Ancient Egyptian Alchemy: From Acacia to Zosimos

Speaker 1 00:00:12 Welcome to Brain Forest Cafe with Dennis McKenna. Speaker 2 00:00:18 All right, so good afternoon, Danny. It's wonderful to see you. Uh, you're looking quite fresh after your trip to Australia, and, I'm really pleased to invite you to one of the earliest of the McKenna Academy Rainforest Podcasts. So Speaker 3 00:00:40 it is an honor to be here. Thank you. Speaker 2 00:00:43 Welcome, welcome. I'm going to introduce you to our audience. P D Newman specializes in the historical and current use of entheogenic compounds, mystical, magical, and initiatory context. He is the author of the groundbreaking work Angels in Vermilion, the philosopher Stone from D to DMT, and the forthcoming titles Theurgy In Theory and Practice, Myster Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine, and Tripping the Path of Souls. Native American Shamanism in the Mississippi Valley, both a keen researcher and a dedicated practitioner, Newman, has been immersed in the study and practice of alchemy, theurgy and Shamanism for over two decades. Speaker 2 00:01:37 Welcome, Danny. I have a question for you already. Uh, <laugh>. What is Theurgy? Speaker 3 00:01:47 okay, that's a good question. Um, the, it's a word that first emerged in the second century, uh, second century after Christ, and it's, it, it appears in something called the Chaldean Oracles, which is a, a received text, um, that a father son team called the Giuliani received. And the, the word itself means either it could be God work or the work of God, or to work with the gods, but it's a combination of words that mean deity and work. And it essentially boils down to, uh, a, a ritual. It's a, it's a death ritual, funeral like ritual where the person going through it, uh, dies to the old self and ascends through the spheres and has a, a, a confrontation with a deity, and then comes back and brings with him, similar to shamanism, brings with with him boons of, of healing, and, uh, uh, Speaker 2 00:02:54 so, so like, it's like divinely received wisdom through some channel or another. Speaker 3 00:02:58 I mm-hmm. <affirmative> Speaker 2 00:02:59 Oh, very interesting. How did you get interested in all this? Speaker 3 00:03:04 All of this, or just the, theurgy part? Speaker 2 00:03:07 All of it. Speaker 3 00:03:08 All of it started with psychedelics. Um, my brother and I, you know, we, we were a lot like I imagined you and, and Terrence were, we, we grew up in the deep south, though, where as long as the cows are fed corn, mushrooms will grow on them mushrooms. So we spent, since I was 11 years old, we started spending most of our time throughout the late summer and fall, uh, picking and drying and learning how to use those things and at proper dosages and that sort of thing. Speaker 2 00:03:43 That's great. So that's it from the age of 14, you were, you were into this and you were in a, you were in a symbiotic relationship with these mushrooms Speaker 3 00:03:53 Absolutely. Speaker 2 00:03:54 It should by about a decade. That's amazing. Yeah. I, one of my, uh, most cherished, uh, memories as a young man, uh, I was living in Berkeley and I decided to take a, a, uh, I decided to go see Richard Schulte s, see if I could get to work with him. And, but I didn't have any money. So at that time, you could buy a Greyhound ticket, 60 days for $60, and that I could afford. So I bought one of those tickets. I left Berkeley, and the first place I went before I got to Massachusetts, I took a long time to get there under 60 days, but a long time. And, uh, first place I went was to Hammond, Louisiana, where some friends of mine owned a leather shop. They were the only hippies in town, but they lived on the edge of, of the, of the town in a pasture, and they had cows. And my, my purpose for going there was to go down and get some mushrooms, you know, I mean, I was gonna get bags and bags of take them back to Berkeley and sell 'em. Well, that never worked. <laugh>. It was the dry season as it turned out. There were damn few mushrooms, but there was enough that I could regularly find them. And, uh, I had a wonderful time. They were off in town all day at their, at their leather shop. But I just went out into the field and ate a few and commune with the cows, and I had a great, great trips out there. It was wonderful. Speaker 3 00:05:33 That's one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is, is, is camp and trip in the field where they're picked, there's a, uh, there's a communion that takes place, and it does involve the cows. Like you said, you're, you're, you're communion with this symbi, like you say, symbiosis. Um, I remember one time my, my wife and I, she wasn't my wife then, but we were camping in this field. We liked to pick in. And, and I, I just had this overwhelming kind of epiphany that, that those cows, that the mushrooms, if they can only be here through the cows, but the cows can only be here through the grain, through the corn, and of course, you have to build a fence around them to get them to poop in one place long enough to produce enough where the mycelium can grow. So it's, it, it really is a, uh, something that demands an humans to do agriculture. Uh, 'cause corn on its own doesn't produce that many grains. Each, each kernel of corn used to be a grain of pollen. So every kernel is a pollen, uh, a speck of pollen. And, but when corn grows in the wild, there's not nearly enough of it to produce anything like that. So it, it really is, um, at least in this area, it's very much a product of, of agriculture and of animal husbandry. Uh, it's, it really is a complex web that holds those mushrooms in front of us. Speaker 2 00:07:01 It, it's a true three-way symbiosis. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, mushrooms, the cows and the people. And probably that symbiosis, something like that, was been repeated potentially for millions of years. This is, I believe it, my theory, I can't see why that couldn't be, you know, knowing the paleo geology, the play paleoclimatology of, of Africa and those times and the paleontology. But, but we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about what you know, and, uh, I would like to, uh, get on with that. Uh, we can talk about, okay, stone ape theory some other day. Uh, so do you wanna share your screen and Yeah, let me start your, uh, presentation ? Speaker 3 00:07:49 Um, so I'm titled this Ancient Egyptian Alchemy because Egypt is where alchemy emerged. We, we have, of course, Indian alchemical traditions and, uh, Chinese alchemical traditions, but they didn't call them alchemy. The processes and the philosophies are similar, but alchemy as such emerged out of Hellenistic Egypt. Uh, so, and I'm, and the subtitle from Acacia to Zosimos, the Word Alchemy, the first time it was bequeathed to us in writing, was by this man, Zosimos of Panopolis who, um, is widely considered the first alchemist outside of the person who taught him, which is a woman named Maria Prophetissa, or Maria the prophetess. Speaker 3 00:08:36 So this is separated into several parts, um, and we're gonna start with alchemy, an alchemy, and this idea of a stone that, now it's called the philosopher stone. Um, he would, he would call it the sages stone. Uh, several different titles he'd give it, but they're all, they're all cognates with this notion of a stone for wise men. So, Zosimos, he was a gnostic hermetist , um, which means he was a Christian, and he, he had this idea about the Egyptian priesthood, that they weren't exactly what they said they were, and we'll talk more about that in just a minute. Um, but the area he lived in was a place called Akhmim. And what he did as a, the way he made his living was doing something called statue animation. He made the statues, he had this secret knowledge about how to tincture the statues certain colors, which was important because just like in Greek magic, in Egyptian magic, all of the deities have correspondences the, from every kingdom from the animal kingdom, plant, kingdom, mineral kingdom, and colors. Speaker 3 00:09:54 So the means by which he believed you could get a deity to inhabit a statue. That's what he means by animated, uh, filled with anima, or soul the means by which you do that are by employing that deity correspondences. So colors were very important. And, um, and that's really where we get the language tincturing from. The word he uses that we translate as tincturing is Baphe and baphe. It means to baptize, to plunge into something, and specifically to plunge into die. And that language persists on up into, uh, theosophy the early Jacob Burma theosophy, um, in the 15th 16th century. Um, so he's a metallurgist, and he's creating statues that are in ensouled. And again, he claimed to have learned alchemy, which alchemy is not the statue animation, but that's, that was his job. Um, and he claimed to have learned this secret doctrine of alchemy from this other, from a female, uh, Maria. Speaker 3 00:11:05 And I find this very fascinating that it, 'cause he takes on a student who turns out to be a female. So in, for example, in in Freemasonry, you know, early on it was men only, and it was, these secrets were seen as passed from a man to another man. Well, he's learned it from a woman, and he is passing it to a woman. And this seems to be central to the way these hermitists worked. For instance, uh, there's another hermetic ritual that appears in the Greek magical papyri called the Mithras Liturgy, which is a rite of apotheosis or immortal. And in it, the person going through the ritual ascends to the gods, just like we talked about with theurgy, but it's a female that comes to this male to go through it. So we're, we're talking about, uh, uh, a secret society of alchemists that, that are, are using this kind of polarity, is how I see it, um, to pass the wisdom on. And it, and it may even suggest a sexual aspect to it, sexual relationships. Speaker 3 00:12:15 This is a picture of, um, Zosimos apparatus for distillation from his own manuscript. And I include this because I want it to be clear that Zosimos is a laboratory alchemist. We tend to, now, when we discuss alchemy in the Western mystery traditions, it tends to be discussed in terms of a philosophical, spiritual metaphysical system where they're using, um, the language of metallurgy and things. Uh, transmutation, they're using that language as a metaphorical trope. There are metaphors involved with Zosimos, but it is a laboratory system. He's making something. Speaker 2 00:12:59 He was a hands-on alchemist. He was, he was mucking around with plants. Speaker 3 00:13:05 That's right. Plants and, and, and, and some minerals, but mainly plants. And we'll see, even when he uses mineral language, he means plants. