The tantric alchemist : Thomas Vaughan and the Indian tantric tradition

362 Pages·2015·2.23 MB·English

by  Levenda

In the seventeenth century the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan, and his
wife and alchemical partner Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances.
What they were doing and how it might have led to their deaths has
remained a secret ... even though the true nature of their experiments is
described in code in Vaughan's published works.
Readers will find that the many disparate threads of an authentic spiritual
tradition are woven together here in a startling tapestry that reveals—
without pretense or euphemism—the psycho-sexual technique that is at the
root of both Tantra and Alchemy: that is to say, of both Asian and European
forms of esoteric praxis.
Using the works of Vaughan as his text, Levenda applies the “twilight
language” of Tantra to the surreal prose of the alchemist and in the process
lays bare the lineaments of the arcane tradition that gave rise to the legend
of Christian Rosenkreutz, the reputed founder of Rosicrucianism who
learned his art in the East; and to the nineteenth and twentieth century
occult movements lead by such luminaries as P.B. Randolph, Theodore
Reuss, Helena Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley who also sought (and
discovered) this technology in the religions and cultures of Asia.

Published in 2015 by Ibis Press
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Copyright © 2015 by Peter Levenda All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be
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or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information
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ISBN 978-0-89254-213-0
Ebook: ISBN 978-0-89254-629-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon request
Book design and production by Studio 31
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Printed in the United States of America
DEDICATION

