Chapter one of Visual Arts & Healing, Part 2

The second realm (“The Moon Mission”) is that of the moon, or the sephireh Yesod. The third realm (“Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later”) is that of the sun, or the sephireh named Tiperoth, and the final realm (“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite”) of the Tree of Life is that of the ultimate being or consciousness, represented by the sephireh the sephireh named Kether”
(Weidner).

Fig. 20 Crop Circle.

Speaking of science fiction, what about the relationship of crop circles to alchemy?
Many crop circles contain what appear to be alchemical symbols or quasi-alchemical designs. People have been known to experience spontaneous healings inside crop circles. Crop circles are shrouded in mystery, like alchemy itself. One fine example of a crop circle which seems to exhibit some sort of alchemical link is this one (Fig. 20).


Fig. 21 Cabbalistic Tree of Life. Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye. By Jay Weidner. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2003. 90.

The pattern seems somehow familiar, but it is hard to put a finger on it. What does it mean? Then serendipity lends a hand. In Weidner’s book The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye he is discussing the relationship of alchemy to the sephiroth on the Qabbalistic Tree of Life. On page 90 he shows a diagram of the Tree, including the twenty two paths between the sefiroth, which correspond to the twenty two major arcana of the Tarot (Fig. 21). And on the opposite side is a diagram of the same Tree, divided into three main groupings (Fig. 22).


Fig. 22 Triads of Sephiroth, Tree of Life. Ibid. 91.

Hod (Splendour), Netzach (Victory), Yesod (Foundation), and Malkuth (Kingdom) – is the exact grouping of the circles in the crop circle. While the meaning of it may remain obscure, its real artistic derivation is clear. The upper left sefireh in the triangle is Mercury; the one that is opposite to it on the right corner is Venus, the central sefireh is the Moon, and the bottom one is Earth.

When the Tree of Life diagram is projected onto several photos from Fulcanelli’s book Le Mystere des Cathedrales (Fig. 23, 24), we see it corresponds nicely to the organic structure of the monuments themselves.



Fig. 23 Credence from Lailemant mansion with Tree of Life. The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye. By Jay Weidner. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2003. (left)


So in addition to close correspondence between alchemy and astrology (and also astronomy), there seems to be a close relationship between alchemy and the Qabbalah, the Qabbalah and sacred architecture, and alchemy and crop circles.

Fig. 24 Front of Saint Trophime in Arles with Tree of Life sephiroth superimposed. Ibid. (right)


Carl Jung wrote extensively about alchemy. The beginning of the alchemical process starts with the prima materia – chaos, the unconscious, etc. The prima materia in art is often symbolized by the dragon, or serpents, or a toad. This is where the first stage, the nigredo and mortification begin.

The nigredo, or blackening, represents death and putrefication. It is the necessary first step, the death of the ego, the dark night of the soul, symbolized by the Black Sun, or sol niger. As with Christ, the body must die before it is resurrected. The former life must be destroyed. In shamanism, the shaman, at the beginning of his apprenticeship or initiation, “is skinned, his bowels are torn out, and as happened to saint Theresa, the flesh is cut from his bones. He is literally chopped into pieces, cooked, grilled, or fried… Tibetan yogins are said to meditate upon death in charnel grounds until they experience a decomposition of their bodies…the spirits of the underworld not only take the body of the initiate apart in a most gruesome way – they also put it together again…which endows the person subjected to such a dismemberment with superhuman powers” (Kalweit 95). “The process of burning away the inessential part was part of the alchemical phenomenology of fire intended to bring about a purification. The alchemists called the process calcinatio” (Marlan 97). Jung called the nigredo the Shadow.

If the nigredo lasts too long or is too intense, suicide may result. Yet, if the time of suffering ends, there comes the albedo, the drying and whitening stage. “One aspect of this process is “cremation,” which brings about both the “death and blackness of mortification,” as well as the dying and “whitening” of the matter undergoing the process.

