Gurdjieff: Alchemy, The Emerald Tablet, Contemplation, and Movements

Gurdjieff said that his search began from a desire to understand the mysteries he had encountered, especially of the sense and significance of human life. His answers centered around the achievement of immortality by “making a soul” (“higher being-bodies”) while serving both cosmic and personal purposes. So fundamental is the “coating” of souls that could endure in eternity, to both his system and to alchemy as he understood it, that he might have considered his system to be not only “esoteric Christianity” but also “esoteric alchemy.” His esoteric alchemy implicitly informs his answers in other fields, such as ethics and religion.

Gurdjieff declared that when the alchemists spoke of transformation of base metals into precious ones, they signified the “transformation of coarse ‘hydrogens’ into finer ones in the human organism . . . ” to make souls.¹ Scholars have somewhat rehabilitated this manner of interpretation for early modern alchemy.² Further, Gurdjieff’s terminology owes much to strands in contemporary Western science which had been hailed by alchemists as vindicating their belief in the possibility of transmuting one element into another.³

I shall consider the Emerald Tablet, the only text which Gurdjieff regularly cited by name throughout the 38 years of his teaching. It may have been originally written in Syriac, in the late first millennium, by a Christian priest who knew the Qur’an. The Arabic text commences: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one God, Amen . . . . What was said by the priest Sājiyūs on the entry into the dark tomb.” I translate:

Written in Syriac, in the first language. 

1. In it is the true explanation, that cannot be doubted. 
2. (It) says that the highest (al-a3lā) is from the lowest (al-asfal), and the lowest from the highest, it (or he) worked [all] wonders from one. 
3. [All] things are gathered from that essence by the direction of one, the most wonderful it worked, it is the origin of the world and its custodian. 
4. Its father is the sun and its mother is the moon. The wind carried it in its womb, and the earth nourished it. 
5. It is the father of talismans and the treasurer (keeper) of wonders. 
6. Perfecting strength, keeping (all) lights (in the) right (course). 
7. Fire became our earth. Separate earth from fire, and the subtle will become yours. Attend to that which is coarse with gentleness and wisdom.⁴ 
8. It ascends from the earth to the heavens; it acquires lights from above, descends to the earth, and in it is the strength of above and below because with it is the light of lights, and thus the darkness will flee from it. 
9. The strength of the strong, it takes possession of [all which is] fine, and enters into all which is coarse. 
10.  Thus is the formation of the greater world and the formation of the smaller world. 
11. The worlds were formed thus. 
12. Thus inscribed Hermes Threefold in Wisdom. 
13. This is his final book, which he hid underground.⁵

One cannot summarily dismiss either the assertion of a priestly author or of a Syriac original. The phrase “there is no doubt in it,” is redolent of the Qur’anic verse: “This is the book in which there is no doubt,”⁶ suggesting that the Tablet possesses the authority of scripture. The Tablet was perhaps envisioned as a clay tablet written not in a cuneiform language but in Syriac, and hence of hoary antiquity. 

That “the highest (al-3alā) is from the lowest (al-asfal), and the lowest from the highest,” is reminiscent of the Mesopotamian Creation Epic, Enuma Eliš, 1:1-2: 

e-nu-ma e-liš la na-bu-ú šá-ma-mu 

šap-liš am-ma-tum šu-ma la zak-rat⁷ 

 

When skies above were not yet named 

Nor earth below pronounced by name.⁸

Akkadian eliš and šapliš, for “above” and “below” share the roots of Arabic al-a3la and al-asfal. Both roots are productive in Syriac. The author of the Tablet possibly knew the Enuma Eliš. It expresses the Semitic cosmology wherein the upper and lower worlds are analogous; the higher bestowing stable forms and names on the lower, a worldview evident in Genesis 1:2 where the Spirit of God hovers above (3al) the face of the waters. 

That the heavens come from the earth may be related to Mesopotamian rituals, such as sacrificially feeding the gods, and lie behind Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation and Reciprocal Feeding: the “Trogoautoegocratic process” and the “common-cosmic process Iraniranumange.”^{9, 10} 

The “it” that “worked [all] wonders from one” could be the divine Will manifested in the design and process of the creation, as described in line three, echoed in Gurdjieff’s “World-creation and World-maintenance.” There follows a change in the unnamed subject of the third-person verbs.

