in an earlier age mind and matter were seen to be alloyed together throughout nature, so that the, sweating of mercury out of cinnibar is not a material process, it's a process in which the mind and the observations of the metalworker maintain an important role, and let's talk for a moment about mercury because the spirit Mercurius is almost the patron deity of alchemy. You all know what mercury looks like. At room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows, it's like a mirror. For the alchemists, and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of what alchemical thinking was about, mercury takes the form of its container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little, bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the
world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the, assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance, onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it.
-terence mckenna