Forgotten Ages Research

Enigmas of the Ancient Alchemists—Are We Just Catching Up to What They Once Knew?

Product ID: LK3

Report Topics:

• Mysteries of eka-lead changed into gold
• The chemistry of water altered by movements of the planets
• Hindu knowledge of the electrolysis of water into oxygen and hydrogen
• Chinese production of aluminum in the third century
• What are the secret powers of mercury?
• Alchemical armor resistant to fire, indestructible paper, and bendable glass
• Ancient incense and fragrances as DNA information carriers
• Are we today catching up to the enigmas of the Philosopher’s Stone?
• Report Update—Ancient Knowledge of Alchemy on the Nuclear Level
• Report Update—More Alchemical Deja Vu

Full Report:

Modern science has become aware of the truth behind the age-old adage: “The discoveries of the future are but the secrets of the past revealed.” This is especially true of what scholars are finding out concerning surviving ancient and medieval manuscripts on the forgotten study of alchemy.

Without a doubt the most well-known claim of the alchemists was their transmutation of lead into gold. Modern physicists up until the end of the nineteenth century dismissed such notions as ridiculous, for it violated all known laws of the stability and constancy of the elements. But then came Madame Joliot-Curie, radium, and the discovery of radioactive substances which can be transformed by isotope decay from higher atomic number elements to lower number elements.

So far, physicists have been able to synthesize up to element 113 for only a few micro-seconds, before the highly unstable materials deteriorate. However, the Russians now theorize that elements of even higher atomic numbers may exist which do not so easily break down, and may exhibit a degree of stability.

One possibility is the element that would have an atomic number of 135 and an atomic weight of 310. It is called eka-lead because it would belong to the lead family, and would display many of the same properties as lead. In fact, there are definite indications that eka-lead may exist in natural forms, and in minute quantities along with normal lead.

What is very significant is that, if eka-lead were induced to decay, the material would break down into several elements of lower atomic number, and the major end-product left would be gold.

Thus there may be truth in the old claim after all—the alchemists knew of some way of precipitating eka-lead from normal lead, and then induced decay in order to obtain the much sought-after yellow element.

The alchemists of old spoke incessantly about the endless purifications of substances. Sometimes four generations of early experimenters were involved in patiently purifying the same substance over a century’s time. Then, at a specific moment, a minute quantity of another element was introduced, and the substance was described to take on a very different appearance and to have new properties.

Today, this same refining process is called zone fusion, and it has been used in the preparation of germanium and silicon for modern transistors. In broader application, modern metallurgical research manipulates this technique to discover new alloys having radically different properties.

A metal is purified to the nth degree, and then a small impurity—sometimes as small as a millionth of a gram—is introduced. The treated metal is endowed with new and revolutionary properties, just as in the alchemical experiments.

Alchemists also spoke of precipitating solutions only at specific times, and these times were calculated by the position of the sun, moon and the major planets. This practice of consulting the heavens for the right moment to carry out an experiment goes far back in history, and is lost in time.

Georgio Piccardi of the Institute for Physical Chemistry in Florence, Italy, through exhaustive research involving 200,000 tests over ten years, concluded that water is extremely sensitive to electromagnetic fields, and that as the fields change or are influenced, so the chemistry of water may be slightly altered.

Piccardi also found that since the Earth’s energy field is subject to change by positions of the sun and moon, chemical reactions also change accordingly. More recent investigations in the United States have confirmed Piccardi’s experiments. Particularly, precipitation may slow down or speed up depending on the positions of the sun and moon, and apparently the closer planets. These longer and shorter periods gave subtle but potent aspects to the water molecules so affected.

Much of alchemy experiments dealt with water, and changing its properties in both chemical and biological functions. They spoke, for example, of producing from water at room temperature a solid, plastic-like substance that had unusual properties.

In 1967, Russian chemists N. Fedakin and Boris Deryagin of the Moscow Academy of Sciences successfully produced what they called polywater—a polymerized form of water with a mass density of 40, a boiling point of 650 degrees Centigrade, and a freezing point of minus 40 degrees Centigrade. It has the appearance of clear plastic.

It is now believed that it occurs naturally, in certain types of clay, in plants, and it is now thought that polywater has a function in the cohesion of living cells.

It would be interesting to know just how much the alchemists knew about polywater, for they appear to have drawn upon a former knowledge based on experimentation over many centuries, while modern chemists have known about it for barely half a century.

