What The Alchemist Got Right…
Oddly, as we advance scientifically it seems as if science itself is becoming more esoteric. For example, Alchemy may be be in the process of “reincarnating” as modern science (see the article below). String theory, chaos theory, and my favorite: Regenerative Medicine (recently a man was able to grow back a fingertip by applying a powder made from pig bladder!) are modern sciences that are nothing short of magical. So, where do we draw the line separating magic from science? Are these two seemingly at odds disciplines actually THE SAME THING?
Good as gold
What alchemists got right
By Stephen Heuser (The Boston Globe)
THREE HUNDRED YEARS ago, more or less, the last serious alchemists finally gave up on their attempts to create gold from other metals, dropping the curtain on one of the least successful endeavors in the history of human striving.
Centuries of work and scholarship had been plowed into alchemical pursuits, and for what? Countless ruined cauldrons, a long trail of empty mystical symbols, and precisely zero ounces of transmuted gold. As a legacy, alchemy ranks above even fantasy baseball as a great human icon of misspent mental energy.
But was it really such a waste? A new generation of scholars is taking a closer look at a discipline that captivated some of the greatest minds of the Renaissance. And in a field that modern thinkers had dismissed as a folly driven by superstition and greed, they now see something quite different.
Alchemists, they are finding, can take credit for a long roster of genuine chemical achievements, as well as the techniques that would prove essential to the birth of modern lab science. In alchemists’ intricate notes and diagrams, they see the early attempt to codify and hand down experimental knowledge. In the practices of alchemical workshops, they find a masterly refinement of distillation, sublimation, and other techniques still important in modern laboratories…[the rest]
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Mike on 31 Mar 2009 at 6:31 pm #
I knew about the concept of reincarnation and that some people believed it, but I was skeptical of it.
In the time my marriage was failing and during the divorce I would get olfactory hallucinations when the weather was damp, drizzly and chilly. I would smell wood smoke and the aroma of meat roasting and bread baking. I asked people around me if they could smell something and they couldn’t.
I did some digging and came across the work of Dr. Brain Weiss and his books. I read all of them in short order and found a past life regressionist not too far from me.
During my regression I went back in time to a time where I was a woman. I lived on the edge of a forest in the mountains and a town was a short walk from my home. It was somewhere in the area where Germany now is.
When I “entered” that life I was walking out of town. There was a light drizzle and, as was the norm for that time and place, fires were going and people were cooking food, among the food cooking was meat and bread. I was wearing a dress with a long skirt and I was barefoot.
I had a husband and three kids, the older two children were boys and the youngest was a daughter. The two boys grew up and got married and moved into a new town. My husband went out hunting one day and never returned. I never did find out what happened to him. My daughter also married. I died one winter, a few years after my husband disappeared, in my house from cold and hunger.
I don’t remember a whole lot from that regression, just what I’ve mentioned, but I do remember that it was a good life. I was happy and content for most of it and had no regrets when I did die.