Transmutation is a subject that from the earliest ages has occupied the attention of students, scientists and alchemists. The power to change, through the application of heat, is of course universally recognized, but the key to the mystery, or the secret of the systemic formula is advisedly guarded from all searchers, and is only gradually revealed after the second Initiation. The subject is so tremendous that it is only possible to indicate in broad general outlines how it may be approached. The mind of the public turns naturally to the transmutation of metals into gold with the aim in view of the alleviation of poverty. The mind of the scientist seeks the universal solvent which will reduce matter to its primordial substance, release energy, and thus reveal the processes of evolution, and enable the seeker to build for himself (from the primordial base) the desired forms. The mind of the alchemist [476] searches for the Philosopher's Stone, that effective transmuting agent which will bring about revelation, and the power to impose the will of the chemist upon the elemental forces, which work in, by, and through matter. The religious man, especially the Christian, recognizes the psychic quality of this transmutative power, and frequently speaks in the sacred books, of the soul being tried or tested seven times in the fire. All these students and investigators are recognizing one great truth from their own constricted angle, and the whole lies not with one or another, but in the aggregate.

1. He who transfers the Father's life to the lower three seeketh the agency of fire, hid in the heart of Mother. He worketh with the Agnichaitans, that hide, that burn, and thus produce the needed moisture.
2. He who transfers the life from out the lower three into the ready fourth seeketh the agency of fire hid in the heart of Brahma. He worketh with the forces of the Agnishvattas, that emanate, that blend, and thus produce the needed warmth.
3. He who transfers the life into the gathering fifth seeketh the agency of fire hid in the heart of Vishnu. He worketh with the forces of the Agnisuryans, that blaze, that liberate the essence, and thus produce the needed radiance.
4. First moisture, slow and all enveloping; then heat with ever-growing warmth and fierce intensity; then force that presses, drives and concentrates. Thus is radiance [477] produced; thus the exudation; thus mutation; thus change of form. Finally liberation, escape of the volatile essence, and the gathering of the residue back to primordial stuff.

1. All atoms or spheres upon the physical plane.
2. All atoms or spheres upon the astral and mental planes.
3. The human being in physical incarnation.
4. The causal body of man on its own plane.
5. All planes as entified spheres.
6. All planets, chains and globes within the solar system.
7. All monads on their own plane, whether human monads or Heavenly Men.
8. The solar Ring-Pass-Not, the aggregate of all lesser atoms.

In all these atoms, stupendous or minute, microcosmic or macrocosmic, the central life corresponds to the positive charge of electrical force predicated by science, whether it is the life of a cosmic Entity such as a solar Logos, or the tiny elemental life within a physical atom. The lesser atoms which revolve round their positive center, and which are at present termed electrons by science, are the negative aspect, and this is true not only of the atom on the physical plane, but of the human atoms, held to their central attractive point, a Heavenly Man, or the [478] atomic forms which in their aggregate form the recognized solar system. All forms are built up in an analogous manner and the only difference consists - as the textbooks teach - in the arrangement and the number of the electrons. ⁵⁷ The electron itself will eventually be found to be an elemental, tiny life.

⁵⁷ Atom and Electron: See Consciousness of the Atom, page 17-22.