Madame Blavatsky's generous and thorough coverage of the subject of ancient magickal lamps in here "Isis Unveiled" continues:

Asbestos, which was known to the Greeks under the name of... or inextinguishable, is a kind of stone, which once set on fire, cannot be quenched, as Pliny and Solinus tell us. Albertus Magnus describes it as a stone of an iron color, found mostly in Arabia. It is generally found covered with a hardly-perceptible oleaginous moisture, which upon being approached with a lighted candle will immediately catch fire. Many were the experiments made by chemists to extract from it this indissoluble oil, but they are alleged to have all failed. But, are our chemists prepared to say that the above operation is entirely impracticable? If this oil could once be extracted there can be no question but it would afford a perpetual fuel. The ancients might well boast of having had the secret of it, for, we repeat, there are experimenters living at this day who have done so successfully. Chemists who have vainly tried it, have asserted that the fluid or liquor chemically extracted from that stone was more of a watery than oily nature, and so impure and feculent that it could not burn; others affirmed, on the contrary, that the oily, as soon as exposed to the air, became so thick and solid that it would hardly flow, and when lighted emitted no flame, but escaped in dark smoke; whereas the lamps of the ancients are alleged to have burned with the purest and brightest flame, without emitting the slightest smoke. Kircher, who shows the practicability of purifying it, thinks it so difficult as to be accessible only to the highest adepts of alchemy.

St. Augustine, who attributes the whole of these arts to the Christian scape-goat, the devil, is flatly contradicted by

Ludovicius Vives,[] who shows that all such would-be magical operations are the work of man's industry and deep study of the hidden secrets of nature, wonderful and miraculous as they may seem. Podocattarus, a Cypriote knight, [] had both flax and linen made out of another asbestos, which Poracchius says [] he saw at house of this knight. Pliny calls this flax linum vinum, and Indian flax, and says it is done our of asbeston sive asbestinum, a kind of flax of which they made cloth that was to be cleaned by throwing it in the fire. He adds that it was as precious as pearls and diamonds, for not only was it very rarely found but exceedingly difficult to be woven, on account of the shortness of the threads. Being beaten flat with a hammer, it is soaked in warm water, and then dried its filaments can be easily divided into threads like flax and woven into cloth. Pliny asserts he has seen some towels made of it, and assisted in an experiment off purifying them by fire. Baptista Porta also states that he found the same, at Venice, in the hands of a Cyprian lady; he calls this discovery of Alchemy a secretum optimum.

Dr. Grew, in his description of the curiosities in Gresham College (seventeenth century), believes the art, as well as the use of such linen, altogether lost, but it appears that is was not quite so, for we find the Museum Septalius boasting of possession of thread, fiber, ropes, paper, and net-work done of this material as late as 1726; some of these articles made, moreover, by the own hand of Septalius, as we learn in Greenhill's Art of Embalming, pg. 361. 'Grew', says the author, 'seems to make Asbestinus Lapis and Amianthus all one, and calls them in English the thrum-stone'; he says it grows in short threads or thrums, from about a quarter of an inch in length, parallel and glossy, as fine as those small, single threads the silk-worms spin, and very flexible like to flax or tow. That the secret is not altogether lost is proved by the fact that some Buddhist convents in China and Thibet are in possession of it. Whether made of the fibre of one or the other of such stones, we cannot say, but we have seen in a monastery of female Talapoins, a yellow gown, such as the Buddhist monks wear, thrown into a large pit, full of glowing coals, and taken out two hours afterward as clear as if it had been washed with soap and water.

Similar severe trials of asbestos having occurred in Europe and America in our own times, the substance is applied to various industrial purposes, such as roofing-cloth, incombustible dresses and fire-proof safes. A very valuable deposit on Staten Island, in New York harbor, yields the material in bundles, like dry wood, with fibres of several feet in length. The finer variety of asbestos, called... (undefiled) by the ancients, took its name from its white, satin-like lustre.

The ancients made the wick of their perpetual lamps from another stone also, which they called Lapis Carystius. The inhabitants of the city of Carystos seemed to have made no secret of it, as Mattheus Roderus says in his work ["Comment. on the 77th Epigram of Sixth Book of Martial] that they 'kemb'd, spun, and wove this downy stone into mantles, table-linen, which when foul they purified again with fire instead of water'. Pausanius, in Atticus, and Plutarch ["De Defectu Oraculorum"] also asserts that the wicks of lamps were made from this stone; but Plutarch adds it was not more to be found in his time. Licetus is inclined to believe that the perpetual lamps used by the ancients in the sepulchres had no wicks at all, as very few have been found; but Ludovicus Vives is of a contrary opinion and affirms that he has seen quite a number of them.

