Symbols - What does heaven look like
Metal
The metals were used in both alchemy and other mystic systems as a symbol for the Intelligences principally those relating to the Planets [the symbolic planets]. A table of correspondences can be found in the section Intelligences and their synonyms.
But, there is also a link symbolically in Alchemy to the chakras. Each chakra had a corresponding colour and metal with the metal gold being at the top - ascension.
This is why the alchemists referred to turning base metal into gold, the objective of the process of spiritual learning and purification that took place on the spiritual path was likened allegorically to a chemical transformation. This transformation was then mapped onto the body.
As one progressed up the levels and layers both of your soul cone and the levels associated with the Planets, one was gradually - from a symbolic point of view - being 'refined'.
All this symbolism was designed to protect the alchemists from the Catholic Inquisition and the torture, burning and other nasty consequences that resulted if one did not conform to dogma. If, accordng to the established Church, there was only one 'God' there could not be Intelligences or Planets, or the kundalini experience or other 'gods' as such some coding system had to be used to describe the spiritual path, and metals were just one way. The ladder is the spine.
The irony is that the Bible is full of symbolic references to these same metals - iron, gold, silver - all there and none of it intended to be taken literally.
There is also a far more tragic consequence from using metal allegorically. Some alchemists were also chemists and physicians. When they described the use of metals and the process of using them, those of a more down to earth and less spiritual nature assumed that by taking actual metals it made you better. From this we have medicines that are even available today and can be found in ayurvedic and Chinese medicine as well as western medicine.
Heavy metals, in fact metals as a whole, poison you. They are not medicinal and have probably contributed to more deaths and distress than any other form of treatment. Even in Belgium in the 1980s when I was there, they put a ghastly lurid red coloured ointment on open wounds based on mercury. Heaven only knows what damage it has done to the Belgian population. It is now banned.
To see what appalling damage can be done when the ignorant take symbolism as being literal look at the sections on lead poisoning and mercury poisoning.
Observations
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- Ahmad Ahsai, Shaykh - Kitab Sharh al-Ziyara - On alchemical metals
- Ashton R - A human figure made of metal
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 01
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 02
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 03
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 04
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 05
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 07
- Baudelaire, Charles - Rêve parisien
- Blake, William - And the North Gate of Golgonooza toward generation
- Blake, William - I was in a Printing house in Hell and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted
- Blake, William - One curse, one weight, one measure One king, one God, one Law
- Brittany - Ys
- Bruno, Giordano – On Magic - The Metals and transmutation
- Chagall - Albertus Magnus
- Charles Fort - Finds of Coins and Disks
- Cirlot on crowns
- Coehlo, Paulo - The Alchemist - The Master Work
- Cohen, Leonard - Ballad of the Absent Mare
- Count of St Germain - Dying wool and silk
- Croll, Oswald - Preface of Signatures – 15
- Dickinson, Edmund - When Phoebus with his rayes bright
- Dogon - The Order of creation
- Empedocles - On Nature - 233-364
- Empedocles - The Clepsydra
- Ezekiel - Ezekiel 1 - The Living Creatures and the Glory of the Lord
- Ficino, Marsilio - On the alchemical art - Chapter 01
- Flamel, Nicolas - Aurora consurgens
- Flamel, Nicolas - Uraltes chymisches Werk A Eleazar 1760 4th illustr.
- Godwin, Joscelyn - God the Alchemist
- Guaita, Stanislas de - Danae
- Healer H - I’m the Fagan with the kids
- Healer H - Having a board meeting
- Keightley, Thomas - Coal and gold
- Keightley, Thomas - Dwarfs and trolls
- Lalla - Forgetful one, get up
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian shaman’s dress
- Maeterlinck, Maurice - The Treasure of the Humble - Silence
- Mircea Eliade - The Birhor, Munda, and Oraon of Northern India
- Mircea Eliade - The Mithraic Mysteries
- Mircea Eliade - The Smith and Blacksmiths
- Mylius, Johann Daniel - Volte
- Numbers 31
- Omar Khayyam - The Rubaiyat - Leaden Metal into Gold
- Paracelsus - On destruction and alchemical metals
- Plato - Critias - Atlantis and Athens
- St Vincent - Marrow
- Stolz von Stolzenberg, Daniel - Viridarium chemicum 1624
- The Book of Taliesin - The Battle Of the Trees - 08
- The Saami - A Cultural Encyclopaedia - The Power of the Drum
- Unusual cards - 16 The Tower
- War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness – 05 Disposition and weapons of the front formations
- Yasna - The Divine Heptad
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 5th Book of Magnesia picture 8 - Resurrection
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 01
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 05
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 06
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 07
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 08