Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Are Constellations Alchemy?

In 1975, I studied with Prof. Betty Jo Dobbs at Northwestern University. Formerly a high school science teacher in rural Arkansas, she shocked her family by moving to Cambridge University, England, where she became a scholar of Newton's alchemy. Newton's occult papers were suppressed for 200 years until unearthed by the Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes. After cataloging them, he wrote, "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians."

Professor Dobbs taught that alchemy was the quest for material/spiritual transformation. Prior to Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, no one conceived these aspects could split apart and be studied separately.

After 1700, science and spirit divorced. Science became heartlessly materialistic; spiritualism devolved into superstitious naiveté.

Einstein and quantum physics solved the material side of alchemy, the transformation of elements through nuclear reactions. Dr. Dobbs believed the compelling task for humanity was to find the solution to alchemy's other side, the transformation of the human heart.

For 25 years I created and ran conflict resolution and violence prevention programs. This is how I came to Germany and the Constellation process ten years ago.

Today, I see every Constellation as an alchemical transformation. You present a problem that robs your life of joy. The Constellation reveals how the traumas that befell your grandparents weigh on your heart like lead. Transformation comes when you hear the ancestors. They mourn when you carry their burdens and rejoice when you receive their gifts.

A century after Einstein discovered the formula to build an atom bomb, in a world of unimaginable suffering, growing numbers of humans are learning to turn lead into gold. Your heart is the instrument of transformation. It absorbs your elders' sorrows and returns kindness, love, and compassion to those in your care. That is alchemy.

No comments:

Post a Comment