Licetus, moreover, is firmly persuaded that a 'pabulum for fire may be given with such an equal temperament as cannot be consumed but after a long series of ages, and so that neither the matter shall exhale but strongly resist the fire, nor the fire consume the matter, but be restrained by it, as it were with a chain, from flying upward'. To this, Sir Thomas Browne [], speaking of lamps which have burned many hundred years, included in small bodies, observes that 'this process from the purity of the oil, which yields no fuliginous exhalations to suffocate the fire, for if air had nourished the flame, then it had not continued many minutes, for it would certainly in that case have been spent and wasted by the fire'. But he adds, "the art of preparing this inconsumable oil is lost'.

Not quite, and time will prove it..."

These many passages from Madame Blavatsky's indispensable "Isis Unveiled" give us quite a bit to consider. In addition, there are many other possible sources. Manly Palmer Hall, in his "Secret Teachings of All Ages", repeats many of these same references, and provides other additional ones:

(Pg. LXI-LXII ): "Numerous authorities have written on the subject of ever-burning lamps. W. Wynn Westcott estimates the number of writers who have given the subject consideration as more than 150, and H. P. Blavatsky as 173... Ever-burning lamps have been discovered in all parts of the world. Not only the Mediterranean countries but also India, Tibet, China, and South America...

In A.D. 1500 on the island of Nesis, in he Bay of Naples, a magnificent marble vault was opened in which was found a lamp still alight which had been placed there before the Christian Era.

According to the Fama Fraternalis, the crypt of Christian Rosencreutz when opened 120 years after his death was found to be brilliantly illuminated by a perpetual lamp suspended from the ceiling.

Numa Pompilius, King of Rome and magician of considerable power, caused a perpertual light to burn in the dome of a temple he had created in honor of an elemental being...' (Repeated to emphasize Pompilius as magician)

'It is now believed that the wicks of these perpetual lamps were made of braided or woven asbestos, called by the alchemists salamander's wool, and that the fuel was one of the products of alchemical research."

Fortunately, while never has our need for the secrets of such unconsumable fuels been greater, never has our modern vocabulary of principles and effects that we might apply been better developed. Indeed, its enticing to think what could be achieved, and how rapidly, if scientists in general had retained the collective courage and integrity to focus on the issue at hand.

While we can already set aside what may be any genuine reference to the asbestos that we are familiar with, since we have been made aware of its disease-producing dangers, we can bear in mind that that the ancients too may have been familiar with such dangers, and may have had a far better understanding of its safe utilization than we. More importantly, we can observe here not only the distinction of various types and the broader assignment of its very name to things which may be in fact very different in nature, as well as keeping in mind the peculiar alchemist's habit of seeming to be talking about something in particular when they say that they are not, and not talking about something in particular when they say that they are, as is invariably true with many of their references to "salt, mercury and sulfur" but indeed promises to happen a great deal elsewhere in their writings.

Being that the alchemists were involved with this phenomenon, in fact, we can already attempt jumping to the conclusions that they may have perfected additional applications of the muonic or "exotic matter" that seems to underly the physical chemistry of perhaps both their goldmaking and their production of alchemic elixirs of longevity.

We could also fairly safely speculate that these processes may also have been graced by them with the principles of time-reversal that appear to be so integral to their feats involving the memory of matter, of which none are more memorable than palingenics, the very feat of resurrection itself. The phoenix rising from its own ashes after cremating itself on the flaming pyre, after all, has the fiery symbolism to also include this feat of the ever-burning flame.

This being the case, here is a phenomenon where an incredible amount of mileage toward explication and mastery may be gotten from the physics of Nikola Tesla and even more importantly, Thomas Bearden. Not ironically, there is at least one of these processes, which here calls for another material which modern sensibilities know better than to emulate if it is even intended as it may be read, involving mercury, that may closely resemble a crude form of the "degenerate semiconductor" that was regarding as having much promise in fulfilling strategies of producing free energy.

So, too, is there a great deal of room for applying the concept of exotic matter in regards to the necessary physical properties of such lamps. The premise we are given, that a molecule with a only a single orbital muon can have 200 times a given physical property of its normal counterpart, could immediately give us thoughts of fuels that burn hundred of times slower, or yield hundreds of times more energy, and this of course is only a mere beginning.

