Chapter Three

The lore of small alchemical stones being chipped at and shared with others abounded – and still do abound. Stories of exactly how much gold a small crumb of the stone could produce are in no shortage throughout the arcana. 

Over and over again the journals catalogue the use of the “Philosopher’s Stone” to turn little hunks, chunks, and crumbs of base metals into gold.  And the sizes of the “Philosopher’s Stone” used in these journals varies from one mad-man to the next; one alchemist to the next, one scientist to the next.  And yet, no scientist or magi has produced a culpable scrape of any such mineral.

What John Aaron Tierney would discover was that he had had the philosopher's stone in his possession all along. What he would also learn was that no man could really wholly possess the stone. Itself it was a conundrum.

And yet, what became a constant problem in and throughout the literature is that it was specific and vague at one and the same time. You could read it to mean one thing and of course it may not mean that thing at all. Or, you could read it to mean another and it did not mean that thing either. This is why people began to call the alchemists mad. There was no simple one line of thought or reasoning. Their meaning shifted this way and that; they were all over the map of human exploration and design.  And, this of course is what kept Tierney wandering close on the heels of the meaning of the alchemists, but just out of reach.  Until that one day.

The stone was not so much a mineral as a metaphor. Coded into the history books of the East and West was this image of a life altering, position changing rock that could open vistas for the possessor. It was not unlike the power and myth of the Grail.

The search for the grail was the search for the vessel that bore the Body and Blood of Christ.  Of late, it has emerged that the quest for the grail was really the quest for the human soul or perhaps the Magdalene and the hidden secrets of her love for the Master.  And so, what had been thought to be an actual grail became the image and likeness of what the grail is by meaning. 

The grail was a metaphoric transference object. The search for enlightenment and wholeness was coded and hidden in tales of knights looking for a chalice. The grail held all the images and all the teachings of a cult that revered and sought the ability to house the Master of the Universe in a vessel. All of the images, all of the teachings and all of the lore pointed to the grail as a symbol for the soul.  The soul as the place that would house the Master of the Universe.

What John Aaron Tierney found was that the stone was really the core of the soul — the will, the desire. Human freedom, desire, choice and the will were the things that were at the core of the soul and at the core of being able to change one thing into another.

Somehow we had the will within our possession, but it eluded our grasp 100% of the time. Will must somehow be converted into submission so power could be bought — transmutation acquired.

I think it was this riddle that caused him to come undone. I think it was this continual working with pairs of opposites that pushed him over the edge, or what appeared to be over the edge in the eyes of his colleagues.

It pushed him over the edge and into the unity that was at the base of sanctity and insanity. It pushed him over into the world of a phrase that swam about inside of him until it came out and became him.

Perhaps the Gnostics were right, "that which we bring forth from within will save us, and that which we do not bring forth will damn us."

When he realized that the will produces the object of its desire, then he realized that sanctity and insanity lie close at bay. Everything that occurred in the thirty-five years was helping his will to discover what it already knew: "The line between opposites is invisible."

Opposites and pairs of opposites marked every aspect of his research. His thoughts could go white with confusion in the midst of his prodding and smelting and studying. He could only sustain the flux of such research for so long. What emerged from this flux was a state of consciousness that people identified with insanity. He looked cracked to the rest of the world. He was merely becoming whole.

He was not crazy, his attempts to conjoin opposites within himself made him drop out of sanity and into insanity in the eyes of the world at large. Given that the world at large does not possess genuine discrimination, they were (and still are) unable to assess Tierney's stability. And so their view was not accurate. Or, at least for this story.

In fact, he was becoming sanctified. People just did not know this.

He was crazy — at least to most. This is how he appeared when he shared his discovery after many years of searching. He was crazy for those that did not know, and sanctified for them that did know. I wish I could be less ambiguous about it, but there you have it.

The man himself became the very riddle he tried to solve. Tierney was an enigma and a conundrum to all who looked on. Some, those who could not sustain enigmas, were unable to accept that he was whole. Those who could balance the unanswered koans of meaning, found him a joy. 

Having been a friend of Tierney’s for years, I have had the advantage of having watched him fade in and out of a clarity concerning these ideas about the “Philosopher’s Stone” and one thing becoming another.  It is from that vantage point that I shall try to describe for you here how he came unglued only to find himself living the very mystery he searched for all these years. 

by, N. Thomas Johnson-Medland   © 2015 All Rights Reserved