Aaron Cheak
Aaron Cheak, PhD, studied classical Sanskrit, German, Greek, religious studies, philosophy and classics at the University of Queensland. His research interests encompass the phenomenology of consciousness, nondual currents in Eastern and Western philosophy, and the traditional esoteric sciences. He received his PhD in 2011 for his work on French Hermetic philosopher, René Schwaller de Lubicz, and served as president of the International Jean Gebser Society from 2013–2015. In 2014 he founded Rubedo Press, which publishes both academic and esoteric titles. He currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where he maintains an active interest in tea, wine, poetry, typography, and alchemy.
Address: www.aaroncheak.com
Address: www.aaroncheak.com
less
InterestsView All (41)
Uploads
Chapters and Articles
What I would present here is a detailed biographical and bibliographical survey of the life and work of René Schwaller de Lubicz. This will draw on the seven years of research that I completed as part of my doctoral dissertation: Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt (University of Queensland, 2011). I will guide the reader on a journey through Schwaller’s fascinating life, from the Parisian alchemical revival and the Hermetic experimentum crucis in stained glass, through to his fifteen year sojourn in Egypt, where he lived in daily contact with the temples at Luxor. The talk will be furnished with original translations from the French, and illustrated with rare photographs.
reality perceives itself through the vehicle of human consciousness, and reciprocally, human consciousness participates in the self-perception of unrestricted reality."
studies to deconstruct the very category of magic rather than provide a constructive or at least heuristic definition of it. What is presented here is a return to a philological basis of description, but one which attempts to extend the linguistic analysis beyond the confines of a single language/culture. After a detailed survey of academic theories of magic, this paper approaches the definitional issue by considering some of the semantic and etymological aspects of magic, with specific attention to (i) Persian magu- and Greek mágos in classical antiquity, (ii) the proposed Indo-European root of magu and its cognates, (iii) the root and cognates of Sanskrit mâ as basis of the concept of mâyâ, and (iv) the Egyptian concept of heka and its signification in Egyptian cosmogony and theology. This paper concludes by identifying a number of motifs which are felt to adumbrate a broader definition of magic, all the while remaining consistent with the philological examples discussed.
What I would present here is a detailed biographical and bibliographical survey of the life and work of René Schwaller de Lubicz. This will draw on the seven years of research that I completed as part of my doctoral dissertation: Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt (University of Queensland, 2011). I will guide the reader on a journey through Schwaller’s fascinating life, from the Parisian alchemical revival and the Hermetic experimentum crucis in stained glass, through to his fifteen year sojourn in Egypt, where he lived in daily contact with the temples at Luxor. The talk will be furnished with original translations from the French, and illustrated with rare photographs.
reality perceives itself through the vehicle of human consciousness, and reciprocally, human consciousness participates in the self-perception of unrestricted reality."
studies to deconstruct the very category of magic rather than provide a constructive or at least heuristic definition of it. What is presented here is a return to a philological basis of description, but one which attempts to extend the linguistic analysis beyond the confines of a single language/culture. After a detailed survey of academic theories of magic, this paper approaches the definitional issue by considering some of the semantic and etymological aspects of magic, with specific attention to (i) Persian magu- and Greek mágos in classical antiquity, (ii) the proposed Indo-European root of magu and its cognates, (iii) the root and cognates of Sanskrit mâ as basis of the concept of mâyâ, and (iv) the Egyptian concept of heka and its signification in Egyptian cosmogony and theology. This paper concludes by identifying a number of motifs which are felt to adumbrate a broader definition of magic, all the while remaining consistent with the philological examples discussed.
The concept of diaphany is drawn from the work of German poet and Kulturphilosoph, Jean Gebser. For Gebser, transparency (Durchsichtigkeit) is that which renders both darkness and light present. Diaphany is designed accordingly as both a journal (from French jour, ‘day’) and a nocturne—a hymn to the night. Diaphany thus conceived is a matrix not only for the rational structures of consciousness (wakeful logos and light) but also for the pre-rational structures of consciousness (myth, dream, darkness). In synthesising Enlightenment as well as Romantik streams of culture, Diaphany seeks to render both sides of the human experience more integrally present.