Such a mechanism is almost required, in fact. While many theories have dismissed these miracles, thinking that they are easily explainable by natural fuels seeping through crevices into the lamps, the lamps were not always necessarily positioned as to make this possible, and relatively few and far between are the hydrocarbons that could sustain a flame for centuries without an accumulation of soot, which is noticeably absent from these accounts. Even if we imply that the ancients mastered the art of total efficiency of combustible materials (indeed, Amerindian ways of building fires are efficient enough to be "smokeless"), there simply isn't always a necessary source of oxygen without resorting to explanations that involve the highly sophisticated technology that seems so characteristic of the ancients.

The Egyptians did possess a smokeless fuel, we are told; we read that they soaked torches in an oil extracted from the toxic castor bean, a rare smokeless fuel, so they could move through the pyramid passages without leaving soot marks on the ceilings. While this presents no solution to the riddle of the ancient lamps, it is interesting that there are strains of the castor bean available today (such as the Frances Hoffman collection from Deep Diversity) whose seeds bear resemblance to Scarab beetles.

Within the use of the Doctrine of Signatures, for example, the ancients might have suspected this to indicate that these yielded some principle which could be isolated by the alchemist and applied to their elixirs (it is inevitable to wonder if the exotic properties of this natural substance arise from exotic matter) while the Doctorine, providing for ever deeper levels of utilization along the same basic theme, allows that they might have been able to adapt this natural product in some instances to utilization in the perpetual lamps.

(Similarly, Bird and Thompkins mention in their work on the Mexican pyramids that the Mesoamericans also knew of a smokeless fuel produced from the maguey plant, a plant that has even stronger symbolic and ceremonial significance.)

The time-reversal feats of the alchemists put them also very close to the edge of mastery of holography, and perhaps if we consider the total esoteric context of their work, even further that that. That such an eternal flame might be in essence a four-dimensional hologram, one whose fourth dimensional properties give it movement and continuity, like a holographic movie, is not the least bit absurd. In fact, it might easily be expected. Hence, this is simply a logical, if relatively crude extension of the Tesla and Bearden science as "scalar thermics", as I have happened to call it as it appears on the pages of this site.

The fact that the kindling and quenching of these lamps is so easily reminiscent of the kindling and quenching effects that are part of Bearden's physics dissertations need not be any sort of coincidence.

There are routes of explanation again in the area of physical chemistry; the observation that certain aromatic materials do not seem to observe necessary limits to their quantity or duration has proven essential in personally extending the concept of anyonic, quantum, or fractional-quantum matter to the subject of ectoplasm and any other stuff which is anomalously abundant. Such a broad concept walks remarkably close to lending strong credence to the bulk of what is said about the Egyptians by Madame Blavatsky here, were we not willing and able to grant them credit for more liberal and ingenious thought that we were willing to believe it all, sight unseen. (Their prowess seems chronically and tragically understated by virtually every author, of course).

We can of course expect them to have been most imaginative, and we could even wind up finding that the eternal flame is merely a symbolic means to an end, a different incidental way of approaching the science of elixirs than the goldmaking which is also so often reinforced as being purely incidental to that goal, that like the phoenix, the eternal flame is a close symbol to the eternal flame of eternal human physical life.

Even while some glowing stones may merely be inventive and sophisticated use of substances such as Canton phosopor, the archaic Chinese acquaintance with is desrcibed by Joseph Needham in his encyclopedic work, there is still even a hint of fractality and other non-linear effects in the accounts of glowing stones on columns, while we are into the holographic; in the presently developing interpretation of Hildegard of Bingen's visions as a remarkably advanced science of holographic and gravitational effects at the atomic level, the general diagrams of atoms who contain the holographic data to "know" they are a part of this planet, appearing much like the representation of a planet as Einsteinian space-time curvature, bear considerable resemblance to such forms.

It is even possible that such an application of "as above, so below", such an alignment of forms at different scales, results in a significant utility. We can barely rule that out any more than we have yet bothered to take the "Hildegardian" physics and apply them to such novel constructs as ball lightning, which may use the same principle with peculiar transposition of formative information between differing scales.

Of course, the principles of ectoplasm as they are coming to appear to be also allow us not only that the glowing stones can accumulate their requirements from the ground, but particularly these unquenchable lamps may be capable accumulators of material that we do not ordinarily consider within their sphere of availability.

These, however, are merely some of the possibilities that lie farthest from the beaten path for many of us, in spite of their very close proximity to known and established physical fact even through our sciences. There remain a dazzling number of more conventional possibilities that can be attempted as well. Simple principles such as those of the interactions of magnetic fields with ions in a flame have a considerable amount of potential to be applied in such a manner as to facilitate the simulation of these perpetual lamps.

