QUOTE(eternal ginja @ Sep 18 2008, 05:28 PM)
2. ... i'm curious as to how any human being searching the same as anyone else can really tell someone how to do something as if they hold the answer.
Buddha said that we are all of us both a student and a teacher to everyone we meet on our path and that we must be thankful for each lesson as an opportunity to learn . Each holds a tool a key a wisdom to help us. Sometimes it is in their posing of a question that they help us to articulate an answer and consolidate our own understanding. Sometimes it is a profound reflection or some other gem.
However philosophical musing aside, alchemy like any magical pathworking can be taught and shared and learnt . It is not just looking in one's self. Mutual goals can be agreed upon in ascension alchemy and that would be the completion of the Emerald Tablet , a thorough understanding of Hermetic principles and elemental energies and their use and applications , ability to visualise , clairvoyantly view, sit in the now in meditative vision and project into and out of the body to the microcosm and macrocosm to learn from teaching spirits on a Kaballahistic journey. The teachers we encounter are treasures.
I don't believe that Christians began Alchemy either . As Frater V.V.L espoused above there is evidence that the art began in Egypty was practiced by Jewish and Islamic Mystics and Christians might have actually been late to the party but Christian Hermetic Alchemists found in this path an axis mundi to mystica unio and it became extremely popular amongst scholars . I believe as Frate V.V.L states that Alchemy is an ancient art which became more popular with scholars during medeval ages and again during the renaissance. It continues to be an eclectic pathworking which is practiced globally.