The ancient alchemists appear to have had not only an understanding of electricity, but how it could be used to separate water into its two component parts. In the Princes’ Library at Ujjain in India, there is preserved a document called the Agastya Samhita, which dates to the first millennium B.C.E. In it is this description:

“Place a well-cleaned plate of copper in an earthenware vessel. Cover it with copper sulfate and then with moist sawdust. The contact of all these elements in this manner will produce an energy called Mitra-Varuna. By it water can be split into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars will give a very active and effective force.”

We have here not only instructions for making a battery, but a description of the electrolysis of water into oxygen and hydrogen. It appears, too, that the Hindus were equally knowledgeable of the reverse process, of creating water out of the elements in the air. Both the Rig Veda and the Brihat Devatas mention that when “Mitra-Varuna” is placed in a water-jar and exposed to the heavens, the “god” born is named Khumba-Sambhava, the Indian equivalent to Aquarius, the Zodiacal god who carries on his shoulder a water jug that never empties.

Going a step further, in his novel The Mysterious Island, first published in 1874, science fiction writer Jules Verne echoed the ancient belief that “water decomposed into its primitive elements by electricity” could “become a powerful and manageable force.” He wrote: “Water will one day be employed as a fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen, which constitute it, used singly and together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light.” Verne forecast that, in the right re-combination, “these two condensed gases will burn with enormous calorific power.”

A century later, Australian researcher Yull Brown partially fulfilled this prophecy with his first production in 1974 of what is today called Brown’s Gas. It is composed of a specific mixture of hydrogen and oxygen that creates an intense fire that can vaporize most metals.

Based on his experiments completed before his death in 1998, Brown was convinced the ancient Maya of the Yucatan knew about his gas long before he improved on it, and used it to extract pure gold out of gold ore ages ago, and also employed it in making highly pure gold jewelry. He likewise suspected that many world ancient cultures extracted and purified other precious metals such as silver and platinum using Brown Gas or its equivalent.

Alchemists from ancient China once employed unknown techniques for manufacturing a metal that did not find its full potentials until our modern age. In 1956, twenty metal belt fasteners with open-work ornamentation were discovered in the burial site of the notable Chinese general of the Tsin era, Chou Chu, who died in A.D. 297.

The fastener was examined by the Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Dunbai Polytechnic. Their analysis showed that the metal of the fasteners was an alloy of 5% manganese, 10% copper—and 85% aluminum.

Now aluminum was supposedly not discovered until 1807, and produced successfully in industrial form until 1857. Today the process of extracting aluminum from bauxite mineral is very complicated and involves the use of a Reverbier oven, refraction chamber and regenerator, and utilizes temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Centigrade. What is more, electrolysis plays a key role.

The question is, where did the Chinese acquire these elements of present era technology in the third century? Or is it possible that they may have possessed methods of producing aluminum unknown today, employing a simpler long-lost forgotten technique not yet rediscovered by modern science?

Joseph Needham, the leading historian of Chinese science, has voiced his opinion that the anomalous aluminum was the product of an unknown alchemist, someone who had access to a lost science. What else could the ancient alchemists have produced using the same methods?

Many age-old sources identified the element mercury as having mysterious powers that have been lost to us today. Chapter 31 in the classic Sanskrit work, the Samarangana Sutradhara contains 230 stanzas that describe the workings of a mysterious mercury engine used for powering flying craft called vimanas: Here are the relevant texts:

“In the flying craft four strong containers of mercury must be built into the interior. When these are heated by controlled fire from the iron containers the craft possesses thunder-power through the mercury. The iron engines must have properly welded joints to be filled with mercury and when fire is conducted to the upper part it develops power with the roar of a lion.

“By means of the energy latent in mercury, the driving whirlwind is set in motion and the traveler sitting inside the vehicle may travel in the air to such a distance as to look like a pearl in the sky.”

Very curiously, British nuclear physicist Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, in a speech delivered at Cambridge in July, 1946, noted that the famed discoverer of the laws of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton, knew something about the secret of mercury. Quoting Lord Atterbury, a contemporary of Newton, Andrade remarked:

“Modesty teaches us to speak of the ancients with respect, especially when we are not very familiar with their works. Newton, who knew them practically by heart, had the greatest respect for them, and considered them to be men of genius and superior intelligence who had carried their discoveries in every field much further than we today suspect, judging from what remains of their writings. More ancient writings have been lost than have been preserved, and perhaps our new discoveries are of less value than those that we have lost.”