The fourth line is often assumed to refer to the Philosopher’s Stone, “sun” to gold, and “moon” to silver, or to fire and water, respectively. These interpretations need not be exclusive. Taking Gurdjieff’s idea that the “intelligence of the sun is divine” (hence with consciousness and a power of attention), this verse and those following can be reinterpreted as referring to the separation of higher hydrogens from lower. The higher body is nursed in the “earth” of the physical body, from the blending of the three creative forces: active, passive, and neutralising or reconciling. The sun would represent the active, the moon the passive, and the wind the reconciling forces. The Arabic word used for the wind is ree7, cognate with roo7, meaning “spirit,” and found in roo7 al-qudus, the “Holy Spirit.” In Syriac, the connection is even closer, the word roo7 can mean both wind and spirit.  

This is a paradigm of creation: the three forces are needed to produce any phenomenon, the earth stands for any womb, matrix, or crucible (the world in which the three forces meet). Thus the fifth and sixth lines would mean that these simple laws produce the wondrous multiplicity and complexity we see around us, making possible all stability and understanding. A further possible interpretation is that the passage refers to the conception of Christ: the sun being God the Father, the moon being Mary, and the wind the Holy Spirit which facilitated the “overshadowing” of Mary by the Most High to effect the conception of Christ.¹¹ This interpretation, which is possible but beyond any chance of being firmly established, would establish that the author of the Tablet was a Christian.

“Lights” in the sixth and eight lines may be interpreted as not merely heavenly bodies, but higher hydrogens bearing consciousness, intelligence and will from on high. 

Gurdjieff himself explained the seventh line as referring to his “first and second conscious shocks” (self-remembering and the barely describable work with feeling) which separate the higher active elements (fire) from the foods through which we receive them. These higher elements are collected in the proper manner, and saturate the physical body, thus “coating” souls.¹²

The eighth line is reinterpreted as a template of World-creation and the formation of souls, for to Gurdjieff evolution is an ascent in which the returning souls produce a food for the higher levels. The ninth line would thus refer to the saturation of the physical body with the substances needed for souls.¹³

The tenth and eleventh lines affirm that these cryptic lines have adumbrated the relation between the “greater world”, and the formation of the “smaller world,” the macrocosmos and microcosmos,¹⁴ further indicating the thorough congruence of Gurdjieff’s thought with that expressed in the Tablet. 

This interpretation, taking its cue from Gurdjieff’s comments of the esoteric meaning of the Emerald Tablet, make sense of a text which is often considered baffling. I cannot purport to establish the only or even the original intended meaning of the text, only to explore the possibility and suggest the coherence of this exegesis, as Maurice Nicoll applied Gurdjieff’s and Swedenborg’s ideas to the Gospels.¹⁵ Further, it suggests that Gurdjieff’s respect for the Tablet was neither superficial nor without grounds.   

Gurdjieff both taught a doctrine and inculcated a practical method which are ultimately one. The aim of all his system but especially “Transformed-Contemplation” is to localize and transmute higher hydrogens within the exercitant and so coat the soul. Sometimes these exercises operate indirectly, but in some the aim is directly expressed.¹⁶ In the unpublished exercise “Three and Seven,” he alluded to both Emerald Tablet and Genesis to guide the exercitant in producing the representations proposed by the exercise: “Always remember that what is above is like what is below. Man, in a small way, is [an] exact [image of the] universe.”¹⁷ Transformed-Contemplation often employs “representations,” “picturings” and “imagining,” examples of what he called “mentation by form” in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.¹⁸ This means that what is understood through them is not completely exchangeable into “mentation by thought,” which always employs words.  

