Inner Alchemy
Alchemy takes two forms, external and internal.
External Alchemy is well known, it is this alchemy which the mystics of ages past laid claim to. With the Power of the external alchemy one could turn lead into gold, steel into silver, and so on. It was always base material into its purified form.
This purification is also true of the Internal Alchemy. The Internal Alchemy was intended to change base man into pure spirit. Of course the processes of this are not simple, nor are they safe, but it is this lack of safety that gives the Internal Alchemy its power.
The question of course arises, what are these processes, what is this art that allows such a transformation to occur. The assumption that such processes involve only acts of magick is an error.
The Internal Alchemy is intended to develop the entirety of the person, and therefore, cannot and is not contained in the form of and one ritual. It is a matter of delving into ones own dark side, the embracing of the forbidden that leads one in the path to mastery of ones own self.
The Mastery of Ones own passions is but the first step, but upon it we must tarry for the moment. As every man understands, society has two sides the moral one, that which is acceptable within the confines that it has set, and the immoral one, those action that are deemed unacceptable within society. Morality is but a human concept developed to control and limit ones actions, the Magus strives to step beyond this, to rid his thinking of right and wrong, and to think in terms of Necessary and Unnecessary.
To do this however, he must experience that which has been forbidden, and understand it. Embrace each new experience and enjoy it, learn form it, benefit from it, and then transcend it. Enjoy lust and the pleasures of the flesh, but do not become seduced by them. It is each time we defeat the seduction of the pleasures of the flesh that we step closer to our goal, this however does not say that we abandon those pleasures. Allow nothing to control you.
No Master can or will admit the actions he has taken to abandon the enchantment of the flesh, but all have done so, for any action that becomes repetitive and mechanical, any addiction is a sign of weakness, as is complete avoidance of the situation.
No action should become a fetish, for that weakens the individual as well. What is it that is hidden inside that keeps one from allowing understanding to flow forth. It is this lack of moral rigidity that prepares one for the transition into a being of radiant light, a being that strives to transcend this world and its god.
The path of the Internal Alchemy is the path of Lucifer, the Morning star. It is the ascent from earth to the heights of heaven, and the attempt to transcend this earth. It is the ascent beyond the child gods of this earth to the reality of the greater macroism, and the reality of the acausal world.
For once we were Gods, so shall we be again!
Inner Alchemy – By Atazoth Cthugan