Chapter: 1
Cave of Fire
Work therefore with . . .
the secret, hidden and invisible fire.
ARTEPHIUS, TWELFTH-CENTURY ALCHEMIST, THE
SECRET BOOK OF ARTEPHIUS, PART 6
That I did not deserve to die could not save me. As I attempt to write down all that has happened, be forewarned—if you are comfortable with your current worldview, read no further. Death marks not an end but a beginning. I shake as I grip my pen, If this must be written in blood, so be it . . .
In my twenty-first year, by chance, by fate, by intention, I’m drawn into a continuity of awareness in deep sleep to a series of initiations for which I can only find correlations in alchemy. With each inhalation, the bellows bring cool air in, and on exhalation warm air moves out. I seek to extend the time of each of the four phases: inhalation, pause, exhalation, and pause again. In time, I pass directly into dreams without losing a continuity of consciousness. These aren’t common dreams but ones of unusual lucidity and power. The first initiation came in the form of repeating, progressive dreams:
I descend steps hewn from stone to a cave with inner chambers. I

walk until I find a room where I see a freestanding stone pillar upon

a raised platform. From the top of this stone pillar pours a blazing

magma. I’m fascinated, held entranced and cannot turn away.

Behind me, a male and a female seal me into the chamber. As the

room fills with burning lava, I’m alarmed—surely, I’ll soon be burned

to ashes! I awaken before the molten fires reach me . . .

VITRIOLVM: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando
Invenie Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam
Visit the interior of the earth and by rectifying [purifying/refining], you will find the hidden stone which is the true medicine.

ALCHEMICAL AXIOM, FIRST NOTED IN BASILIO
VALENTINO’S AZOTH, 1613
Despite the increasing rigors of architectural studies at the university, I’m again and again drawn in my deep sleep to descend to the underground chamber, to my inner stone room of rumbling fiery magma emerging from the earth. Night after night, I’m entombed by the pair to face my impending death alone, yet always I awaken before the lava reaches me (only later did I research and discover the alchemical quotations and illustrations seen throughout this account).
Lightning . . . gave to the flames of the volcano a bloodlike appearance
. . . Vesuvius [volcano] roars. . . . Wrapped in darkness, I seemed to
descend into an abyss. I know not how long I remained in that situation.
THE MOST HOLY TRINOSOPHIA
Weeks pass before a new stage unfolds. I’m yet again led by an unseen power to descend into the cave to the pillar of exuberating fire. I’m again sealed in by the pair, but this time I say an inner farewell to all I know in this life, and decisively gather my courage to stare down the primal magma: The only way out of this is through! I wade barefoot directly into the burning lava spreading over the stone cave floor.
Curiously, the molten fury offers no pain, and I feel only the rise of a dry heat within me. The room fills to the ceiling with the glowing lava. I calmly surrender as I’m incinerated into ashen embers. Slowly, this dark ash cools into stone, and I become heavy black stone—timeless, deeply at peace. This repeated over several nights until I awoke one morning with a fresh mind of clear light, full of curiosity.
A lake of fire presented itself to my sight. Sulphur and bitumen

rolled in flaming waves. I trembled. A loud voice commanded me to

pass through the flames. I obeyed, and the flames seemed to have

lost their power. For a long time I walked within the conflagration.
THE MOST HOLY TRINOSOPHIA
A new plateau of remembrance is reached, and though the dream stages continued, I no longer found them frightening. I look forward to being sealed in, swallowed into my nightly fiery deaths and stony, cataleptic rest, as I feel more myself each time it occurs. I’m calcified and dissolved over and again until finally came the Separation of the White from the Black:
Humming within the immobile stone of the physical body, I feel and
know myself to be like a thin skeleton of highly vibrating white light.
I am the wavering filament of pure luminescence. The fixed is now
volatile, and like an electric wisp I’m now as slippery and translucent
as light through a window. Lifting away from the stone, I am free! I
vibrate and float around the room as a filament of white lightning.
An indescribable joy fills me; I am utterly myself. I soon find myself
standing down on the street before my home, light shimmering
everywhere off the wet surfaces after an evening rain shower. A