Andrade continued, quoting Newton:

“Because of the way by which mercury may be impregnated, it has been thought fit to be concealed by others that have known it, and therefore may possibly be an inlet to something more noble, not to be communicated without immense danger to the world.”

What it is about mercury that could be of “immense danger” we do not know. Yet it seems apparent that the ancient alchemists were well aware of the practical application of mercury.

In the 1970’s Soviet explorers excavating a cave near Tashkent in the Uzbek S. S. R. discovered a number of conical ceramic pots, each carefully sealed and each containing a single drop of mercury. A description and illustrations were published in several Russian scientific periodicals. There is no clue to what these mercury containers were used for, but they must have been highly treasured and used for something that is beyond our present understanding and technology. It was a secret that was found, used and preserved by a select few—only to be lost again to this day.

Ancient legends from the early days of the Silk Road speak of unknown alchemists from Central Asia who developed a thread of material which when sown into a garment made its wearer invincible from arrows and spears, as well as impervious to fire. It is said that Emperor Yu of China paid a small fortune in royal gold and jade in order to obtain just one such garment, a vest that was light-weight yet could not be penetrated by any known weapon or consumed by any flame.

In 2006 Yu’s distant descendants from the University of Beijing announced their success in creating threads of fullerene-carbon—chemically designated as C-60—in the form of microscopic nano-tubes which when “sown” together formed material that will one day prove much better than present bullet-proof vests and fire-resistant clothing. We today know that fullerene-carbon exists in very minute quantities in nature along with regular carbon-12 and carbon-14 molecules. Did the ancient alchemists once understand a method of how to “distill” natural C-60 and collect it, then develop it into a thread in the same manner as silk was created in our modern age?

Another Chinese legend spoke of alchemists producing a second suit of armor that provided its wearer with perfect camouflage. It did not cause invisibility, but rather made a body “obscure” and difficult to see because it was “blacker than black.” Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University have recently created the darkest material known, that reflects back less than one-tenth of one percent of light falling on it. The material is composed of carbon nanotubes grown on iron nanodots on top of a silicon wafer and meshed together, forming an irregular surface that minimizes reflection and maximizes light absorption.

What little light is reflected is scattered and diffused to such an extent that, when observed against most partially illuminated backgrounds, the outline of the material is hard to see. Against a dark background, it blends in and remains unseen. Like its ancient Chinese counterpart, the “extreme black” material makes a good “stealth” covering in order to minimize detection.

Another modern form of carbon that may have been anticipated by alchemists is called graphene, and consists of a single layer of graphite, a material found in common everyday soot. What today’s industrialists are discovering is that graphene, and its byproduct graphene oxide, might be utilized as an ideal reinforcement in composite materials, combinations of two substances that possess the desirable properties of both. A host of alchemical references were made to the “magical” fusion of otherwise incompatible materials bonded together through a “secret” process using “black powder.”

Graphene is also the only known substance at room temperature through which electrons flow at the same relativistic speed as neutrinos, giving a molecule-thick sheet of it very unique and unusual electromagnetic properties. Arranged in specific chemically-induced patterns, graphene could serve as ultra-high speed transistor circuitry and be used to store a tremendous amount of information in a very small space. Were some alchemical manuscripts in fact made from graphene oxide “pages” which contained knowledge not only written on their surfaces, but also preserved within the sheets themselves?

There are reports in many myths and legends that secreted away in certain parts of the world are vast hidden storehouses of alchemical books, the very pages of which were magically produced so that they would be almost indestructible. Recently, researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have developed a new form of paper that will not tear or crack, and is as tough as iron. Normal modern paper is made from plant fibers tens of microns in diameter and is brittle, but the new Swedish paper pulverizes and swirls cellulose in an enzyme medium creating a far stronger and more durable weblike structure that adheres together on the nanometer level. The particular enzymes utilized in this special process are identical to those that are found in plant extracts listed in a number of medieval alchemical works. Are we today merely catching up to lost knowledge that may be extremely old?

Arabic alchemical manuscripts make several references to “a blendable glass that is stronger than Damascus steel” and was also non-magnetic. In 2007, physicists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced after two years of research the creation of a metallic glass that can be bent at right angles without breaking. Liquid metal is first super-cooled which makes it three times stronger than its natural crystalline state. During this process minute quantities of zirconium, copper, nickel and aluminum are interjected, much in the same manner that alchemists of old added tinctures to their metallurgical solutions.

