blanche in selecting manuscripts from those libraries that interested him.
Not only was Dee a scholar of the classics and the magical past, but he was an intimate
friend with some of the great movers and shakers of his own time, particularly Sir Philip Sidney
and the entire coterie of poets and artists who had gathered themselves around Elizabeth
as strangers.
It was essentially a poetic enterprise, as alchemy always is. Merlin, in the Arthurian
legends, has come down to us basically disguised as a poet.
The image we have of Merlin is a great historical figure, and Dee's image. So Dee possessed
an enormous power over the imagination of his contemporaries. They were in awe of his
learning.
Or let my lamp at midnight hour be seen in some high lonely tower, where I may oft out-watch
the bear with thrice great Hermes, or unsphere the spirit of the bear.
of Plato to unfold what worlds or what vast regions hold. Perhaps we are the naive ones.
Perhaps we too quickly assumed that we had understood all there was to know about matter.
After all, even to this moment, we cannot locate the seat of the imagination in matter.
We cannot trace the evolution of a human thought or hope in matter.
It's almost as though the alchemists, through their humility, had a deeper insight into the workings of the world than we have achieved today.
The transformation of matter into a universal panacea for the redemption of mankind.
This was Dee's great...
...passion. This was the overarching theme of his life, a deep, deep...
...commitment to the reformation of society, and a deep, deep...
...exhaustion and rejection of the values of Christendom that he saw betrayed all about him.
And then by distillation, and then by coagulation, and then by concentration through firing...
...the alchemical body...
...is brought to completion.
These are processes that go on both within the chemical retort, the alembic, in the alchemist's laboratory...
...and they're processes which go on in the heart and mind of the alchemist.
One process dissolves.
Another process separates the dross, the gross matter, from the precious.
Another concentrates the subtle essence.
Another raises the subtle essence to another level of refinement.
Over time, the great friend of the alchemist, this process of rarefaction and growth...
...both metallic and psychological, both internal and external, both personal and impersonal, proceeds and feeds upon itself...
...and eventually...
...not through any logic discernible to the scientific mind.
There is a kind of miracle.
The production of the stone, the union of spirit and matter...
...the fusion of these two contradictory aspects of the universe into a new and third thing...
...the quintessence, the rubedo, the lapis philosophorum, the aqua vitae...
...the nostre lapis...
...the lapis philosophorum de vici.
I would place Dr. D at the center of this business.
And then it's a dissolve.
To Mortlake 1582.
The angelic encounter.
All you that feign philosophers would be...
...and night and day in Gelber's kitchen broil...
...wasting the chips of ancient Hermes' tree...
...leaning to turn them to a precious oil...
...the more you work, the more you lose and spoil...
...to you I say, how learned soe'er you be...
...go burn your books and come and learn of me.
He was unusually susceptible to the claims of Edward Kelly...
...who came to D with two bona fides...
...a mysterious book written in hieroglyphics...
...and a red powder...
...which he claimed to be...
...a partially completed approach to the alchemical elixir.
With these two bits of evidence in hand...
...D fell fully under the spell of Kelly and his scrying ability...
...communing with spirits and entities discerned within.
He was at last obtaining entrance into the angelic realms...
...he had so long sought.
The diaries of D show that over a period of years...
...and on a daily basis...
...he and Edward Kelly would regularly retire...
...to the inner chambers of D's house...
...first at Mortlake...
...and then in a series of courtly settings...
...as they moved about Europe.
And in these seances, in these settings...
...a vast cast of angels and voices...
...passed in parade...
...always egging our protagonists...
...deeper into the Rosicrucian enlightenment...
...and the political dispensation that they sought.
In 1583, they arrived at last in Prague.
Prague at that time was ruled by Rudolf II...
...the occult emperor...
...collector of dwarves and giants...
...patron of alchemy and astrology...
...one of the most eccentric and extravagant rulers...
...in the entire panoply of European history.
And it was to Rudolf...
...and it was to the people around Rudolf...
...and the emperor's private secretary...
...Count Palatine Michael Meyer...
...it was to these established...
...and renowned alchemists...
...that Dee brought his plan...
...and drew them forward...
...toward the idea of an alchemical reformation.
He was able to lay the groundwork for events...
...which a generation later...
...would blossom into the Rosicrucian enlightenment.
The whole of the cosmos is reflected...
...in the mystery of man and woman...
...the mystery of the human mind-body interface.