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and like I said, he has a student that he takes on named Theosebia and Theosebia is, she's learning astrology from the Egyptian priesthood and taking these offerings to them. Speaker 3 00:13:25 They offer them to the gods in her name, and, and then teach her, Zosimos tells her that this astrology is actually what they use to enmesh the souls of men in matter. Um, it's the way that these fallen angels, the same fallen angels we read about in the book of s Enoch and, and Genesis, he's a Christian. So he's, he's exposed to this literature and he believes that the gods, to which these Egyptian priests are making these sacrifices, are actually those fallen angels. And the, the things that, that they're teaching her, he says, is the mechanism by which they enmeshed souls. So she says, well, I, I don't agree because they're teaching me what she calls propitious alchemy, which we would call, um, classic lections, you know, trying to figure out the best time to do certain actions. And he says, it doesn't matter if you're doing propitious alchemy, if you use alchemy at all, it only enmeshes you further in fate. But he says, but I have this way of separating the soul from matter, doing right the opposite. And he says, that's what I call alchemia . Speaker 3 00:14:41 And he offers to teach it to her, and she's interested. So she, she says, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll take you up on that offer. What do you have to say? What do you have to teach me? And he starts teaching her about, um, excuse me. He starts teaching her about, uh, cinnabar. Now if you're familiar at all with Chinese alchemy, they have two systems, Neidan and Waidan. One is internal alchemy, the other is laboratory alchemy, like what we're discussing here. And they, they center that work around cinnabar. And cinnabar is a mineral that is composed of sulfur and mercury. It's what the pyramids were made out of in Mexico. Teotihuacan, uh, was made out of these cinnaber slabs. And they would put it through a, a smelting process and extract the mercury out of it, um, in Mexico. And that's where they found that mercury, under the pyramid in like a river. Speaker 3 00:15:36 So it's, it's, it's kind of a, a worldwide thing. This preoccupation with cinnabar, we don't know where Zosimos encountered it, but he apparently did. I believe he probably encountered, um, some Chinese alchemy, uh, 'cause it goes way back. But what they do with this cinnabar bar is they teach a cosmology with it. What they're trying to teach is how you go from one God to all of the many things we see around us. How do you go from the one to the many? So they use cinnabar as a metaphor to teach that. They say that the cinnabar is the one, and from it, we create two. Well, Zosimos, he's not teaching a cosmology with it. He's literally telling her. So we take the cinnabar and we extract mercury from it. And she writes him back and she says, look, I have, I don't understand what metallurgy and this mineral talk has to do with freeing my soul from matter. Speaker 3 00:16:32 What, what does this have to do with me? And so he says, well, I'll tell you what it has to do with you. He says, in fact, I'll draw you a picture. And he writes her a book called Muṣḥaf Aṣ-Suwar that was preserved by the, the Arabs, um, Arabic communities preserved it and got it eventually into European alchemy, where it influenced virtually every alchemical text, uh, that was produced during the Middle Ages. So what he tells her in this book, in addition to these pictures, to which this picture we're looking at, is a picture from the book of Zosimos with the sun over him and Theosebia with the moon. I, that's my interpretation of what we're seeing. Um, but he's telling her, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break this down and give you the secret to this. And what he tells her is he says, this is the part that you know, that she's confused by. Speaker 3 00:17:28 But he, he says, if you dissolve the body together with the mercury by the Acacia and continue to cook the whole, then the body will die. The body. He means the cinnabar. That is what the sages spoke of when they said it is white and outer appearance in red and essence. And I want you to keep that in your mind while we're going through this process of discussing this, because it appears over and over this idea that it's white and red somehow, particularly white on the outside and red on the inside, he said, he says, but they said Mercury from cinnabar in order to disguise it from those who wanted to enter this work. The stages described their work with any one of the crafts similar to it in order to cover it. Therefore, we have also named it lead from copper. So when he says, lead from copper is the same as Mercury from cinnabar, he's telling her that I, when I choose these red minerals and these red metals like copper and cinnabar what I really mean is acacia. And from it, we're getting this specific substance. Speaker 2 00:18:43 And that is absolutely mind, mind boggling to me that this has never really been teased out before. Because this is, this suggests that from the very beginning of alchemy as such, it's, there's, uh, are entheogen present. It's an entheogenic, um, endeavor. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So this is what cinnabar looks like. Um, and to the right is vermilion the red powder that's prepared from it. So if you produce, if you, uh, uh, smelt this cinnabar, one of the, the byproducts you can get is vermillion pigment. Um, and he, he uses this specifically because it resembles what he's talking about, just like you said, to to his student, where we're concealing it under a language of a, a, uh, an art whose processes are similar to our craft. And he sees this as looking like his, uh, acacia powder. And there's a good reason why. So this is an image on the right. Speaker 3 00:19:50 We're seeing Acacia root bark, and on the left we're seeing the acacia root bark powdered, um, which is how you would need it in order to put it through this process to extract the stone from it. But you can see there's a remarkable resemblance here. Uh, and, and it's the, the redness. Not all acacias have this redness, but the, the acacias with which he was working did, and the the ones we are usually familiar with, those who do kind of work with, uh, acacia teks and produce DMT organically, this is what we usually see from, especially from, uh, mimosa hostilis. It has the same kind of a redness to it. And mimosa and acacia are from the same family. They're both mimosoides, we would call them. Um, in fact, uh, mimosa hostilis used to be classified Acacia tenuiflora. So it was, it was once an acacia. The same is true of the anadenantheras that produce Yopo and, and the Caribbean and the South America. Um, they were once classified as Acacia niopo. So they're all very related plants. And most of us, if we're, if weren’t botanists, we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Anyway, they're so similar. Speaker 3 00:21:07 Now, this is a picture from Muṣḥaf Aṣ-Suwar, and you see, he's pointing with his left hand at the roots of this tree, as if to indicate this is what we want. The, the good stuff is in the roots, and the leaves are colored in the classic colors of the alchemical work, black, white, and red, which indicate how you produce this. The black signifies the dark roots in the earth, um, in the black Earth, which is actually, um, where alchemy comes from, from Khemet, kimia, which means black, black earth. So the black phase indicates where we find the prima material, the first matter, the white represents purification, it represents, um, catharsis stripping everything away except for the stone. And then the red represents the final phase, which actually signifies the more in effect than, than a stage itself. It, it represents carnal union with this, bringing it into the body. Speaker 3 00:22:10 And on the right, you can see th this is a classic, um, bipennate compound leaf structure that we see with, uh, virtually every acacia and mimosa. Now, I just spent some time in Australia where I was exposed to a number of acacias that do not have that kind of leaf structure. Um, but the ones, again, that Zosimos was working with, and we'll discuss some of those in in a moment. They did have that same, uh, leaf structure. Now, they also have these thorns all over them, which is actually what Acacia means when Dioscorides named the Acacia. He named it after its most defining characteristic, which are these thorns. And you can see they vary, um, significantly in appearance, but in, but in every case, they are gnarly. The top one to the left is what we have here in Mississippi. Uh, Gleditsia triacanthos . It used to be classified as Acacia Americana. Um, but it's a fascinating one that shows up in an a number of different botanical assemblages from burial mound sites. So there might even be history of this here in, in the States, but we seem to find we're finding it all over the place, the more we investigate. Speaker 2 00:23:30 Now, of course, Zosimos did not invent Acacia. He didn't pull that out of a vacuum. He was part of a long Egyptian tradition that saw Acacia as the arbor vitae, the Tree of Life. And it was seen this way because it's, it's wrapped up with the myth of one of the most famous Egyptian gods Osiris. And this is an image of Osiris here in the underworld, in the Duat, um, which is where, where he travels when the sun is you, it can't be seen the underworld, um, in every Egyptian af in the beginning it was only the pharaohs, but later on it was believed that every Egyptian had to go through this, this trial in this face-to-face confrontation with Osiris in the underworld. Speaker 2 00:24:20 Now, Osiris, he is a lot of people, you'll see them say he's a sun God. He's not a sun God. He's a vegetation and fertility God and a God of the dead. Um, the, the association with the sun comes from the association of Solar timings with agricultural timings. So you can't separate him from the son, but he's not the son. And he, he is a member of a trio of gods where he was the firstborn. And the the next two are Isis and Set, or, um, Apep, Apophis, Tiphon, several different names. He's called by. And because he's the oldest, he, he gets the, he's supposed to marry his sister Isis, who's one of these three gods. Well, Isis chooses, I mean, excuse me, set was born, first Set, and then Osiris. So set is supposed to marry Isis, but Isis chooses Osiris. And that causes this, um, this real anger to develop and set that pans out. Speaker 2 00:25:33 And what he, so they're having a wedding and he throws a party for them while they're having this wedding. Um, and he tells him, look, I've made this box for you, this special box, and it's the exact dimensions of your body and Osiris he had been drinking and the story. And he says, that's impossible. I'm a God. You can't mimic my dimensions in a box. And he says, okay, we'll climb inside of it and I'll prove it. And he climbs inside of it and Set nails the the top on. And you, we find out it's a coffin that he's nailed in it. And he takes this coffin and throws it into the Nile. And eventually it washes up, just like Moses' basket washed up on, on the bank of the Nile, wrapped up in the roots of an acacia tree. And the box itself was said to be made out of Acacia. Speaker 2 00:26:26 Also, Budge and his, his writings, he just notes that it was a red wood. Um, but it's Acacia, uh, now Set. One of his minions finds out a about this coffin being wrapped up in this tree, tree. And he comes and tells him, Osiris is no longer in the Nile. He's out now, he's still in the box, but eventually he'll get outta that box, and you're gonna have to deal with him. So Seth says, well, I'll nip that in the bud. And he goes down, chops the tree down, cuts it up into planks, and throws all of those planks into the Nile. Another version of this, of the story. He scatters them all over upper and lower Egypt, but is the one where he throws 'em in the Nile that concerns us. So eventually Isis is able to recover all of his parts and reassemble him, but she doesn't find his fallous, she doesn't find the generative part of him. Speaker 2 00:27:26 It's lost in the water. