Presence, Alchemy of Man, Hermeticism — Introduction

This page is the introductory entry for the second of the three axes of the Paret Method: presence as a discipline of state, inner alchemy as a technology for human transformation, and hermeticism as a tradition of transmission. For the overall vision and the other two axes (Fascination and Magnetism, CNV-Polyvagal) see the Main Page.

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The second axis of the Paret Method gathers the part of the Method that cannot be reduced either to mere technique of fascination or to mere neurophysiological explanation: it is the inner operational dimension. Here the person is not only the one who induces or receives a state, but the very material of the work. The language is that of operative alchemy — not museum alchemy, but alchemy as a technology for transforming the human being that the European hermetic tradition has handed down from the Renaissance through Paracelsus, Wirth, Crassellame, Cagliostro, Kircher, up to the contemporary synthesis of Marco Paret.

Threshold with the third axis

The alchemical and hermetic operations described in this axis are not allegories. They have a measurable neurophysiological counterpart described in the third axis of the Method, which the threshold page From the Hermetic to the Neurological — Correspondences articulates in detail: the Tria Prima corresponds to the three polyvagal circuits, Integral Presence to the stable activation of the ventral vagus, solve et coagula to the cycle of autonomous dissolution and recoagulation, the four stages of the work to the phases of neurophysiological transformation, VITRIOL and hara to enteric anchoring, Tummo to vagal thermogenesis, inner silence to the suspension of the default mode network. The human being is always the same: the hermetic axis and the neurological axis describe the same person from two sides.

The discipline of state

The entire Method rests on a base state: Integral Presence™. It is not a technique among others, but the operational foundation that makes every technique effective. It is the proper name that the Method gives to the quality of attention, stability, and perceptual openness that the hermetic tradition called sub specie interioritatis and that Eastern hesychasm called guarding of the heart.

• Integral Presence — the basic protocol
• Presence (hermetic tradition) — the historical root of the notion
• Sub Specie Interioritatis — the reading from within
• Inner Silence · Inner Silence — STOP VAK · Mental Emptiness
• Integrated State — convergence with the other two axes

The alchemical work as a technology of man

Alchemy, before being narrated as pseudoscience by 19th-century manuals, was for four hundred years a precise technology: a sequence of inner operations capable of transforming the person from lead to light. The Paret Method recovers this sequence as an operational structure, not as a metaphor.

4 Stages of the Alchemical Work

Nigredo (dissolution) → Albedo (purification) → Citrinitas (illumination) → Rubedo (reintegration). See also 4 Stages of the Alchemical Work — Path of Power and Cabbalistic.

Tria Prima

Sulfur (☉), Mercury (☿), Salt (♁) — the three Paracelsian principles from which human typologies derive. Key page linked to the Six Character Types of the Paret Method.

VITRIOL / HARA · Three Salts

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem — the formula that condenses the operational program of the work. Work on the hara, the three salts of the body.

Solve et Coagula (Strong Somnambulism) · basic elements · reference

Dissolution and recoagulation — the dynamic engine of the work, applied in the Method to the practice of strong somnambulism.

Rubedo / Reconstitution

The final stage: the person recomposed and reintegrated, no longer raw material but a conscious subject of their own state.

Secret Fire — Awakening of the Inner Fire

The secret heat of the alchemists — the inner fire that fuels the work.

Hermeticism as a tradition of transmission

The hermetic axis is not a shelf of rare books: it is a living chain of transmission that the Paret Method documents through its historically verifiable figures.

• Athanasius Kircher SJ, alchemist and magnetist — the 17th-century Jesuit who held together magnetism, alchemy, and Egyptian symbolism
• Philosophia Hermetica by Federico Gualdi — the 17th-century treatise that articulates the doctrine
• Santanelli — Santinelli — Crassellame · Santanelli and Magnetic Philosophy — the Italian line of magnetic hermeticism
• Hermetic Caduceus — the symbol that crosses all traditions
• Tetraktys (4 elements) · extended model — the structure of the four elements
• The Kybalion — the 20th-century synthesis of the seven hermetic principles
• Strict Templar Observance — the Templar-hermetic branch
• Rune (FRAOM) · Odic Runes · Odic Runes (sequence + meanings) · practical sequence — the runic-odic transmission as a variant of the work

The ways of the body

Inner alchemy has a non-Western parallel in Eastern systems: yoga, tantra, Taoist alchemy. The Method holds them together as different dialects of the same operational grammar.

• The Alchemical Body — Siddha, Hatha Yoga and Internal Alchemy (White 1996) — David Gordon White's synthesis: internal alchemy as the common matrix of yoga and tantra
• Serpent Wisdom — Dvija Caduceus Kundalini — kundalini as the Eastern variant of the secret fire
• Tummo · procedure · reference — Tibetan heat
• Tantra — Container (procedure and theory) · container capacity · reference — the containing dimension
• Trataka / Magnetic Gaze (basic) — Indian visual concentration, bridge with the first axis

The work on light

Light is not a metaphor in the alchemical work: it is an operational object. Working with light — physical and inner — is one of the techniques the Method inherits from the hermetic axis and applies in current practice.

• Sphere of Light · Bola de Luz · Presence Therapy
• Technique of the Ball of Light — Boule de Lumière
• LuxMind
• Salamini — Induction with Light (procedure) · Salamini Technique — Induction with Light
• Technique de l'Air (induction with 75W light)

Symbols, sound, sign

The hermetic axis has always also been a semiotic axis: symbols, sounds, forms are operators, not illustrations.

• Symbol Work
• Sound Symbolism — 14 ways to use sounds (NV) · complete version

Threshold entries with the other axes

Some entries stand on the threshold between the second axis and the other two, serving as bridges:

• Stephen Wolinsky — Interpersonal Trance and Trance by Observation · Wolinsky and deconceptualization — the bridge with the CNV-polyvagal axis via deconstruction of identities
• Wilhelm Reich — the bridge with the bodily-energetic dimension of the third axis
• The Magnetic Gaze (Paret 2011) — Marco Paret's text that articulates the magnetic gaze as an operator straddling fascination (axis I) and alchemical presence (axis II)
• Convergence of typological systems — key page showing how the alchemical Tria Prima converges with the bodily typologies of the third axis

The section to be expanded

This section of the axis is expanding. The following entries are planned or have stubs and will be progressively expanded:

• Oswald Wirth — alchemical and symbolic-cabbalistic corpus, tarot
• Paracelsus — the doctrine of the three principles and the archeus
• Cagliostro — Egyptian Freemasonry, Rite of Misraim (page of the rite already existing)
• Tabula Smaragdina — the foundational text of the tradition
• Arcana Arcanorum — the hierarchical initiatic doctrine
• Philosophical Mercury — the central substance of the work
• Athanor, Azoth, Prima Materia — the operational lexicon
• Logismoi — the psychology of hesychastic thoughts-passions, bridge with character analysis

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Wiki of the Paret Method · ISI-CNV · Université Européenne — primary sources and oral tradition preserved in the ISI-CNV archive.