Alchemy Archives - Maier Files Series Tidbits and Articles-

Tower at Bollingen

In the Tower at Bollingen it is as if one lived many centuries simultaneously. The place will outlive me, and in its location and style it points backward to things of long ago. There is very little about it to suggest the present. If a man of the sixteenth century were to move into the house, only the kerosene lamp and the matches would be new to him; otherwise, he would know his way about...

The Perfect Fifth: The Science and Alchemy of Sound

In The Maier Files, Otto Maier reveals to Rolf that the sequence 4-5-6-8, representing a major chord, holds profound significance. He explains that every note resonates with the one an octave lower and its harmonious tonic, suggesting that sound carries the potential for far-reaching connections—to both ancient knowledge and cosmic forces. This brings us to the ancient and sacred concept of the Perfect Fifth, a sonic interval deeply revered throughout history for its healing and...

The true matter of the philosopher’s stone

The Stone is everywhere to be found, but nowhere seen. The Stone is also within … Mention of the philosopher’s stone in writing can be found as far back as Cheirokmeta by Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 AD). Alchemical writers assign a longer history. Elias Ashmole and the anonymous author of Gloria Mundi (1620) claim that its history goes back to Adam who acquired the knowledge of the stone directly from the biblical God. This...

Jehan’s Last Steps – a remarkable mysterious story

In 1934 the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung published in Issue 48 an article by Otto Rahn entitled: Jehans Letzer Gang (Jehan’s Last Steps). The piece told the story of one Jehan Tessenre, a young family man moments away from his execution by Hugeunot troops in reprisal for the death of sixty—two of their brethren. They had been betrayed by Jehan to the townsfolk of Tarascon who lost no time in tossing them off the same high...

The Hidden Continuity: Gnosis, Paracelsus, and the Long Memory of Forbidden Knowledge

There is a peculiar amnesia that settles over history whenever knowledge becomes dangerous. Names are erased, doctrines mislabelled, entire traditions dismissed as error or fantasy. Yet beneath this cultivated forgetfulness, certain ideas persist with remarkable stubbornness. They resurface under new guises, migrate between disciplines, and reappear precisely where orthodoxy least expects them. The story of Gnosis after antiquity is one such case. For centuries, the term “Gnostic” functioned less as a description than as an...

The Arabic Idris and the Alchemical Mercury

The name of Hermes, whether or not qualified as Trismegistus, henceforth served as guarantee or signature for a host of esoteric books on magic, astrology, medicine, etc., throughout the Middle Ages, and this despite the fact that, with the exception of the Asclepius, the Corpus Hermeticum was unknown. Picatrix At the same time, an inspired imagery unfolded in both Latin and Arabic literature in a succession of “visionary recitals” (as Henry Corbin calls them), constellated...

The Philosopher’s Stone appeared in the low countries

At the present time, our materialistic science derides alchemists as misplaced mystics who pursued a dream of finding a chemical compound that might transform base metals into gold. Indeed, they recognize that much scientific breakthrough was achieved through these pursuits, but they throw out out the goal of the alchemists as simply a fanciful or impossible plan and fantasy. However, there exist fascinating incidents, a few so deeply curious that the mind can barely cope...

The Element That Cannot Be Imprisoned

There is a cosmological assumption buried so deeply in Western thought that almost no one examines it anymore. It goes like this: material reality consists of four elements — earth, water, fire, air. These four are the substance of everything that can be weighed, measured, bought, sold, taxed, and destroyed. They are the jurisdiction of the world’s administrators. The question the alchemists were really asking was never how do we turn lead into gold? The...

Alchemy, Exotic Matter, and the Mystical Number 137

Otto Maier, a name shrouded in secrecy and intrigue, emerges from the annals of history as a German scientist whose pursuits straddled the realms of advanced physics and ancient alchemy. His diaries reveal a mind equally captivated by the promise of exotic matter and the mystical allure of alchemical transformation. As we delve into Maier’s world, we uncover a narrative that intersects with the profound themes explored in Arthur I. Miller’s “Deciphering the Cosmic Number,”...

The Lost History of Esoteric Writing

Philosophical esotericism —the practice of communicating one’s unorthodox thoughts “between the lines”— was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others’. Despite this long...

What is Cosmic Matter? Is outer space not empty?

Physical space may itself be curved, contain antimatter, house a sea of neutrinos, and be related to the invisible realm of the psyche. Nevertheless, physical space is also made up of something else. That something else has been called, for generations, the ether. With the discovery of holography and a new order to the universe, the conceptualization of empty space must be reevaluated. Just as the room you are sitting in contains the electromagnetic energy...

Gothic form is living form

Wagner’s mythic medievalism and Teutonic underworldliness was shared by the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s embrace of William Blake’s prescient dictum—Gothic form is living form—the largely unacknowledged creed of Victorian architectural revival. Barbaric An adjective that had once meant “barbaric,” “Gothic” had been redeemed by perception of the medieval Catholic Church’s architectural embrace of the divine-maternal, the mysterious, tempting curve: the very essence of art, according to Edmond’s Bailly’s bookshop habitué, art critic, aesthete, monarchist, and Catholic...

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