CONTENTS

Introduction
SECTION ONE: NIGREDO
ONE: An Outline of the Problem
TWO: The Chemical Marriage of Thomas and Rebecca Vaughan
THREE: The Alchemical Language
SECTION TWO: ALBEDO
FOUR: The Hermetic Contribution
FIVE: The Chinese Contribution
SIX: The Tantric Contribution
SECTION THREE: RUBEDO
SEVEN: The Anthroposophia Theomagica
EIGHT: The Anima Magica Abscondita
NINE: The Magia Adamica
CONCLUSION:
Lumen de Lumine
Glossary
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Emerald Tablet by Heinrich Khunrath
Photo Insert
Solutio Perfecta
Chinese Alchemist
A Map of the Alchemical Process
Scholae Magicae Typus
Nei Jing Tu (Chart of the Inner Warp)
Creation of the Inner Embryo
Release of the Inner Embryo
Indian Chakras and the Human Body
Adam Kadmon
The Alchemical Egg
Mutus Liber
Coniunctio Oppositorum
Portae Lucis
INTRODUCTION
There is no question, then, of developing new mythologies as if a mythology was a kind of fancy
dress that made life more exciting. The very idea that mythology is something one invents suggests
an unpardonable arrogance, as if myth were at our beck and call. Rather, it is we, the will of each and
every one of us, that are at the beck and call of myth.
1
— Roberto Calasso
... one may regard the myth as a projection of an existential reality which seeks its own truth in a total
view of things ...
2
— Hans Jonas
I came to this study many years ago. In 1968, the University Press of New
York published an edition of A. E. Waite's 1919 The Works of Thomas
Vaughan: Mystic and Alchemist along with a new Foreword by “Father of
the Beats” Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982). I had been studying another of
Waite's works, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, as well as Aleister
Crowley's Magick In Theory and Practice, along with a copy of the Dao De
Jing in English translation. I was still in high school in the Bronx and, well,
it was the Sixties.
The very first article I wrote for my high school magazine (and thus the
very first article I wrote about anything) was about alchemy. It concerned
the famous case of the seventeenth century scientist Jan Baptist van
Helmont (1579–1644) and a demonstration of the transmutation of base
metal into gold in his presence, affirmed in his own writings. It was the
Foreword by Rexroth in the Waite book, though, that captivated me at the
time and which still resonates all these decades later.3 Rexroth set out the
curriculum that I was to follow—from alchemy to Chinese and Indian
alchemy, yoga, and Tantra—in order to understand what Thomas and
Rebecca Vaughan were up to in the seventeenth century. In fact, it was
Rexroth's allusion to Chinese alchemy that inspired me to begin a study of
written Chinese so that I would be able to locate and translate alchemical
texts that had so far not been made available in English. It was that study
which developed into a serious interest in Mandarin, that eventually—in
1984—found me fully involved in China trade and which set me on a
course that would see me spending the better part of three decades in Asia.
All this because of a collection of writings by a seventeenth century
Welsh alchemist and a foreword by a twentieth century American poet. Yet,
I am not the only one to have been affected this way by Vaughan's work.
His reputation was revived in a work by Mary Anne Atwood (1817–
1910) entitled A Suggestive Inquiry into Hermetic Philosophy. Originally
published in 1850 and almost immediately pulled from circulation, most
copies destroyed, this erudite and penetrating look at alchemy was the result
of Atwood's study of the subject while she still lived at home with her
occultist father. It was her father who suggested to her that she write what
was essentially the prose version of a long, hermetic poem he was
composing. She did so, and her father had the 600-page book published, but
without first reading it himself. When he finally did, he was shocked at the
way his daughter had revealed so many alchemical secrets. He bought all
the copies he could find and he and his daughter burned them in the garden
outside their home, along with the only draft of his poem. A few copies of
her book escaped the holocaust, however, which is how we are able to read
it today.
She never wrote another book again even though she lived for sixty more
years.
There is much food here for speculation and wonder, and not a little
sadness, but we will restrain ourselves to the matter at hand, which is
Atwood's appraisal of the work of Thomas Vaughan. She writes, “... the one
Art and medium of vital perfectibility is more clearly shown in his writings
than in those of any other English author.”4 She also mentions his strange
and controversial death, by saying it was due to “an overdose of the elixir.”5
It was this reference to Vaughan that excited A. E. Waite himself and
moved him along a path of esoteric study.6 This path eventually led him to
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and to the authorship of dozens of
heavy tomes on virtually every occult science and discipline known at the
time: from works on Kabbalah to alchemy, ceremonial magic, secret
societies, the Tarot, the Holy Grail, and the like.
And it was due to Waite's fascination with Vaughan that this writer
developed his own lifelong interest, wound up in China, visited Daoist
temples in Beijing and Shanghai, found himself running a sales and
marketing operation from a base in Kuala Lumpur, photographing Indian
temples in Java, hunting Nazis in South America, and a host of other
strange occupations ... all because of Thomas Vaughan, A. E. Waite, and
Kenneth Rexroth.
And especially because of alchemy.
IN MY CAREER I HAVE PUBLISHED some dozen books or more, several of
which have been translated into numerous languages, and I have written
many more than I have actually published. Over the course of the past forty
years or so people have asked me to diverge from my usual position of
uncommitted observer and reporter on such things as religion, politics,
cults, and esoterica in order to write or speak more frankly on what it is that
I believe to be true. Normally, I leave that to readers to decide for
themselves; I don't like it when someone who is supposed to be a historian
or investigative journalist intrudes too much into the story being told. I like
to make up my own mind about things: just give me the data, the facts as
they are known, and I will take it from there. At the same time, I am very
aware of the criticism levelled at historians and journalists that there is no
way to extricate oneself or one's point of view from the story being told.
There is no absolute standard of truth; every history is a narrative, a story
being told from a specific point of view no matter how hard we try to be
objective. Indeed, my own research over the past decades has shown me
that most of what we believe to be history is actually carefully crafted
fiction.
In the case of such subjects as alchemy and Tantra this characteristic is
even more pronounced. All works on both subjects (written by the
practitioners themselves) are essentially works of fiction: they use a
contrived language, replete with metaphor and allegory, disinformation and
misdirection. The actual personalities and events described within these
texts are surreal, impossible, and beyond ordinary human experience. Yet
the texts do reveal even as they conceal. Like many spiritual texts, they
refer to otherworldly events and circumstances which the literal-minded
would refer to as fantasies, delusions, etc. These texts fall within a twilight
zone of literature: they purport to be about real events and circumstances,
but even a casual glance at them shows that this claim is difficult to defend,
at least from a modern perspective in the aftermath of the scientific
revolution. If they are not real—or describe real events— then what are
they about? They are obviously not meant to entertain: the language, while
fantastical, often is difficult, turgid, even lugubrious. There is no
perceivable story line, no narrative voice. This, taken with the insistence
that what is being discussed is not what is being discussed, and you have an
impossible text that defies any attempt at interpretation. Perhaps for this
very reason there is a cottage industry in alchemical texts as well as in
books claiming to be Tantric or to reveal Tantrism. After all, in the absence
of any real information about either, one can pretty much say anything one
wants by way of “revealing” the “truth” about alchemy or Tantra and who