Late in 1993 a disturbing new element appeared. Russian crime syndicates were offering for sale a substance hitherto unknown to the West, called simply ‘red mercury’. It was said to be a secret product of the Soviet nuclear industry. On 23 December 1993 five Moldavian nationals were caught trying to enter Romania carrying some pure uranium together with what they said was this red mercury. It was destined for the nuclear black market.33
Worried Western scientists sought to establish whether this substance actually existed and, if so, exactly what it was. But in 1994 the US Department of Energy and the International Atomic Energy Agency declared red mercury to be ‘bogus’. They argued that it was just another fraud perpetrated by the Russian mafia on would-be purchasers of illicit nuclear goods.34
But certain Western nuclear physicists had good reason to think otherwise. And they suspected the accusations of fraud to be motivated by the desire to cover up an unpalatable truth.
In the June 1994 edition of International Defence Review, nuclear physicist Dr Frank Barnaby wrote of his conversation with an anonymous Soviet physicist. He had been told that this red mercury was a vital component in a revolutionary type of Russian nuclear bomb. It had proved such an efficient catalyst in the detonation of these devices that they could be built many times smaller and lighter than their Western equivalents.35
Dr Barnaby explained that with the use of this red mercury a nuclear bomb weighing only four to six pounds could be constructed. He was concerned since such a weapon could easily be placed in a city centre and detonated. He expressed his fears about the danger of this technology falling into the hands of some terrorist group. His information was that a number of Middle Eastern countries – Israel, Iran, Iraq and Libya – and Pakistan had already illicitly purchased quantities of this substance for weapons production.36 At least some of these countries are known supporters of terrorist groups and might be expected to pass on either the technology or the finished product.
The reported production of this substance has distinct parallels with the alchemical process. If any alchemists worked in the heart of the Russian military complex with access to modern equipment, it is easy to think of them inventing something like red mercury.
According to the Russian scientist, the recipe for making it is as follows:
1) Antimony sesquioxide and mercuric oxide are heated together at a temperature of 500 degrees centigrade under one atmospheric pressure of oxygen. This heating must continue without pause or fluctuation for two days. It produces a substance called mercury antimony oxide. This was not described publicly in the scientific press until as recently as 1968.
2) Next dissolve this mercury antimony oxide in pure mercury, using equal weights of each substance. Seal this mixture in a container and place it inside an atomic reactor. Irradiate it for about twenty days at a temperature of 500 degrees centigrade.
3) After this time all excess mercury is tipped off leaving a ‘cherry red’ substance with a consistency similar to liquid honey. Capsules of this thick fluid are placed inside the nuclear bombs.37
It is indeed curious that this manufacturing procedure should involve mercury and such lengthy reaction times. It is curious too that, in addition to mercury, antimony is involved. The twelfth-century alchemist Artephius wrote of a special tincture which contained both antimony and sublimated mercury for which many dramatic uses were promised.38
The creation of the initial chemical compound of mercury antimony oxide was admitted only in 1968; red mercury is not yet openly accepted. How many more supposedly impossible substances can be created using chemistry, modern technology and much time? Apart from great patience, perhaps there is more that we can learn from the experiments of the alchemist.39
But it was not these chemical techniques which lay at the very heart of alchemy. At its deepest and most secret level the experiment was on none other than the alchemist himself – or herself. Their task was the transmutation of the soul.
We must return to Zosimus, one more time, and listen to what else he has to tell us.
To Make the Heavens Open
The writings of Zosimus make it evident that alchemy, whatever physical secrets it might have concealed, had become a chemical metaphor of the same spiritual quest which is the underlying object of Hermetic thought. A spiritual quest which had to be concealed because all too often it was feared and vigorously persecuted by both civil and religious authorities.
The purification of the first material – the mercury – over a long period of time by means of a steady heat until the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ is reached was simultaneously a practical ascetic discipline and a symbol of the progress achieved in purifying the inner being of the alchemist. This is how we must understand the statement Zosimus made to a friend, a woman alchemist called Theosebia: ‘Perform these things until your soul is perfected.’40 Alchemy, according to Zosimus, was a divine mystery.
In the previous chapter we looked at ‘The Poimandres’, the first text in the collection of the Books of Hermes Trismegistus – known as the Hermetica. We have seen how it concerns a pupil who is seeking an initiation into a divine mystery. An initiation which reaches its profoundest point as an all-encompassing vision of light. Zosimus, in his text for Theosebia, explicitly referred to ‘The Poimandres’, as well as to another dialogue in the Hermetica, the fourth, called ‘The Mixing Bowl’. This focuses upon the links between humanity and divinity. It stresses the ever-present, eternal nature of the source of all being. The ‘mixing bow’ was a symbol of baptism or initiation which conferred knowledge and immortality. This same text too mentions reincarnation.
