Since the launch of Nemeta in September 2018, I have been uncertain what material to include here in Course 1 Gaian Alchemy. Not due to lack of material on the topic: After all, Planetary Tantra is itself a complete system of alchemy defined generically as the transmutation of mind and senses through interactivity with nature. Moreover, content in Course 9 Biomysticism and 10 Mythophrenia develop this practice in diverse ways. How exactly to select units for this Course has always been problematic.As far as I can recall, I originally intended this classroom in Nemeta to release some version of the 1982-1985 course on alchemy and ecopsychology given in Santa Fe. It runs to 550 single-spaced typewritten pages with hundreds of illustrations and symbols drawn from alchemical manuscripts. But something happened and I did not manage to convert that original work into units here. The option to go back to it and make selections involving editing and updating, or even leaving it as it originally was, is not feasible due to the time it would involve. The material in block 101 TOWARD A FUTURE ALCHEMY and 102 THE GREAT WORK comes from that original project. But there is much, much more that remains unpublished. At this point, I am not sure where I would find it in my files.

So it happens that I do not find other units among the hundreds in development on Nemeta that I can include here. It seems odd that this topic, which is central to the Gaian practice of Gnosis today, would be so spare in material but that is how it stands at the moment.

Readers of Not in His Image will note that I gave considerable attention to the topics of deep ecology and so-called ecopsychology. Doing so, I touched on the foundations of Gaian alchemy going back to the 1980s. In 1.101 Atmospheric Physics I explained: “My provisional approach to The Great Work presented in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1981 and revised in 1984-5 into a 21-lesson  package went dormant for some years. In 1992 Theodore Roszak published a definitive work, The Voice of the Earth. The subtitle is: An Exploration of Ecopsychology. It seems that from the late Eighties onward the notion of ecopsychology emerged among the avant-garde of American academics, for whom Roszak is a leading figure. The Course was proposing ecopsychology before it was named as such.”

In fact, that single unit contains a complete synthesis of the “Great Work,” and I don’t see how I could have stated it more clearly or completely. For now, the nine units in this Course will have to stand for all I can say about Gaian alchemy. It looks like it may be all I really need to say, short of overdeveloping the theme and repeating myself. However, I remain alert for any existing material that might surface in the future appropriate to be included here. As for adding new content, that is always a possibility but the odds of my doing that are low.

In the perspective of so many years since 1982 in Santa Fe, I hold strongly to the view that my writings on the Great Work present a unique contribution that establishes a primary truth: The operations of the human psyche (sensation, cognition, memory, imagination) are events in the terrestrial habitat to be considered as real and palpable as the extra-human processes of nature. What you feel and think about the wind on your face is an event of nature, exactly like the wind on your face. To me that says it all.