It's important to see Dee...
...as a kind of culmination...
...of a tradition that had been at work...
...for over 150 years in Europe.
The use of astrology...
...numerology...
...Hebrew Kabbalah...
...and the doctrine of signatures...
...to produce a magical theory of nature...
...and man's place in it...
...can be traced to...
...a generation before Dee.
People like Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettlesheim...
...who became the prototype for Faust...
...the Bishop Trithemius...
...the great developer of codes and ciphers...
...one of Dee's great passions...
...the Florentine magician Marcello Ficino...
...who was the great rediscoverer...
...and promoter of the Hermetic knowledge...
...and upon which he drew very heavily.
But he took their work...
...and added the dimension of the idea...
...of an angelic intercession into politics of the time...
...essentially in support of the values...
...of the young Queen Elizabeth...
...and her Astraea reign.
Alchemy and the history of alchemy...
...is full of contradictions, inconsistencies...
...unions of opposite, if you will.
The very year that the Rosicrucian manifestos...
...claimed the attention of the European public, 1608...
...Dee died in poverty and disappointment...
...in his now half-looted and abandoned home...
...at Mortlake.
The alchemical dream that Dee had sought to live...
...was to be completed, if at all...
...by personalities other than himself.
These are actors...
...in the baseless fabric of this vision.
Frederick the Elector...
...the fifth Palatine Prince of Heidelberg...
...sixteen years old...
...was betrothed by an arranged marriage...
...to Elizabeth Stuart of England...
...the daughter of James I...
...the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII of England.
She too was but sixteen years old...
...when they were married...
...in one of the most dramatic nuptials...
...that London had ever witnessed.
Frederick had come to England...
...to claim his queen...
...accompanied by courtiers...
...alchemists...
...and his advisor Christian von Anhalt...
...an alchemical dreamer...
...who saw in the marriage of the young couple...
...the opportunity for the establishment...
...of a Protestant alchemical kingdom...
...in Central Europe.
The young couple, lost in love...
...made their way back...
...to Frederick's beautiful Palatinate...
...in southern Germany...
...and there they intended to dwell...
...and found a dynasty.
But such was not to be.
And they were the center...
...of a movement...
...of alchemical reformation and revolution...
...of spiritual freedom...
...and to my mind...
...a very sort of psychedelic world.
A rarefaction...
...a good alchemical word...
...a rarefaction...
...of the human...
...imprint on this planet.
A spiritualization...
...of humanity...
...and a new order of mind...
...folded in...
...to this...
...pair of sixteen-year-olds.
So, to take an incident...
...like the career of Frederick the Elector...
...Palatine of Heidelberg...
...and his bride...
...and make of it...
...a kind of exemplar...
...a parable, a myth...
...if you will...
...the myth of the alchemical marriage...
...a myth...
...that takes innocence...
...and naivete...
...and belief...
...in the power of ideas...
...to make a new world.
In the decades immediately before...
...the birth of modern science...
...the exploration of the new world...
...and the flowering of the alchemical imagination...
...confronted European man...
...with a bewildering...
...complexification of nature.
And the primary symbol...
...used to understand...
...this bewildering...
...variety of phenomena...
...was the labyrinth...
...the palace...
...the acropolis complex...
...stretched through time and space...
...architectonic...
...pregnant with mnemonic possibility...
...the palace, the court...
...became the symbol...
...at the center of the social mandala...
...of the European imagination.
And never more so...
...than here at Heidelberg...
...where Frederick and Elizabeth...
...literalized the mnemonic...
...and alchemical intentions...
...of the age...
...in a vast sprawling complex...
...of red sandstone...
...cut with secret passageways...
...hidden doorways...
...and complexity...
...found ordinarily...
...only in the depths...
...of the human unconscious...
...and the alchemical imagination.
It's ground zero...
...for the Rosicrucian...
...enlightenment. Standing...
...here in the alchemical...
...laboratory...
...of the palace in Heidelberg...
...we are essentially...
...at the center of the alchemical...
...hopes of the Rosicrucian...
...enlightenment. It was...
...here in the years before the adventure...
...in Bohemia...
...that Frederick's alchemists...
...astrologers...
...and soothsayers toiled...
...directly under the king's...
...observation and control...
...here came...
...Michael Meyer, Heinrich Kundrath...
...the great names...
...of alchemy. It's entirely...
...possible that John Dee...
...was in this room.
It's entirely possible that Edward...