Zosimus advised Theosebia, ‘Do not roam about searching for God; but sit calmly at home, and God, who is everywhere and not confined… will come to you.’41
This process of creating the ‘Stone’ was often expressed symbolically as if it were a birth following a long gestation. This is put well – if cryptically – by the woman alchemist Cleopatra:
For just as the bird warms her eggs with her heat and brings them to their appointed term, so yourselves warm your composition and bring it to its appointed term… cook it upon a gentle fire… Then remove it from the fire; and when the soul and spirit are unified and become one, project upon the body of silver and you will have gold such as the treasuries of kings do not contain.42
She continues, ‘See the mystery of the philosophers which our fathers swore to you not to reveal or publish. It has a divine Form and a divine Activity.’43
The secret remained concealed but was never lost. Indeed, the seventeenth-century English antiquarian freemason and alchemist Elias Ashmole explained, in the introduction to his compendium of British alchemy, which he published in 1652, that the alchemist, ‘rejoyceth not so much that he can make Gold and Silver… as that he sees the Heavens open…’44
12
Reincarnation
On 3 December 1990, in northern India at the town of Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills, the base of the Tibetan government in exile, a BBC television crew was filming inside a flamboyantly decorated temple. They were recording a Tibetan ceremonially dispensing blessings to respectful hosts of queuing pilgrims who, one after another, were being gradually presented to him. But this regal Tibetan holy man was a child of only five years, a small calm figure all but dwarfed by the large and ornate throne upon which he was sitting.
He sat with great dignity during the three-hour ceremony and maintained the same composure during the remainder of the day’s elaborate rituals. The reason for all this reverential attention was that this young boy was regarded as the reincarnation of Ling Rinpoche, a greatly respected and high-ranking lama who had died six years earlier.1
The Tibetans consider it a normal occurrence for lamas to be reborn; their new incarnations are sought by various means, either written clues left by the dying lama or various mystical revelations, generally delivered by the Tibetan state oracle while in a state of trance. Accordingly, following the death of Ling Rinpoche, a se
arch had been made for his new incarnation.
In this particular case, the dead lama having been such a close friend of the Dalai Lama – the exiled leader of the Tibetans – the latter undertook to seek the mystical clues within his own meditation and divinations.
His first insight was that the lama had reincarnated, within the year, into one of the Tibetan enclaves in India. So it was within these communities that the search began. By the end of the first year, 690 children had been recorded as possible candidates. Succeeding divinations and mystical insights narrowed the choice of location down to one settlement two hours away from Dharamsala where ten young boys had already been noted.
An official deputation visited these boys but the initial results were not encouraging. None of the children seemed to feel comfortable with the investigators and none gave any indication, any recognition or memory, that might have suggested the reincarnation of Ling Rinpoche.
The visitors noted, however, that one little boy was missing. They were informed that since the initial survey his mother had died and he had been moved to another school, to the Tibetan Children’s Village School, in Dharamsala itself.
A senior Tibetan, together with his assistants, then visited the school. As they arrived, one small boy cheerfully approached them and readily took the hand of one of the visitors. They were told that he was the boy they had come to see. It seemed an auspicious beginning.
The next day a more senior deputation interviewed the boy. During their talk they handed him four strings of religious beads; one string had belonged to the dead Ling Rinpoche. Without showing the slightest doubt, the child immediately picked out the beads of the latter and, with his left hand, fingered them in the manner of those trained in their use. It was recalled that Ling Rinpoche had been left-handed in his youth. The deputation became more confident that this child was the one they sought.
The next day the young boy was taken before the Dalai Lama, who later reported:
When I received the boy at my residence and he was brought to the door, he acted just as his predecessor had done. It was plain that he remembered his way around. Moreover, when he came into my study he showed immediate familiarity with one of my attendants…2
The boy’s guardian, who had previously served Ling Rinpoche for many years, remembered
There were many occurrences that confirmed our belief. His behaviour while eating, his smiling. He does lots of things that are typical of the past master… He always showed sensitivity in recognizing past associates and students, especially Western students of the past master. He called some close students by their names.3
As a result the young boy was accepted and honoured as the reincarnation of the dead lama.
However, intriguing though the events of this story are, it is most unlikely that the procedure followed would go very far towards satisfying a modern scientific inquiry into reincarnation. But such reservations do not enter into the Tibetan approach. Reincarnation has always formed a fundamental part of their belief. Furthermore, they take it for granted that the recently dead lama would be doing what he could to make his new presence felt.
This wide search for incarnations of religious leaders is probably most widely known in the West with respect to the Dalai Lama himself. All Tibetans believe that he is the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, and so on, back to the first who died in 1475. This first, they believe, was a god-like figure who chose to incarnate on earth in order to help where he could. The present Dalai Lama, the fourteenth, was picked out in 1936 as the reincarnation of his predecessor who had died the year before.