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, keep that, that image in your head. It's lost. It was said to have been eaten by a, a fish. And, uh, this fish shows up in later alchemical traditions, um, and European alchemy. So she reassembles him and constructs a new phallus out of Acacia. It's this acacia shows up over and over. She carves him a magical phallus out of Acacia. And then after he is resurrected and brought back to life, she consorts with him, and she becomes pregnant with Horus. And Horus is who eventually avenges of Osiris against his murder by Sett his uncle. And this is really probably the, the most famous Egyptian myth. But there were other gods worship before Osiris, like Apep the bull, uh, excuse me, uh, Apis the Apis bull. It's a golden bull. But by the time Osiri s became the chief deity of Memphis, he subsumed these other gods. And this myth, other myths, became combined with it. This is a good example. So prior to the Osiris myth that we just discussed, there was another myth about, uh, uh, a cat goddess. Some say is Sekhmet, others say it's Bastet. But she chases Apep, this same serpent, the serpent of darkness into an acacia tree where he's killed. And that blood runs down the tree and creates a medicine. Speaker 2 00:29:09 This same story shows up in Greek myth where, um, it's Dionysius who becomes a mongoose, uh, and chases the snake. And later Osiris becomes the mongoose instead of a cat and chases the same. So we'll fast forward to the eighth or ninth century when another one of these texts that were preserved by these hermetic Arabic communities, um, reaches Europe, called the Turba Philosophorum. And this text is really fascinating to me because it's an argument among a group of philosophers about what the philosopher's stone is and how it's made. These philosophers that show up are Plato, Socrates, Parmenides, Empedocles, these pre-Socratic and, and platonic philosophers. And then there's Moses. And Moses. You remember, you gotta remember, he was raised an Egyptian, and there were a rows of tradition, an alchemy that said Moses was an alchemist. And this primarily comes from the, the episode when he makes the children of Israel drink the golden calf. Speaker 2 00:30:24 That was, he grinds it to a powder, mixes it with water, and makes them drink it. So this drinking of gold, um, was very, very meaningful to the alchemists. And here we have Moses cast as an alchemist. And this is where we find our, our next mention of the, the identification of the prima materia. Moses stops them all. He says, the envious have named lead from copper. Zosimos said that copper being a red metal, so that's cia the envious, have named the lead from copper, the instruments of formation in order to mislead posterity by deception. Again, just like what Zosimos said, I am making it known to them that their instruments of formation are formed from our powder, but of them, no powder is more fit for our work and better for our composition than the powder of Acacia, out of which arise suitable instruments of formation. Speaker 2 00:31:29 Now, by instruments of formation, he means the thing by which we do the stuff, the, the philosopher's stone, he's producing it for acacia. So we see this, this tradition has continued on up until we're at, we're at eighth or ninth century. Now, another person in Europe who names Acacia by name, um, is an alchemist named Heinrich Khunrath. And Khunrath, we'll learn later, was a student of Edward Kelly, which is very significant for this, this study, but Khunrath, he says, the white powder is Acacia gum, thus the red gum is the resin of the wise, a synonym for the transforming substance. So remember, the red and the white, they're from the same thing. It's white and outer appearance. It's red on the inside. Acacia gum is a, a sap, a gum that comes from acacia trees. It's used as a food stuff. It's used in incense blends. Speaker 3 00:32:38 It's used in all kinds of places to this day. Uh, but he's making it clear to you that yes, it's from Acacia, but it's not the white stuff, it's the red stuff that you want. Now, he didn't just pull this out of anywhere. He, he gets this from Zosimos teacher Maria Prohetissima. While she didn't leave any writings, Zosimos quotes her as saying, from the white plant that grows upon the mountain, take white gum and red gum and join them in true marriage. G um with gum. Now, of course, the red gum, like Khunrath said, is the transformative substance. It's the psychedelic part of it. The white part being just a food stuff. It's a binding agent. And that's where this really comes in, is that it binds it, it makes it into a solid. Prior to this Zosimos also discusses this, prior to him, this was only used in an elixir form in a liquid. Speaker 3 00:33:40 But he says, I'm the first to figure out how to turn this into a stone. And I think that's important at this time, because glassware is virtually non-existent. How outside of a sheep's bladder, how do you keep a small amount of liquid? And a sheep's bladder is remarkably large for the amount of liquid we're talking about. How do you keep it from drying up or spilling or draining? You make it a solid. And I think that's what we're seeing here. Now, when she says the white plant that grows upon the mountain, the mountains in that region produce Acacia Albida, the white acacia. It's, um, it's been reclassified as Faidherbia albida, but it's still Acacia albida. This is what we suspect she was talking about In bloom, the white blossoms cover the, the entire tree and make it almost look like it's snow covered. It looks like completely white. Speaker 2 00:34:44 So this brings us to the second part of this, this talk. Um, we're gonna talk about probably the most famous episode from, from European alchemy. And it's with a man named Dr. John Dee who was, uh, an astrologer. He was the advisor for Queen Elizabeth. First, he was a mathematician. Uh, anything you could imagine that was a si science of the day. He was knee deep in it and a master at it. But one thing he wasn't a master at was talking to angels. He, he, he wanted to be able to communicate with angels, mainly because he believed that angels were in the space, in the, in the sky. And wherever they were, that spot, all the way down to where it touched the earth, they ruled that. So the angel that's over Germany rules Germany, and the one that's over England rules England. And his, what his thinking was, if I could just talk to the, the angel that rules Germany, then I could spy on Germany and I could control Germany, and, and this would make me more valuable to the Queen. Speaker 2 00:36:00 So that's what he was trying to do. But he couldn't do it. After, after all this trial and error, he eventually started taking on scryers, and Queen Elizabeth would send them to him. But he was never happy with them. None of them were ever able to do this to the degree that he wanted them to, until a man showed up named Sir Edward Kelly. He wasn't a sir yet. But Edward Kelly, Kelly was already kind of a, uh, a charlatan figure. He, he was seen that way. He was a scoundrel. He, he had had his ears cropped for the crime of coining. Um, coining is passing off, uh, adulterated metals as silver gold, something that was already associated with alchemists. And it's actually the reason that the Catholic church banned alchemy was because of this coining problem. But he is immediately successful in this. And what they're using, first, they used an Aztec obsidian mirror. Speaker 2 00:37:03 That's what we see on the left. I find it very fascinating that what d was using was this a mirror similar to those that the Aztecs were likely taking mushrooms and staring into for visionary purposes, he had gotten his hands on one. Well, after Kelly comes along, similar to the way there would be manifestations of jewels and necklaces, uh, in New York, in the burned-over district, during the boom of spiritualism, an angel showed up and brought them another crystal and told them to use this one instead. And with this, they started reading, re receiving what we know as E nochian magic, this very complex system of magical ritual designed to communicate with angels. And through these transmissions, he eventually constructed this at their, the angel's, um, direction. This tables had to be built this way with this, uh, this sigil like thing. On, on the top there, the, the wax disc we're seeing is called the Sigillum Dei Aemeth. And there's also one of the, each of those place underneath the pegs of this table. And on top of it is the crystal that he's using to see the angels that they're making contact with. Speaker 2 00:38:20 And I, I'm, I'm not sure who the artist is, but I had to include this image because I, I just love it. The gesture in the corner, the, the female ghost to the left, the angel in the, the crystal. It, it demonstrates quite well the visionary, uh, aspect of this tale. Now, he finally confesses to Dee, he says, I came to you because I need your help. I, I just used you needing a scryer as a way to get to you. And he says, I actually, I have this manuscript in my possession called the Book of Dunstan. And in it, it's, it, it gives directions on how to produce this red powder. And he says, this red powder is, is essential. I have to have this. Speaker 2 00:39:16 It's, he doesn't say this to Dee, but it's clear he needs it to do these seances, what they call these angelic actions. This is his visionary substance. And he goes to great lengths to try and get Dee to translate this thing. And when he won't, he finally says, well, an angel told me to come talk to you and tell you to translate it. And then it tells us where treasure is buried. Dee liked that, if you read in his diaries, he was constantly asking these angels about treasure, buried treasure. So he got, he got Dee's attention again, and he tells him it's from this, this Dunstan figure. Well, Saint Dunstan, he was the archbishop of Canterbury, and allegedly his grave