While strictly peer-reviewed, and while upholding the highest standards of academic research—including an unwavering fidelity to source materials—Diaphany is not a conventional academic journal. That is, Diaphany is not interested in so-called ‘objective’, ‘dispassionate’, or ‘impersonal’ inquiry for its own sake. Rather, Diaphany seeks philosophers tempered in the fires of genuine wisdom rather than mere information; scientists whose work emerges as much from a fervent, personal quest as it does from the perception of inexorable, impersonal realities; and artists of poēsis and presence who make the invisible visible and the eternal tangible according to a Kandinskian ‘inner necessity’ (innere Notwendigkeit).
Despite this profoundly all-embracing purview, however, alchemy continues to be conceived as either proto-chemistry or proto-psychology. The present volume seeks to redress this false dichotomy by exploring alchemy as a quintessentially integral phenomenon. Opening wide the full spectrum of alchemy—from east to west, in history and practice, from antiquity to the avant garde—our aim is to penetrate as deeply as possible, within the limits of a single volume, into the rich practical and experiential traditions of the alchemical mysterium.
Featuring both well-established scholars and emerging, cutting-edge researchers, this book synthesises a quintessentially high caliber of academic authorities on the vast and baroque heritage of the alchemical world. As a whole, the volume seeks to strike the perfect balance—the golden mean—between strict, historical objectivity and empathic, phenomenological insight. Drawn from international ranks (Europe, the Antipodes, the Americas) and cutting across disciplinary boundaries (Egyptology, Classics, Sinology, Indology, Tibetology, philosophy, religious studies, Renaissance studies, history of science, art history, critical theory, media studies), the contributors to this volume include some of the most gifted investigators into the world’s esoteric lineages."
Featuring Aaron CHEAK ∙ Algis UŽDAVINYS ∙ Rodney BLACKHIRST ∙ David Gordon WHITE ∙ Kim LAI ∙ Sabrina DALLA VALLE ∙ Christopher A. PLAISANCE ∙ Hereward TILTON ∙ Angela VOSS ∙ Paul SCARPARI ∙ Leon MARVELL ∙ Mirco MANNUCCI ∙ Dan MELLAMPHY
Egyptian alchemy ∙ Greek alchemy ∙ Hellenistic alchemy ∙ Taoist alchemy ∙ Hindu Tantric alchemy ∙ Tibetan Buddhist alchemy ∙ Islamicate alchemy ∙ European alchemy ∙ Surrealist alchemy ∙ Erotic alchemy ∙ Laboratory alchemy ∙ Alchemy of the word ∙ Alchemy of the body ∙ Alchemy of the spirit ∙ and more.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Peer Reviewers
List of Illustrations
PART I—CORNERSTONES:
Ancient Alchemies, East and West
Introduction to Part One:
Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium
—Aaron Cheak
1. The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak
2. Telestic Transformation and Philosophical Rebirth:
From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism
—Algis Uždavinys
3. Metallurgy and Demiurgy:
The Roots of Greek Alchemy in the Mythology of Hephaestos (Discussions)
—Rod Blackhirst
4. Taking from Water to Fill in Fire:
The History and Dynamics of Taoist Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak
5. Mercury and Immortality:
The Hindu Alchemical Tradition
—David Gordon White
6. Iatrochemistry, Metaphysiology, Gnōsis:
Tibetan Alchemy in the Kālacakra Tantra
—Kim Lai
PART II: TRANSFORMATIONS:
Alchemies of the Spirit, Body and Word
Introduction to Part Two:
Interzone: On the Origins and Nature of European Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak
7. The Alchemical Khiasmos:
Counter-Stretched Harmony and Divine Self-Perception
—Aaron Cheak & Sabrina Dalla Valle
8. Altus’ Ominous Aphorism:
Reading as Alchemical Process
—Mirco Mannucci
9. Turris Philosophorum:
On the Alchemical Iconography of the Tower
—Christopher A. Plaisance
10. Of Ether, Entheogens and Colloidal Gold:
Heinrich Khunrath and the Making of a Philosophers’ Stone
—Hereward Tilton
11. Becoming an Angel:
The Mundus Imaginalis of Henry Corbin and the Platonic Path of Self-Knowledge
—Angela Voss
12. The Kiss of Death:
Amor, Corpus Resurrectionis and the Alchemical Transfiguration of Eros
—Paul Scarpari
13. Agent of All Mutations:
Metallurgical, Biological and Spiritual Evolution in the Alchemy of René Schwaller de Lubicz
—Aaron Cheak
14. Take Two Emerald Tablets in the Morning:
Surrealism and the Alchemical Transubstantiation of the World
—Leon Marvell
15. Incredible Lunatic of the Future:
The Alchemical Horticulture of Alan Chadwick
—Rod Blackhirst
16. Alchemical Endgame:
‘Checkmate’ in Beckett and Eliot
—Dan Mellamphy
End matter:
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Author Biographies
Although the identity of the author remains a mystery, the text appears to have been composed sometime between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Preserved in the manuscript collection of Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, it was first brought to the attention of Bernard Husson by his friend, Eugène Canseliet (1899–1982), a French alchemist and the only direct student of Fulcanelli. This eventually resulted in the first publication of Les Récréations hermétiques in 1964. Gilles Pasquier published a corrected edition in 1992, also in French, which included the Scholium or commentary. The text of the Scholium is a particularly revealing addition, for it presents 150 Hermetic “aphorisms” encapsulating the core principles of the alchemical process.
