Alchemy for beginners

I am starting my journey into Alchemy. So, I thought I would start a thread for those who:

1. Want knowledge of Alchemy.
2. Want to start practicing Alchemy.
3. Are advanced practicioners of Alchemy who want to help guide us newbs.

I performed a search to see if this has been attempted in the past....i.e. have a "database" of knowledge in this area.....but didn't find anything. If there is one, please feel free to redirect me in that direction.

Now, onto the thread topic.

Does anyone have any good starting points/books/excersises etc. to begin an alchemist's journey?

Yeah this is the best book on the subject: "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" translated by Charles Luk

books.google.com... I8WIp8fQ_oA&hl=en&ei=QHBgS5juMI-HlAfLj7SmDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

If you want to practice the book then get the Level 1 Sitting Meditation c.d. -- scroll down -- as it's the same exercise as what the book explains:

www.springforestqigong.com...

While you're waiting to get the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" you can read this free full book which details the beginning steps of the practice:

www.scribd.com...

reply to post by Nutter




[edit on 27-1-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 27-1-2010 by drew hempel]

reply to post by drew hempel


Thank you for the information.

Can I ask?

Do you practice?

Yeah I went 8 days on half a glass of water and I was never hungry nor thirsty. I was practicing from the information I gave you but more importantly I took classes in person from the alchemy master Chunyi Lin. Chunyi Lin went 49 days in full-lotus yoga in a cave taking no food, no water and no sleep. He now does healing with the Mayo Clinic informally -- springforestqigong.com...

You can read my blog for details naturalresonancerevolution.blogspot.com...

[edit on 27-1-2010 by drew hempel]

reply to post by Nutter


I read a book that brought together a lot of medieval alchemical practices called "The Tower of Alchemy." That's about the extent of my experience with alchemy but I don't think I'll derail the thread too badly with a little about that.

The whole idea as presented in the book was basically to imagine a castle/multi-room temple that represented your physical body, and you would do various meditations of ceremonies in the different rooms of the castle that represented processes within your subconscious and in your body, and the symbolism is supposed to be automatically interpreted as a message to your subconscious so that mental and physical changes start taking place. That summary really doesn't do justice to the actual book at all but I think it would be impossible in a single post anyway.

I still carry the idea around with me though, and I've taken a lot of liberties with it but I still use it. For example the main "throne room" that you're supposed to start each meditation in, represents your heart inside your chest. So when you start your meditations you are centered in your heart, represented mentally by being inside this throne room chamber, which is decorated symbolically. They give instructions for how you should imagine the rooms to be decorated in the book but I took my own liberties with that as well. I try to "live in my heart" (and the rest of my body for that matter... it's amazing how little attention we actually pay to all our body sensations during the day until we MAKE ourselves start paying attention) but I like to start meditations in a "room" that's actually way out in outer space and I can just mentally kind of teleport to wherever I want to go from there....

Anyway you can find the book on Amazon, it also talks a lot about all the alchemical processes, distillation of this and solidification of that, but unfortunately I don't remember those too well and I don't have the book with me right now. Carl Jung talks a lot about alchemy and that's where I really picked up most of what I understand about human psychology.

Anyway there's my 2 cents in the bucket...

"The whole idea as presented in the book was basically to imagine a castle/multi-room temple that represented your physical body, and you would do various meditations of ceremonies in the different rooms of the castle"

Sounds like Interior Castle by St.Teresa of Avila.