The result is an amorphous glassy steel that holds no electrical charge. The overall final composition contains hard areas of high density surrounded by soft regions of low density. With small manipulations made to its new molecular structure, the end product develops plasticity and helps prevent internal cracks from forming and spreading.

While as yet we cannot say with certainty that this was the same methods used by ancient alchemists to produce their own version of “bendable glass,” the fact that it has now been accomplished by modern processes and the characteristics are identical to the old alchemists’ descriptions point for point, gives credibility to our forebears having been able to do the same, perhaps in ways simpler and less complicated than what we possess today.

Sophisticated alchemical knowledge appears to stretch back all the way to the beginnings of known human history. German researchers at Friedrich-Schiller University, in examining Neanderthal hunting tools dating circa 80,000 years ago, found that a type of “superglue” had been utilized to fasten flint blades to wooden shafts to produce spears. The glue consisted of a type of pitch produced from lignite pits found in the Harz Mountains of Germany. But as Professor Dietrich Mania of the Doener Institute of Munich discovered in his chemical analysis, the pitch does not attain super-adhesive qualities until it is first subjected to 400 degrees Centigrade under very specific condtions. In his opinion,

“This implies the Neanderthals did not come across these pitches by accident, but must have produced them by intent. The find demonstrates that the Neanderthals must have possessed a high degree of technical and manual skills comparable to those of modern homo sapiens.”

Such a significant revelation, however, begs the question, how did the Neanderthals develop such skills so long ago? Or did they acquire them from a much older yet advanced source with whom the early Stone Age peoples were in contact? Or perhaps, could the Neanderthals themselves have been a distant remnant of a forgotten primordial civilization?

Going a step further, our modern research into the secrets of biochemistry only dates to the last century, but for other civilizations now lost in our past, the research may have extended over millennia. Many alchemical treatises are filled with formulas for perfumes, incenses and aroma therapeutic mixtures that were meant to enhance memory and intelligence. Recently, researchers at the University of Lubeck in Germany performed a number of computerized memory tests using some subjects under normal or control conditions, while others were tested in a room filled with the smell of roses. In addition, a group of the control subjects were also kept in a room with rose scent during sleep.

Not only did the added rose odor significantly enhance initial test performance, but those who slept with the rose stimulus also dramatically improved their scores when the same memory test was given the following day. Brain scans taken during sleep showed that while slow-wave activity was occurring, the scent cue heightened output of the hippocampus, pointing to a direct correlation between olfactory stimulation and brain performance. We can only wonder, what else did the alchemists of old know about the use of specific aromas and their effects on the mind?

For thousands of years a resin extracted from the bowellia tree, which grows in southern Arabia, was burned as incense in major temples and sanctuaries throughout the ancient world. It was said to have the unusual effects of bringing peace of mind, relaxation and a heightened sense of spiritual experience. We today know this resin as frankincense, and was a highly prized ingredient that appeared in several alchemical treatises linked with other curative substances and methods of rejuvenation.

In early 2008, Arieh Moussayeff, a pharmacologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, led a team of American and Israeli scientists in successfully isolating from bowellia tree resin a compound they named incensole acetate. By injecting mice with this substance, they discovered the subjects had significantly reduced levels of stress and anxiety. The new chemical helps to regulate the flow of ions in and out of neurons in a similar way that modern antidepressant drugs work today. The experimenters concluded their findings will aid not only in developing a new class of chemicals that will shed light on the molecular workings of the brain, but will also facilitate in creating a general calming effect that promotes a healing mental state.

The question is, what other hidden properties of frankincense did the ancient alchemists explore that present-day researchers have yet to even suspect?

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, French authorities on the history and development of alchemy, reported in their landmark book, Morning of the Magicians, that studies have been made of powders, perfumes and scents preserved in prescription form in ancient and medieval literature, and some of the results of tests run on these were very unexpected. Many of the powders were so complex that modern scientists are still unable to completely break down their molecular structure. Some perfumes like certain musk concoctions, on the other hand, have formulas almost identical to DNA, the basic genetic building blocks of life.

