Alchemy Archives - Maier Files Series Tidbits and Articles-

Goethe the Alchemist

The secret teachings of Goethe. That Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Germany’s greatest poet, had an interest in the occult and alchemy is clear from Faust. Based on an historical character, the original Faust legend goes back to medieval times and prior to Goethe‘s there were earlier dramatic renditions of the tale, notably Christopher Marlowe’s. Yet it is to Goethe’s Faust (Part I 1808; Part II 1833) that most of us turn when we think...

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...

Laurin ‘s marvels and his enchanted Rose garden

Laurin ‘s marvels. Are you worthy to enter the Rosengarten? King Laurin ’s greatest marvel is his understanding of day and night, which is also that of life and death. Oh, how we would like to possess that knowledge! It is in these terms that men lament, but they need not. As one can always ascend to Laurin ’s marvellous kingdom. In spite of the silk threads which protect it. Still, one must be a...

The money alchemists

The destruction of the worldwide economic order in the wake of World War II encouraged world leaders in 1944 to form a meeting to generate alternatives. This conference, referred to as Bretton Woods, resulted in the development of a new global ﬁxed exchange rate regime with the U.S. dollar playing a central role. Under the Bretton Woods system, an ounce of gold could be bought at a ﬁxed international rate of $35 per ounce (+/-...

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 Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence

Well-known spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas uses the metaphor of the mysterious philosopher’s stone to discuss a tremendous liberating power that leads to endless enlightenment. An introducrion by Almaas: TRUE NATURE, the fundamental nature of what we are—and of everything—is what matters most when it comes to spiritual transformation. It is the single most important element for liberation. The more we understand it, the more we realize that it is not simply the most important element; in fact,...

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...

Grail Knights

In the early 1180s, as the shadow of Saladin lengthened over the Holy Land, a nobleman with Merovingian ancestry, Philip d’Alsace, count of Flanders, commissioned the greatest poet of the age, Chrétien de Troyes, to do a French reworking of a strange tale about a poor knight, the son of a widow, who attains the kingship of the Holy Grail. Philip d’Alsace Philip supposedly found the tale in an ancient Celtic/Germanic chronicle, and wanted Chrétien,...

The Symbol That Appears When You’re Ready

Sometimes a symbol finds you before you understand why you needed to see it. This is the nature of initiatory knowledge—it presents itself not when we go seeking, but when we have become ready to receive. There exists a diagram, deceptively simple in its geometry, that has appeared across the centuries in forms both sacred and profane. You might recognize it from the margins of medieval manuscripts, carved into the foundation stones of ancient churches,...

Imagination and phantasy

When following Otto Maier’s path one will meet somewhere on his/her road, Böhme. Like the contemporary student of the inner world, alchemists were concerned about differentiating imagination from fantasy. They were aware that true imagination possesses a power and depth that fantasy does not possess. Jakob Boehme was one of those who warned against the delusions of fantasy. Struggle for redemption Böhme was a mystic. Although not a practicing alchemist, he used the terminology and symbols...

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...

The Green Fairy’s Secret: Unraveling the Mystical Herb of a Forgotten Monastery

At Maier Files Tidbits, we delve into the enigmatic and the unexplained, where history intertwines with the supernatural. In the remote mountains of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France, amidst the crumbling ruins of an ancient monastery, a peculiar discovery whispers of secrets long buried. A plant, steeped in bitter mystique, grows wild among the stones of Chartreuse de Bonnefoy, a once-thriving Carthusian enclave. Known to some as the harbinger of the “Green Fairy”—a nickname for the infamous absinthe—this...

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