Die Alchemie. Das ist die Lehre von den grossen Geheim-Mitteln der Alchemisten und den Speculationen, welche man an sie knüpfte

For the sake of the second position, one does not only say 2 multiplied by 12 equals 24, which gives the year 2400. One also says 2 multiplied by 3 equals 6. This provides the philosophical number 6.

The Greeks generally adopt the four Weltalter World Ages that we have already encountered. In contrast, Hesiod does not assume four, but five World Ages: the golden, the silver, the bronze, the heroic, and the iron. This is nothing more than a reference to five mystical World Ages. These emerge if one does not discard the calculation of 6 multiplied by 12 equals 72.

To make the matter even more mysterious, a distinction is made between a "God-year" and a "human-year." It is assumed that the numbers 4800, 3600, 2400, and 1200 are not human years, but God-years. A God-year and a human-year are related such that one human year equals one day for the gods. If one wishes to convert the above God-years into human years, one must multiply by 360. We use 360 instead of 365. We already know this alchemical leap from earlier discussions. The following numbers then emerge for the duration of the individual World Ages:

But people are not yet satisfied with this. They also add these year totals and obtain the sum of 4,320,000 years. Such a sum is called a Mahâyuga a great period. We note here that Indian numerical philosophy uses the four basic arithmetic operations: division and multiplication. We have enough evidence of this above. However, if numbers are suddenly to be added here, it seems to be a departure from the principle regarding arithmetic operations. Indian numerical philosophy usually has nothing to do with addition or subtraction. Yet this departure from principle is only apparent. No fundamental value is placed on addition here. It is included as an incidental byproduct. This is permissible. If one says the individual World Ages lasted such and such a length of time, it follows naturally, quite apart from all alchemical-numerical speculation, that one can say they lasted this long in total.

After the addition, however, it goes even further. The Mahâyuga is multiplied by 72. This 72 comes from the position 6 multiplied by 12 equals 72 mentioned earlier, which was previously set aside because there are only four World Ages. Here it is brought back in. Through multiplication, it is said: 72 x Mahâyuga = 72 x 4,320,000 = 311,040,000 years. This is now a Manuyuga. And finally, the Manuyuga is multiplied again by 14. This 14 is introduced for the sake of the number 7. In the second position above, we had 2 x 12 = 24. This was extended, based on the three sacrificial fires, to 2 x 3 = 6. This brought the philosophical number 6 into the matter. Since one is already at it, one thinks: if we can say 2 x 3 = 6 instead of 2 x 12 = 24, we can go further. We can take the 72 in position 14 and say 2 x 7 = 14. This gives us the 14 which is placed against the Manuyuga. Thus: 14 x Manuyuga = 14 x 311,040,000 = 4,354,560,000 years. That is then a Kalpa. These are colossal numbers! They were naturally devised to hide the philosophy of the number even more effectively.

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Indian Cosmogenesis.

We have seen how alchemy takes possession of cosmology in the section on Indian alchemy from the standpoint of cosmology. But alchemy does not stop at cosmology. It also makes Kosmogenese cosmogenesis, the origin of the universe its own. However, this has not yet happened among the Indians. We do find cosmogenetic philosophies among them. But these are merely "cosmogenetic wood chips" that one person carves one way and another carves differently. They have nothing to do with alchemy yet. In this regard, we cite from the Rigveda:

"At that time there was neither non-being nor being; no world, no air, nor anything beyond; nothing, anywhere in the happiness of anyone, enveloping or enveloped. Death was not, nor then immortality, nor distinction of day and night. But Tad That breathed without breathing, alone with Svadhâ self-determination, which is contained within it. Besides it, there was nothing later. Darkness was there; this All was wrapped in darkness and indistinguishable water; but the mass covered by the husk was produced by the power of inner heat. Desire Kâma, Love was first formed in the mind, and this became the original, creative seed, which the wise, recognizing it through the insight in their hearts, distinguished in non-being as the bond of being." Lassen.

In a passage of the Black Yadschurveda it is said:

"The waters were there; this world was original water. In it moved the Lord of Creatures, having become air; he saw her the earth, and lifted her up in the form of the boar, and then he formed her, becoming Visvakarman, the architect of the All." Lassen.

