A Response to Dan Merkur’s “Methodology and the Study of Western Spiritual Alchemy”

by Karen-Claire Voss [1]

Theosophical History VIII No. 9, July 2002

After a great deal of thought I have finally decided to respond to the criticism of my work, which appeared in Dan Merkur’s “Methodology and the Study of Western Spiritual Alchemy” (Theosophical History, April 2000).   On account of having labored long, hard and lovingly over both the articles he cites in his in the end I found I could not remain silent, and while this response may not be enough to fully address his criticism I cannot help but try.

The focus of Merkur’s argument is by no means only my work.  He starts by criticizing Mary Anne Atwood, saying that she began a pattern he views as unfortunate because it was she who proposed that spiritual alchemy was an “initiatory path” without having sufficient evidence, and notes that this idea was subsequently espoused by Arthur Edward Waite, Rudolf Steiner, Julius Evola, Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade. [2]   Then he writes “As a final methodological concern, I would like to address a persistent rumor in modern occult circles that Western alchemists engaged in mystical visualizations and unions during sexual coitus, in a manner that closely resembles Hindu and/or Buddhist tantra.” [3] After mentioning several works by persons whom he, rightly or wrongly, believes fit within those circles, he comes to me in a section entitled “Alchemical Marriage”: 

What we have here is a jumble that sorely needs untangling.  First, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am in no way connected with any occult circle, modern or otherwise.  Secondly, I certainly did not propose this as an academic hypothesis!  For one thing, there is the simple fact that I would never have done such a thing without providing empirical evidence, something I am hardly in a position to do since I am not a specialist in tantra.  Toward the very end of the article, almost as an aside, I did indeed suggest a possibility, but since when is remarking on a possibility tantamount to proposing an “academic hypothesis”?  Merkur concludes his comments about my work by quoting me out of context to support his claim about what I purportedly did.  This is something that runs counter to the acceptable norms of scholarship.  In fact, I distinctly recall agonizing over the precise wording of what I actually wrote which was: 

The nature of the conjunction seems to me to suggest that the tradition of the alchemist and the soror mystica was not simply intended as a symbol with no corresponding reality in time and space, but that it was a form of western tantra.  However, to explore such a speculation would go far beyond the scope of the present article. [5]  

  My most serious objection is that Merkur has quoted me out of context for his own purposes.  If he had quoted what I wrote in its entirety – an extremely tentative statement if ever there was one—he could never have claimed that I was proposing “an academic hypothesis.”   To assert that I have done this has serious, negative implications for my work in this article and my work in general.  Moroever, on reading his article, anyone not familiar with mine would get the impression that its entire thrust was to attempt to link the western alchemical tradition with that of tantra.  On the contrary, the focus of my substantial (36 page) article was to try to show that in order to be properly understood the texts and images of what I call “spiritual alchemy,” (a term for which I provided a working definition) should be approached in terms of the worldview that produced them.  In this case, the worldview was esotericism.  Following Antoine Faivre’s taxonomy of esotericism I argued that for the alchemists, the practice of alchemy emerged from out of a “specific experience of the world” and constituted a ”way of being in the world,” [6] and that when studying the corpus of spiritual alchemy this fact had to be taken into account and, in addition, taken seriously.  This was indeed proposed as an academic hypothesis and given the approach taken in many of the current studies in the field of contemporary western esotericism it was and still is a highly controversial one.  Yet, Dr. Merkur said nary a word about this.

I have several other objections as well and this seems as good a time as any to articulate them.  First, in a footnote Merkur objects to the fact that, according to him, the texts that I used in another article are not examples appropriate for illustrating my assertion of the presence of a hierogamic theme because they concern only “the metallic opus.” [7] I do not happen to agree with him.  My view was, and still is, that such texts can be interpreted on several levels at once. 

Second, there is the issue of why an alchemical text was written in the first place.  Some years ago, while he and I were talking at a conference we were attending, Dr. Merkur remarked that one of the texts I had used in an article (he was referring to my article on the Rosarium philosophorum) [8] had been written by an alchemist who was in the service of, or otherwise under the thrall of, some influential so and so, and had thus been entirely impurely motivated to begin with and therefore the resultant text had nothing whatever to do with spiritual alchemy.  I think I responded by saying simply that I would give the idea some serious thought because I hate confrontation.  I still loathe confrontation, but at that time, I was also afraid of it.  Now I submit that neither the reason why a text is written nor the character of the person who writes it matter.  I would argue that a written text (just as a spoken one) becomes an entity; that is, that it acquires an ontological status of its own, from the moment it is written (or spoken).  Making text is an act of embodiment, or, if you will, procreation. 

Third, Dr. Merkur repeatedly asserts that spiritual alchemy has similarities with kabbalah (i.e., a form of Jewish mysticism) rather than with tantra (i.e., a form of Buddhist or Hindu mysticism).  At the end of a lengthy explanation of a kabbalistic formulation of what constitutes sacred sexuality from the Iggeret HaKodesh Merkur compares it with the writings of Thomas Vaughan, commenting approvingly that Vaughan’s writing bears numerous similarities with what is written in the Iggeret HaKodesh and that Vaughan actually uses kabbalistic terms when describing the union between masculine and feminine.  He writes that Vaughan’s work “is the talmudic and kabbalistic teaching in alchemical guise” and concludes by saying that “The interest in procreation contrasts sharply with the goals of tantra, whether Hindu or Buddhist.” [9] I do not agree with Dr. Merkur on this point and want to take this opportunity to articulate some further considerations. 