Fig. 25 Albedo. oils, 30” X 40”, John Halliday Fig. 26 Nigredo, oils, 30” X 40”, John Halliday

Fig. 27 Citrinitas, oils, 30” X 40”, John Halliday Fig. 28 Rubedo, oils, 30” X 40”, John Halliday

The alchemists refer to this process as the albedo” (Marlan 97). The albedo “means illumination, the broadening of consciousness that goes hand in hand with the ‘work’” (Jung 148).

The next stage, the citrinitas, or yellowing, is rarely mentioned in later texts. It represents the transmutation of silver into gold. Jung says this symbolizes the Wise Old Archetype.

Finally, there is the rubedo; this is the culmination of the self archetype, a symbol
of wholeness and finding one’s true nature. “In order to make it come alive it must have ‘blood’, it must have what the alchemists called the rubedo, the ‘redness’ of life….Blood alone can reanimate a glorious state of consciousness in which the last trace of blackness is dissolved…Then the opus magnum is finished: the human soul is completely integrated” (Schwartz-Salant 37).

This all culminates with the coniunctio, the union or marriage of opposites, of the solar and lunar, the “Chymical Wedding”, the hieros gamos, or sacred wedding. This is the philosophical gold so highly prized by the alchemists. It is sometimes depicted as a hermaphroditic character. It harkens back to the Qabbalistic idea of Adam Kadmon, the First Man, who was “hermaphroditic”, or a conjunction of male and female, who, after being split, experienced the Fall. The coniunctio is the redemption of the fall, the redemp- tion of matter.

We have seen that the influence of Alchemy on the arts is fairly pervasive, from artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Durer, to modern day artists like Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Joseph Cornell and others, to filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick. Alchemy had its roots in Gnosticism, which postulated that spirit was trapped in corrupt matter. Alchemists thought they could liberate spirit from matter, and thus “redeem” it, or conversely, endow dead matter with spirit. The whole raison d’ etre of alchemy was the process of transformation. Psychologists like Carl Jung have interpreted the meaning of alchemy to be that of personal transformation, leading to a whole, healthy Self.

According to Fulcanelli, the Gothic cathedrals in Europe were built to transform those who entered them. The ideas of alchemy used in Surrealism were used to transform the psyche of not only the artists who made the art, but the public who viewed it. Alchemy liberates spirit from matter; the Surrealists liberated art from the restraints of everyday consciousness. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey were also meant to transform those who view it. In a tangential way, the “cosmic art” of crop circles is related to alchemy, and literal spontaneous healing of physical ailments have occurred from persons standing in the middle of this art. Indeed, author Whitley Strieber has recently begun meditations on crop circles, claiming certain efficacious effects, both mental and spiritual, can occur from this. The spagyric plant concoctions of alchemists were also claimed to literally heal the body and spirit. The twin influences of art and alchemy can indeed produce healing in various ways, both psychic and physical.

There are also two remarkable instances of healing in my life.

The first instance was ten years ago, when I was teaching in Saipan, in the Northern Marianas Islands. I was very ill, and traditional doctors could do nothing for me. The secretary of the school I taught in, Doris Pangelinan, had an uncle who was a shaman or medicine man. He prepared about agallon of a greenish, odd tasting stuff he had concocted from rare herbs found growing in the wild in Okinawa and Saipan. I drank about a cup a day, but results were immediate (the next day, in fact). So efficacious were its effects that for a time, doctors could not believe I had diabetes, and thought they must have been mistaken in their diagnosis. BYU was very interested in him and his concoction, but unfortunately, he died before he ever gave out his secret.

The second instance was more recent (2007). I’d had a particularly nasty tumor on my scalp, the size of a ping-pong ball that had to be surgically removed. In late 2006, it reappeared again, at the same site, and slowly grew. Kaiser Permanente doctors dithered about it for months at a time, until it threatened to become as severe as the previous one. I received a laying on of hands blessing from a friend of mine, and in short order, the tumor receded, then disappeared entirely, to the great astonishment of the Kaiser doctors.