...Kelly stood where I am...
...standing now.
It's almost impossible...
...to conceive of the hopes...
...and the fantasies...
...and the labors...
...and the dreams...
...that have been generated by...
...and are centered on...
...this room...
...and the objects in it.
This is the last alchemical...
...laboratory in the world...
...to fully function...
...before...
...the rise of modern...
...science. And these tools...
...in many ways reflect...
...the internal cosmology...
...of the men and women who used them.
This, for example...
...a typical alchemical...
...distillery is called...
...the Pelican.
Another example of the colorful...
...nature of alchemical...
...vocabulary. It's called...
...the Pelican because it is...
...associated with the...
...myth of a bird which plucks...
...blood from its own breast.
The primal materia...
...feces, black coal...
...charcoal, salt...
...niter, heated in here...
...brought to a...
...high temperature, a fevered...
...caloric state...
...rises into the higher...
...imperium of the vessel...
...and there, rarefied...
...it condenses...
...liquifies...
...and flows down...
...into the cooler domain...
...of the child of the Pelican.
Here the essence...
...is collected, the quintessence...
...and always the hope...
...was that...
...the next experiment...
...the next combination of materials...
...would yield...
...excervitae, the lapis...
...philosophorum, the...
...completion that the alchemist...
...sought.
And so all this fantastic...
...apparatus that we see...
...around us is really...
...not so much in the...
...service of channeling...
...liquids, gases...
...but in the service of...
...channeling spirit...
...out of matter and into the...
...higher realms where it then...
...can be refluxed...
...recondensed...
...and the lapis...
...philosophorum, the stone of the...
...philosophers, the central...
...mystery brought to completion.
It's the self...
...that we are trying to...
...recover. This is lumina...
...dilumina, the light trapped...
...in matter, the lux natura.
This is universal medicine...
...curing all ills.
It is the answer.
It is what everyone is...
...looking for and no one...
...can find. And so...
...the alchemists...
...toiled over the...
...centuries. The torment...
...of the sulfur.
The torment of the...
...cinnabar. The search...
...for the triumphant chariot...
...of antinomy. The search...
...for the quintessential...
...essence...
...that represented the union...
...of all the world...
...that the alchemists saw...
...around them. We have...
...come to understand that the...
...work of alchemy was not...
...about the transmutation of...
...crude metals into gold...
...but was in fact a kind...
...of dance of the imagination...
...in which...
...the...
...psychological complexes within...
...the alchemist were mingled...
...in an amalgam with...
...chemical processes creating...
...a kind of mythology...
...of matter. A...
...landscape in which the green lion...
...the red dragon...
...the hermaphroditic queen...
...the four-headed dog...
...were figures moving to and fro...
...in the fevered...
...speculations of the so-called...
...philosophers.
And the belief was...
...that man could...
...work with nature...
...a full partner...
...with the divine process...
...and redeem...
...the light fallen...
...into matter, and in so doing...
...redeem himself.
The alchemical...
...philosophers were living in a waking...
...dream, and many of their...
...recipes were designed to wipe out...
...the boundaries between waking...
...and sleeping. The stages...
...in the great work...
...beginning in the nigredo...
...the blackening, then...
...the rubedo, the reddening...
...the citrinitas, the yellowing...
...the veriditas...
...the greening...
...the albedo...
...the whitening, and finally...
...the purificatio.
So at each stage there are...
...substages of dissolution...
...et coagulatio.
It's a melting and a recasting...
...and a purifying...
...of psychic contents.
Images are full of ravening...
...beasts, incestuous mother-son...
...pairs, brother-sister...
...pairs, hermaphrodites...
...all taboos are...
...broken. This stuff...
...just boils up from the unconscious...
...then is sublimed...
...through the stages...
...and is somehow fixed.
And this fixing is the culmination...
...of alchemy.
If you bring off this trick...
...then you possess our stone...
...the philosopher's stone...
...the lapis, the sophic hydrolith...
...of the wise.
In the swirling of the alembic...
...in the chemical processes going on...
...in the retorts...
...you will be able to project...
...your unconscious material.
We are never really able...
...except in the psychedelic state...
...to transcend the belief...
...in the inner world and the outer world...
...as being somehow separate.
Within the context...
...of the alchemical...
...vocabulary...
...the psychedelic experience...
...as brought to us...
...through plants...
...long in the possession...
...of aboriginal plants...
...and people...
