Back in Oxford, the distinguished historian of science, Alastair Crombie, urged me to investigate the Islamic alchemical corpus and to publish my analysis of Newtonian experimentation with psychoactive substances. The biographer of Elias Ashmole, Conrad Jîsten, invited me to consider the implications of extrasensory perception within the alchemical context. At this time, I met Piers Gibbon, who was studying shamanic practices and altered states of consciousness as an undergraduate at Wadham College, Oxford. During the intervening years, Piers and I have collaborated on a great deal of academic research into the shamanistic practice of chemically heightened states of perception.

While investigating the Islamic alchemical corpus, I was the first scholar to read a group of 'undisturbed' manuscripts that emerged from the archives of the Museum of the History of Science, where they had been deposited in the late 1940s by Henry Ernest Stapleton. Two dusty teachests of Stapleton's manuscripts had been rescued from dark storerooms where they had been locked away for over twenty years. Their recovery was the result of a letter from the Jungian scholar, Theo Abt, who was interested in Stapleton's work. Within days of the recovery of this precious archive, I discovered Stapleton's translations of two important but still unpublished alchemical texts: Al-Majriti's, Rutbatu al-hakim and Ar-Razi's, Shawahid.

I corresponded with leading scholars concerning the hitherto unrecognised importance of the Islamic alchemical corpus, which revealed a much broader definition of classical science than had been realised, hitherto. The work of the great scholars, Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Washington and Fuat Sezgin of Frankfurt have been important in this phase of my research. In Oxford, Freddy Beeston, Wilferd Madelung, Farhan Nizami, Najah Shamaa and Colin Wakefield encouraged my investigations of the rich Islamic alchemical corpus.

The Islamic alchemists operated a breathtakingly broad science, that they maintained in almost total secrecy. This great chain of secret science extends from the Umayyad prince, Khalid ibn Yazid, through the careers of Jafr al-Sadiq, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Ar-Razi, Muhammad ibn Umail, Ibn Sina, Al-Majriti, and many others.

The massive Islamic alchemical corpus is paralleled by a smaller but fascinating body of Hebrew alchemical writings, of great historical significance. The work of Raphael Patai on the Jewish alchemical tradition is a major addition to the scholarship of alchemy.

My analyses of the history and archaeology of science have led me to the theory that the concept of cultural improvement via scientific progress is a myopic anachronism, based on an incomplete and imperfect reading of the history of science. I have begun to see a need for a broader definition of science, one that encompasses the scientific analysis of the mind, as well as matter.

The survival of a great deal of the top secret scientific traditions in the Orient gives me hope that a new period of revolution in science can lead to an expansion of our understanding of nature and the most important component of biological evolution, the human mind. I hold that the coalescence between western science and traditional oriental science is one of the most beneficial enterprises possible for civilisation, and the apriori, dogmatic pursuit of scientistic empiricism, as if it were an infallible methodology for the advancement of civilization, is a sad and presumptuous misunderstanding of the history and philosophy of science, a fallacy that I deem to be the most costly and valueless of unecessary human preoccupations.

Since 1990, I have been privileged to work with a small group of scholars in Oxford, who are interrogating the archaeological record via the exacting process of narcotic archaeology: Andrew Sherratt and Richard Rudgley. Andrew Sherratt has published many scholarly papers in a variety of academic journals on the role of psychoactive substances in prehistoric societies. His work on the archaeological evidence for the use of nightshades in Britain demolishes many of the most unnecessary presuppositions that distort a large proportion of the scholarship of mediaeval magic and witchcraft. Richard Rudgley was presented with the inaugural Prometheus Award for his first book, The Alchemy of Culture, which details the universal distribution of psychoactive shamanism, from prehistory to the present. In his second book, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances, Rudgley catalogued, categorised and defined the culture of chemically heightened conscousness, and he kindly acknowledged some of my work in identifying faunal sources of psychoactive drugs in alchemy.

The chemists, Graham Richards and Jeremy Robertson, have given me encouragement in my studies of the history of alchemy and chemistry in Oxford, frequently providing me with much needed insights into the elementary but elegant procedures of classical chemistry, toxicology, alkaloid extraction and the importance of tryptophan in the alchemical context.

In 1996, while visiting Harvard to investigate the archives of Wasson, I met the German ethnobotanist, Christian Ratsch, who has written several important books and recently compiled an exhaustive catalogue of psychoactive plants. In 1997, the eminent American ethno-botanist, William Emboden, lectured an appreciative audience in the Ashmolean Museum, an event that helped to establish a broader awareness of the importance of narcotic archaeology and ethnobotanical studies in Oxford.