What had these perfumes been used for? Were they information-carriers, that generated illusions and hallucinations for gaining power over crowds? Or were they some form of “instant knowledge,” whereby students inhaled the appropriate scent to learn secrets imparted to them on the cellular level? Here is an aspect of ancient wisdom we can only guess at, but which certainly needs further investigation. As Pauwels noted:

“Such an investigation would prove that the magicians of antiquity knew more about the psychological effect of perfumes than the best specialists of our own times.”

There is a growing realization that, just as portions of the alchemical treatises left from unknown ages contain knowledge we are only now re-discovering, so it makes us pause to wonder about the rest of the words they contain that have not yet been discovered or deciphered.

Into this category must be placed the lost wisdom of the most mysterious substance of all, the Philosopher’s Stone, that alchemical elixir of life so often spoken of in medieval circles, yet the secret of which still lies hidden away in crumbling manuscripts. Perhaps someday modern chemists will provide the answer—if some enterprising scholar of long-lost books does not find it first.

Physicist Frederick Soddy made this significant statement in 1920:

“The philosopher’s stone was accredited the power not only of transmuting metals, but of acting as the elixir of life. Now, whatever the origins of this apparently meaningless jumble of ideas may have been, it is really a perfect but very slightly allegorical expression of the actual present views of physics we hold today. Can we not read in these legends some justification for the belief that some former forgotten race of men attained not only to the knowledge we have so recently won, but also to the power that is not yet ours?”

What was the real source of the alchemists’ wisdom? To have held the knowledge they had, they must surely have been the heirs to a body of lore that was the final product of many ages of forgotten experimentation and observation. Yet from where did such a science reach our era today?

Pauwels and Bergier considered every possibility of where the medieval “magicians” acquired their learning, and came to this conclusion:

“Only one source would answer the question—lost cultures that had attained a higher level of technological advance than we have, and of which a few traces have been preserved in the rites and alchemical recipes.”

This conclusion was echoed by the eminent German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche, who remarked:

“Do you believe that the modern sciences would ever have arisen and been great if there had not beforehand been in a previous age magicians, alchemists and wizards who thirsted and hungered after forbidden powers?”

Report Update—Ancient Knowledge of Alchemy on the Nuclear Level

The concept of the atom is one which stretches back into unknown antiquity. In the tenth century, the alchemist and philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi stated his belief that: “Absolute space and time are more fundamental than the cosmos, and this holds also for matter, which is eternal, has structure, and subsisted even before bodies were formed in a state of dispersion (throughout the Universe).”

Likewise, the medieval Islamic scholar Ikhwan al-Safa remarked that physical objects cannot exist without space, echoed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who said, “There is no space outside the cosmos, and the Universe cannot be said to be in space.” The latter also recognized that, within space, atoms are individual and independent entities that combine and separate in a never-ending succession of different space elements.

Such precocious perceptions about the fundamental nature of matter and space by the Arab alchemists were said to have been ultimately derived from the Classical world. The Roman scholar Lucretius, in the first century B.C.E., wrote about particles of matter “rushing everlastingly throughout all space.” Both Epicurus (fourth century B.C.E.) and Leucippus (fifth century B.C.E.) accepted the atomic theory which they attributed to the older Greek Democritus (early fifth century B.C.E.). He once stated a reality which modern physicists accepted only within the last century: “There is nothing but atoms and empty space.”

But the Greek philosopher made the mistake of claiming that atoms were the final basis of all matter, and were thus indivisible, calling them: “That which cannot be cut.”

However, he was right when he said, “Everything is the fruit of chance and necessity“—the basis of modern quantum theory. The far-sighted philosopher also believed that all atoms existed in “nothingness“ or the vast vacuum of space, where they “combine in various ways to produce all the objects we see.”

Curiously, Democritus also foresaw something else which modern physicists have yet to accept in principle. Besides atoms, there is something else he called eidelons—the “shell” or etheric structure of matter that exists before materiality can manifest. Though rejected by the modern chemist, it was a concept that was very real and viable for the ancient alchemist. For by certain secret methods of eidelon detection through exercising deep spiritual perception, their appearance anticipated the potential advent of physical matter in new and different forms never seen before, of which the alchemist took full advantage in his preparations.

It is said that Democritus received his concept of the atom from the Phoenician Moschus, who preserved an even older tradition that contained the more accurate fact that atoms, while the basis of matter, were indeed divisible—proven only within the last half of the twentieth century by the discovery of a myriad of sub-atomic particles.