...appears to be the identical...
...phenomenon.
And the plants...
...lift the...
...the imprisoning...
...structures of the ego...
...and the ego flows out...
...into the world.
Shamanism...
...is essentially...
...a living tradition...
...of alchemy...
...that is not seeking...
...the stone...
...but has found...
...the stone.
The shamans of the Amazon...
...have attained a sufficient...
...sophistication to...
...explicitly understand...
...that the vessel...
...of alchemical transformation...
...is the body...
...and the...
...head...
...of the experience.
This is the alchemical...
...vessel.
This is where you will encounter...
...the three-headed dog...
...and the queen dissolving in her...
...bath, and the incestuous...
...couple that combine...
...soul and luna to produce...
...the white essence of the...
...panacea of the universal...
...medicine. These are...
...psycho-mental...
...processes.
Nature is...
...a...
...great distillery...
...of...
...complexity.
Alchemical gold...
...novelty...
...connection.
We have re-understood...
...what was forgotten...
...during the reductionist...
...centuries of modern science.
We've re-understood...
...that the world...
...is one thing.
And it's a living...
...thing. It's a...
...thing with an intent...
...and a...
...spirit. And rational...
...analysis tells us that...
...matter is simply...
...atoms flinging...
...themselves through space...
...obedient to certain mathematical...
...laws that are invariant.
And all the...
...creativity, all...
...the sense of connectedness...
...that we...
...experience as...
...living beings, as members...
...of a society, as human...
...beings in contemplation of...
...nature, all of that was...
...denied. And it reaches...
...its ultimate culmination...
...in a statement...
...made by Jean-Paul Sartre...
...the French existentialist...
...who said, nature is...
...mute. You understand what I mean?
Nature gives no clue...
...he tells you.
Man is alone...
...in the cosmos with his...
...complexes and his obsessions...
...he confers...
...meaning. I...
...reject this. I think...
...the entire message of...
...the psychedelic experience...
...which is that nature seeks to...
...communicate. All...
...being...
...is pregnant with language.
All reality...
...wants to include...
...the...
...human side of...
...nature in its...
...ongoing intent.
One of the most famous...
...of all alchemical...
...axioms is...
...as above...
...so below.
Meaning always that...
...in every small part of reality...
...there is a tiny...
...reflection...
...of the great...
...overstructure of reality.
And in the largest...
...structures are hidden the secrets...
...of the smallest...
...and vice versa.
We unconsciously imbibe the ontology...
...of science where we have mind...
...firmly separated out...
...from the world.
But in an earlier age...
...mind and matter were seen to be...
...alloyed together throughout...
...nature. And...
...I think it's very interesting that at this...
...very high-tech moment...
...in our...
...adventure...
...the plants...
...return and almost...
...stand before us...
...as a beacon...
...and a promise.
They stand for absolute...
...dao.
They stand for the...
...correct way...
...for life to relate...
...to its...
...environment.
If you look around you...
...the entire global...
...civilization...
...is undergoing...
...some kind of meltdown.
The planet...
...itself...
...is now to be seen...
...as a kind of alchemical...
...retort.
The prime of materia...
...to be transformed are...
...the nuclear stockpiles...
...the toxic waste dumps...
...the industrial...
...wastelands.
The I Ching says never...
...confront evil directly...
...and never name it...
...directly because it finds...
...weapons to...
...defend itself.
We are not an army.
So our strategy must be...
...stealth.
It's an alchemical strategy.
And what do I mean by stealth?
I mean...
...the house of...
...constipated reason...
...must be...
...infiltrated by art...
...by dreamers...
...by vision.
Find the others.
Find...
...the others...
...and then you will know what to do.
All truth...
...which springs from the individual...
...is subversive.
Find...
...the others and then...
...using this technology...
...which was designed...
...to keep track of us...
...to pick our pockets...
...and to sell us junk we don't want...
...use this technology...
...to produce art.
Massive...
...amounts...
...of subversive art.
All culture is...
...some kind of myth.
All cultural...
...stories then...
...have a psychic dynamic...
...to them.
We are not an army.
This is what Frederick didn't understand.
He was a king...
...but he was not an army.
Frederick...
...the elector...
...was one of seven electors...
...seven German princes...
...whose combined vote...
...could choose a new emperor.
The politics of the situation...
...were not lost on Christian von Anhalt...
...and other alchemical advisors...
...close to the young prince.
Frederick began to plan...
