Faust in Love: Tibetan Alchemy and European Tantra

The Flying Saucer and The Fisher King Part 2

“Thus, the Kalachakra path becomes in the end like a kind of alchemy.”

-Geshe Lhundub Sopa

“I hope to show that Western alchemy is nothing less than Indian Tantra and Chinese Daoism in European dress.”

-The Tantric Alchemist Peter Levenda

“The quest of alchemy is therefore a quest of God, and in what sense is it pursued by Vaughan in physics? One would say in the last resource that it can be in the physics of man's own body and nowhere else in the universe.”

-Arthur Edward Waite

In the last installment, we discussed parallels between Western legends of the Fisher King/Holy Grail and Eastern legends of Shambhala and the Black Stone, and we hinted at a possible connection to modern UFO mythology. We began our investigation with Nicholas Roerich’s account of a UFO encounter in the early 20th century and noted how he connected this experience with Shambhala and legends of a black stone. Roerich claimed that the aforementioned black stone was the very same relic of the Western Grail myths and the Philosophers stone of Western Alchemy. Last time we explored the Grail connections, and so now we will explore the alchemical thread that binds our mythological drama.

We will begin with a quotation from the UR Group’s Introduzione alla Magia quale Scienza dell'io. I have chosen this rather lengthy passage as it ties together the entire matrix of themes we have analyzed so far, and sets the stage for the rest of our investigation. Our Catholic readers will take issue with most of it, just as they have most likely taken issue with all of the material so far covered (as do I). It bears repeating that we are not condoning or endorsing these strange and liminal voices, we are merely stitching them together. If nothing else we are compiling these exotic whispers to tease out the darkness lurking on the margins of mythology. This is an exercise in comparative folklore and occult praxis, not in Christian Apologetics.