Al-Kimia Quotes

“For Ibn ’Arabi, whose most beloved teacher Abu Madyan was identified as being the stone, the continual revelation of God’s word is a living, breathing creation. Those highest saints, who are known as the malamatiyya, the blameworthy of this world, the ‘hidden’ or kafirun of God are the embodiment of all the systems of concealment and disclosure, jafr, ta’wil, taqqiyah, et al. The Qur’an is not just a book, it is a person. The texts of al-Kimia are not simple words which when put together produce magical formulas, they are alive.”
― John Eberly, Al-Kimia: The Mystical Islamic Essence of the Sacred Art of Alchemy

“Again and again and again. A transmutation is required to effect the spiritualization of matter. Whenever living beings disappear, they leave behind a subtle essence, or ‘body’, which in esoteric Islam is called the jism mithali. Solve et coagula, dissolve and coalesce, in other words, ‘to make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body.’ This is the basis of al-Kimia, nothing more simple can define the term. One and one do not make two, the One divides and multiplies, yet remains One. There is nothing lost by dying; spirit and matter constantly transmute in form and formlessness”
― John Eberly, Al-Kimia: The Mystical Islamic Essence of the Sacred Art of Alchemy

“In his visionary treatises or recitals fashioned after the recitals of Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi uses marvelous symbol and imagery. In the recital titled ‘Aql-surkh or ‘The Red Intellect’ he encounters a personage whose countenance is red. When he asks why he is this color the personage replies that he is a luminous Elder and is really white, but that he was thrown into a black pit, and when mixed with black, every white thing connected to the light appears red, like the sun at its setting or after the dawn. When asked where he comes from, the personage replies that he resides beyond Mount Qaf, and he tells Suhrawardi, who appears in the recital as a trapped falcon, a symbol of the intellect, that his nest is there too, but he has forgotten it”
― John Eberly, Al-Kimia: The Mystical Islamic Essence of the Sacred Art of Alchemy