Perfection of man

While the work of Carl Jung and others have underscored the archetypal power and universal significance of alchemical symbols, alchemy itself is much more than a psychological commentary on the nature of the human psyche. It is true that alchemy reflects the highest aspirations of the human soul, for our gold has always symbolized the hastened perfection of Man as well as matter. However, any alchemist worth his salt knows that lasting transformation only takes place when the work is accomplished on all levels of reality—the mental, the spiritual, and the physical. The Great Work is actual work to be done with the hands, the heart, and the soul, and not just understood with the mind. 

Our hopes for the future condition of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads the abolition of inequality between nations the progress of equality within a single people and the true perfection of man. Will all nations one day attain that state of civilisation which the most enlightened, the freest and the least burdened by prejudices, such as the French and the Anglo-Americans, have attained already Will the vast gulf that separates these peoples from the slavery of nations under the rule of monarchs, from the barbarism of African tribes, from the ignorance of savages, little by little disappear ... 

All these causes that contribute to the perfection of the human race, all these means that ensure they must by their very nature exercise a perpetual influence and always increase their sphere of action. The proofs of this we have given and in the great work they will derive additional force from elaboration. We may conclude then that the perfectibility of man is indeflnite. Meanwhile, we have considered him as possessing the natural faculties and organisation that he has at present. How much greater would be the certainty, how must more vast the scheme of our hopes if we could believe that these natural faculties themselves and this organisation could also be improved This is the last question that remains for us to ask ourselves. 

Suchten, Alexander von. "Man, the best and most perfect of God s creatures. A more complete exposition of this medical foundation for the less experienced student." In A golden and blessed casket of Nature s marvels, ed. Benedictus Figulus, 57-87., 1893. 

He knew more about rubber than anything else. A synthetic-rubber factory had much in common with him civilized, neat, more reminiscent of perfected nature than of Man. A rubber plant had to be absolutely clean a speck of dust mingling with the liquid rubber could mean a blowout on the highway some day. To plan a rubber factory, you did not begin with materials you put your finger to the wind, because the wind had to blow in the right direction to take off the carbide dust so that it "would not be thrown in your neighbor s face."... 

Man is the most perfect of animals in man there is a union of three parts, these are body, soul, and spirit. Metals also may be said to have a body, a soul, and a spirit there is a specific bodily, or material, form belonging to each metal there is a metalline soul characteristic of this or that class of metals there is a spirit, or inner immaterial potency, which is the very essence of all metals. 

This is the cause that man dieth such sundry deaths, because hee eateth in his bread the death of all other things, which when perfect separation is not made, bringeth foorth fruit according to his kinde. Over these deaths hath the Physician power, and not over that which was injoyned to the body of man particularly. ... 

God in materializing Himself, to speak thus, by the Creation of the World, did not think that it was enough to have made such beautiful things, He wished to place upon it the seal of His divinity, and to manifest Himself still more perfectly by the formation of Man. To this end, He made him in His image, and in that of the World. He gave him a soul, a mind and a body and of these three things, united in the same subject, He constituted humanity. 

God gives the first in its perfection to Saints and the children of Heaven enlightens the mind of man so that it may acquire the second, and the Demon throws into it clouds to suggest the spurious ones. 

C.S.M. Pouillet of France (1830) and J. Ericsson of the United States (1870) devised pyrheliometers that measured the energy of the direct rays of the sun by the rate of temperature rise of blackened metal masses. C.G. Abbott of the Smithsonian Institution perfected this technique with his silver-disk pyrheliometers, which are still in use as secondary standards. The inventor of the primary standard radiometer used today was K.J. Angstrom of Sweden. His instrument, invented in 1899, uses two blackened strips of man-ganin, each of which can be heated either electrically or by the rays of the sun. The measurement is made by exposing one strip to the sun, and then measuring the current required to heat the adjacent strip to exactly the same... 

We must accept that no device of man will ever be perfect. Whilst remaining watchful for the inevitable pitfalls, we should never forget the many positive achievements already recorded in the field of insect control by chemicals. 

Gold is the most perfect of all metals, he murmured. In gold God has completed His work with the stones and rocks of the earth. And since man is natures s noblest creature, out of man must come the secret of gold. Therefore he worked with the blood and the urine of man. These operations consumed twelve years and six thousand crowns. He was surrounded by a motley group of pretended seekers after the stone—by men who, knowing the Italian rich, offered him secrets which they neither understood nor possessed. His wealth dwindled slowly as he supported all manner of adepts, for he had not yet learned that where one honest adept of alchemy is found, ten thousand cheats abound. 

She brings nothing to the light that is at once perfect in itself, but leaves it to be perfected by man. This method of perfection is called Alchemy. For the Alchemist is a baker, in that he bakes bread a wine merchant seeing that he prepares wine a weaver, because he produces cloths. So, whatever is poured forth from the bosom of Nature, he who adapts it to that purpose for which it is destined is an Alchemist. 

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