Mary Anne Atwood - The Philosophical matter

Mary Anne Atwood - The Philosophical matter

The Philosophical matter is the entelechy of body bearing the spirit, the antecedent cause, right up through. The human soul is more than a mere resultant of body; it is its ultimate perfection, for it is a mesothesis between two spheres. 

The Ether is the universal extended Matter; the Divine posit everywhere; life.

The Metals of the philosophers are the ethereal metals; the Ether’s progressive stages; its processes; the arising of the Ether from and through its lower to its higher forms and qualities. 

The adept regards nature inwardly and as a whole; he feels all in himself.

The soul’s angelic essence is a metallic humidity. The soul in its perfection is the Christian philosopher’s stone. The soul in its metalline perfection is the philosopher’s stone.

Alchemy can be fully understood only by those who have entered on and are working the philosophic process; by those who, as Plato well says, are conversant with the soul in her philosophy --- i.e., the recreative, or rather separative, process. 

All you get first of all is a pure matter which is passive, having no power of perfecting itself; it is the attractive power. But you must set free the masculine ferment, the sulphur or divine ferment (which is doubly hidden and beyond in this life of ours) to effect the perfection of the matter. 

 Our life is threefold. The Salt, the will, opens it secondfold. Each life must have its key and representative; the first has its status and being in sense. Dissolve the sensuous medium and you have
the second or medial life. Dissolve the medial and you reach to the divine, which rectified the whole individual. Visitabis interiore terrae, etc. 

Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the seeking of The Sophia in the mind.

For production of effect there must be a return of the sulphur (this third, this obscure, this radical life) on its matrix. Each principle of the life --- active, passive, and resultant --- must be produced or evolved separately, and represented personally produces a universal work. 

Mary Anne Atwood