How Theosophy Created Spiritual Alchemy - The Alchemy of Jakob Böhme

European Spiritual Alchemy grew out of the complex world of medieval German mysticism, Paracelsian Alchemy, Heterodox Lutheranism and was most powerfully forged by the Theosophy of Jacob Böhme (1575 - 1624)). In the second part of our series on the development of Spiritual Alchemy, we now turn to the rise of Theosophy led by Böhme. Specifically how Theosophy would see the history of salvation is a history of the alchemical process of de-transmutation (the fall of human kind), the individual transmutation of Jesus of Nazareth as Christ-Sophia, the spiritual transmutation of humanity and nature (redemption), before a final physical transmutation of all of reality as the reconciliation of the divine with itself - all of which as on vast Alchemical symphony.

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Recommended Readings:

Zuber - Spiritual Alchemy: From Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood - 978-0190073046

Other Readings:

Linden, Stanton J. (ed.) The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton. 978-0521796620. Nicely edited collection of alchemical primary texts.
Principe, Lawrence. The Secrets of Alchemy. 978-0226103792. An up-to-date history of alchemy.
Newman, William. Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire" 978-0691174877. Cutting edge research on alchemy in the 17th century.
Roob, Alexander(ed.) Alchemy & Mysticism. 978-3836549363. A collection of alchemical imagery and symbolism, also a nice coffee table book!

Spiritual / Psychology School of Interpretation

Atwood, Mary Anne. A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery….(many re-print editions). The first text to introduce the ‘spiritual interpretation” of alchemy.
Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy. 978-0226203904. Religious-philosophical interpretation of alchemy.
von Franz, Marie-Louise. Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology. 978-0919123045. An introduction to the Jungian psychological interpretation of alchemy.

[TheModernHermeticist]

Heterodoxical Lutheran Stuff and the Acrimonious Rivalries is the name of my metal band, we play Landsknechtcore.

[alexpipkin]

Your ability to take extremely intricate and normally confusing concepts and break them down in an understandable way is awesome. Rock on man l..l,

[monkeytrousers]

So glad these videos exist... Saves me years of banging my head against impenetrable books and getting nowhere...

[markwaki]

As a Christian, this is heavily illuminating concerning the history and inner workings of my faith in Christ. Thanks

[nocantry]

I can't wait to get off work so I can watch this! Thank you Dr. Sledge and whomever works on ESOTERICA for the wonderful videos. God bless you all.

[TheAlkhemiaStudio]

Without a doubt, one of the best episodes on alchemy and a must watch for anyone interested in the subject. Great job Dr.!!! 👏👏👏👏👏👏

[andymurray]

When giving out credit to ahistorical alchemical views, I think Terence Mckenna deserves a lot of credit (I love Terence but he was pushing the ahistorical interpretations hard in the 80s and 90s, and was a self-proclaimed student of Eliade and Jung) for his popularity on YouTube and influence on more recent generations.

[_KRYMZN_]

“When one trades history for mythology, you do so with the currency of intellectual integrity” might be the hardest bar of the decade.

10:14 for those who want a reel-up

[jonasespinoza]

Excelente talk, a lot of info to digest.
I probably need to watch it again, even if graduated from a theological college and continue studying for many years . Heavy stuff. Thank you.

[DrRussPhd]

The green flash with the "Your guess is as good as mine" was easy to identify the cause: you had an urge for absinthe and it came thru on the video. Green as a bean.

Another interesting video.Thanks.

[MAGIAECORPUS]

Awesome episode Sir. Thank you for setting the record straight. There's so much BS around misinterpreting one thing for the other. May truth prevail. Thank you.

[sebastianhelm]

i'm from Görlitz, so I very much appreciated your closing words! Great scholarship, I am currently working on a presentation for spiritual alchemy and you helped greatly to restrict the historical timeframe. My reading left me with the impression that spiritual alchemy in a gnostic sense was the dominant line and laboratory alchemy just its veil.

[protagtom]

You're the absolute best English speaker on western esotericism on youtube, us over at
r/hermeticism would to have you for a live Q and A sometime

[mikeflannery]

Thanks! Awesome content as usual. Im in the middle of your Kabbalah series and I must say it is quite fascinating. I can only imagine the hours of research it took to produce such an in depth series.

[cheri]

Thanks!
I love your lectures, Justin Sledge.
I appreciate learning more about your depth of knowledge you impart with on these topics.

[Reddotzebra]

So basically the original alchemists wanted to be able to find a method to turn stuff into other stuff, elemental transmutation. And in the process of doing that they discovered a lot of compounds, basically by trying to mix various things, heat them up and/or then separate them again, and these compounds were then given fanciful descriptions, since nobody really knew how the process worked at the molecular level ("Spirit of Sea Air" being a favorite.)

Then actual analytical chemistry became a thing because people had discovered that some of the things alchemists had made were useful for normal everyday applications, and they wanted to make more of those things, and know the exact process to make them, and if it could be made more efficient and cheaper.
As usually happens when money is involved, all the fanciful ideas about what actually took place were stripped out, a new process for mass production was formulated, and we get common everyday hydrochloric acid.

Then after alchemy had already been declared a pseudoscience by the current generation, someone thought that this lost art would be really cool to bring back, because surely something that involved had to have SOME meaning to it, and they made it trendy, and then a lot of now-famous people put words in the mouths of the old alchemists that were only really trying to turn one metal into another?

[meshnykon]

Love the divinely timed glitch at 13:32 as you say "transform nature." Lol

[AzazelSanteros]

This man is totally legit- you got beef with him, you got beef with ME..
Keep bringing us that occult wisdom Justin 🙏 🙌 ✨️ 👌 👏

[MarcoVisconti]

Fantastic analysis as usual. Could it be the time that Anglo-American occulture finally discovers how laboratory alchemy never disappeared in non-Protestant countries? Maybe in the future you could look into Principe Raimondo di Sangro and in the esoteric orders that he inspired.

[benkingston]

Thank you very much for finally getting around to Böhme. Great Video!