There are also a great many more possibilities on the path less chosen, although these possibilities are again no more distant from the reaches of our present science to explain. Consider, for example, the principle of inversion. Such a principle is familiar to many occultists, and easily has many counterparts in physics, including a conservative estimation of the consequences of exceeding various limits so that the principle of reactance is displayed. Such an estimate tends to provide us with the premise that systems which exceed a certain characteristic, such as frequency will not only behave differently if that variable is changed, but may provide us with the concept that the most conservative difference in their behavior is that they will act oppositely.

Such a principle may be applied time and time again to the magickal sciences, and can be evidenced in such places as at Glastonbury, where the ring of Hawthorn trees, trees renowned for ability to avoid lightning strikes, have had to be fitted with lightning arresters because of the propensity of these particular trees for attracting the lightning.

While initially awkward, the notion that the magickal science can invert the properties of a combustible so that, for example, the lamp which succeeds in the presence of oxygen can be made to succeed in the absence of it, may also exhibit therefore that property of failing in its presence so that when ancient sepulchers are opened, these lights extinguish. Had their discoverers thought to places them in evacuated jars, perhaps with some other specific small help, it is quite possible that their flames would have resumed.

Just as we may involve the science of magnetic fields and ions toward explaining the magickal prevention of fire, and here to explaining the magickal empowering of fire, we may also apply the inversive reasoning to those magickal means of prohibiting fire, to yield yet another basis for this sort of technology.

There are nuances of reference to certain botanicals here also, which would have been identified for use in these eternal lamps probably though the use of the Doctrine of Signatures, and they do include mugwort, whose magnetic properties and possible content of exotic matter may go a long way toward being able to participate in initiating the commencement of these mystical lights.

In fact, there are even softer nuances here if a student is fully prepared to dwell on them. There is the mention of Callimachos, in an in fact peculiar and incredulous fashion. Such are the ancient allusions, their nonsensical nature only need serve to grasp the attention rather than result in dismissal of the matter, and here for not only the verifiable fact that Callimachos in "his" epigrams writes of the ancient lamps, but for the interpretive fact that these epigrams have their existence justified by normally serving as highly compressed bundles of instructive allusions. Several of these, such as the epigram to "Kynopion" and that which speaks of "the flit" are so rich in such values that they are preposterously easy to demonstrate, outside of the length of such a task.

Callimachos writes, (here from the Lombardi/Raynor translation):

"Kalliston, daughter of Kritias, dedicated me, a twenty-nozzle lamp
To the god of Kanopos, ornate votive offering for her child Apellis
See me lit and exclaim, "The Evening Star has fallen".

Or as is found in the Mair version (Loeb Classical Library)

"To the god of Canopus did Callistion, daughter of Critias, dedicate me- a lamp enriched with twenty nozzles;
a vow for her child Apellis, Looking on my light thou wilt say, "Hesperus, how art thou fallen?"

And again in the first source:

"Call me Pamphilos, comic witness to the victory of Anaxagorax, the Rhodian playright, grossly comic;
Not just the usual love-wracked mask, but one side crinkled like roasted figs and the nozzled lamps of Isis"

Even without the probable allusions through puns made of the proper nouns, matched to similar more familiar forms and their context, there are considerable clues here, and even perhaps more inspiration to be made of the particular angle of the allusions. That the nozzles of a lamp are like figs may suggest through "sympathetic magick", or more reliably, the Doctrine of Signatures, that figs may play a role in some forms of these devices.

That figs should happen to resemble the brain (superficially as well as chemically) alerts us that to the ancient reasoning, they may have attempted if not succeeded to use the brain-like botanicals in the course of consecrating oracular heads- the forerunners of those all-knowing, speaking skulls to be found in all good artworks describing the alchemist's laboratory, and both the establishment and permanence of these artificial intelligences may strike us as related and applicable, but we are also thus reminded that of the candle that habitually adorns these skulls, and their possible peculiar properties and function! Such a thing as has been suggested by such an allusion is of course quite a good idea, although there are things much deeper into physics for these references to allude to as well.

Likewise, does the mention of Hesperus promise to conjure up a vast amount of creative thought applied to the matter, as do the other references and allusions. One can see in these passages, for example, another relevance to the peculiar half-truths attached to the Egyptian lamps, basically that the physics of these lamps can be based on what is in fact the ideal physics on which to base human physical immortality.

We can also consider classical references for any ramification of twenty nozzles corresponding to an atomic number or atomic weight, of perhaps an element with appropriately non-linear tendencies as to serve the goal of the perpetual lamp's creation.

