Sunday, August 27, 2006

Alchemy & Alchemists - Another Revised Version

I have about a week to revise a book I wrote back in 2000 on alchemy. As usual with these things, it's going slowly.

To help me get my rewrite done, I've been reading Patrick Harpur's The Philosopher's Secret Fire, and will then move on to Jean Cooper's book about Chinese alchemy. I've also ordered a book on Indian tantric alchemy from Amazon, plus a dictionary of alchemical symbols. I'm hoping both will arrive in the week.

When I started writing the book - the first version, that is - back in July 2000, I thought it was possible to sum the whole subject up in one book. It was only in doing a second, revised edition in 2003, that I realised that it's an impossible task. Alchemy is a life's work, and is also the work of life. Anyway, the 3rd edition is due out in October, and will hopefully be slightly more modest in its aims...

Still, it has at least got me back in the Zone after spending a summer with the Gnostics, so my thoughts are back with Elias again. I bet he's been wondering where I've been. Come to think of it, that makes two of us...

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