In the Râmâyana it is said:

"Everything was water, then the earth was created, and upon it arose the independent Brahma with the Devatas deities." v. Bohlen.

In the Law Book of Manu it is said:

"When the Eternal and Invisible, whom reason has established for us, wished to produce manifold beings from his own divine substance, he first created the water by a thought and placed in it the seed of generation. This became an egg, shining like the sun, and in it developed the great forefather of all spirits, Brahma, the creative power of the Eternal. After a whole year of creation, by thought alone, he divided the egg, the two halves of which then formed into heaven and earth." v. Bohlen.

And so forth. But one must not be misled by all of this. We repeat: Indian cosmogenesis or cosmogeneses have nothing to do with alchemy. A true cosmogenesis only enters alchemy through the Egyptians. These Egyptians have the world emerge from the Nile. The Jews then spin this Egyptian view further. According to a very specific alchemical problem, they have the world arise from water. In doing so, they account for the universe as a "world-vessel" according to a very specific alchemical principle.

Before Indian cosmogenesis reached the point where, coming to the Egyptians, it drew the Nile and Egypt into its scope; and before the Jews generalized Nile and Egypt into "world-water" and "world," a principled cosmogenesis that is a child of alchemy was unthinkable. Least of all could one imagine the alchemically-conceived problem of the origin of the world from water and the "world-egg" attached to it. When the Indians speak of the world's origin from water, it is such a vague "wood chip" of thought. It likely leans on the legend of the Deluge. As soon as one assumes a Deluge, one confirms the fact that the world as it is now was produced from water. It emerged from the Deluge-water through the receding and drying of that water.

But a world already existed before the Deluge, otherwise it could not have submerged in water. Thus, we have two worlds that we inhabit: one pre-flood and one post-flood. To have the cards match regarding these two worlds, the first is made to emerge from water just like the second. According to such a view, the Deluge was at the beginning. This is an ideal conception. It may be related to the fact that the Indians present the Deluge as a World-Egg saga. Bringing the world-egg independently onto the stage is based simply on how a chicken emerges from an egg. We want to say figuratively that the world also arose from an egg. This thought is all the more obvious as the Indians probably said, like the Jews, that the heaven above us has the shape of half an eggshell. They did not see it as we do, standing like a dome or a bell over the earth.

If one now wishes to oppose us by saying that what you call "cosmogenetic wood chips" of the Indians

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actually constitutes Indian cosmogenesis, and that I have no right to pull the cosmogenetic standpoint out from under their feet: well, then we are satisfied with that. In our standpoint above, we only care about pushing it into the foreground with precision that true alchemical cosmogenesis, specifically the alchemically-conceived emergence of the world from water, which the Greeks also lean on, originates from the Jews and not from the Indians.

Just as this state of affairs is notorious, it is also notorious that what is intimately and organically linked to the Jewish way of perception belongs to Jewish alchemy. It cannot belong to Indian alchemy or cosmogenesis. It follows that if things are found among the Indians in a cosmogenetic sense that correspond to Jewish perceptions, they are either coincidences of no principled weight, or they are data that came from the Jews to the Indians, rather than from the Indians to the Jews.

If the agreement in an individual case is too great for "coincidence" to be the explanation, then the Indologists may settle among themselves whether they want to date the text in which the passage occurs after the time when a Jewish alchemy already existed. Or they can consider the passage in question as an interpolation, a later addition. As stated, they may settle whether they want to do one or the other. But settle it they must, if they do not wish to blindly oppose the data provided by alchemy. They must not become infatuated with the parchment and try to make Indian what is Jewish and can only be Jewish. To push this state of affairs into the foreground with precision, we adopted the negative standpoint regarding Indian cosmogenesis.

Alchemy among the Egyptians.

The Water-Transformation Experiment.

The Egyptians received alchemy from the Indians at a time when Indian alchemy still exclusively occupied the cosmological standpoint. In this Indian cosmology, the situation is peculiar. It prominently focuses on the heavens and pushes the earth we inhabit into the background. Indian cosmology leans on the deity. Since we turn our gaze to heaven when we turn it toward the deity, this produces a cosmology where heaven is primarily taken into account.

