Andro:
I agree with the Ripley quote wholeheartedly, with the caveat that the understanding of the word "contemptible" is an expression of cultural learning / indoctrinations, in so far as a child would not consider the matter contemptible by default, although I would say the way a child views the matter and the way an adult, that casts it aside, views it is completely different.
Yes I believe it has been mentioned on this forum but I think in a way that is not 100% direct in how it is being described, but I have not read all the posts here (to be honest though I have spent many months just reading posts, so I have read through most of them). It's also one of those things that, if you know how to look, you see it everywhere being alluded to. Me and the Mrs were watching x-files last night after I wrote my post above, and like an interesting coincidence there was something mentioned in that episode that made me think the writers knew of this matter. Then again, perhaps it's a case of "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail", and my mind was filling in connections that were not purposely put there by the writers of that episode.
The church, in its quest for total dominance of allowable thought, was adamant in quashing not only people who worked with certain physical matters in what they considered heretical ways (i.e. exploratory medicine / anatomy), but also people who worked with matters in an intellectual way as well.
So for example the publishing of Galileo's works ultimately caused him to be found guilty of Heresy, and he was sentenced to live the rest of his life under house arrest for the smallest of indiscretions, as he was allowed to publish his heliocentric hypothesis so long as it was made clear that it was a mere hypothesis, and he was required to include praise of god as the ultimate architect. When he did so, he had a character in his book speak of god being the ultimate architect, but the church though that the character was a sort of a simpleton, and they took offence to this, and thus he was tried and found guilty of heresy. Safe to say the bar for heresy was pretty darn low!
My view is that the interaction of the matter with the alchemist is important, perhaps even the most indispensable aspect of it, and it is due to this interaction (and subsequent processes which can be described as the opening of the matter, reduction of it, energizing it, using it to capture, using it as a nest, using it to extract principles, and so on) that is the key. Many matters can be used, some can be vile, some could be urine, but many will not be vile. Some may be rare or hard to find. I don't know if this next part makes any sense, but I think that if you find the matter which you think is the matter, and work with it, and then afterwards treat it poorly, or speak ill of it, I think it's entirely possible to "forget" what the matter actually is, or have it somehow taken from you. My experience here is that the matter is of two worlds: it has an earthly part and a celestial part, or that it exist "in between" these two extremes.
As if the part which is being worked on is holographically affecting the whole of it's origin.
I think so too, also why it's like a secret that protects itself, as the awareness of this fractal, or micro in macro and macro in micro, or even I would call it "dual nature", is part of the process. I think without this awareness, you are working with a dead matter which perhaps will not yield any results and thus the matter can be cast aside as if it's "not the matter", but with the awareness, it is "the matter", and yields results. Like the double slit experiment, the actions of the observer form part of the process or rather influences the results. Only thing I would say here, that unlike in the double slit experiment, where all is required is any observer, in this case it requires more than that, a little bit more than just the passive act of observing, perhaps even a bit of an active act or working and contemplating as it were.
The fundamental matter that is being worked is the same, no matter its origin
Yes. I think theologically we can reduce everything back to being sourced from one origin, and even scientifically we can reduce everything back to one origin as well, but both of these are models which perhaps are not 100% correct, but mere maps of how different systems trace the causality of creation. One can also map creation not as a one time "causal clock that was wound up" but also as constant gradient or waterfall of creation (if one uses a above/below division) or a constant expansive emanation (from center outwards), but ultimately I think it has a singular source, and a singular origin as well. It appears in many different ways under many different guises as it progresses along, just as a physical matter can at one point appear as a sea shell, another point as a limestone cavern, and later on as the lime-light at a Victorian opera house.
found anywhere a man can go. It certainly narrows down the things it could be.
Hid in the last place to look even. Well, even then it's also something that requires it to be recognized, and that recognition necessarily means a framework of understanding first has to exist, which is why I think it's cast aside as being "not it" if that framework is not already in place.
