The Virgin’s Milk.

This was/is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Alchemical Art. The PLATE IV in Solomon Trismosin’s Splendor Solis illustrates the operation of Sun and Moon by a King and a Queen. The Queen, subconsciousness, holds a scroll in her right hand, upon which is scribed Lac Virginis. Her right hand is placed directly over her intestinal region. This is the Virgo region of the body, according to medical astrology, and the hand is Hebrew letter YOD. Virgo and Yod are both assigned to the Hermit Tarot Key.

Again, in the seventeenth plate of that same work, the interior star or vessel of the Mercury Chakra depicts a maiden also holding her hand over the intestines. Furthermore, in Titus Burckhardt’s Alchemy, the author reprints a plate from a Gothic manuscript in the British Museum.

Between pages 168-169 is a picture of a maiden. She is drawn standing inside a distilling type vessel with her torso protruded. The original artist had to distort slightly the maiden’s hand in compensation to reach her intestinal region. Having done so, deliberately or accidentally, the artist’s distortion subsequently becomes the focal point of the whole picture. Nevertheless, it is a medical fact that within the intestinal region there is a ductless gland at the upper portion of the small intestines called the lacteals because the gland secretes a milky fluid. During the process of digestion this gland secretes an oily, milky substance which medical science calls chyle. The ancient alchemists, however, have long before named this liquid the Virgin’s Milk.

Chyle is actually distilled drop by drop into the bloodstream at this point through natural digestion. Alchemists have labeled this micro step in the body laboratory operation, DISTILLATION. All the pictures described above hint to extra amounts of CHYLUS released into the blood stream by self-conscious suggestions.

Without this aid from Our Mercury, subconsciousness will trickle mere normal amounts of chyle to keep the physical vehicle alive. Extra amounts in the blood stream, however, when mixed with fire, water, air and earth, change our ordinary blood into the alchemist’s AURUM POTABILE, the ‘Potable Gold.’ The combined Elixir traverses the arteries to the frontal lobe of the brain where it stimulates the pineal gland, a tiny, cone-shaped body containing the yellowish, granulated substance medical science calls ‘brain sand.’ The brain sand eventually gels into a gummy substance when infused with enough of the prepared Potable Gold. Then the raising of the serpentine, electrical energy, KUNDALINI, will finally fuse the gummy substance within the pineal body, turning it into a solid, amber crystal. This is the Philosophers’ Stone within the body of an adept. The Caduceus of Hermes symbolizes the entire process.

When the Third Treatise in Splendor Solis is read in conjunction with what has just been outlined here, the whole riddle is easily solved. When the Third Eye (the Moon Chakra) is eventually opened as the result of these earlier stages in the Alchemical Process, one sees the entire universe formed solely of a Light Substance. This is the inner discovery of the Universal First Matter. Don Juan Matus explained to Carlos in The Fire From Within:

There is no world of objects, but a universe of the Eagle’s emanations.¹

Lac Virginis by Latin Cabala Simplex totals 112, the same number of PRIMA MATERIA. Similarities go further since the First Matter inside an alchemist is described as an oily, milk-white substance. So is the Universal First Matter outside the body: “As above, so below…as within, so without.” The Virgin’s Milk inside the physical body is another form of the First Matter of the Universe.

In conjunction with the study of Lac Virginis, please research from a good medical dictionary all that can be found concerning chyle, the lacteals, chyme, lymph, lymphocytes, the lymphatic glands, leukocytes, animal fat, olein, stearin and palmitin. When an alchemist knows consciously the degree of subconscious processes occurring within the physical body laboratory, the Great Work may be brought to fruition sooner. Lac Virginis is the crux of our body’s immune system. Since Lac Virginis comes from a ductless gland it is not stored in any sac, like bile in the gallbladder. It is the same with mammals. We cannot extract chyle from other humans or animals and inject it into another human to enhance the immune system of the recipient. Would that we could! Somewhere within this function of the Virgo region of the body lay the secret to the cure of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Please cross reference ELIXIR and TRANSPARENT STONE.

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Footnotes:

1. Castaneda, Carlos, The Fire From Within. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984, pg. 46.