Both texts, which clearly form a single work, are presented here in a handsome dual language edition, in French and in English, with copious scholarly annotations by Christer Böke, John Koopmans, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, and Aaron Cheak.
Before examining Schwaller’s work proper, part one of this thesis deals with methodological and historiographical considerations at some length. I begin by detailing the “hermetic problem of salt” through cultural-historical, mythographical, chemical and alchemical lenses in order to introduce the phenomenon of salt as an “abstract concretion” resulting from polarised opposites (acid and base, fire and water, sun and sea, sulphur and mercury, etc.) The juncture of opposing principles perceived in the “hermetic problem” of salt anticipates the methodological discussion, which examines the dichotomy between history and phenomenology, along with the materialist and metaphysical sympathies of these methodologies. Form mirroring content, the method employed in this thesis seeks to establish a “neutralisation reaction” between such extremes, encompassing both empirical-historical and eidetic-phenomenological approaches. The guiding model for this synthesis is the Heraclitean palintonos harmoniē (counter-stretched harmony), in which inherently opposed tensions are viewed as integral rather than antithetical to the deeper vitality of the whole. Following from this, the broader argument of this thesis is based upon the perception that the modern academic caricature of alchemy as either operative (reducible to chemical explanations) or spiritual (reducible to psychological explanations) is in many respects a false dichotomy. In support of a more integrative premise, detailed examples are adduced from both eastern and western branches of alchemy (i) to argue for the revision of rigidly dualistic biases within the historiography of alchemy and (ii) to lend support to the adoption of a more nuanced critical apparatus that is able to come to terms with nondualistic currents within the plurality of alchemies. Upon these premises, the life and work of Schwaller de Lubicz is turned to as a modern exemplar of this nondual current in alchemy.
Part two of this thesis focuses on Schwaller de Lubicz’s life and work, his colour theory, and his alchemy. Through a detailed bio-bibliographical survey, the keys to Schwaller’s intellectual development are presented and situated within their relevant contexts. I examine his artistic, Theosophical, socio-political, initiatic, alchemical and Egyptological milieus. As a student of Matisse, Schwaller had a life-long interest in colour and light. For this reason, the colour phenomenon is presented as a guiding thread for the dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy in general and the “manipulation of salt” in particular. The colour theory is examined with reference to Newton’s Opticks, Goethe’s Farbenlehre and ultimately to the operative work on stained glass that Schwaller undertook with Jean-Julien Champagne (alias Fulcanelli).