The Dalai Lama has since given his own thoughts on reincarnation. ‘Death,’ he has explained, ‘… is just a change of clothes.’4
The Teachings of Reincarnation
Indian literature is extremely ancient: the oldest, known as the Vedas, dates from at least 4,000 years ago, about the time that the first Babylonian Empire emerged in Mesopotamia. Running through this ancient literature is the concept of reincarnation. One Vedic text, speaking of a man who has died, states, ‘Let him reach his own descendants, dressing himself in a life span… let him join with a body.’5 If age of a belief is any measure of its validity, then reincarnation is there with the finest of them. A later Indian text, the Bhagavad Gita, explains reincarnation in much more detail: ‘As a man leaves an old garment and puts on one that is new, the Spirit leaves his mortal body and then puts on one that is new.’6
Generally, in the non-Muslim East, the idea of reincarnation is a perfectly acceptable belief, integrated into even the most modern aspects of the culture. Scientists who are at the very cutting edge of technological progress, who have sent India’s own rockets and satellites into space, have done so while at the same time believing in their personal past and future lives. In other words, contrary to Western prejudices, such belief is eminently rational and not incompatible with modern science.
The Hindus and Buddhists believe that every individual is, in reality, an eternal being (each a fragment of the One) which, over many thousands, or many millions, of years returns, again and again, to take on another body. All humanity, they teach, is caught within this cycle of birth and death from which the only escape is enlightenment. The search for enlightenment is the finest aim of any life.
Successive lives are better or worse, pleasant or unpleasant, depending upon the quality of karma (meaning ‘action’) which might be faced. This karma arises from past actions; it denotes the amount of good or bad which might have accumulated in previous lives: it determines whether, in a new life, a person faces retribution or reward. Naturally, from this concept arises a very strong sense of morality, for each individual’s success and eventual freedom from the cycle of rebirth depends upon his or her karma.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that we also find allusions to reincarnation in those texts which came out of Egypt, known as the Hermetica. As we have seen, they are primarily concerned with the profound direct experience of Divinity. Nevertheless, the texts contain various asides which make it clear that the full spectrum of Hermetic thought – perhaps given more often in an oral form – did have a recognition of reincarnation. In the text called ‘The Mixing Bowl’, Hermes is reported as saying, ‘Do you see how many bodies we must pass through, my child… in order to hasten towards the one and only?’7 And in the tenth book of the Hermetica, ‘The Key’, Hermes explains what occurs when the soul leaves the body:
The irreverent soul, however, stays in its own essence, punishing itself, seeking an earthy body to enter – a human body, to be sure. For no other body contains a human soul; it is not allowed for a human soul to fall down into the body of an unreasoning animal.8
It is just possible that this is evidence of an influence from the Indian holy men who were certainly teaching in Egypt during the Greek and Roman period, the same period during which the Hermetic books were composed. By our present understanding, none of the earlier Egyptian texts contains the specific idea of reincarnation – achieving the afterlife was the consistent preoccupation. Of course, we may have seriously misunderstood and mistranslated certain crucial passages. There may well be some symbolic understanding of the afterlife that includes a concept of reincarnation which translators have missed.
We are given pause by a very curious exchange found in The Book of the Dead which seems to relate both to a cycle of lives and a concept of karma, or something similar.
Unfortunately, this particular part of the ancient papyrus text was damaged and its true sense cannot be determined with accuracy. And that is quite apart from any translation difficulties.
The exchange is between the dead man – in this case the scribe Ani – and the god Thoth. The dead scribe asks, ‘How long, then, have I to live?’ Thoth answers, ‘It is decreed that thou shalt live for millions of millions of years, a life of millions of years.’ Ani responds, ‘May it be granted unto me that I pass on unto the holy princes, for indeed I am doing away with all the wrong which I did, from the time when
this earth came into being…’9
The Memories of Philip Corrigan
Philip Corrigan was born in 1959. Night after night as a child he had dreamed in vivid detail of having lived in England during the years leading up to the First World War. These dreams were so powerful that never for a moment did he doubt that they were real memories of a previous life.
He always dreamed of the same family in which he was the eldest of three girls. He dreamed of playing in a park, walking with his sisters, going to school; all ordinary events in an ordinary life. Except, of course, that this life was half a century in the past.
And, although he was yet to discover it, this life had come to a terrible end.
Curiously, apparently by sheer chance, when Philip was eleven, his parents moved to a village in the English Midlands, near the city of Bradford. His father had purchased a small shop there. Once settled, along with the continuing influence of his dreams, another certainty grew: Philip realized that he had somehow come back home. He sensed, for the first time, that it was here he had once lived.
But with this certitude grew an ominous feeling, as yet unattached to any specific incident which Philip could remember. Perhaps being closer to the actual site of the past events awoke memories much deeper, long buried because of their horror and pain. Philip gradually realized that in this previous existence he had met with a sudden death. At first he wondered whether it had been the result of some accident. Yet, belying this suggestion, something much darker lingered, something decidedly sinister.
Ancient Traces: Mysteries in Ancient and Early History Page 22