Dr. Merkur is adamant about insisting on the difference between tantra and spiritual alchemy and, I suspect, would not admit of any similarities at all between tantra and kabbalah.    I simply do not understand this because it is the goal of all three—kabbalah, tantra and spiritual alchemy—that unites them and functions to make them similar.  Since all mysticism is essentially concerned with the same thing, at best his view seems to me to be chauvinistic.  As I wrote in my article: 

In my view, in its purest form, spiritual alchemy constitutes a bona fide tradition within the history of religions, one that represented a serious hope that it was possible to overcome the subject/object dichotomy, that chasm which seems to yawn between the spirit and the body.  As such, its praxis focused on making the impossible, possible. [10]

This is the goal of kabbalistic striving, but it is also the goal of tantric work as well. Like me, Mircea Eliade, as Merkur disapprovingly points out, also sees a commonality between tantra and spiritual alchemy: 

The Sun and Moon must be made one . . . above all prajna, wisdom, must be joined with upaya, the means of attaining it . . . all this amounts to saying that we are dealing with the coincidentia oppositorum achieved on every level of Life and Consciousness. [11]

Merkur objects because Eliade is saying this is what happens in tantra.  Since precisely the same thing happens in kabbalah, what is the difference?  Sacred sexuality is an element in both.  The goal of unifying various things that are perceived as being in opposition to one another is also an element in both, as is the idea that the world is meaningful; indeed, that it is hierophanic.  Spiritual alchemy, kabbalah, and tantra all entail the movement of energy from one level to another.  They all entail an interaction between energy and manifestation.  Granted, the kabbalists concentrate on moving energy from inside, outwards, in as much as they concentrate much of the work of visualization on the semen that would result in impregnation while in tantra the semen is retained and energy is moved inwards and upwards.   However, the kabbalists’ work is in imitation of the acts of the gods “in the beginning,” as Eliade might have it, [12] since they seek “to ascend to, and so participate within, the copulation of the sefirot . . . The copulation of the Cherubim,” i.e., “the copulation of Wisdom with Understanding,” as Merkur describes it. [13]   Actions performed in imitation of the cosmogonic acts of “the beginning” are intrinsically procreative, but such actions are by no means limited to the kabbalists.  Of course the terminology used by the kabbalists is different then that used in tantra and generally, different than that used in spiritual alchemy, the movement of the elements involved is conceptualized differently, and the precise methods involved in effecting the union are different.  However, when all is said and done, I confess I do not see any essential difference because in every case the impetus is away from fragmentation towards ontological wholeness.  The thing that connects different forms of sacred sexual practices is this, and although there are differences in form, so long as this is the goal, the substance remains the same.  With respect to this, whether or not semen is ejaculated or retained during an act of sacred sexuality hardly seems worth mentioning. [14]   

In closing, I want to remind the reader that I am not a specialist in kabbalah, as is Dan Merkur, nor as I have already said, am I a specialist in tantra.  However, one does not have to be a specialist to be aware that there were many connections between the Jewish and Hindu traditions generally.  Moreover, in fact, many specialists have articulated such connections.  For example, a valid comparison between the kabbalistic metaphor of the unio mystica and the Katha Upanishad IV:15 was made by Moshe Idel in his Kabbalah: New Perspectives, [15] and in a discussion about the phenomenological similarities between the kabbalistic practice of visualizing the Tetragrammaton and certain Hindu mandalas, Idel notes that, although there are differences, “one cannot underrate the possibility that Hindu traditions infiltrated into kabbalah, perhaps via the intermediacy of Sufi material.” [16] There is also Hananya Goodman’s Between Jerusalem and Benares:  Comparative Studies in Judaism and Hinduism [17] that contains a discussion of similarities between specifically tantric material and kabbalistic union with God. Finally, there is also the very interesting fact that there were other types of connections besides thematic and phenomenological ones between the two traditions.  In a study entitled “The Song of Songs and Tamil Poetry,” done almost thirty years ago, Chaim Rabin showed that there was maritime trade between Judea and South Arabia and South India, that animals and spices from India became known in Judea as a result, and that this may have happened as early as the first millennium. [18]    Historically, wherever there are mercantile connections one finds philosophical and artistic connections as well.  Of course, the Kabbalah emerged much later, in the 12th century, but there is no reason to think that it was somehow uniquely immune to sharing and cross-pollination with other mystical traditions.  This is what has always happened with mystical traditions. 

At base, my greatest objection to what Dr. Merkur says stems from the fact that he insists that spiritual alchemy can only be compared with kabbalah, not with tantra.  It seems obvious to me that the comparison of spiritual alchemy with kabbalah is valid.  There are, as Dr. Merkur has shown, resonances of kabbalah in spiritual alchemy.   Apparently, there are also resonances of kabbalah in tantra.  Why wouldn’t there also be resonances of tantra in spiritual alchemy?  

As I have tried to show here, it is valid to compare spiritual alchemy with tantra since the goal of both was essentially the same.  I am convinced that whatever their differences tantra and kabbalah were each concerned with healing and with life -- with making fragmented, wrongly carved up life whole again. They sought to recover the experience of ontological wholeness.  In the face of this, it really does seem to be only a detail that tantric practitioners were not concerned with mere physical procreation.  For that matter, neither was the kabbalist.  The tantric adept, the kabbalist and the spiritual alchemist were all striving to go beyond the dualistic framework characterizing ordinary perception, towards genuine encounter with the Self and with the Divine and with their interpenetration.  All three were bent on spiritual procreation.    While each tradition is marked with its own distinct character these are the things that unite all of them and these are the things with which I have always been concerned.       

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