The work on colour, metals and stained glass is for Schwaller a propadeutic for understanding the process by which spirit (light, colour) transforms the bodies in which it is incarnated (matter, substance). Ultimately, the “hermetic problem of salt” is seen to centre directly upon the mineral register of an entity’s consciousness (palingenetic memory); because this imperishable register of consciousness is also the determiner of an entity’s form, salt is consequently regarded as the mechanism of evolution, resurrection and palingenesis. The deeper dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy thus concerns the role of this “fixed nucleus” in the formation of bodies, from mineral to human. In particular, I examine the principles of Schwaller’s metallurgical alchemy in order to understand how the “spirit of metals” acts as a fiery metallic seed (sulphur) that “coagulates” a nutritive substance (mercury) into a bodily form (salt). This understanding is applied to the stained-glass work. I then look at his meta-biological alchemy, in which it is not the genetic seed but the palingenetic mineral salt that forms the determining principle in the biological entity’s evolution. In essence, Schwaller’s “hermetic problem of salt” is understood as the fulcrum not only of individual immortality, but also of the qualitative mutations (leaps) between kingdoms and species. More specifically, the kingdoms of nature are seen to emerge alchemically through "qualitative exaltations" induced by the divine seed-ferment (sulphur) upon the primordial materia (mercury) giving rise to a neutral centre of gravity: the saline magnetic nucleus or ‘styptic coagulating force’, the spiritual locus of physical form.
In the final analysis, Schwaller’s alchemy is quintessentially nondual in the sense that it encompasses both operative and spiritual processes. These are not separate but deeply interrelated realities. Through the idea of salt, Schwaller offers a holarchical explanation for the continuities between mineralogical, biological and spiritual bodies, and thus a theory for the material mechanism by which consciousness transforms phenomenal form. To approach this kind of alchemy as exclusively chemical or psychological is thus completely inadequate and reinforces the necessity for a nondual critical apparatus in the study of alchemy.
Among the Greeks, this continuum was articulated in terms of a divine and usually invisible underpinning to the manifest cosmos, on which basis the poles of the hierarchy became established in terms of phenomenal and intelligential orders of existence. Cosmological intermediaries were paralleled in the psychological and ontological spheres, serving both to separate and bridge the dualities of heaven/earth, reason/sense, and psyche/body. In Neoplatonism, Theurgy, and Sufism, the concept of imagination became revivified as a locus of theophany, ontological transition, and cosmic liminality. A tripartite cosmological motif becomes apparent; imagination—the mundus imaginalis—is understood as a mesocosmic process between micro- and macrocosmic extremes.
Centrifugal and centripetal phases are seen to characterise the transitions between essence and manifestation. The dialectic of the former is unitive and oriented toward the unmanifest. It proceeds by the integration of that which is Other to form a perfected whole (signified by androgyny, consubstantiality, harmony). The dialectic of the latter is divisive and oriented toward the manifest. It proceeds by the dis-integration of the whole to engender an Other (signified through contrasexuality, hypostasis, tension). Given this, magic may be understood as the availing of the mesocosmic imagination in order to ‘shift the veil of māyā’ and hence (i) reveal absolute reality (integrality and Gnosis) or (ii) effect creative action in the realm of manifestation (phenomenal appearance, manipulation of images). Hence, the acquisition of divine power is tantamount to deification; the enactment of divine power to reification.
This conference invited its participants to examine the liminal space of “Crisis and Mutation” in order to concretize the ever-latent (yet ever-present) origin. In doing this we seek to unveil the integral presence underpinning the complex and conflicting undulations of human evolution.
Some of the questions this conference seeks to address include:
How can the symptoms of disintegration that fragment our world be understood as negative indicators of the integral (i.e. what is the solution hidden in the dissolution)?
How can tension be used to liberate ourselves from the extremes that create this very tension?
What is the "alchemy" of consciousness by which we can engage and transmute deficient manifestations into integral concretions?
To do this I will explore the motif of dissolution in an alchemical and integral sense. Gebser himself has pointed out that the dissolution of our culture under the excesses of mental-rational fragmentation hides a hidden solution. In a similar vein, alchemical theory holds that for anything to “evolve” towards its innate integrality, it must first be reduced to a condition of formlessness, and this was done through the process of dissolution. “All organic bodies, as well as certain mineral compositions, are susceptible at the moment of their decomposition, to an orientation towards a new form” (Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science, p. 80).
To explicate the dynamics of this restructuration, I will develop the alchemical principle of enantiodromia—the idea that the excess of any phenomenon evokes its opposite. Just as solid crystalline salts emerge “miraculously” from a saturated liquid solution, radical transformation ensues from a state of superabundance and excess. Similarly, Schwaller held that instances of excess in nature were means by which consciousness could transcend phenomenal form. On a natural and cultural level, crisis, dissolution, and fragmentation become transitional vehicles for the liberation of spirit from limiting ontological structures.