The tradition of Moschus may have been derived from India, where one finds the most in-depth study of atomic theory recorded from the ancient sources. The Hindu sage Uluka, over two and a half millennia ago, spoke of all objects being composed of paramanu or “seeds of matter.” The Varahamira Table, dated to 550 B.C.E., attempted to measure th size of an atomic particle, and the figure given is close to that known today for the hydrogen atom.

Yet in such a miniscule piece of matter is contained still smaller realities. The Yantra Vashishta noted: “There are vast worlds within the hollows of each atom, multifarious as specks in a sunbeam.” And these “vast worlds” revolved around each other, like “infinitely small planetary systems.”

Most noteworthy is the fact that early Indian alchemists not only understood the concept of molecules, but actively differentiated between their weights. One scholar named Udayana collected various forms of gases, smoke and other aerial residue in animal skins and bladders, then determined which were lighter and which were heavier than the atmosphere around us. He also observed that both heated air and steam rises—and this more than three thousand years before Robert Boyle and the Montgolfier brothers.

Meanwhile, Jainist alchemists anticipated various substances having opposite electrical charges and even a quality of “spin,” not rediscovered in Europe and America until the twentieth century. Likewise, the Chinese taught that all elements have opposing aspects of yin and yang, and were successfully combined in specific manners only according to such qualities. In the eighth century, they compiled a huge compendium of alchemy that divided all materials into their “two principle” aspects, called the Tshan Thung, the “Similarities and Catelogues of the Substances.“ Joseph Needham, in his many studies of Oriental chemistry and physics, points to such concepts as foreshadowing our modern version of the “electro-chemical series of the elements.”

Going deeper, several Sanskrit books contain references to divisions of time that cover a very wide spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, according to Hindu texts dealing with cosmology, is the kalpa or “day of Brahma,” a period equivalent to 4.32 billion years.

At the other end, as described in the Brihath Sathaka, we find the kashta (in other works identified as the truti), which when one works out the various time divisions within divisions, translates into one three hundred millionths of a second.

Modern Sanskrit scholars have no idea why such large and such miniscule time divisions were necessary in antiquity. All they know is that they were used in the past, and they are obliged to preserve their tradition. Time divisions of any kind, however, presupposes that the duration of something has been measured. The only thing that exists in Nature that can be measured in terms of billions of years on one extreme or hundred millionths of a second on the other, is the half-life disintegration rates of atomic radio-isotopes. These rates range from elements like uranium 238, with a half-life of 4.51 billion years, to sub-atomic particles such as K mesons and hyperons, with mean half-lives measured in the hundred millionths of a second.

The spectrum of ancient Hindu time divisions and the time spans of radio-isotope disintegrations thus coincide, and the former could easily have been used to measure the latter. If the ancient Hindus—or an earlier civilization from which the Hindus inherited their time divisions—had a technology that could discover and measure nuclear and sub-atomic matter, it means that they possessed a very sophisticated wisdom of alchemy on the nuclear level.

Once we finally realize that the alchemists of old had an infinitely graer grasp of how to manipulate both matter on energy on the smallest possible dimensions, then we can start to recognize that many of the potentialities modern physicists and technologists are only beginning to reach for today, were already accomplished ages ago.

Looking at the many unexplainable feats once performed by the ancients, the evidence of what was achieved can be found everywhere among the surviving artwork and monuments from the past. Over a century ago, occultist-esotericist Helena P. Blavatsky stated the case in this revealing statement from her seminal work, Isis Unveiled:

“If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colors of Luxor—the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application? The indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts. The Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking. The gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient cathedrals. And the secret of the true malleable glass. And if chemistry is so little able to rival even with the early medieval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more archaeology and philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition.”

If we but admit that most if not all these remnants of “miraculous” arts and crafts have their answer in ancient nano-technologies that we ourselves are only now beginning to understand, then the enigmas of the forgotten past finally find their ultimate solutions.

Report Update—More Alchemical Déj� Vu

After an in-depth twenty-year study, in 2007 Iranian researchers made the remarkable announcement that they believed their distant ancestors had employed some unexplained form of nanotechnology in the construction of their important sites over three thousand years ago. The primary site of investigation is called Tchegha Zanbil, a massive ziggurat-like sanctuary located in the southwestern province of Khuzestan southwest of the region’s principle city of Susa, and once a holy center of the Elamite Kingdom founded circa 1250 B.C.E. The related temple site is at neighboring Pasargadae. Both monuments have been declared World Heritage Sites by the United Nations.