was rifled. And in it they found two ceramic orbs, one red and one white. And the story, the person who opens this grave, he throws the white ball and it breaks on the ground to reveal a white powder that is immediately absorbed in the ground. Speaker 2 00:40:14 That's gone probably acacia gum and the red orb, he doesn't break it, but he thinks, excuse me, he thinks I can probably take this into town and sell it, which he does to an innkeeper. And it's this innkeeper who put it in the possession of Kelly. Well, Dunstan the person it's about is an interesting figure in his own right. He, he was a metallurgist. He moved into the ruins of Glastonbury, set up a tiny little lab, and he would sit in there and make, do alchemy and metallurgy and pray. And he was subject to visions of the devil. I think that's significant, that he's having visions. Uh, and one famous story, he grabs the devil by the nose with his blacksmith tongs, and leads him out, out and shows the people outside as, uh, some of his, his followers, his students. He says, look, see, the devil is real. And, and this is, this is what he looks like. Speaker 2 00:41:16 But he, he didn't leave us any writings, but there are writings attributed to him, whether they actually go back to him. We can't prove that. We don't know that. But one of the writings attributed to him is from a book called De Occulta Philosophia. And in it, he's, he's quoted as having said, the angelic stone provides exceptional temporal and geographic vision and an ability to understand the language of animals. Also, he shall be endued with divine gifts of foreknowledge by, of things, by dreams and revelations. It is the food of angels. Now, this language, this angelic stone, food of angels language, we'll see it show back up in Ashmole and the Royal Society. So they were definitely reading this also, but again, this, uh, we, we said earlier, Khunrath the figure who, who gave us the acacia gum reference, that he was a student of Kelly will, whenever Kelly, he Kelly, was eventually arrested for this claiming to be able to transmute base metals into gold, which he couldn't do, um, obviously, because it's a metaphor. Speaker 2 00:42:37 So he was arrested and his place was taken by Khunrath. Rudolph II hired Konrath as his court projector. Her Konrath is the, is the one, uh, who I said gives us this, this identification of the white powder as Acacia. But he was Kelly's student. He sought Kelly ows, uh, to teach him. So just as a reminder, the quote again, the white powder is Acacia gum. Thus the Red Gum is the resin of the wise. He gets this from Kelly. And this brings us to part three of this talk with which concerns Elias Ashmole and the Royal Society. And we're gonna see more of this language appear regarding this Acacia and this substance. Ashmole, he was is from Litchfield. He was an antiquary. He's the one who gave us, um, public museums. He created the very first public museum, but he eventually got into alchemy, and he learned alchemy from a man named William Backhouse. Speaker 2 00:43:47 Backhouse learned alchemy from his father, Samuel Backhouse, who was a student of Kelly. Ashmole was pretty much obsessed with John Dee and Kelly's work, and he eventually became Dee's archivist and inherited all of his papers. He also inherited a manuscript that before it was realized, what it was had become kindling for the hearth of another fellow who sold him the papers. I think his name was John Hussey, but his maid didn't realize what they were, and she burned seven pages before he, he realized what it was. And, um, so those seven pages are lost to us to this day. But Ashmole acquires those manuscripts, and he tries to, to decode them and work with them. In the meantime, he starts publishing on Alchemy. He, his first book on alchemy he publishes is Fasciculus Chemicus, which is a collection of alchemical poems in the English language. Speaker 2 00:44:49 His second alchemical text, one of the most famous alchemical text ever to be produced is Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. And in this, he includes this prologue. He says, the angelic stone. No, that's the language we just saw from Dunstan. The angelic stone affords apparition of angels, meaning visions, and gives the power of conversing with them by dreams and revelations. Nor dare any evil spirit approach the place where it lodges. So again, dreams and revelations, angelical stone, it, it's, we're seeing a continuation of a tradition that began in ancient Egypt. Now, this is a picture of what's believed to be Kelly's lab. This was discovered behind a, a, a secret wall, and it's now part of a museum in Prague. But this is just like with Zosimos. He's the, the equipment, the apparatus looks almost identical, and it's clear that they're doing something in the lab. It's not just a metaphysical metaphorical practice. Speaker 2 00:46:01 And you'll, you'll read tons of alchemy books that claim that that's the case, that it's just metaphor. But I I, I've written these folks and I'm, I'm encouraging them to test the, the residues in these bottles, because we don't know what, what any of this stuff is. But if any of it tested positive for, uh, Acacia, we would have, we would, we would know a lot more than we do, um, besides just references in literature. But he also includes a poem from Kelly in this book. And this poem has a line in it that I find very revealing. He says, All you that faine philosophers would be, and day and night in Geber's kitchen broyle, wasting the chips of ancient Hermes' tree, weening to turn them to a precious oyle. The more you worke the more you loose and spoile. To you, I say, how learned soever you be, Go burn your Bookes and come and learne of me. Pretty arrogant, but probably, uh, he probably is right? Uh, he, he, he probably was one of the most learned alchemists of his, of his day. Speaker 3 00:47:23 Now, while Ashmole is working with Dee's papers, he realizes it must be the red powder. That's why I can't get it to work. He couldn't see the angels either, just like Dee. So he brings the problem to his friend Robert Boyle. Robert Boyle is known as the first chemist. Um, he was the, an elected president of the Royal Society in 1680, uh, a position which he declined, but he was dumbfounded to learn that Boyle was already looking for this red powder. He had learned about it from an alchemist named Wenzel Seyler, who claimed to have found it in a pillar and a monastery. Well, a, a fellow member of the Royal Society, a man named, um, George Ashe, writes to him, writes, Boyle, the letter survives. And he says, this red powder that you're preoccupied with, it didn't come. Wenzel Seller didn't get it. And a monastery, he got it from Edward Kelley when he was in Prague. Speaker 2 00:48:26 So both of these men realize they're looking for the same substance independently of one another. And Boyle being the scientific mind that he was, he immediately realized, well, if it causes visions and it's a physical substance, and it must be a drug, we're looking for a drug. And he even wrote a paper about it, a paper called Dialogue on the Converse of Angels aided by the Philosopher's Stone. And in it, he says this, it seems incredible that a little powder that is as corporal as powder of brick should be able to attract incorporeal and intelligent beings that have neither need nor use of gold. And to converse with those that have made themselves possessors of a few ounces of transmuting powder for what affinity can there be betwixt, the inanimate elixir, and a rational and immortal spirit that these angels should delight to hover about it. Speaker 3 00:49:28 So he, he's, he doesn't understand why, why angels would be concerned at all with a physical substance, much less why would it evoke their presence. But like I said, he's a smart man, and he knew this if it's a physical substance, and it must be a drug. And at this point, he releases a famous document. It's all, it was put on display by the Royal Society in 2010. It's called Boyle’s Todo List, or Boyle’s wishlist. And in it, he lists all of these items that he needs to acquire for the royal society to pursue this endeavor. In it, he says, we need potent drugs to alter or exalt imagination, to procure innocent sleep and harmless dreams, stimulating drugs, drugs that cause pleasing dreams as exemplified by the Egyptian electuary. Now, I cut a electuary off there, but we'll see it in a second. But Egyptian electuaries, um, Chris Bennett, the cannabis, uh, historian, has proposed that these, the Egyptian Electuaries refers to Dowan Meskh and Majoon, these very sweet confections made with Hashish and ancient Egypt. They're looking for this. Now, they're also looking for the fungus mentioned by the French author. This one is obscure, but again, Bennett suggests, and I think he's right, that the French author is Rabelais, uh, an alchemist who talks about, um, manna and what seems very much like an entheogenic context. And he contrasts it with another fungus. He calls the Good Agaric. Now, remember, fly Agaric is Amanita Mascara is a, a hallucinogenic mushroom that's been known since, uh, at least since the publication of Mordecai's book, the Seven Sisters of Sleep. Speaker 3 00:51:28 But this predates that. But it's a widely known hallucinogen that's been proposed to be the solution to a number of different, uh, uh, entheogenic problems. Soma, for example, it was Watson's famous solution for Soma. He says, drugs that cause great strength exemplified by frantic, epileptic, and hysterical persons. So he, he was literally looking for, for hashish. He wants magic mushrooms, and he doesn't realize it, but he, he needs acacia. They eventually find Acacia, but before they do, they go through different drugs. One of the drugs they, they experimented with was Hashish, uh, Robert Hooke, who is the curator of experiment at the Royal Society. And he was Isaac Newton's like arch nemesis. They hated one another. He gave two different lectures to the Royal Society on the physiological and psychological effects of Hashish. And one of those, he says, it is, it is a certain plant called ganja. Speaker 3 00:52:38 The dose of it is as about as much as may fill a common tobacco pipe. The leaves and seeds being dried first and pretty finely powdered, it taketh away the memory and understanding so that the patient understands not nor remember if anything, that he seeth heareth or doth in that ecstasy. After a little time, he falls asleep and sleepeth very soundly and quietly. And when he wakes, he finds himself mightily refreshed and exceedingly hungry. Now my friend David Harrison, um, in his book, he discusses this and makes the comment that, uh, what we're seeing here is the first case of first recorded case of the munchies <laugh>. Speaker 3 00:53:24 Now, where did they get Acacia? Because that's the, that's the, the, the Ariadne thread that we're chasing here in their possession. And we know this was in their possession, because Boyle had two major inspirations for the