Barry Mason, a prominent bibliophile and authority on psychoactive drugs, has made a great deal of his research available to me, and he has introduced me to Brian Barritt, artist, musician and a learned authority on psyhoactive substances, who collaborated extensively with Timothy Leary on several projects.

In 1996, Christopher Arkell, publisher of The London Miscellany, read and published Wonderland Revisited, my short biographical essay on Lewis Carroll. In 1997, Antonio Melechi published a new edition of Wonderland Revisited, in Psychedelia Britannica. Later in that year, I delivered a lecture, 'Ripley's Vision Revisited: A Chemical Interpretation for Esoteric Alchemy' to the conference, Contrasting Interpretations of Alchemy, organised by the Society for the History of Alchemy & Chemistry, which was held at Imperial College. In 1998, I was invited to collaborate with Andrew Sherratt on the production of Sacred Weeds, which was broadcast on Channel 4.

For the past twenty years, I have practiced yoga, tantrism, taiji, kung fu and meditation. Today, I continue my studies of Taoist shamanism as a student of Dayan Qigong with Michael Tse. In this tradition, direct examination and diagnosis of the energy field surrounding the human body via the Sky Eye is an integral part of routine clinical procedure.

In Oxford, I am deeply engaged in the analysis of many Oriental sources, literary, artistic and archaeological, for references to esoteric alchemy. I have discovered fascinating material in the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tibetan and Mongolian traditions. Although the secret scientific culture of shamanism has been devastated by historical trends in China and Japan, it has survived in both cultures. Oriental shamanism represents a rich archive of intelligence, that is not adequately appreciated by western science, which is still suffering under the misconceptions of Descartes and Jung, which distort and disempower the past -- and prohibit it from informing science and revolutionising western medicine.

Oxford's great social historian of science, Allan Chapman, has recently explained the influence of the Victorian amateurs in scientific discovery. According to Chapman, until the 19th century, scientific amateurs led the way in discovery, while institutional scientists accumulated data, through the routine practice of normal scientific activities. Following tradition, Chapman divides their respective roles into the Gentlemen and the Players. According to Chapman, the Gentlemen were epitomized by the Grand Amateurs, and the Players characterized as careerists.

The broader implication of Chapman's theory of the role of amateurism in the history of science is that throughout the period of scientific history that followed the Inquisition, the major discoveries in science were accomplished by the Grand Amateurs. In the aftermath of the Inquisition, institutional pronouncements were viewed as inherently suspect by the intellectual community. In reaction against the institutionalized excesses of the Inquisition, the scientific community began to elaborate a system of institutions which would protect science from outside interference. The Royal Society in London grew out of a tradition that stemmed from secret initiations in alchemy, through Rosicrucianism, the College of Night, the Invisible College, the Oxford Experimental Club and the Oxford Chymical Club.

It is ironic, that the trend to institutionalize and to 'professionalize' research has led to the situation that we have today, where it is difficult for amateurs in science to gain recognition for their work. The need for a circumspect approach to institutional authority has seldom been greater in the history of science than it is today, in 1999, when so much scientific research is funded by governments, frequently driven by defense policies to maintain data in secrecy.

For these reasons, many scientists have begun to break away from science, because they view institutional control as damaging to the role of science, itself -- for it limits the scope of inquiry. The social and political institutions that dominate science have become the targets of a growing trend of scientific scepticism that seeks to liberate science from mythologies that would limit the scope of inquiry, and destroy the scientific tradition.

Science, like religion that preceded it, should not be a tightly enclosed, esoteric tradition, open only to professional scientist-priests. In religious history, the only information that we have concerning mystical states of consciousness has come directly from mystics, saints, prophets and seers themselves, and not through the priesthoods that arose after them, who falsely claimed the power of intercession between humanity and the divine. Just as certainly, civilisation does not need a pseudo-scientistic priesthood to preserve, protect and defend a sacred body of knowledge -- and an evolving spectrum of methodologies in science -- from contamination by foreign influences.

As the institutionalisation of science continues unabated, science's ability to discover new insights into nature is diminished in direct proportion to the process of professionalism that binds its practitioners to the politically derivative dogmas of their particular mythologies. The reversal of this egregious trend is sought by all responsible scientists everywhere.

2000 MICHAEL CARMICHAEL - Alchemy Online. All Rights Reserved.

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