Part of the construction techniques utilized had employed metal clamps to fasten the various stonework and brickwork together. But when these clamps were subjected to chemical analysis, the surprising discovery was made that the curious bronze alloy composing the clamps was coated with an unidentifiable substance whose very atomic structure had been significantly altered. The nuclear signature of the coating was not the same as similar artifacts made of the exact same materials. At first the Iranian researchers thought the aberration was only a natural fluke of some sort, but when the substance appeared in the second temple site, with precisely the same signature, they realized that the nuclear change had been deliberately made. Whatever the mysterious transformation was that had taken place, the experts were of the opinion that the unknown procedure had helped to preserve the two temples with a fargreater longevity than other sanctuaries of similar age.

Besides the metal coating, the Iranian investigators also detected more indefinable nuclear signatures used in the colorization of glazed tiles and glassware at both sites.

Did ancient artwork inspired by flashes of alchemical insight into the nature of the microcosm leave tantalizing clues of their visionary accomplishments? In 2008, Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden led a team of international scientists in taking the first successful high resolution pictures of an individual electron in motion, using super short bursts of laser light. What is amazing is that these images are remarkably similar to both Predynastic and Dynastic pictographs found in Egypt dating back between three and five thousand years ago, that show unique radiant patterns identical to the newly seen electron motions. As we today delve ever deeper into the infinitesimally smaller worlds of our reality, will we find further evidence that the Ancients have already entered these regions far ahead of us?

Old alchemical manuscripts once described forms of paper that were strong enough to stop a knife or sword blade from penetrating. Materials scientist Lars Berlund of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden recently discovered that if the cellulose fibers in wood pulp—rather than by today’s process of being chewed up with enzymes into a stew of much finer particles—were instead re-woven into a network of continuous strands one-thousandth their original size, the end product would be a flexible sheet with similar properties to Kevlar, used in modern bulletproof vests. But unlike Kevlar, Berglund described the new material as being able to be manufactured from renewable materials at relatively low temperatures and pressure. “It has a beautiful fiber structure that is aa good illustration of how biology can do things much mure elegantly than commercial processes.” What is more, such processes were well within the capabilities of what the alchemists of old could have created for themselves.

In 2008, a team of materials investigators led by Pulickel Ajayan of New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute announced their development of a type of paper that can store and discharge electricity. The paper is composed of an array of carbon nanotubes set into a silicon surface and then covered by dissolved cellulose, which gives the paper lightness and flexibility. It has the ability of extracting an electric potential from human sweat, tears and bood, building up and storing the energy until it can be released. One modern possibility is that such small charges could be potentially usable to power tiny medical devices inside the human body.

Medieval and early Renaissance alchemists took this one step further by drawing out on these types of sheets the images of circuits using iron-particle inks that set up specific electrical functions. It is thought that specially designed complex sigils and signets—even such geometric patterns as pentagrams and other diagrams and motifs—served as circuitry boards that held very focused electrical constructs. When the paper and their inscribed patterns were placed on certain parts of the body—particularly wrapped around the head—and were activated by the sweat, tears and blood released through the trauma of certain initiatory physical exertions, the drawn configurations were energized and in turn stimulated either healing through rejuvenation or consciousness expansion by direct illumination.

Just as inscribed paper can hold an electrical charge and focus it in certain ways, so can clothing. Wizard alchemists were often described as wearing special garments, capes or hats with occult symbols on them when performing their work, said to enhance the outcomes of their experiments. Similarly, scientists today have developed a way to generate electricity by rubbing together fabrics with tiny wire mesh woven inside them that produces power by simply being stretched, rustled of rubbed together.

This process is made possible through a principle known as the piezoelectric effect, in which electricity is generated when pressure is applied to certain materials. Zhong Lin Wang and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been experimenting with micro fibers coated with zinc oxide that are entangled with similar fibers that are additionally coated with gold. When jostled together by the action of even a slight breeze, or if worn as a cloth that flexes with human body movement, together the two fibers moving against one another generate electrical current. So sensitive is this interaction that energy can also be produced by the fabrics being subjected to the barely perceptible exertion of sound and even sunlight.

And like the sigils and signets scripted onto alchemical paper, parallel symbols purposely woven into electrically-generating garments became an array of interacting circuitry patterns that were able to direct the energy to specific anatomical locations for specific puroses, helping to enhance the functions and performances of both body and mind.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]