Text: The Alchemy of the Voice at Ephrata Cloister Jan Stryz Michigan State University Alchemical transmutation is effected when male and female principles within the individual work to bring about the union of heaven and earth. It seems on one level to be a solitary pursuit. Yet tradition calls for the male alchemist to enlist the help of a female in some instances, in order to provide the complementary energy necessary to the alchemical process. In one sense, calling upon a human helper logically extends the principle that has the alchemist working with physical materials in that it turns the alchemist's attention to the apparently objective world. But it is also consistent with the alchemical world-view, which is concerned with relations played out between essential energies. Thus, the alchemist never merely acts upon inert objects, but enters into relations with living substances. No physical experimentation with metals or stones is involved in the alchemy that I will examine here. But under the direction of their founder and "Father," Conrad Beissel, the choral group at Ephrata cloister did engage in work that can be defined as alchemical. The principles that governed the composition of the tunes mirrored alchemical relations; the dietary regulations imposed on choral group members aimed at the spiritualization of the voice; and the relations between Beissel and the group members were tinctured with the drama of the alchemical love and war that played out within him. In the wilderness of Pennsylvania, during the mid-eighteenth century, Beissel invented his own idiosyncratic version of alchemy from those pieces of Boehmean theosophy he absorbed as a young man in Germany. http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Alchemy.html

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