From the Worshipful Master

THE HIDDEN STONE

The Esoteric Secrets of Spiritual Alchemy

W∴ Valentino Francis Michael Pine 32nd°, P∴M∴
Worshipful Master · St. Petersburg Lodge No. 139, F.& A.M.

The Great Work

Popular history remembers alchemy as failed chemistry, hooded men bent over crucibles, chasing gold from lead. The adepts told a different story. The furnace was a veil; the true laboratory was the alchemist himself. Spiritual alchemy is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work: the transmutation of the base lead of the unregenerate self into the incorruptible gold of an illuminated soul. Its motto is “solve et coagula”, dissolve and coagulate (or recombine): break down every false part of the self and reassemble what remains in divine order. The Work proceeds through nigredo, the blackening, in which the old man dies; albedo, the whitening, in which the soul is washed; and rubedo, the reddening, in which spirit and body reunite in glory. Every Mason will recognize this as his rough ashlar, worked toward the perfect ashlar.

The Christian Current

Western alchemy flowered inside Christendom, not against it. Its masters were canons, monks, and mystics. George Ripley of Bridlington, the Benedictine Basil Valentine, the visionary Jacob Böhme, and Sir Isaac Newton, who read the Work as a mirror of the Passion. Matter suffers, dies, blackens in the tomb of the vessel, and rises glorified. Putrefaction and resurrection. Many went further, naming the Philosopher’s Stone an emblem of Christ, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22), words every Mark Master and Knight Templar carry with him. Spiritual alchemy offered the contemplative Christian an interior science of regeneration, and this great work takes place inside the character and soul of a man, not a laboratory.

A Grammar of Symbols

The art speaks in emblems. Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, the Tria Prima, are soul, spirit, and body. Sun and Moon, gold and silver, king and queen, are the active and passive principles whose “chemical wedding” begets the regenerated man. The Craft knows these luminaries well! The Ouroboros, the serpent devouring its tail, teaches that the Work is circular and the One is the All. The squared circle reconciles spirit with matter. And in the Chamber of Reflection the whole secret is compressed into seven letters; V.I.T.R.I.O.L.: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, “Visit the interior of the earth; by rectifying, you will find the hidden Stone.” Very simply translated, “to discover ultimate truth or reach enlightenment, you must look deep within yourself and correct your flaws.”

What the Stone Really Is

The lapis philosophorum is no mineral and no red powder. The Stone is the perfected man himself. Consciousness rectified, the soul fixed and made incorruptible. It transmutes base metals because a regenerated man ennobles all he touches; it confers immortality because what is realized in him is the deathless part. In Masonic language: the perfect ashlar, hewn for that house not made with hands. The final secret is grammatical, the Stone is not found; it is become.

Alchemists in the Craft

The rolls of early Freemasonry are thick with Sons of Hermes. Elias Ashmole, made a Mason at Warrington in 1646 in one of the earliest recorded English initiations, compiled the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the great anthology of English alchemy. He helped found the Royal Society. Sir Robert Moray, initiated in 1641 by the Lodge of Edinburgh, was a devoted Hermetic student and presided over the Royal Society’s first meetings. Towering over them all stands Sir Isaac Newton, who left a million words of alchemical manuscript, “the last of the Masonic Magicians,” Keynes called him.

The alchemist and the Mason work from one trestle board: a man raised from base matter, squared, polished, and made fit for the Temple.

To learn more, look no further than St. Petersburg Lodge No. 139s official challenge coin. A free booklet (authored by your Worshipful Master) containing the esoteric knowledge of our challenge is soon to be published. Stop by the Lodge and pick one up next month.

Fraternally;
As Above, So Below.
W∴ Valentino Francis Michael Pine 32nd°, P∴M∴