The purpose of the present paper is to provide a detailed survey of Gebser’s life and work as a whole. Although a few studies of Gebser’s life and work exist in English, very few of them draw on the full breadth of his collected oeuvre (nine volumes in German). This paper will present the development of Gebser’s life as integrated with the development of his work and thought, making consistent reference to the German sources. The paper will feature numerous original translations from works hitherto unavailable in English. Overall, it is intended that the bio-bibliographical study proposed here will fill the paucity of knowledge in Anglophone Gebser studies about the details of Gebser’s biography and works. More specifically, two points will be emphasised: (i) the defining nature of Gebser's formative experiences/inspirations upon the development of his life and philosophy; and (ii) his abiding vocation as a poet and the pertinence of the poetic perception of reality to integral consciousness. In regards to both of these points, I will seek to shed particular light on Gebser’s indebtedness to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke in breaking through to a new consciousness. I will suggest that Gebser was to a large extent “inspired by the same muse” as Rilke. More generally, I will also give concrete details of Gebser's contacts with other important figures, such as Lorca, Jung, Heisenberg, Suzuki, Govinda, as well as Gebser’s own personal experience of integral consciousness.
What I would like to present is a detailed biographical and bibliographical survey of the life and work of René Schwaller de Lubicz. This will draw on the seven years of research that I completed as part of my doctoral dissertation: Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt (University of Queensland, 2011). I will guide the audience on a journey through Schwaller’s fascinating life, from the Parisian alchemical revival and the Hermetic experimentum crucis in stained glass, through to his fifteen year sojourn in Egypt, where he lived in daily contact with the temples at Luxor. The talk will be furnished with original translations from the French, and illustrated with rare photographs.
- See more at: http://esotericbookconference.com/lineup/aaron-cheak/#sthash.8gLuxg7K.dpuf"
embody or manifest divine feminine power (Shakti) in the human microcosm through a ritual methodology of worldly power and pleasure, tantra envisioned the medium of human-divine interaction as proceeding via sexual fluids in which the essence of numinous power was instilled. Thus the tantric adept sought to engage sexually with divine feminine entities in a reciprocal exchange of sexual fluids for the mutual gain of supernatural powers. However, sectarian differences culminating in the Shrividya tantra of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries resulted in a process of ‘Brahminisation’, whereby the assimilation of the divine element to sexual fluids was intellectualized and hence sublimated into a symbology of photic and acoustic representations (e.g. yantra and mantra). We argue that it is precisely this dichotomy between the ‘wet’, feminine Kula practices and the ‘dry’, masculine Shrividya practices that is at root of the distinction in tantra between the vamacara (left-hand path) and the dakshinacara (right-hand path). Moreover, given that these terms gained wide currency in Western occult parlance in the nineteenth through twentieth centuries (Blavatsky, Crowley, LaVey, Aquino, et al.), it is imperative to distinguish the original tantric meanings from the various (mis)interpretations proliferated in modern Western occult contexts. To do this we seek to emphasise, through the methods of cunning linguistics, the essentially feminine nature of the authentic left hand path.
The Alsatian hermeticist, alchemist and esoteric Egyptologist René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) held that an alchemical salt exists in the human femur (thighbone). This “salt” was a mineral nucleus upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness could be permanently “inscribed.” Because it was physically indestructable, the salt was seen by Schwaller as “more permanent than DNA” and was accorded a key a role in Schwaller’s esoteric theory of evolution (genesis). Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the salt located in the femur was the precise mechanism by which individual characteristics—the vital modes of consciousness—are able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the death of the individual. The salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of rebirth (palingenesis).
To the rational-empirical consciousness, this position appears thoroughly absurd. However, we hope to show that the logic which operates at root of the motif “salt—thighbone—palingenesis” is not only consistent with an entire complex of ancient initiatory symbolism, but that, ultimately, a deeper consciousness—with its own epistemology—is implicated in the esoteric perception of reality. To understand this on its own terms, rather than advance the one-sided reductions peculiar to academia, efforts to see beyond our own “logic” must be made.