And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.

Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.

Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.

So for the better part of the past century, despite the fact that it is thought to be the pivotal work of one of the era’s great thinkers, the book has existed mostly just as a rumor, cosseted behind the skeins of its own legend — revered and puzzled over only from a great distance.

Which is why one rainy November night in 2007, I boarded a flight in Boston and rode the clouds until I woke up in Zurich, pulling up to the airport gate at about the same hour that the main branch of the Union Bank of Switzerland, located on the city’s swanky Bahnhofstrasse, across from Tommy Hilfiger and close to Cartier, was opening its doors for the day. A change was under way: the book, which had spent the past 23 years locked inside a safe deposit box in one of the bank’s underground vaults, was just then being wrapped in black cloth and loaded into a discreet-looking padded suitcase on wheels. It was then rolled past the guards, out into the sunlight and clear, cold air, where it was loaded into a waiting car and whisked away.

THIS is a science known only to the Atlanteans and a few of the Aryan Hindoos. It is a science which practised in the West will speedily bring about a "New Heaven and a New Earth" for the world is as we see it, and the Kingdom of Heaven or happiness lies in our own hearts, within us, by the hypnotic suggestions we absorb from others, selecting only those which are beneficial.

In this country of my many friends who have seriously taken up the study of colour I would mention Deighton-Patmore of London who has made a few charmingly coloured lamps with definite therapeutic effects, and The Colour Centre at Blackpool, headed by Whitehead, Walmsley and Hunt who have done some real valuable research upon this work as is destined by the Great White Lodge of the Himalayas. In this work Ivah Bergh Whitten of the United States of America has taken an active part in the interests of humanity.

Seven is the perfect number. In Powers That Be I have referred to the seven stars, the seven planets, the seven notes of music in each octave, the seven colours of the spectrum, and so on. In the same way that the seven colours of the spectrum (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red), when properly combined and balanced, produce pure white light.

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"Disease can be diagnosed by its odor, every ailment having a different odor."

A steady green light and green paper or walls should be in the bedrooms of young male children as this color raises the male sex urge to a higher level. . . ."

"It should be borne in mind that the high vibrations of red transmitted-light will, if played upon the eyes for ... half an hour, remove the symptoms of influenza."

"I am a man acquainted with miracles." Such affirmations as these, if made by one of Southern California's obscure wizards, might pass with scant attention. But they are the statements of Dr. Alexander. Cannon, M. D., Ph. D., M. A., K. C. A., D. P. M., Ch. B., F. R. G. S., F. R. S. M., one of the most extraordinary figures in British science.

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Edward VIII's links to a mystic (BBC News)

Further Evidence has emerged that King Edward VIII was seeing a mystic during the abdication crisis

Previously undisclosed archives tell the story of a king in the grip of a man known as "The Yorkshire Yogi".

Dr Alexander Cannon trained as a medic, and dabbled in alternative treatments, mystic techniques and black magic.

Lambeth Palace was tipped off that the King was receiving hypnotic treatment from Dr Cannon for a drink problem.

The new archive evidence is examined by reporter Sean Stowell in BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour.

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The alchemists were after what McKenna describes as a “magical theory of nature.” They used precise and calculated methods that would pave the way for the future intellectual development of some important sciences such as chemistry, biology, phenomenology, and psychology. Their intention was to transform the human spirit and the physical body itself into something divine and wholly other, something resembling the odd and spectacular alchemical art of the time. They experimented with myriad combinations of special chemicals, magical formulas, and complex distillation processes designed to produce the fabled “philosopher's stone”: a metaphorical goal which can be read in many ways. In essence, the alchemists were trying to bring heaven down to earth by merging spiritual mysticism with the physiological exploration of alchemical mixtures.

According to McKenna, the group of European alchemists who centered around John Dee and the British court of Queen Elizabeth I in the late 1500's believed that the spiritual philosophy of alchemy was so profound and full of potential that it should be embraced as the popular religious paradigm of the day. The Christian preacher Martin Luther had started a Protestant reformation in 1517 with the 95 Theses and now, a century later, Dee felt that the world was ready for an alchemical reformation. With this idea of a religious reformation in mind, Dee and a group of court alchemists traveled to the palace of King Frederick V of Bohemia in 1618 with the intention of establishing a new alchemical kingdom.

This alchemical dream lasted for about a year before the Austrian dynasty of the Hapsburg family got wind of the reformation plan and disapproved of Frederick's kingship, quickly dispatching an army to lay siege to the kingdom of Bohemia and Frederick's court. After a brief period of fighting Frederick was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain on November 8th, 1620, and the Bohemian hopes of establishing an alchemical religious state were destroyed. While the bulk of alchemical knowledge was lost to Western civilization after this time, the intellectual threads of this esoteric philosophy can still be found in the modern world.

As McKenna points out, this attempted reformation was not entirely dissimilar to what happened in the social climate of America in the 1960's with the re-introduction of sacred plants into Western culture and the social upheaval that occurred simultaneously. McKenna describes the drug revival of the 60's as a sort of “failed alchemy” whose ideal was to transform the human spirit, but wound up as a splintered and marginalized movement, similar to alchemy. However, although alchemy was lost to Western civilization for a few centuries, some of the basic ideas can still be found scattered here and there in some esoteric religious practices, mystical writings, transpersonal psychology and art history books: themes of creativity, diversity, synchronicity, unions of opposites, and personal psycho-spiritual exploration which were all an essential part of the alchemical endeavor.

So while the dream of European alchemy may have apparently died in the 16th century, the underlying motivation of the alchemists – a desire for innovative and genuine spiritual experience – is a fundamental human characteristic that can be traced through many different cultures and time periods. As an example of this, at the end of The Alchemical Dream, McKenna makes an interesting historical footnote about a young solider named Rene Descartes who was part of the invading Hapsburg army which defeated the Bohemian kingdom. Shortly after this time, Descartes was visited in a dream by an angelic apparition who instructed him with a piece of advice which would fundamentally alter our world. The angel said to him, “The conquest of nature is to be achieved through measures and numbers.” Descartes would go on to become one of the most influential scientists and philosophers of his day. For McKenna, this is a perfect example of how the spirit of alchemy (the spirit of inner human creativity) will continuously reappear at opportune moments and direct the course of human events in mysterious ways which we can only begin to understand.

A trailer for the film is available on Google video. 

For more information or to request a screening, visit Sacred Mysteries.

via Reality Sandwich | Tristan Gulliford