Sigilheart

The real root of alchemy is to be sought less in philosophical doctrines than in the projections of individual investigators. I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared to him as the particular behavior of the chemical process. Since it was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the fact that the experience had nothing to do with matter itself . . . He experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own unconscious. In this way he recapitulated the whole history of man’s knowledge of nature. As we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character. Astrology is a primordial experience similar to alchemy. Such projections repeat themselves whenever man tries to explore an empty darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form.

Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

archetypes are rendered by increasing the passage of time's speed which reveals a given figure or subject matter's most distinctive & consistently recurrent traits as they reappear & reinforce a distinction over time. any perceived archetype in the present is, thus, the very countenance of primordial history itself since the beginning, looking back.

Esaias van Hulsen

Mezzotint Engravings, 1620

The great nest of being in the four quadrants, after Ken Wilber

Joseph Boros, Reframing Environmental Scanning: An Integral Approach

The nested circles of the Great Chain of Being that represents the worldview of all pre-modern cultures

In Gurdjieff’s cosmology, The Universe is represented by the symbol of the Enneagram. The Enneagram itself is composed of three symbols

Russell A. Smith, Gurdjieff: Cosmic Secrets

Pages from the oldest known Norwegian svartebok ("black book") manuscript. Vinjeboka, c.1480-1520, Ms.8° 1059, Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo, Norway.

philippino anting-anting talisman vests

Diagrams from a thirteenth-century version of the Ars Notoria.