gentle peace fills my soul, and I roam my neighborhood in delight.
Solvite Corpora et Coagulata Spiritus
Dissolve the body and coagulate the spirit.
THE OUROBORIC CYCLE,
AN AXIOM OF MEDIEVAL ALCHEMY
We dissolve the living body with Apollo’s fire—
So that what was before a Stone may become a Spirit.
EPIGRAM CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHERS’ STONE BY ALEXANDER DE S. TO GULIEMUS BLANCUS, FROM
A GOLDEN AND BLESSED CASKET OF NATURE’S MARVELS
BY BENEDICTUS FIGULUS, 1608
The midnight forays away from my home became more frequent. Nightly now, I allow my body to drop into the cement-like heaviness, soon reidentifying as the white filament of light. I will myself away from my tomb of stone, released from the heavy, dark ballast of the physical body. The joy of such freedom almost made returning to my fleshy body a burden, feeling encased in a primate form, but in time I learned to balance these two ways of being.
The symbol of chemistry is drawn by the creation of its adepts, who cleanse and save the divine soul bound in the elements, and who free the divine spirit from its mixture with the flesh.*
ZOSIMOS OF PANOPOLIS

Chapter: 2
Pineal Portal
In the Sounding of the Trumpet:
"Mercury contains all that the Sages seek . . .
It dissolves, softens, and extracts the soul from the body."
EDWARD KELLY, STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

That spring of 1982 a three-year process of profound inner initiations commenced in my deep sleep, leading me to eventually abandon my familiar land to roam over the world in search of the sacred key, the Stone all philosophers seek, "the quintessence of the Sages, the living mercury which has in itself the heavenly spirit, the most precious of all treasures" (Sophic Hydrolith, part 4, 1678).
Weeks after these dream initiations began, the cave of fire was no longer required. Melting into ashen stone while still remaining awake, conscious of the silvery tendril of soul now released, I enjoyed a certain freedom in my local neighborhood for some weeks. Then one evening a new development occurred:
As my body lay in a heavy stonelike catalepsy, I again reindentify as

a long silvery wisp of electricity. However, this time I, the silvery

wisp, am drawn upward into a tiny point of liquid metal light at the

center of my head. I hear a high-pitched siren growing into a

thundering freight train or a heavy waterfall, then becoming many

bells struck all around me—now emanating from the center of my

head. Louder and louder it becomes until I can no longer bear it.

Immersed in intense fear, the process ends.
Every few nights this repeats: my silvery, electric-light self is inexorably pulled upward through my spine, condensing into a point in the center of my head with the terrifying, piercing sound of metal bells, a high-pitched air-raid siren, or at other times the deeper and more terrifying sound—that of a great rumbling train with its deafening whistle blowing. Time and time again this came, but intense fear arrested the process, such that I would fall into an oblivion of unconsciousness.
Until one has become accustomed to it, the actual process of passing through the "Door" in the pineal gland produces an effect of extreme mental confusion and a terrible fear. Indeed, one feels that one is heading straight for death or insanity.
OLIVER FOX

Nightly now, within my cooling body of stone, I’m withdrawn into my charged spine—an inner pillar of power, then drawn upward, approaching the terrifying rumble at the center of my brain. One evening I simply could not stem the flow into the center of my head. Again, I know the only escape is in and through, so I surrender to the inevitable and with all my courage I focus and fall into the roar as it reaches a ringing crescendo, collapsing into a silvery point at the center of my skull. Pop! As only a point of awareness, I'm pulled up and out the top of my head, away from my body. . . .
Led by the blazing star, the candidate throws himself into the midst of the waves. With his lamp upon the crown of his head (the spirit fire lifted into the pineal gland) he struggles for mastery over the currents of the etheric world.
MANLY P. HALL