creation of the Royal society. One of them was, uh, the Invisible college, uh, uh, a proto Rosicrucian style secret Society of philosophers. And the other is what's called the Hartlib Circle, a group of alchemists that surrounded this man named Samuel Hartlib and Hartlib. He left a number of correspondences behind with a number of different people, and one of them, one of the letters we read this for the sages stone, is made from the sages acacia, which is first prepared by means of the common distilled, acacia, the spirit of wine and other waters. And it must be reduced to its waxy form. Observe this in memory of me. It's almost like in the last supper, this do in remembrance of me. I think he's trying to be cryptic, that if pure distilled vinegar be immersed in the destroyed Saturn and preserved by the heat of St. Mary, probably referring to, um, Maria Prophitissima, it loses its acridity and becomes sweet like sugar, and you will find transparent stones corresponding to crystals. Speaker 2 00:55:06 So now we've gotten past solidifying it with gum, we're, we've proto chemistry has evolved to such a degree that they're able to get crystals stones produced from this. Speaker 2 00:55:33 Now, this is how Acacia gets into Freemasonry for the, those who don't know in the third degree of Freemasonry, the Master Masons degree, the, the candidate for initiation is symbolically murdered and raised. But when he's murdered, a sprig of Acacia is placed at the head of his grave. And in one version of the ritual, the rite of strict observance, they, they pull the acacia out, and he says, it has no roots. It must signify something. It doesn't say that it's an acacia. It must signify something. He says, the fact that it's lacking roots is significant. It's a symbol. And so this man, John Theophilus Desaguliers, he was research assistant to Sir Isaac Newton at this, at, in the Royal Society. He becomes the third grand master of the Premier Grand Lodge in London. Now, prior to that, Acacia was mentioned, nowhere in Freemasonry. Instead it talked about Cassia. Speaker 2 00:56:33 Now, cassia, it, it, it shows up in, um, in the Bible referring to, uh, funeral rights. It was used in Egypt for mummification, and it was mainly, uh, a preservative, and it, and it kept the body from stinking largely, but they would use cassia and these ary preparations, mortuary preparations. So the original reference to Cassia was more in reference to the fact that the third degree is about death than anything else. But by the time he becomes Grand master, which he would've had to have been to make this change, because after that, and and literally every monitor, every expose, every version of the rituals published throughout Europe adopted Acacia, and no longer said Cassia. It was like overnight before I found out he was involved. I, I couldn't just, couldn't get how, how you could get everybody in Europe to just change like that. But, uh, it takes a grand master. Speaker 3 00:57:39 Now, after he made that change, it was so well received, everyone thought it was such an amazing innovation, put in this acacia and Masonry that they had a parade. And in this parade, the Masons paraded around there what's called tracing boards. Tracing boards are what are used as like a memory palace, a mnemonic for the worshipful master, the man who's initiating the candidate, a mnemonic for him to, uh, recall points of these, of the lectures. So things that are, that must be said in the creation of a master mason. Well, what we're seeing here to the left in this board they're carrying is the new tracing board for the master mason degree, a coffin with a sprig of acacia at the top, which we can barely see. But this is the first time we see that tracing board. Now we see them all over the place. Speaker 3 00:58:33 Um, here are four different versions, uh, from different places all over the world and different times. But we can see in each one, uh, it's a coffin or a grave with the sprig of Acacia at the top. Uh, now this one to the right, I, I didn't have enough room to fit it. There's an acacia at the top and to the side, but that's, that's, this is Desaguliers doing. That's this happened because of him, because the Royal Society was looking for psychedelics, mainly because they wanted to make Dee's magic work. They needed this red powder. It's almost just mind blowing to me. Now, it's, it would be easy to say all of this were conjecture. Um, if it weren't for the writings left by a man named Alessandro di Cagliostro, called himself Count Cagliostro. He wasn't a count, but he was, uh, an Italian mystic and healer, and a, and an alchemist. And he tells us blatantly what they're doing with this Acacia. Speaker 2 00:59:39 He's also just like Edward Kelly is seen as like a, a scoundrel. And to this day, his name has been just smeared through the mud. Anything you read about Cagliostro is a warning about how terrible he is. I, he, he claimed to have gotten the knowledge of what he calls Egyptian Freemasonry from a, a, a book on Egyptian freemasonry that he bought from a London bookseller. I think his name was George Coston. We don't know what that book was, but it was probably this book, the Crata Repoa, written by Friedrich von Koppen. Now, Cagliostro wasn't the first Mason to step forward and say, I represent this Egyptian form of masonry. Prior to that, von Koppen said the same thing for an organization he called African Bahara, meaning the African builders or the African architects. Speaker 2 01:00:37 And in it, in this book, crot repo, he records those rituals. This was later published by Manly P. Hall as Egyptian Freemasonry. But so von Koppen in it, in the seventh and final degree of this, of his right, the candidate is made to drink this elixir called Oimellas We don't, he doesn't give a recipe for the elixir. Um, but based on the etymology, uh, Heckthorn though interprets it as honey and wine o oi for Oinos and Melas for honey. S o sweet wine, we're gonna see that again, the same kind of idea. So remember, Zosimos learned from Maria and Zosimos taught Theosabia. One thing Cagliostro insisted on was initiating women into his system of Freemasonry. Prior to that, only men were initiated. But he said his, his system, women are absolutely and must be initiated with the caveat that they were initiated by different people. The women were initiated by a woman who represented Queen Sheba. The men were initiated by a man who represented just like in Masonry, one of the grand masters of Freemasonry, king Solomon. Speaker 3 01:02:00 But he was a insistent that women had to be involved. Now, he, he's got a, an Egyptian order, his Masonic order. He says, I need some tracing boards, just like they have in regular masonry. We're gonna need tracing boards. And he has a, a, one of his initiatives is a man named Philip Loutherbourg, who's a pretty famous painter. He, he was known for his paintings of ocean scenes, of boats. Um, but he said, I'll do it. I'll, I'll paint you something. And the first thing he painted it were these three images. These aren't the tracing boards, but they're planes for it. And that they were eventually, as I understand it, used as tracing boards. But in the beginning, he's showing them and saying, this is what I think I can do. If you like 'em, let me know. He loved them. And we will see a lot of these motifs repeat. But he changes it around. Speaker 2 01:02:54 And this is his first degree tracing board. And in the first degree, the candidate is met by father time. And father time forces the candidate into this little cave underneath. You can see there's a pyramid above it, but it represents a subterranean cavern under the pyramid. Once he gets in there, he sees that it's what we still to this day in masonry call a chamber of reflection. And it's a, it's a cave that is, uh, furnished with things like this. Um, there's usually human remains, either an entire skeleton, a skull and crossbones, or just a skull. Um, an hourglass is a symbol of time. There's a candle, is a symbol of illumination. All these things, uh, tend to be present as well as a quill. And, um, a piece of vellum on which you were to write your last will and testament. Speaker 2 01:03:49 So they go in, in, they experience this chamber of reflection, and when they come out, they're given a drink to drink. They're, they're standing in front of the master's altar, and on it is a goblet full of this red liquid. And this is what he says. The acacia is the primal matter. And when the rough ashlar or mercurial part has been purified, it becomes cubicle. Now, here, he's borrowing language from masonry. The ashlar. Rough ashler is the candidate who is new to masonry. He's rough on the edges, literally. But through this ritual work, he becomes a perfect ler, this perfect cube. Speaker 2 01:04:34 He's borrowing that language and combining it with this language about a stone we already had from alchemy. He says, it is thus that you may bring about the marriage of the sun and moon, and that you shall obtain the perfect projection. Remember the sun and moon over Zosimos and Theosebia’s head? Then he says something very interesting, Quantum suficit, et quantum appetite. This phrase comes from farm, ancient farm, not ancient, but old, old pharmacies, um, uh, apothecaries. When, when they would distribute to you a drug that was safe to take as much as needed, it literally means take as needed. So quantum suficit et quantum appetite, they've borrowed this from, from pharmac, cocy from, uh, uh, apothecaries, and he's putting it in here. So this lets us know right off the bat, he's talking about a drug. Speaker 3 01:05:36 Once they've passed this, they go through a fumigation, and he fumigates fills the, the lodge up with this smoke from, uh, this, uh, theoral. And he tells him that he's, he's, he's fumigating him with innocence. Now, thi this is from a false ethymology. Remember we said acacia means thorned, but in freemasonry, they didn't know this, and they gave it a fa uh, uh, another definition based on, it's a false ethymology, ah, Kakios or A-Kakios, not evil, not bad or innocent. So he is literally, literally saying, I'm fumigating you with Acacia. But he gives it in this false ethymology, and it's out of this fumigation that the candidate first begins to see visions that, and it's represented here by this Medusa like woman holding a snakes in a torch, uh, like Hecate sort of. Um, and here's an image from an Egyptian lodge, uh, whi, which this is from a Memphis-Misraim lodge, which purports to be the continuation of Cagliostro's, Egyptian masonry. But we can see the like massive amounts of fumigation going on, and even what looks like an alchemy lab here to the left. And in a lot of the old lodges in Europe, there were alchemy labs present in the lodge. Speaker 3 01:07:01 And after that, he makes him drink this liquor, this liquid. And, and, and the French, right? It's called the Bitter cup. Um, and the Scottish Rite is called the cup of death. Speaker 3 01:07:15 They no longer