In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the traditional use of metals and minerals in Ayurveda and explains what is important to know about metallic medicines.
Let me first say that although some metals and minerals are employed in South India, they are much more commonly used in North India. This is particularly because North India has seen a greater influence of the results, or as my mentor Vimalananda would say, the by-products, of Tantric alchemy within the Ayurvedic system of medicine.
If you are interested in reading about Tantric alchemy, I would encourage you to read The Alchemical Body by David Gordon White. It is a fascinating book, although it is also quite substantial at around six hundred pages. It explains how, particularly during the medieval period, yogis experimenting with alchemy worked closely with physicians. It also shows that alchemy is easier to understand when it is studied alongside the yogic practices that developed with it.
Speaking from the perspective of my mentor, Vimalananda, who was an expert in Tantric alchemy, minerals are very valuable as medicines because they last much longer than herbs. In fact, once they have been properly prepared, he believed that the older a mineral or metal became, the better it became. They require only very small quantities and do not need special methods of preservation or storage.
According to him, the proper use of herbs might allow someone to live four or five hundred years. But if metals are used properly, it may even be possible to live for thousands of years. For people like us, however, metals are valued in Ayurveda because they have the potential to produce powerful effects within the body.
Gold and silver are generally used in a highly refined form. In Ayurveda, they are first beaten into extremely thin gold leaf or silver leaf. Well-prepared gold leaf may be only three or four atoms thick. The leaf is then combined with herbs and repeatedly incinerated. This traditional process was intended to produce what was understood as monoatomic gold or monoatomic silver.
Other metals, especially copper and iron, are generally prepared in the form of oxides through repeated incineration. Heavy metals, particularly arsenic, lead, and mercury, are usually prepared as sulphides. Mercury is regarded as the most important of the metallic medicines.
Sulphides are used because the sulphur atom binds strongly with the heavy metal. When these preparations are properly purified and correctly prepared, they are believed to circulate through the body and produce beneficial effects without chemically reacting with the tissues, much like the noble metals, gold and silver.
When using metallic medicines, especially those containing heavy metals, it is absolutely essential to know that they have been properly prepared by a reliable manufacturer. Otherwise, they can cause serious problems. I personally know people who have experienced difficulties after using improperly prepared Ayurvedic metallic medicines.
One other substance worth mentioning is mica, which is actually the name of a group of minerals. Mica is regarded as an excellent general tonic. It is especially noteworthy because it is traditionally considered best when it has been incinerated one thousand times.
In fact, some yogis would make the preparation of one-thousand-times-incinerated mica a sadhana in itself. It could take seven, eight, ten years, or even longer to prepare an exceptional medicine, while continuously reciting mantras throughout the entire process.