2-3-2012 Powder Alchemy, an Evolving Treatise

    by Kristine Lavender Love




Some alchemical musings on the nature of Powders and their inherent Potency 

by virtue of their powderized state

which initially began by pondering some of

The most Important, Infamous, Notorious, Famous,
                                   Useful & Naughty Powders 

                                                 Throughout Antiquity 

                                                                                            

Powders.  What are they?  What do you think of when they come to mind?  Ground up plants?  Man-made chemicals coming out of some laboratory somewhere?  Drugs such as heroine and cocaine?  What about half the contents of your kitchen cupboard -- like flour, sugar, coffee, tea, salt, cocoa powder, baking powder, yeast, spices, herbs of all sorts such as garlic powder, chili powder, onion powder.....   

Wow, are you getting it?  What would life be without some of these basic building blocks of our civilization, diet, culture, pharmaceutical base -- whether you choose the Green Pharmacy or the other route.   It occurred to me, during the course of much grinding of and working with powders in many ways, that there is something particularly important, or potent that happens when a substance is ground up into fine bits and becomes equal parts physical matter and air/space.  

This alchemical process I call POWDERIZATION, and below you will find an evolving body of work on the subject, pecked at with new insights as they have sprouted over the course of some years.  

SO WHAT ARE Some of THESE IMPORTANT USEFUL FAMOUS & NAUGHTY POwDErS?

Salt                            Flours of all kinds                    Sugar                             Spices
Coffee                       Tea                                        Paint Pigment                 Yeast
Cosmetic Products       Henna & Kohl                         Silicon (glass powder)      Gunpowder 
Mushroom Spores        Cocaine                                 Opium                            THC
Saltpeter                    Medicinals made from herbal/synthetic powders            Myrrh 
Frankencense              Ashes                                     Soil                               Dust 
Pollen                        Steiner’s BD preps     

 

Powders are alchemical agents of transformation.  

They bring about profound change, ranging from basic nourishment to euphoria, to violent death and destruction, and everything in between.  They sustain life and cause death, and as such are agents/catalysts of life - death - rebirth.  True Pharmakons.

Powders are activated by being combined with one or 

more of the other elements 

 -- Earth, Air, Fire or Water  --

All the big drug companies
and medical establishments
know this and want to
keep the power of the catalyst
for it/themselves.

WHO are the biggest
    Users, Pushers,
                 and Purveyors

                       of Powders?

  "....ashes to ashes, 
          dust to dust...."

Doctors                                The Military               Drug lords                 Priests 

Witches & Shamans            Glass blowers             Nature                      Big AG

Herbalists                 The Beauty/Cosmetic Industry             Anyone who cooks

                                              Perfumers & incense makers/user

                                          The current cultural “Death-Keepers”,

                                              i.e. the medical-pharmaceutical- 

                                 senior care undertaker / burial establishment 

Starting to get the picture?  These are things for which  EMPIRES have been created, fought over, won and lost throughout recorded history.  

      

 Scores of people are addicted to many of these substances

Powders are readily assimilatable.

The total absence of the water element is what renders a substance powderable.  However it still must be acted upon by some agent for powderization.

What would life be without Chocolate???

Powders keep a long time in most cases; they are light and usually easily transportable.  But often, especially with organic substances, they are ground fresh, close to the time of  demand because they have a limited shelf life of potency once powdered. 


One individual bit of a powder can’t ever claim to be better than any other bit. There is a kind of egoless state involved. It is what it is by virtue of being greater than the sum of its parts. Although one grain of something can stand as the collective representative, that one particular grain is no better or more important than any of the rest of it. 

 Usually powders don’t work - unless VERY potent - until there is a critical mass amount of substance for the application.

Powderization releases/makes readily available a substance’s potency.

Exposure to any of the other elements uses up/releases a powder’s potency, at varying rates, and often (ideally) according to the intentions or ignorance of the user (for example, throwing a handful onto a fire in an invocation of some kind vs. letting it sit outside unattended in a dish).

Aboriginal women (and probably men too) cover their mostly-naked bodies with a thin layer of ash as a cold/wind/sun barrier.

Herbal Powders ground for making
Hair & Skin Care Product

What sorts of things do POWDERS do? 

Powders have great penetration capacity



When used 
          they block (as in ashes); 
                they penetrate deeply; 
                     they heal, uplift; 
                            they nourish;
                                    they destroy; 
                                          they alter;
                                              they make possible human civilization.


When combined with fire, some burn slowly, some explode, very few don’t burn at all.

Nearly all powders readily combine with WATER

    All powders readily combine with AIR and disperse.

In most cases they are readily conducive to combining with all the other elements (air, fire, water, and even earth) until a critical mass saturation point is reached and the powder overwhelms the element --
                   such as when suddenly the flour overwhelms what was predominantly a liquid mix in a cake batter, and now it’s an unmanageable sticky hard mass; 

or when too much ash or sawdust is put on a fire and extinguishes it;
or when dust/sand become predominant in the Air element and create dust storms, rendering Air unbreathable.

Herbal Ingredients selected
for processing into Oil Infusion

The elements themselves produce powders:

Herbs ground & Infusing in Olive Oil

Wind plus sand grinds rocks to dust.  Fire burns and produces ash; Water erodes away earthen elements and grinds them down; it evaporates and leaves a dry powdery residue.  Earth comes up against earth in whatever forms, wearing substance down.    

From Plants, to Oil, to the most luscious
Herbal Cream, in about
10 Alchemical Steps

Air is always involved in any substance that is powdered.

 Powders are a blend of Earth, Air & Spirit.

This Treatise is a work in process and subject to further expansion.