Leaning on the deity, from which everything proceeds, is justified because the Arcana secret remedies are remedia divina divine means. It is all well and good to label the Arcana as divine means. But to neglect the earthly standpoint in favor of such a heavenly one is going too far. It is not the gods who apply these means, but we humans. We do not take the ingredients from which we manufacture them from heaven, but from the earth we inhabit.

The Egyptians made this standpoint clear to themselves. They realized it was appropriate to draw the world we inhabit into the realm of the alchemical world. However, if they set out to draw the world we inhabit prominently into the alchemical realm, they had to let their way of looking at things diverge from that of their teachers, the Indians. They had to break with Indian tradition. But they hesitated to do that, and so they fell into a hybrid situation. Looking around, they found a way out. This way out consisted of sticking to Egypt.

They said: even if we take into account the world we inhabit, it does not have to be the profane world "out there." No, we stick specifically to Egypt. Egypt is our world. Our world is the Egypt preferred by the gods. The Indians cannot resent us for bringing this world in. If they want to argue, let them argue with the gods

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who favored our Egypt, but not with us, who are merely establishing what lies at our feet. Thus, Egypt enters Egyptian alchemy by way of an extended Indian cosmology and a self-satisfied national concept.

As soon as the Egyptian alchemists expanded the Indian cosmological view in this way, it required only one step to move from cosmology to cosmogenesis. Egypt owes its origin to the Nile. It is, as the ancients said, a gift of the Nile. Since the Egyptians were focused on Egypt, they were also focused on the Nile. They placed the two in opposition such that they said: if we have the Nile, we also have Egypt. Egypt arises from the Nile. Thus, a strictly grounded alchemical cosmogenesis was established.

From our standpoint, this is a cosmogenesis that moves within narrow limits. It deals with the Partials-Kosmos partial cosmos of Egypt, not with the Universal-Kosmos universal cosmos. From the Egyptian standpoint, however, the narrowness of the view disappears. If the Egyptians had the cosmos of Egypt, they had the cosmos in general in an egoistic-Egyptian way. To them, Egypt was the cosmos.

Egyptian cosmogenesis thus consists of saying: we have the Nile, and from it, Egypt emerged. But Egyptian cosmogenesis goes no further. It was the Jews who first gave this limited cosmogenesis a universal expansion. Only the Jews applied to the world in general what the Egyptians had applied partially to Egypt. In doing so, they gave a general expansion to both the Nile and Egypt. They turned the Nile into the water that was there at the beginning. They turned Egypt into the earth that we inhabit.

Thus, the parallel between Nile-Egypt and Water-World emerges: just as the Nile was there first and Egypt arose from it, so the world-water was there first and the world we inhabit arose from it. Such a parallel, however, still carries the shackles of Egyptian thought. The Egyptians say: Egypt is the world. The parallel does nothing more than reverse the matter and say: the world is Egypt. We have the situation where the cosmogenetic expansion, whose purpose is to emancipate itself from the narrow viewpoint of the Egyptians, still moves in the narrow circle of Egypt.

The Jews realized this. They realized that if they said expansively that what happened with Egypt and the Nile on a small scale happened with the world and world-water on a large scale, they were only halfway there. They realized that if the generalization was to reach its goal, they had to go one step further. Looking around for that purpose, they came upon the "Water-Transformation Experiment."

The Water-Transformation Experiment consists of letting water stand and then obtaining earth from it. By means of this experiment, and by means of the transformation of water, the Jews now said: we do not need Egypt and the Nile at all. What the Nile is, is water in general. What Egypt is, is earth in general. We do not need the Nile to give us Egypt. We simply need water in general to give us earth.

In the general cosmogenetic view, we do not need to say: we have the Nile, this yields Egypt, and likewise we have the world-water, and this yields the world or the earth we inhabit. No, we can say quite generally, abstracting from Nile and Egypt: we have water, and this yields earth. We do not say, as the Egyptians do, that just as Egypt arose from the Nile, the world arose from the water. Instead, we say: just as water is given and earth arises based on the Water-Transformation Experiment, so in the realm of cosmogenesis, water is given and the earth we inhabit arises. The origin of the world is thus nothing other than a water-transformation on a large scale. If we thus place the narrowly defined Egyptian cosmogenesis against the broadly defined Jewish cosmogenesis, we do not have a simple opposition—