Now the sexual force, as we know, is the ultimate expression of mechanical nature within our organism. This sexual force contains the law of three. It is in itself an expression of that Cosmic Christ, that fire which gives rise to all life. We have within our own experience and our own knowledge the knowing that in order to create, we need to combine forces. So for us to create the physical body, for a child, we need the positive force, which is the man, we need the receptive force, which is the woman, and we need a force which will equilibriate the two or bring them together; and that of course is sex, which is the Holy Spirit. When those three forces combine, we can create. Physically speaking, of course, we can create a child. But there is another way to use the same three forces in a higher way.

Within each of us, we have the final distillation of that mechanical nature. The process of transforming all the energies that we take in results in the production of that sexual energy. In the ancient tradition of alchemy, the sexual energy is known as the raw matter. It is the fundamental force with which the alchemist has to work. Now alchemy, of course, also has a very ancient history.

And we know that alchemy is the derivative of a couple of words that are put together: Al, which is related to Allah or the spirit, is also related to the word El in Hebrew which means “God,” and khem, or chemia, which is Greek and means “to fuse or cast a metal.” So to fuse or cast ourselves with God is the science of alchemy. Alchemy was know by another name, which is spagirism. This word, spagirism, is a combination of two words in greek: spam, which means “to extract” and agirus, which means “to reunite.”

The process of alchemy is to take the raw matter, or lead, a base metal, and extract from it what is pure; and then to take those pure elements and create something greater. We have all heard that the alchemist works to extract the gold from lead. This raw matter, in us, is Mercury, which is our own sexual energy. The alchemists called the sexual energy Mercury because it is the vehicle of the sun. In other words, it is the vehicle of the creative forces of the cosmic Christ. Mercury, as the messenger or intercessor, is the vehicle through which the three forces can work in us.