Reflection for service on Nov.27, 2022 at First Unitarian Church of San Jose:
I admit these days my political views are very partisan, and I am angry about some of what’s happening. Some of you are too. In this essay I rise above this just a bit to put it all in a larger context.
Some people see the economy as a way to get rich, or to get their own needs met. But an economy is more than that. It’s a field of transactions, in which each person is interdependent on others. In any economic transaction, a buyer and a seller must exist simultaneously.
Our democracy in the USA is now almost-hopelessly divided into two factions represented by two political Parties. One of them generally believes the first way about the economy, and the other generally believes the other. Alchemy is a way to cure the division and for people to understand the principles guiding each Party.
How many of you have heard of "neoliberalism"? It’s a philosophy that is ubiquitous in our democracy today. It in ingrained in us, but most people don’t even know what it is. It is as if you lived in the Soviet Union but didn’t know what communism was. It says the goal of life is for individuals to compete in the market and win. It says that if government regulations are reduced on our so-called "free" enterprise system, and taxes are lowered on the wealthy, more growth and opportunity will happen and the benefits will trickle down from the rich to all of us. This ideology is also known as Reaganomics. It has been enacted in the USA and the UK for over 40 years, but it does not work. It never did; but it still rules that first political Party I mentioned, but whose name I can’t say here.
This Party has also kept in place procedures that restrict our democracy. One is called gerrymandering, and we saw it work this month to help them keep this Party in control of the House of Representatives. It is when politicians choose their voters, rather than the voters choosing their politicians. Politicians themselves draw district boundaries to concentrate the opposing Party’s voters in a few districts so that their own voters get majorities in more districts. This Party’s presidents also have appointed Supreme Court justices that have kept big, dark money legal in political campaigns. Some members of this Party also have threatened to overrule the voters in their states so they can themselves choose electors in the electoral college from their own Party, and they have kept the undemocratic electoral college in power too in presidential elections, so that people vote by state regardless of each state’s population, thus negating the national popular vote. The Senate is also organized based on the votes each state gets in the electoral college. Using the senate filibuster to block legislation, along with gerrymandering and its Supreme Court, this Party stops any attempt to reform these restrictions on our democracy, and this keeps neoliberalism in power and the money flowing to the top.
This is where alchemy comes in. It is a pre-industrial version of chemistry, and alchemists worked with metal combinations and with tinctures and herbs to develop cures. In those days only about 10 metal elements were known, and they arranged 7 of these in order of perfection as they conceived them. It was said that some alchemists were able to transform the least perfect metal, lead, into gold, the most perfect metal. But this was only possible if they did the inner work too, called the great work. Alchemy today is rarely practiced, but recent science may be coming into more harmony with this traditional science. And it’s often used these days as a symbol of transformation, and its most significant symbol is very relevant. It’s called the alchemical or divine marriage or mystical union between the male and female principles, and it’s the goal of the Great Work. In current physics we know about the binary aspect of atoms between positive and negative charges, and we also know there are neutrons and smaller portions within atoms too. In pre-industrial times, alchemy was closely related to some Native world traditions, and to some Oriental philosophy and practices such as Kundalini, Tai Chi, Kabbalah, and Yoga. Yoga offers a practice anyone can use to see which principle, male or female, solar or lunar, gold or silver, yang or yin, assertive or receptive, active or passive, is strongest within you. This is possible because we are all each more than just male and female. We have both yin and yang operating within us. Are you willing and ready to do this simple practice, and see which principle is strongest in you? (I won't ask you to tell us your answer)
Put your right thumb on your right nostril and breathe in. Then let go and put your left thumb on your left nostril and breathe out. Then hold your left thumb on your left nostril and breathe in. Then switch back to putting your right thumb on your right nostril and breathe out. Do this several times, and you afterward should feel more balanced inside. And you can tell which nostril is more open and easier to breathe through. If the right nostril is easier to breathe through, then your assertive male yang side is stronger these days. If the left side is easier, then your female or yin side is stronger.
If we could all practice this, then both sides would open up for us. We can even feel both principles operating in us as one simultaneously. Now, the first political Party I mentioned is all about the assertive male side alone. It is about neoliberal competition. It appeals these days to the straight white christian rich male, and to their fears that they may be replaced in our country by others. The other Party, generally-speaking, wants us to all live and work together, although it is also accused of fostering passive dependency on the state and practicing the opposite kind of identity politics. To clarify, which nostril is strongest for you right now does not mean you do or should belong to one political Party or the other. But if our society could practice this sort of yoga breathing practice or an equivalent, even metaphorically on the political level, and achieve to some degree the symbolic alchemical divine marriage, we would develop balance in our lives and our politics and restore our democracy. May it be so, and then there will be enough of all kinds of gold for everyone, and for all identities.
What is Neoliberalism by George Monbiot
Inscrutible Alchemy by E. Alan Meece
Neoplatonism and Alchemy by E. Alan Meece
Alchemy - Sacred Secrets Revealed
Solve Et Coagula - The Great Work of Alchemy
Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored, by Archibald Cockren
Symbolism of alternate nostril breathing from my Bach Toccata in F 540 essay about Chakras/Kundalini and the Tarot's major arcana card order