Blazing Star and Alchemy
Blazing Star
About the symbol Blazing star, Pike, in Morals and Dogma in the 25th degree, Knight of the Brazen Serpent, says that it epitomizes Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian, and Guide of Souls.
Our Ancient English brethren likewise thought of it as a symbol of the Sun. In the ancient talks, they stated that the Blazing Star or the central Glory alludes us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which illuminates the Earth, and by its amiable impact apportions endowments to humanity.
Pike, in a previous degree, stated that The Blazing Star in the middle is said to be “a symbol of Divine Providence, and dedicatory of the star which seemed to control the shrewd men of the East to the spot of our Savior’s nativity.”
He proceeds to state that the Blazing Star or Glory in the inside alludes us to that fabulous light, the Sun, which illuminates the earth, and by its amiable impact apportions favors to humankind.” They called it additionally in similar talks, an image of vigilance.
The word Prudentia implies, in its true meaning, Foresight; and, appropriately, the Blazing Star has been viewed as a seal of Omniscience, or the All seeing Eye, which to the Egyptian Initiates was the seal of Osiris”. Builders Magazine, 1915, Gage says of the image that it is the seed and the wellspring of all life and everlasting life.
Alchemy
Mackey, in his Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, says of this image, that the Neo-Platonicians presented at an early time of the Christian period an obviously new science, which they called the Sacred Science, which physically impacted the ensuing state of expressions of the human experience and sciences.
In the fifth centennial emerged, the name of the science, alchemia, al being added to chemia, a Greek word utilized in Diocletian’s declaration against Egyptian works treating of the transmutation of metals; the word appears to be basically to signify “the Egyptian Art,” or the place where there is dark earth being the Egyptian name for Egypt, and Julius FirmicusMaternus, in a work On the Influence of the Stars upon the Fate of Man, utilizes the expression sciential chemiae.
From this time the education of alchemy was followed publicly. In the Middle Ages, and up to the finish of the seventeenth centennial, it was a significant science, also studied by the absolute most recognized thinkers, for example, Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lulli, Roger Bacon, Elias Ashmole, and numerous others. Additionally, alchemy is also called the Hermetic Philosophy since it is said to have been first coached in Egypt by Hermes Trismegistus.
Freemasonry and alchemy have looked for similar outcomes and they have both looked for it by a similar strategy of symbols. It isn’t, thusly, abnormal that in the eighteenth century, and maybe previously, we discover a joining of a significant part of the study of alchemy into that of Freemasonry.
Hermetic customs and Hermetic degrees were normal, and their relics are still to be discovered existing in degrees which don’t totally follow their cause to alchemy, however, which show a portion of it follows in their ceremonies.
The Twenty-eighth Degree of the Scottish Rite is altogether a Hermetic degree and entitles its heritage too in the title of Adept of Masonry, by which it is in some cases known.