These exercises serve the formation of a soul, inter alia, through sensation. Gurdjieff distinguished “conscious” sensation from “organic” sensation: “impulses . . . are organic if they are unintentional and psychic if they are conscious and intentional.”¹⁹ The following synthesizses formulations by Gurdjieff and his pupil George Adie: when attention is directed to physical sensation, this “charges,” so to speak, the envelope of the body, and consciousness of sensation is yet further enhanced. With the effort to transform negative emotions into positive, the hydrogens needed for the formation of the soul are “digested and assimilated” within that envelope of conscious sensation. If this occurs sufficiently often and intensely, the soul crystallises, permeating the physical body, and similarly for the formation of the mental body. When these three bodies are formed, then real “I” can manifest more fully and frequently, perhaps even becoming permanent.²⁰ 

Gurdjieff said that his Movements included a visual representation of cosmic laws.²¹ Number 33, “Cosmic Rhythm,” one of the “mesoteric” Movements, strikes me as being just such a “sacred dance,” dynamically representing the Food Diagram. A student at the center back represents the crown of the head. Another person, the “priestess,” is surrounded by four other figures. Others around these six displace and take distinctive postures. The priestess alternately twirls and moves towards the head figure, then to the other end of the configuration. The priestess feasibly represents the higher hydrogens which move to the head, then to the base of the body, and back to the middle. Those who move out when the priestess descends, appear to be hydrogens present in the body, transmuted by contact with the priestess (the blending of hydrogens in the Food Diagram) and moving to the four limbs of the body. That this Movement represents a cosmic movement is supported by its title. It seems to have incorporated elements from at least two other Movements from the 39 series: Number 3, “The Three Tableaux,” also known as “Scenes from a Great Temple,” and Number 11, “Lord Have Mercy.” The Movements, like the exercises, exemplify “mentation by form.” 

The study of alchemy reveals the sources of Gurdjieff’s terminology. This terminology cannot have been finalized before 1897 when the existence of the electron was confirmed. Nineteenth-century developments in chemistry and astrophysics converge with the discovery of the electron to suggest a time in the early years of the twentieth century for Gurdjieff’s production of his system, following upon certain experiences he appears to have had. I refer especially to the discovery of the periodic table; radioactivity; theories concerning a prime source which could be identified with either hydrogen or ether; and the formation of elements in triads and their possible transmutation one into the other. Gurdjieff referred several times to the periodic table, and his comments disclose his careful study of contemporary chemistry and how it could be related to the octave in music, colour, and even astronomy.²²

These developments were studied by alchemists, In L'alchimie et les alchimistes : ou, Essai historique et critique sur la philosophie hermétique, Louis Figuier identified the four elements—Air, Fire, Earth, and Water—with Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen, antedating Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine by 34 years.²³ He also appealed to the recent discovery of elemental triads (later found in Gurdjieff’s teaching) and linked these to Prout’s theory of hydrogen as the base unit of creation. This predated the discovery of radioactivity which transmuted certain elements into others and was taken by contemporary alchemists as vindicating their craft. 

Gurdjieff studied psychology: Mesmer and mesmerism, hypnosis, consciousness, fixed ideas, and “multiple I’s.” He produced from these a unique teaching of “features of sleep,” which he called identification, negative emotion, considering, lying, formatory thinking, unnecessary talking, uncontrolled imagination and daydreaming. To a person with a conscious aim to develop being, it is a joy and cause of gratitude to awaken each day and struggle with these features. He related these to alchemy through “being-states,” and the psychological effects of metals and materials.

I will, in a future study, theorise how Gurdjieff’s experiences could have been put into contemporary terms. In conclusion, Gurdjieff said ancient knowledge had been lost from known religions or had been misinterpreted. One might contend that some of what Gurdjieff taught is “traditional,” but this depends upon “tradition” being sufficiently broad to afford a parallel to most anything. One can urge that the mystic path is traditional and that Gurdjieff’s system belongs to that path. But the making of a soul is hardly the final aim of all religions, as Gurdjieff asserted. One can say that the salvation of the soul is the same as the making of a soul, but this is plainly forced. To bring Gurdjieff’s ideas into accord with these faiths, one has to project Gurdjieff’s teaching onto them. In a sentence, Gurdjieff’s pursuit (mysticism) was traditional, yet the path by which he taught it was innovative, and the theoretical teaching he brought was positively revolutionary. Gurdjieff taught that life begins from above the level of the earth, as does most all religion, but adds another idea which, probably original in this form (although it can be related to the ancient concept of feeding the gods): that while life descends from above, the purpose of humanity is to “help God,” by nourishing higher levels through our own self-perfection. Arguably, a precursor of this doctrine was cryptically expressed in the language of hermetic alchemy in the Emerald Tablet.