When mortal turns IMMORTAL

According to Tantra ideology, male and female vital fluids, semen and uterine blood, are power-substances  because their combination gives rise to life and vitality. These Rasas are even identified with gods and goddesses whose boundless energy was often portrayed as sexual in nature. Usually the god invoked in this context was some form of Shiva and the female was some form of Devi.

The Alchemist Siddhas equated Mercury with a male, warm substance which controls the elements Earth and Water. And, symbolically it was called the semen of Shiva.  Mica , which is cold was the element of air; and regarded the female counterpart of Shiva, the Shakthi.  Therefore through the union of mercury and mica, male and female.

The process, which is spread over eighteen stages, and carried out over several months, involved planting a ‘seed (bija)’ of gold into a mass of mercury. The process of making the Mercury absorb in ever increasing quantities of Mica or Sulphur called Jarana is carried on till the Mercury becomes   (baddha) or killed (mrta).

This is done in three stages each consisting six steps. This six-step process, by which mercury is bound, is followed by another six-step process, in which the proportions of mica or sulphur swallowed by mercury greatly increase. Here,  mercury  is made  to absorb a mass of mica equal to its own. Next, mercury is made to swallow twice its mass of mica, and so on until the proportions ultimately reach 1:6, with mercury absorbing six times its mass of mica. In this final and optimal phase mercury, said to be "six-times killed," is possessed of fantastic powers of transmutation. At the conclusion of this process, mercury takes the shape of a linga.

  Mercury is regarded as ’killed’ when it becomes a hard metal or a red-blood stone. The mercury that is ‘killed’ – mrta  or stilled (rendered non-volatile – baddha and reduced to ashes- bhasma) with the help of powerful herbs, is transmuted into gold through a mystic process (samskara).That is to say; after having been killed or fixed, Mercury changes its character, it takes on a nobler, more exalted form and is reborn.

At the end of the fantastic series of samskaras, the mercury itself would have disappeared leaving only the ‘noble and immortal’ metal – the gold. The final product, if consumed in prescribed quantity would, it was claimed, rejuvenate the body and make it as resplendent and burnished as gold. ”The Siddha who ingests is immediately transported to the realms of the gods, Siddhas, and Vidyadharas”.

 The gold here becomes an insignia of immortality. And, by swallowing a pellet of such created gold the alchemist becomes a second Shiva, a Siddha, perfected, golden and immortal.

There is also a Vedic myth of Prajapathi turning into gold (hiranya purusha): ‘he is Prajapathi, he is Agni, he is made of gold, for gold is light and fire is light, gold is immortality and fire is immortality’.