I know I’ve been griping about Gilchrist’s book in the other two posts and before I go off on this last rant I do want to say I still found the volume useful.  I’d forgotten about Kelpius’ Women in the Wilderness, for example (you’ll be hearing about that in a future post) which made me think about Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death” (a bit of a circuitous route but I got there). I am not suggesting that you don’t go find Alchemy and read it if you’re interested in the topic – just be wary of her “slides.”

(Wow! When I went hunting the link to Alchemy I found that Gilchrist has a book called Millennium: the Year 2000 published in 1969. I soooooooo want to read that and she what she predicted.)

So for my final grouse – in the final chapter there is the inevitable reference to quantum theory and how our collective

world view has grown; boundaries have been pushed back by the advent of new branches of science, including quantum physics, which breaks down the distinction between energy and matter, and demonstrates how the ‘observer’ is in reality a ‘participator’ in atomic experiment, affecting the very particles that are worked on.

Bah! She did it again! Our existence affects particles because we are particles. An example: jump in a lake. Your mass will displace an equal mass of water. The water will go splooooey all over the place. The universe in action: particles affect other other particles even at the gross level of our human existence.

The fact that we have discovered that this is true at the particulate level is cool and interesting but doesn’t change the fact that particles affect particles. So my grouchiness is caused by what? See it?  Her use of “affect” implies intent. Mine does not. What she is implying with that sentence is that in our experiments we can affect particles in particular ways – we can make them do things we want them to – you know like change their atomic mass just by our presence – i.e. don’t need high-tech stuff like a fission bomb or a particle accelerator – an alchemical lab and the right intent will do.

Back to the water going all sploooey – jump in the lake again. This time go in with intent. Intend that the water you are about to displace, will displace itself in a jiggling cube right into my bathtub.

(I just went in to the bathroom and checked. The tub is still dry. Try again.)

OK, so it didn’t work and there is a reason why. Matter affects matter. Matter is in a fixed relationship with energy. None of that includes intent and without intent, the alchemist cannot accomplish his or her goals without the high techy stuff.

(The “intent” piece is a thorny problem having to do with operating in a fundamentally dualistic universe [the one that is posited by belief systems like Alchemy, Hermeticism in general and other related religions like Christianity.] I’ve alluded to the problem elsewhere and may dive in again, but not here.)