[Submitted by Frater Kris. Portland, Ore.]

Ask any Rosicrucian, and they will tell you: once you’ve made up your mind to pursue a specific piece of the great work, the synchronicities start becoming too many to even keep track of! I’ve experienced plenty of synchronicities in my life, but never so many as when I decided to pursue herbal alchemy.

New Year’s Resolutions almost always involve a sacrifice of some sort, and usually, it’s giving up something we like. This year, I thought it would be more realistic to resolve to do something I wanted to do, instead of vowing to give something up.

I thought any new endeavors would pretty much have to involve Rosicrucian philosophy and my interest in alchemy. So, I decided to focus my energy and creativity on herbal alchemy.

For years, I’ve been interested in chemistry. I’ve made essential oils, infused oils, herbal elixirs, incense, tinctures, etc. I’m interested in psychoactive plants and learning about their chemistry and history.

I have read in the Fama Fraternitatis that Rosicrucians should make no magical claims except to heal the sick, and this they do for free. That sentence was stuck in my head. What if I could learn to make healing plant tinctures? What if I could do that for free and help my friends while doing it? I thought that my chances of success would be much higher because I wanted to help others.

I woke up New Year’s Day thinking “where do I even start? I don’t have a plan. I don’t know enough about herbs. I don’t know anyone that would want any herbal tinctures.”

As I was thinking about all of this, my iPhone began beeping on the nightstand. New podcasts had downloaded. I’m thinking “excellent, a new episode of The Plant Path, that’s one of my favorite podcasts!”

The title of this new podcast was “Your next 12 months toward herbal mastery.” After I listened for an hour, I set my headphones down on the counter and just said “Wow” out loud. Here was an in-depth plan about really doing it, how to start, tips for success, how to build both confidence and competence. It’s going to be a great year!

Most of this episode was devoted to herbal alchemy and “Spagyrics.” Spagyrics is a term for the method of making the healing herbal compounds created by Paracelsus– where the herb is broken down into its three essentials: sulfur, mercury, and salt.

Sulfur could be looked at as the alcohols created by the plant, mercury as the essential oils of the plant, and the salts are the leftover ashes after the calcination phase. These three essentials, or “Tria Prima” were each purified, then recombined in a 3-4-5 ratio to create the perfect herbal solution. It was just what I needed to hear.

A couple of days later, I heard an interview with Robert Bartlett, author of Real Alchemy, and I decided to check out his book. Just as the thought occurred, someone posted a comment on my Instagram photos of various alchemy books: “I like the photo…you should include Robert Bartlett’s book, Real Alchemy.” Amazing.

I had a $25 credit on Amazon so I bought the book and still had $11.83 left. I looked at the “Customers also buy this” lineup, and there was Frater Dennis William Hauck’s Idiots guide to Alchemy. Price: $11.83!

All sorts of synchronicities followed. I can barely recall half of them.

Last week, I was showing a photo of my alchemical distillation setup to a customer at work. He oversees a medicinal marijuana company, that specializes in CBD extracts. He was so impressed with my work he said he wanted to hire me for some work at his business. Incredible!

Sometimes we decide, and the universe reacts positively with synchronicities. Sometimes we decide and things don’t’ fall into place, to show us that isn’t the right path for us. As Rosicrucians, we are much more aware of these synchronicities, and we can even do experiments to keep the synchronicities coming!

Even if every opportunity doesn’t pan out, I feel it’s going to be an excellent year for my practice of herbal alchemy. Sometimes the universe is just waiting for us to tell her what we want, waiting for us to decide. All we must do is make the decision. A resolution doesn’t have to be a sacrifice, and we can resolve to do the things we love, and maybe cutting back a bit on our vices will just come naturally when our focus is on the things we genuinely love, especially when it’s an opportunity to be of service to our fellow human beings.

I’m feeling very fortunate that I can be of assistance to my friends and family, to my Pronaos, and humanity.

Frater Kris, 
AMORC member, and volunteer
with the 
Enneadic Star Pronaos of Oregon and SW Washington
More of Kris adventures in alchemy and the esoteric on his YouTube Channel

Got a story to share. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at oregon@amorc.rosicrucian.org