indigo boy | 07 jul 07 txt

Weekend 07/08 July 2007

Colour and Alchemy

According to the original brothers Grimm story of Iron John, at this stage the King said to his daughter: "I'll arrange a great festival that will last three days, and you will be the one who throws out the golden apple. Perhaps the mysterious night will appear." You will understand this completely, when I finally reveal the beautiful original story "Iron John" by the Grimm brothers.

This part of the story is really about the three stages in Alchemy, and the three different coloured horses that Iron John give to the young warrior is a symbolic description thereof, but furthermore, also about the associations of the colours Red, White, and Black, in Alchemy.

The "Golden Apple" is associated with immortality, and we know that some young men, when about to be sacrificed in the Greek ritual of Adonis, were given a golden apple as his passport to paradise.

Read more about Adonis:

http://www.greek-gods.info/

http://www.djhistory.com/

feed://community.adlandpro.com/

The story says that Iron John gave the young man a different coloured horse, saddle and armour on each of three successive days, and we sense that some information is being offered in that detail. We have to investigate the three colours and their associations. There are many historical references to the vast power red, white, and black have had over human consciousness up through the Middle Ages.

Red:

For many African peoples red represents the blood of birth, menstrual blood, and blood shed by a weapon. For Europeans red is associated with similar things, but they add "anger", for example "he saw red"; and "the blood-red thread of life."

White:

In Africa white resembles semen, saliva, water, milk, lakes, rivers, "blessing by flowing water", the sea and priesthood. For Europeans white retains the connection to blessing and milk, and it does suggest qualities of good fellowship and strength. It also calls up purity, purity of children and brides, and by extension persons with high moral purposes, such as the "white knight", who fights for purity, the Virgin Mary and for good.

Black:

Black is charcoal, river mud, and black fruits amongst many Africans, and it represents badness and evil, the blackened corpse, suffering, disease, lack of purity, and for night and darkness. In certain tribes black refers to "the concept of mystical or ritual death". To "die" often means to reach the end of a particular stage of development. For Europeans, black represents death and mourning. They add depression: "he is in a black mood", and also evil, "the black witch or magician"; also crude matter and Orisis' body when in the underworld.

The alchemists, Egyptian or European, have the same three colours, but begin with black. First the black of the "prima materia", the black of lead, the black of matter utterly untouched by spirit or consciousness, They want the black to deepen.

I the second stage the black whitens, as the horizon whitens before dawn. White here stands for a purification that is going on; imagination, spirit, and humour are developing. To live in the white state one does not live in the true sense of the word. In order to make it come alive it must have "blood", "the redness of life".

The alchemist's third stage is the red of the rising sun. Now sulphur appears, flaring up, passion."

This is the path for men and women who want increased personality, more spirit, occult knowledge, who want spiritual lead to turn into spiritual gold. It begins maybe at forty-five, not at birth. We walk the lead-gold path at the same time we walk the life-death road.