...beyond the fairy tale world...
...of his Heidelberg Palatinate...
...and dream of himself...
...the alchemical emperor...
...returned...
...to the throne...
...of the kingdom of Bohemia.
In Prague.
And in the winter of 1618...
...I believe...
...moved with his bride and his court...
...all these alchemists...
...magicians...
...casters of horoscopes...
...herbalists...
...visionaries...
...moved the entire court from Heidelberg...
...to Prague...
...to create an alchemical reformation...
...that had been hatched in the mind...
...of the English alchemist...
...and mathematician...
...John Dee.
Unfortunately...
...the alchemical dream was not to be.
Frederick's advisors...
...had seriously misjudged...
...the situation.
James was not...
...supporting an alchemical revolution.
He was playing...
...one side against the other.
And to the idealists in Prague...
...such cynicism...
...was unimaginable.
The Habsburgs back in Madrid...
...quickly got wind of...
...what was going on...
...and laid siege to Prague.
And the story of the alchemical kingdom...
...and the Rosicrucian enlightenment...
...for all purposes ended...
...in an incident called...
...the Battle of White Mountain.
And Elizabeth fled...
...to the Netherlands with her children.
Frederick...
...was defeated at the battle...
...of the White Mountain.
And the alchemical dream died.
And this...
...was really in some sense...
...the beginning of the Thirty Years' War.
And as you know...
...going into the Thirty Years' War...
...Europe was...
...a place of popes and kings.
At the end...
...of the Thirty Years' War...
...it was a place ruled by...
...parliaments and peoples.
And the entire medieval world...
...was swept away.
And these angel-dealing...
...horoscope-casting...
...alchemy-pursuing...
...visionaries...
...of this Rosicrucian renaissance...
...became simply objects...
...of historical curiosity.
But there was...
...an unbroken thread...
...that however thinly drawn...
...persists right up to...
...the present moment.
So the idea is to show the way back...
...to the high magic of the late...
...Paleolithic.
I think that what we want to do...
...is the alchemical garden.
That's where our roots are.
That's where meaning is.
Meaning lies in the confrontation...
...of contradiction.
The coincidencia positorum.
A rediscovery...
...of the real ambiguity...
...of being.
A deeper possibility.
A rebirth of the human spirit.
In their way...
...Frederick and Elizabeth...
...were acting out the dream of Camelot.
In their way...
...they were acting out the alchemical dream...
...of the rebirth of the king and queen.
In their way...
...they were laying the groundwork...
...for a new...
...dispensation of human thought.
Freed from the medieval...
...assumptions of guilt...
...and the need for redemption.
A point of view that made...
...human beings co-creators...
...in a magical universe...
...with a loving deity.
All that...
...passed away.
With the fall...
...of the winter king and queen.
Well, until recently...
...I thought that was the end of the story...
...but there is a coda...
...that is amusing...
...if nothing else.
This Habsburgian army...
...having laid siege and destroyed...
...the alchemical kingdom...
...began to retreat...
...across Europe.
In that Habsburgian army...
...there was a young...
...soldier of fortune...
...only 19 years old...
...still wet...
...behind the ears...
...happily soldiering and wenching...
...his way around Europe...
...and his name was...
...René Descartes.
On the night of September 16...
...Descartes had a dream...
...and in this dream...
...an angel...
...appeared to him...
...and the angel...
...said to Descartes...
...the conquest...
...of nature...
...is to be achieved...
...through measure and number...
...and that...
...revelation...
...lay the basis...
...for modern science...
...it's the alchemical angel...
...which will not die...
...it returns...
...again and again...
...to guide the destinies...
...of nations and peoples...
...toward...
...an unimaginable conclusion.
dennis mckenna's 2008 talk examining the western preoccupation with death he calls the death culture and its judeo-christian roots in the concept of original sin as the act of beco
a 2008 documentary exploring prophecies surrounding the mayan calendar end date of december 21 2012 and the quechua pachacuti tradition
terence mckenna on james joyce's finnegan's wake as a work of psychedelic linguistic alchemy, where all narrative boundaries dissolve and language mirrors the mechanisms of conscio
terence mckenna and ralph metzner discussing shamanism, alchemy, and yoga as traditional technologies for consciousness transformation and expanded perception
terence mckenna on james joyce's finnegan's wake, exploring its psychedelic and apocalyptic dimensions as a hermetic text where all boundaries dissolve.