Publisher's Synopsis
Russell Yoder's roots are in the radical Pietist tradition of Ephrata and the Universalist tradition of my Family's ancestral mentor and mage, George de Benneville. Common to both aspects of this heritage is an awareness of "alchemy" as a tool for effecting physical and spiritual change in our perceived reality -- perception being the key, of course; or as our seminal source of inspiration, Jacob Boehme has it,"our world must be made heaven, and heaven the world." Such an effectual outlook requires a wholistic approach, but its ground or foundation can be laid nowhere other than, or prior to, what is raised up as a newborn clarity in ourselves. The alchemists were savvy and self-honest enough to know that, first, our dark nights of faulty mis or pre-conception had to be dissolved and dispensed with; in order to conceive a Pearl of genuine worth. For even abiding within seemingly "right traditions" can be exposed as an iron-cold sarcophagus, leading to "death" rather than gold; as the alternate-reality "dream" of my experience at a latter day outpost of Ephrata suggests.* But if we die to those constricting parameters, whatever their nature, breakthrough does occur and precise insights emerge; because our alchemically-forged faculties have themselves become the light!** What you will find herein, then, are pithy penetrations of such light; offered by me as practical handles for engaging the wonderful realizations of those predecessor spiritual masters and practitioners, who, like us, aspired to a self-clarifying and world-reconciling awareness.
