The Pilgrimage of Alchemical Water

Civilisations throughout the ages have always recognised water for its life imparting properties, but only the most elect among them have ever been able to truly recognize and realize the alchemical secrets of water. The ancient teachers had various interpretations for describing the role of human lives in the physical world, but some also considered the impact of this world on the souls of human beings due to their sojourn on Earth. Those ancient mystics considered the world to be a stage for the development and ascension of human soul to a greater level of glory as indicated by the qualitative purity of their alchemical water. The alchemical water in the metaphorical sense represents the morality in human behaviour that is achieved through the application of wisdom and knowledge. The material or physical water has its normal flow in the downward direction of a slope as the part of its movement; however, the alchemical water or morality always moves against the slope in the upward direction of its spiritual ascension. Therefore, the mortality of man tends to defy his ambitions for materialistic progress as all such progress is usually rendered vain in due course of time, but the spiritual achievements always tend to endure the waning tides of time. A man through the faculty of wisdom, must try to peek into the invisible realm of the needs of his mind. He must explore that unlit land of his passions and desires, and to find answers that his mere sharp senses for sights and sounds could not discover. He must overcome his darkness by cultivating the thirst for alchemical water, and satiate himself with it in order to understand the ultimate mystery of nature; death!

The physical properties of water in themselves constitute the greatest enigmas of natural world with regards to its polarity. The polarities in nature represent the properties of substances that may only vary in their degrees. The Greek adepts used to define water as ‘cold and wet’, in contrast to the element earth which is supposed to be ‘cold and dry’. That is because water and earth are the polar opposites comprising of the same properties but different polarities, and also the similar principle applies to fire and air. But fire and water are fundamentally incompatible, and so are the interactions of earth and air. For example, the density of water decreases with the rise in temperature, but if the temperature rises too high so as to reach the boiling point of water, then the water shall loose all of its density and turn into the vapour state (element air). Similarly, water turns into ice or solid state (element earth) at very low temperatures. Therefore, the threshold points beyond which the variation in any qualitative property such as temperature completely nullifies the existence of an elemental condition (the liquid state) actually represents the range of polarity. The elemental polarities have the potential to sustain their individual characteristics whilsts intermingling with each other. The water represents the opposite polarity of earth, and hence the astrological earth signs in the zodiac occupy placements that are opposite to the astrological water signs. On the contrary, the elements of air and fire are ‘hot and wet’ and ‘hot and dry’ in their characteristics respectively, thus forming a different elemental pair of polar opposites. As a consequence of its property, water serves as a universal solvent and performs numerous alchemical functions such as dissolution through corrosion and erosion, purification through sedimentation and crystallisation, as well as precipitation and quenching. Of these processes, purification and precipitation usually requires lower temperatures of water, whilst dissolution and quenching works well at the higher temperatures with water. Metaphorically, it symbolises the extent of adherence to a moral creed whereby any coherent natural existence of human life could be viable, and the human integrity would find a meaningful ground for its fulfilment. It should be morally appropriate to seek warmth and to preach the code of obtaining heat in extremely cold regions of the world, but to exemplify the same code as a form of divine guidance in some extremely hot area ought to be a gross misappropriation of morality. The significance of moral values or teachings must always be relative to the immediate working environment of the practitioner, and therefore morality should always guide humanity according to the alchemical principles of elemental polarity.

All the intellectual developments that have resulted in the formation of society have been the products of efforts from man to extend his vision into the unknown. Man constructed microscopes and telescopes as machines that give him insights into the atomic and molecular structures of very small dimensions as well as into the massive galaxies at great distances. There is a similarity and a harmony at all levels of material observation; which can be determined by the very extrapolation of that alchemical vision, the insight of which for instance allows an alchemist to distinguish between a strong acid and drinking water, and consequently to employ the two physically similar substances that are actually very different in their respective chemical natures. Therefore, the human destiny is in the process of formulation according to the quality and power of the alchemical vision possessed by man, and guided by his moral efforts to extend the dimensions of this vision. The legacy of man is essentially the product of an alchemical process driven by the characteristic functions of the alchemical water. The material water constantly thrives to find the merits of alchemy for which it incessantly strikes and breaks the rocks to create the soft earth that may have the potential for the generation of life. Even then most of it could only produce life at the lowest levels such as wild vegetation that seldom if ever may get consumed by the animals. After a long effort of the alchemical process of sustaining all sorts of living creatures, the water finally finds its ascension by being of the most fundamental constituent and utility to the only potential being of conscience, the man! Therefore, it is the greatest duty of man to justify his being as the prime keeper of the legacy of alchemical water, and to uphold its sanctity and purity by fulfilling its pilgrimage at the highest and the most sublime peak of its ascension through the life of integrity and the conduct of morality.