This is not all of course. While the magickal iconography of the matter may easily take us to such unindicated places as the observance that the fig which Callimachos mentions outright belongs to the family Moraceae, to which the Mulberry, Morus sp. belongs. The very fact that the Mulberry is host to the silkworms who produce fibers of silk has a curious harmony with the quest for some lampwick which is never destroyed. While we can have a guess that this natural product, silk, may have been used as a starting material, and accomplished with some knowledge allegorically woven into the knowledge of the Morae, the thread-spinning fates who gave the genus Morus its name, we might as well anticipate that Heraclitus might in his way not only tell us that these Fates keep the planet in their orbits, but they also keep this wick perpetually whole and alight.

It isn't that far from there to even more "unofficial" interpretations of myth, that may point all the way to exotic matter that might be found in the epigram alluded to by the other, the epigram of Kynopion, which so eloquently evokes Knotgrass, to a superficially similar plant, oregano, some forms of which those who are avid herb gardeners might already know from experience tend to yield an astonishing and mysterious quantity of oil upon harvest, especially if such a harvest has followed any frost.

I have of course collected these upper leaves and seed heads at various times, to have the paper plates they were gathered on soon stained with an proportionally astonishing quantity of oil, stained pink for apparently having taken up pigment from the plant, and if this material's origins include some defiance quantum statistical defiance of the normal limitations of quantity that apply to matter, or if they had pulled a portion of it from the very earth as mediums may summon ectoplasm, I'd not be the least bit surprised. Nor can I even begin here to recount the apparent allusions from ancient literature which imply exactly such a thing as that this was known and utilized by the ancients.

Various oreganos, through riddles and allusions, seem to have received the highest celebration in ancient literature. One cannot help, for example, smirking not at the lewdness of Catulus' references to such things as cleavage and "the moldy old scrolls of seers", but at the shrewdness of how well they serve to capitalize on recognizable applications of the Doctrine of Signatures to the Cretan oregano, and its applications to daily life in return.

All this, of course, is only the beginning of the esoterica that could be enlisted in the quest to recreate these fabled flames.

Of course, it would only be fair to also include the possible physics of Aladdin's lamp; that the perpetual flame need only be a very primitive from of the enduring artificial intelligence that is called a genie, or d'jinn, must be emphasized. The possible identity of this human-like billowing cloud of stuff as a quantum computer made of quantum matter is not at all different from the idea that an inexhaustible fuel may be possible if the matter is in the proper quantum state.

Even the scientific principle whimsically and audaciously known as "Maxwell's demon" can be evoked to account for rudimentary effects needed to sustain such a flame, in fact.

Also possible is the notion that the modern article (which appeared in Science News magazine) whose title informs us of "Late Atomic Bursts from Cracked Crystal" is giving us our initial introduction to even more amazing properties of crystalline material, such as some of the materials used in the wicks of ancient magickal lamps, of perhaps excited crystals sustaining an output of certain atoms, and ones real enough to support such a flame, in this probable counterpart of piezoelectric output. We seem to tragically understate the fact that piezoelectric crystals keep producing various output without ever questioning exactly how they replenish themselves!

Such principles may well have been known to many of the alchemists, and may represent the difference between a Comte de St. Germain whose claims of repairing flaws in precious gems were a quackery consisting of saturating the flaws with certain oils, and a more likely portrait of a St. Germain who typically did exactly what he promised in these matters

Some aspects of Prigogyne resonators may be introduced into such a premise as well, quickly bringing us right back to the physics of Thomas Bearden, who uses the principle to account for the mysterious glowing balls of light so often included amongst odd phenomena.

All of this to prove, perhaps, as if the greatest blessing of an enchanted perpetual lamp were to be a literally spiritual illumination, that man seems to have wallowed in the rumor of his own mortality, has prematurely declared himself incontrovertibly mortal, and then projected this limitation onto his reality. What is a man who insists himself to be mortal not in his own mind in danger of running out of?

As Buckminster Fuller has said, "There's no energy crisis, there's a crisis of ignorance".

Indeed, in Einsteinian terms, energy is all that creation contains, and we are not running out anytime soon. Such a man who superimposes his own erroneous self-image upon the workings of his reality, science, and utility, is both the victim and the perpetrator of the most heinous myths of scarcity. It is endlessly intriguing how the man who believes himself to have an honest chance at physical immortality may have his greed so magickally throttled by quickly coming to realize that neither his life nor the stuff of the universe, need to be so robotically -nor so loudly- proclaimed as subject to fictitious austere limitations.

To know otherwise, and to glimpse the stuff of mastery of the appropriate arts, is the brightest light the ancients could ever have owned, and the brightest fire they could have shared with we who followed. Accepting that light in the here and the now, however, even while it is a matter of public policy, is still a matter of individual choice.

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