drink an acacia, of course, it's just wine. But back then they were, and this is what, uh, Cagliostro says, the candidate shall drink the red liqueur placed upon the master's altar, thereby raising his spirit in order to understand the following speech, which the worshipful master shall address to him at the same time. Now, keep in mind, this is in the 18th century, the language that Cagliostro has access to. Uh, but he's basically saying, this is going to expand your consciousness, raise your spirit in order to understand. I think that's about as close as we could come to actually saying, this is going to expand your consciousness that we could get at this date. Now he, here's the next tracing board. He shows, which shows us the candidate with this knife murdering Hiram, uh, murdering Hermes, Hermes and Hiram are cognates. The Hiram in the Bible, uh, is spelled, uh, Heh Resh Mem. Those same three letters, if we just change the way we pr pronounce the vowels, becomes herm. Uh, a short version of, uh, Hermes, a shortened Hermes herms, were, um, Hermes like statues that were placed to mark boundary lines, uh, mark properties and ancient Greece. So he's murdering Hiram in the form of Hermes. Speaker 3 01:08:49 He says this to him, my child, you are receiving the primal matter. Learn that the great God created before man, this primal matter, and that he then created man to possess it and be immortal. Man abused it and lost it, but it still exists in the hands of the elect of God. And from a single grain of this precious matter becomes a projection into infinity. Now, single grain is another giveaway that this is a drug he's talking about. A grain is a unit of measurement used for distributing things like morphine. It amounts to roughly 64 milligrams, a good dose of DMT, really clean DMT. You only need about 10 milligrams. But back then, this would've been a crude production. And I imagine 60 milligrams would've been just right to get what we would call a breakthrough experience. He says, the acacia, which has been given to you at the degree of master, of ordinary masonry, is nothing but that precious matter. And Hiram’s assassination is the loss of the liquid, which you have just received. So he is saying that it's the blood of Hiram that is being drunk. There are modern alchemical traditions that do this same kind of tech with Acacia. They call it the Blood of Christ. Another one I know of calls it the Blood of Osiris, but it's the same concept Speaker 3 01:10:27 Concept. Now, after Cagliostro, just like Kelly, he was arrested. Cagliostro was arrested by the Inquisition. And in his possession was this document Les Trés Sainte Trinosophie, a brilliantly illuminated, uh, piece of work. Uh, it's absolutely gorgeous. Um, now, uh, Manly P. Hall, just like the Crata Repoa, he published this and he took the liberty of attributing it to Saint Germaine. There's no evidence that this book was written by Saint Germaine. You'll see why it literally describes what's going on in Caglliostro ritual. Speaker 3 01:11:11 But it was in Cagliostro possession is a really important part. So this is one of the images we see in the beak of this bird is the same bipennate compound leaf structure that we've seen in these acacias, these mimosoideae trees. And this is a symbolic, this is how alchemy works. They give you, like rebus. It's a symbol that you have to decode. Uh, many of them don't have any writing with them. And if they do, it's very little. A good example is Mutus Liber, the mute book, which says nothing. It's just pictures. But in this is the key to the process of extracting this substance. In the same section where this appears, we see this crystal goblet with the red liqueur inside it. Now, next to this image is this text. It's a story about this man going through this trial, this trial and error, this journey, this rite of passage. And the man initiating him says, he says, he handed me in a crystal cup, a shining liqueur of saffron hue. Its taste was delicious, and it emitted an exquisite aroma. I was about to hand the cup back to him after moistening my lips in the liqueur. When the old man said, drink it all, it will be that only nourishment during that journeys, I obeyed and felt a divine fire course through all the fibers of my body. I was stronger braver. Even my intellectual powers seemed doubled. Speaker 2 01:12:55 That sounds like a drug like the, he's describing the experience of it, of it flooding his nervous system. Now, the, the end bit about intellectual powers seem doubled. Evidence shows that psychedelics really do that. If you're familiar with, well, certain psychedelics, if you're familiar with James Fadiman's, um, experiment where he found that microdoses of mescaline, uh, allowed people, certain professionals with certain problems they'd been struggling with for several months, to find a solution with it from, just, from that experience. He said, I think in the report it says that every single one of them were able to not only solve the problems, but their solutions were eventually commercially accepted by their peers. This comes to the final part of his ritual, of his initiation ritual. So they've been, they've, they've smoked, basically they've been fumigated with Acacia. They've drank Acacia, and now he sends the candidate into this little room. Speaker 2 01:13:58 He calls the tab a tabernacle. The tabernacle, of course, is from, uh, the Moses episode. When, and like the arc of the covenant was constructed out of Acacia wood, he sends them in there and they are, they're going to have a vision of angels, just like with Dee and Kelley. These angels are supposed to tell them certain things, impart wisdom to them in the ritual. It's acted out as though they did. And there's a series of questions and answers, just like a catechism and Catholicism that they share after they emerge. So they go in. This is, uh, uh, an image from one of Khunrath Heinrich Khunrath manuscripts showing virtually identical scene to what they experience in this tabernacle. Speaker 2 01:14:50 And after they come out, this is the final tracing board they're shown, and it, we will, we'll get a good description of it here. Question: what does the tracing board represent? Answer: a phoenix being consumed in the middle of a blazing pyre. That's what we saw that bird remember over the fire with the acacia in its beak. A sword and the staff of mercury, those are up here, um, under the bird burning and a cross figure. Time with wings. A master mason elect of God, an upturned hourglass and the broken scythe of time. These are on the ground, um, under their feet here. Question: what is the meaning of the phoenix? Answer: That a true mason may rise from the ashes that he can renew himself, be rejuvenated at will like that bird, and that it is with this certificate that one can say, my feathers grow back basically. Speaker 2 01:15:53 Now, this language of rejuvenation, we're gonna, we're gonna wrap up this talk with that, but keep that in your mind. Keep that fresh rejuvenation, renewable Question: What is signified by time? And the master mason who is clipping his wings. Answer: that when a good mason succeeds in clipping the wings of time, his life no longer has a fixed term. They're talking about entering a timeless space where time stops or doesn't exist at all, eternity. What is meant by the broken scythe? Answer that, for a man who is immortal, the measurement of time becomes pointless. Question: what were you taught in the interior of the temple? Answer, the most sublime knowledge. Question: Of what does that consist answer? After I had received a portion of the power, which God desired to grant to the grand Copht , to founder, meaning Cagliostro, I was taught the means of regenerating degenerate man. This idea of regeneration is absolutely central to what Cagliostro is trying to do. And in fact, after you became, you went through this ritual, there was another rite that opened up to you, this retreat that he only offered to his advanced adepti. And this image here sh, is showing us that the in pictorial form. But I'll tell you the letters M B here, if we're, if you're paying attention earlier, that shows up on one of those tracing boards. We saw, um, one of those coffins Speaker 3 01:17:49 In this retreat, Cagliostro devises. He says, the candidate will shut themself up in a house in the countryside. He will take a grain of material prima. Again, we know that a grain is a unit of measurement, 60 to 64 milligrams. We know that the material prima is the primal matter. That's acacia. They're not taking the the DMT yet. They're just taking the acacia, probably symbolic as a symbolic gesture. On first waking, he will absorb his first grain of universal medicine. We know from his ritual, the universal medicine is this stone that's been abstracted, extracted, and dissolved in this wine. He will repeat this the following days. So this is a regiment. A uh, uh, several days Speaker 3 01:18:43 After an unconsciousness of three hours, then convulsions, perspiration, and considerable evacuations. He will change the bed linen. Now, ayahuasca, granted, he don't make ayahuasca with acacia, but ayahuasca is known in many regions as la purga meaning the purge. And it's because it causes this kind of purge. Most people tend to vomit, but it can just as well come out the other end. And I think that's what we're seeing here. The following day. He takes a second grain of universal medicine. A deep sleep will follow. The hair teeth, the nails and skin will blacken fall off and be renewed. The 40th day, he will return home regenerated and perfectly recreated. So this is what he meant. What, when he asked, what did you learn here? And they say, well, I learned the mystery of regeneration. They learned about this ritual, this retreat. Speaker 3 01:19:55 Now this notion of the hair, teeth, nails, they're fall. They're falling off and coming back. This sounds like nothing to me, so much as the motif of shamanic dismemberment, which is particularly common with DMT experiences. And it's an experience where, one, as the, uh, the vision of being sometimes chopped up and put back together, sometimes skinned, uh, at times organs will be removed, which is very common with, uh, Australian, um, aborigines dreamtime traditions. They, they will open them up, take out the organs, and replace them with crystals. We see something similar in the Ojibwe Midewiwin Society where they put magical shells inside the body. But I think that's what we're seeing with this retreat for regeneration is a motif. Motif of shamanic dismemberment replete with an ayahuasca analog. I, here's a good example from two different alchemical manuscripts. It shows both how they kind of cheated off each other. Speaker 3 01:21:08 They, each manuscript was like a version of the last one e even though they could be separated by a hundred years. But it also shows this motif of dismemberment. Now, he's kept the head in both cases, which is golden. This head is identical to osiris phallus