Manfred Junius writes:
As it was decided last year at the Chateau, we shall make it a seminar of Indian Alchemy (Ayurvedic Alchemy), during which we shall concentrate on metalorganic compounds known as Bhasmas in Sanskrit.
Theory:
With the help of photographic slides we shall first have a theoretical introduction into the alchemical methods used in India, and discuss the issues.
Practical:
Starting with an ordinary anorganic materia prima, i.e. the metal, (probably zinc, which is of great interest today as a good builder of immunity), we shall go through the stages of shodhana (alchemical purification), granulation and finally the building of the compound through repeated very specific closed calcinations known as Puta in Sanskrit. We shall also look at the various other methods of building metalorganic compounds which have been in use in India since ancient time and which form an important and quite unique part of ayurvedic pharmacology.
(At Manfred´s invitation Steve Kalec will present a 11/2 hour programme on the „Secret Hidden Fire of the Alchemists“, including a 30 minute spiritual exercise.)
You will find Indian Alchemy very fascinating.
I may also give some very basic introduction into Ayurvedic Medicine and its specific way of looking at health and disease, if this would interest our friends.
We can have music among ourselves at the Chateau like last year, and I am planning to bring my Surbahar with me for this purpose.
Read some comments from
Manfred Junius and participants about last year’s seminar.
Manfred Junius was born in Germany in 1929. He worked as a professor of biology at the University of Calcutta and later, for 18 years, studied classical Indian music („true musical alchemy“) at a number of universities and with Ravi Shankar. The Academy of Music in allahabad presented him with the title Sangitacharya, the highest honour for a musician in India.
He studied Ayurvedic medicine with Dr. Bhagwan Dash and obtained his Western alchemical knowledge through many years of personal instruction from Augusto Pincaldi, in Switzerland.
Junius is currently Production Manager of Australerba Laboratories for spagyrics and head of the Australian School of Ayurveda in Adelaide. He is also Consultant Editor of the International Journal of Indian Medicine, published in Poona. He continues to teach internationally.
My desire to come back to your country is very intense.
Since a long time I had the great wish to come there, one of the greatest centres of Alchemy, Kabala and Magic; there is such a nimbus around your place, also what you told us about Kutna Hora has left a deep impression and the desire to be there longer.
Actually I was the one who had suggested some years ago that we should come there so it is something of a pilgrimage.