that was lost in the water. Now, if you know anything about DMT teks, you, you produce a, a fluid, a menstruum, and you put the wood in it just like was chopped up. Remember, the deity is in the tree chopped up and put in the water. But what, even when you filter out all that plant matter that's now spent, 'cause it's, it's generative power is in the menstruum. That's the Phallus that's lost in that menstruum. And that's the head that he's holding here, that he's saving the rest, he doesn't need, he's in, in masonry. It's the same symbol as, uh, removing all of the superfluous material from that rough ashlar to make it a perfect ashlar. Speaker 2 01:22:18 The best explanation of shamanic dismemberment that I've ever encountered is from a man named Jeremy Naydler. In his book, Temple of the Cosmos, where he's describing the Osirian initiation, I, he says, in the process of initiation, the overall experience of unitary self-consciousness was broken down altogether. In order to rebuild it more strongly. The important initiatory idea of dismemberment becomes comprehensible. When it is seen as the only way of describing the experience of catastrophic psychic fragmentation. The mutilation of the body undergone by Osiris, was the prototype of psychic fragmentation that must have been experienced by the initiate in a psychophysical way. This psychic fragmentation was precipitated as a prelude to the initiates re-identifying with a new psychic center that transcended the distributed psyche, the healing of the limbs, the restoration of the members of the dismembered body is a theme that runs through the sacred literature of ancient Egypt. It was the climax of the Osirian initiation, which involved the experience of dismemberment. This was the final rite of passage. Speaker 2 01:23:49 And with that, we come to, this is the, the final portion of this talk. We mentioned Jacob Bohme briefly earlier, who you used, borrowed that same language from Zosimos about tincture. He would talk about tincturing the soul with morning redness. He had a group of followers that, uh, eventually left Europe and came to North America where they landed in Pennsylvania and created this community called the Ephrata community that's still there to this day. And they're very magically oriented, alchemically oriented group of Christians, the theosophers, to be specific, one man came to them. His name was Johann Regnier. He said, uh, look, I hear that you've got this ritual for, uh, this retreat that you do. They had in their possession Cagliostro´s retreat. And he says, I've heard about it, I want to do it. And they said, well, that's absolutely outta the question. Speaker 3 01:24:58 That's only for people who have been doing this for a long time. It's very dangerous. Maybe if you stay for a while and you do well, you might get an opportunity. But right now it's outta the question. And he says, well, I was just trying to be nice. I already have the retreat, so I'm gonna go do it anyway. Screw you guys. And he does, just like Cagliostro says, he goes out in the woods, he clears him a little spot of land. He builds his, his little hutt, and then he starts taking the universal medicine. This is his own report of what happened to him. I, if there was any question about whether or not we were talking about a drug, this right here will lay that to rest. He says, I subjected myself and my cabin to all the rules and requirements of the ritual, even more strictly than they had been communicated to me. Speaker 3 01:25:52 This went on without my attaining anything of that which I saw until I at last lost my reason and became delirious. When I was completely mad and without reason. They took me from the hutt, demolished it and confined me in a cell guarding me day and night. But as they could not accomplish anything, they removed me to a dark cell and beat and lashed me so that I might recover my reason. It was like shock therapy or something, all, as all proved for naught. And I only became worse. They removed me to another place, then again, to another where I had more liberty, after which I became sane. However, not without many relapses or flashbacks, maybe, although my reason had been entirely gone, everything remained in my memory and I can readily recall all so long as nothing else crosses my mind. Then I recovered and came gradually to my sound senses. Speaker 3 01:26:51 But whenever my will was opposed, the turba and confusion appeared again. So this was an unsuccessful attempt at Cagliostro’s retreat. Um, and the symptoms are consistent with what we know from what we would call a bad trip. Somebody that's not prepared for what they're, they're undergoing. But this is, this is alchemy. This is what alchemy looks like since its inception, was this tradition of producing this, this mystical substance from a very real physical tree. And that's hence the lab. You, you have to have a laboratory. They're preparing something, they're preparing a drug. And once it's used, we get, that's where we get this trope of transmuting base metals into gold. It doesn't do that, but it transmutes baseline consciousness into illuminated consciousness, visionary consciousness. So that's, uh, that's the extent of, of this talk today. And, um, I, I hope you enjoyed it. Speaker 2 01:28:04 Wow. <laugh> wow. You have, you have presented a lot of interesting information here. There's a lot to digest. Yeah, it is a lot to digest. It's, and I'm gonna have to digest it, I think, I think I saw, uh, much of it at the Broughton conference, but mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's much better to be here and pay attention to it, and I can hear you better and, and just, uh, just focus on it without any distractions. Uh, yeah. I I think this will be very, uh, very interesting for people. Uh, I have a couple of, uh, maybe naive questions. Sure. Uh, from the standpoint of chemistry and pharmacology, uh, DMT as you know, is not orally active. Usually you have to have a, a potentiator, like a monoamine oxidase inhibitor to make it orally active. And it seems that in some cases, in many of the instances that you talk about, it's, it's, it's consumed as a liquid. Speaker 2 01:29:16 Uh, in other cases, it's, it is there, there is references to fumigating it, you know, which does make sense. Do you think that this liquid, well, a couple of questions. Might the liquid have contained an MAO inhibitor, like a beta carboline that we just don't know what that was? Or in other cases, might the liquid have been insufflated? Uh, could it have been taken through the nostril? Speaker 2 01:29:48 I hadn't considered that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. But we do have a very, so we fast forward to the occult revival, the 19th century occult revival, and there's a man, <laugh> named Kenneth RH McKenzie. He's a student of a man named Frederick Hockley, who teaches how to do what Dee did, how to stare into crystals and talk to angels. He actually wrote a book called Crystallomancy is what he calls it. McKenzie was his student, along with a man named Captain F G Irwin and Irwin's son Herbert Irwin. Speaker 2 01:30:27 Herbert was a virgin. He was a child. He's 15. And in their system, they believed the scryer needs to be a virgin, the person seeing the angels. So they had, they had Herbert doing the scry for them. Well, McKinsey, he is trying to write the very first Masonic encyclopedia, so eventually published as the Royal Masonic Encyclopedia. In it, he wants to have an entry for every Masonic organization that exists. Well, one Masonic organization is the Rosicrucian order. The very first Rosicrucian order to surface after the initial publication of the Rosicrucian Manifestos, is this German order called Der Orden des Gold- und Rosenkreutz, created by a man named Hermann Fictuld. Another man broke away from this order and created something called the Fratres Lucis a spinoff. McKenzie wanted an entry for the fractures. Lucis, he didn't have worm for his book, and he didn't know anybody who was a member <laugh>. So what they did was they got Herbert high as a kite, and, and we know that they were getting him high as a kite is, and because he eventually overdosed on laudanum trying to take laudanum to use the crystal, but they get him high gas a kite to, in order to contact Cagliostro, because they believe Cagliostro, if anybody knows, he'll know Speaker 2 01:32:02 In the records, it says that they're successful. They make contact with Cagliostro, and they tell him, we need to know about the fractures, Lucia, what can you tell us? And he says, well, there, there's nothing to tell you. You don't have the pharmacopia. And they, he, they say, what do you mean? He says, well, you can't do anything until you get the herb rue. And this isn't a transmission from a, from a, a seance kind of like thing. So they're, they have this herb root, and they say, well, what is herb rue? And he tells them, he says, well, it's a, it's a plant you need to get. He says, if you take it, it'll cause euphoria. It'll cause you to sweat. It opens your pores. He says, it's a cure for melancholy, but if you take too much, it's a poison. It'll kill you. Basically describing Peganum Harmala. Now, rue we call Peganum Harmala is Syrian rue. True rue is Ruta graveolens. And it used to be added by Romans to wine, uh, to increase the bouquet. Um, and it was used at one point during the Catholic Church for benedictions. Speaker 2 01:33:11 But Syrian rue is unrelated. However, they didn't know this. If we go back and look at Pliny’s the elder's natural history, he and, and his entry under Rue, he says, there are two kinds. There's the roe, common roe we're aware of, and then there's Savage Rue or Wild Rue. He says, it gives a description for it, and it's a virtually identical to the description Cagliostro gives for Herb Rue. Well, their teacher, remember they learned this scrying thing from, from Frederick Hockley, and they tell him all about it. And a letter from Hockley survives where he says, look, I need the recipe for the herb Rue. I'm prepared to try it. I've asked you in the past letters, and you haven't told it to me, what is the recipe? Which is significant too, because he stopped saying, what's, what's the herb? They know it's herb Rue, but he wants the recipe for it more than one thing in it. Speaker 2 01:34:06 So there's that strange reference. I mean, for all we know, they already knew about the necessity of an MAOI and knew that this was one and just needed to put it in Cagliostro’s mouth to give them some authority. That's very possible. Very. But the other possibility is that is is just impossible to accept. And yet here it is this reference to herb Rue. Now, I'm sure you're familiar with Benny Shannon’s speculative hypothesis, biblical entheogens, where he says, you know, these plants grew in such close proximity, they could have been and probably were combined mm-hmm. <affirmative> that aside, which I, and I think there's a lot to his argument. Speaker 3 01:34:52 We now know that there are a number of acacias that just like you mentioned, beta carbolinees, they're possessed of flavin flavonoids that act as beta carbolises and are orally active without the need of an MAOI Speaker 2 01:35:06 good point. And some of these tryptamines acacias also contain beta carbolines because right. Beta carbolines are in the same biosynthetic pathway. So there are species that have both tryptamines and beta carbolines. Now, the question is whether the species that were used to prepare these acacia elixirs were that species, but it's entirely possible. So that could be a one pot separate, uh, you know, preparation in, in a sense with the beta carboline, uh, Speaker 3 01:35:45 We managed to get some, some, um, seeds for the Acacia Albida, and we're growing it in a greenhouse. We're gonna test each of the parts, the aerial parts, the roots, and see if it's one of these plants. Speaker 3 01:35:57 Now, when I was in Australia, I was shown two different ones that they claim they can just, one of them, they can just use the Phyllodes. Uh, Phyllodes are, they're like leaves, but they have multiple veins running through them instead of one through the middle. And there's something that a, that a tree will produce if it's in a, in a region that doesn't get enough water. Speaker 2 01:36:20 Right. Some of these by Lowness Acacias. Yeah. And, and you can get the, you can get a differential distribution of the different alkaloids in different parts, like the bark the root mm-hmm. <affirmative> the phyllodes and so on. So there are, you're right, there are a number of acacias that might contain beta carbolises, uh, you know, along with a tryptamines. And there may be data on that. I mean, there, uh, Snu might know, it might be in the literature, you know, he'd be a good one to ask. Speaker 2 01:36:53 I think if anybody knows, he would know. Yeah. Um, but then there's been all this taxonomic revision and so on, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that, that is a niggling question, but I, I think that's another, you know, fascinating aspect of this. And, and, uh, there's another possibility. What's that? Speaker 3 01:37:14 That, that, um, and this was presented to me by an alchemist named, uh, Eric LaPorte, who owns a pharmaceutical company in India, but one of the most accomplished modern day alchemist I've ever encountered. He, he contacted me and he said, I have, I have made this elixir the exactly the way they've described it, and it's active without the need of an MAOI mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I said, well, how, what are you doing to, to make it that way? And he says, well, I'm just making it so potent that it overwhelms the monoamine oxidase in the gut and gets past it. Speaker 3 01:37:49 So that's another possibility, but taking so much that you occupy all the MAO in your stomach. Speaker 2 01:37:57 Right. That is a possibility. And another possibility is, uh, and I don't think this has actually been, uh, been verified, but it is possible some of these acacias contain not only DMT, but 5-methoxy DMT. Right. And Bufotenin, 5 methoxy, D M t, those anadantheras, it's 10 times, it's, uh, more active than DMT on a bio weight basis. I think it can be orally active, uh, by itself, potentially. I mean, the work that I did as a graduate student on these virola preparations that, that Ookoohe these, you know, uh, virola is, uh, normally taken as a snuff, you know, and the sap is powdered, dried down powdered takens. Well, but the Witoto and a couple other tribes, which I did my thesis on, make an orally active preparation about on that. Speaker 2 01:39:00 And, uh, out of that, that sap essentially very high in DMT and 5-methoxy and other tryptamines. But those are the two main ones. And then remember, that's why you went to La Chorrera right? Was looking for Acua originally to get that thing Right. Exactly. And the hypo. But when I got back there 10 years later as a graduate student, my hypothesis, sort of, my whole thesis was a comparison of the chemistry pharmacology of ayahuasca, which is, was then better elucidated. So we knew it was DMT, we knew it was beta carboline from Banisteriopsis. My naive question was, and the expectation was that, uh, well, these virola, preparations would be the same thing. They were orally active, and there'd probably be beta carbolines in there, or some kind of MAO activity, inactivator inhibitor. And to my surprise, there weren't any beta carbolines in the virolas I looked at. Speaker 2 01:40:10 There were traces not enough to be significant pharmacologically, but then I ran these extract through MAO inhibition assays, and they were pretty good inhibitors of MAO. And so then I concluded that basically what's going on is exactly what, uh, what you propose that the tryptamines were so high in these preparations that they, that, you know, they're, uh, DMT and 5-methoxy, they're both substrates for MAO. Right. So they mm-hmm. <affirmative> effectively synergize and reinforce each other and overwhelm the MAO, you know, in the gut. I think that's what's going. So the, so it's proven it does work. That's it. Does I I didn't know that. Well, it's an end of one, Danny. That's the thing. Uh, the one, we, we got about, uh, seven samples of this material from different shamans, different practitioners, and we bioassay to all of them, most of them. Speaker 2 01:41:17 Some were inactive, and they later turned out to be, that's 'cause they had no alkaloids. We were, we were looking at a tradition where a lot of information had been forgotten. This was a dying, this was a disappearing, this was disappearing knowledge, you know? Right. And the people we were working with, it was sort of like, well, my grandfather or my daddy knew how to do this, and yeah, I'll give it a try. Right. But we got a couple of, uh, samples from this one who really did seem to know what to do with it, how to make it, and I bioassay that in the field. And, uh, it was, it was a lot like 5-methoxy DMT, you know, I said at the time, this is a lot like 5-methoxy DMT, uh, I had little experience. It's amazing that time when I got it back to the lab and put it through the, uh, GC Mass spec. Speaker 2 01:42:20 Yep. 5-methoxy DMT at a ridiculously high concentration. And that was the only one that was unambiguously active, you know, of all of these others. I mean, I was surprised how chemically variable these things are. Sometimes different species. The sometimes the same species, different specimens have a rather different alkaloid profiles. So the virolas, there's a lot left to, uh, be understood there. But I don't think it's out of the question to think that, you know, and, and you know, I have not taken, uh, 5-methoxy orally, uh, you know, at a high dose, and I'm not likely to, 'cause I'm basically chicken <laugh> and I'm concerned about my heart. I don't blame you. But, but, and we don't have Jonathan Ott around who would do it. You know, and he would, you know, but somebody needs to try that. They need to try 5-methoxy orally escalate the dose and see if there's a level at which by itself, uh, you know, you're, that it's acting. Speaker 3 01:43:40 I, I would not be surprised if, uh, well, when I was growing up, my Guinea pig was always my little brother, you know, he was the first one to try salvia. We'd put, we'd give it to him, and if he did, okay, we'd take it <laugh>. Yeah. Maybe I'll call him up and get him to try it. Right. When I was researching, um, the book, uh, uh, that'll come out soon on Native American Shamanism, I ran into a few unexpected discoveries. In addition to that Acacia Americana that shows up at the burial sites and the, uh, botanical assemblages tobacco, of course shows up and another plant called lIex vomitoria, um, Yaupon holly. Yeah. And tobacco will form beta carbolines. And when you <crosstalk>, that's exactly what I was gonna say. I, yeah. So that, that tobacco would work. And there's a, there's a fascinating Freemason and this herbalist named Sibly, Ebenezer Sibly, if you get a chance, look up his herbal that he published. He dedicates it to the Freemasons. There are only a couple of pictures in there. A few pictures. Speaker 2 01:44:51 The pictures that all of the ones that are drugs are on the same page. On the same page. He has coffee, tobacco, nutmeg, and mimosa. And he puts them all together with no explanation of why. That was the first time I suspected maybe, maybe coffee or tobacco could work this way. Now, that's not coffee, but that I like yaIex vomitoria is, is the only native norther, excuse me, the only North American source of caffeine. It's related to, uh, Yoruba mate of South America. Right. Right, right. And, and it works as an MAOI. So there, there are lots of things that, that, uh, could have been done, but Cagliostro mentions none of them. We, we only get the mention of Rue Yeah. From his mouth in a crystal ball, you know. So I think I'm, I'm personally, I lean towards the possibility that they're either working with a species that has its own flavonoid, beta carboline. Speaker 2 01:45:51 Yeah. Mechanism flavonoids are another overwhelming mm-hmm. <affirmative> that hasn't been looked at. So there's, there's lots of, lots of things for chemists to, to sort through here. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, uh, I mean, absolutely. Uh, this, this is, this is it. I think you've uncovered, I think you've uncovered the actual chemical, uh, origins of alchemy, and yes, there are, I wasn't just speculation. It was not all symbolism. These people were mucking around with plants and they were That's right. And, uh, yeah. This has been fantastic, Danny. I, well, thank you. Appreciate you coming, talking about this. We have to follow up with your, uh, with your presentation on the North American shamanism, which I know is just absolutely equally depth deep, you know, and, uh, yeah, thank you. I've shared some of it with you. You'll, you'll, I'd love to come back and tell you about it when it's time. Speaker 3 01:46:55 Absolutely. You've got a book in progress with that. Yes. Yeah. It's already been picked up by Inner Traditions. Uh, I don't have a publication date, but, uh, but it's gonna, it is gonna be on the shelves very soon. Speaker 2 01:47:08 Well keep us posted. We will, uh, trumpet it from the rooftops and, and this one too. We'll get this out to our social media. You're gonna be famous. You're gonna be famous. Irv <inaudible>. Well, but, uh, I appreciate that. I really appreciate, uh, you're talking about this and you're clearly your scholarship is, uh, you know, I is deep. You've read deep in, into this, and it showed. Speaker 3 01:47:41 Thank you. Uh, and thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Dennis. It's been a blast. Thank you. Uh, me too. I'll let you spend the rest of the evening and unwind. Okay. All alright, buddy. I'll be in touch now. Speaker 1 01:48:09 Thank you for listening to Brain Forest Cafe with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna Academy.