Alchemy

Origin

Alchemy emerges in Hellenistic Egypt around the third century BCE, in the cultural fusion of Greek philosophy, Egyptian temple metallurgy, and Mesopotamian astrology that characterised the Ptolemaic period. The earliest named alchemists are Zosimos of Panopolis, who flourished around 300 CE, and the legendary Maria the Jewess, whose bain-marie water bath still bears her name in French and Italian cuisine. The Greek-Egyptian alchemists wrote in a deliberately obscure symbolic style, mixing chemical procedures with theological reflection, and attributed their tradition to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek name for the Egyptian god Thoth.

After the closure of the Alexandrian schools, alchemy passed to the Arab world and flourished there from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. The Persian polymath Jabir ibn Hayyan, called Geber in Latin, who flourished around 800 CE, systematised alchemical theory around the sulphur-mercury principle. Al-Razi (Rhazes, 854 to 925) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980 to 1037) refined laboratory practice. From the twelfth century, Latin translations introduced Arabic alchemy to Christian Europe. Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Arnaldus de Villanova, Nicolas Flamel, Paracelsus, John Dee, and Isaac Newton all worked within the tradition. Paracelsus (1493 to 1541) reoriented alchemy toward medicine. The Rosicrucian movement of the seventeenth century gave alchemy its mature Christian-Hermetic form.

Theory and method

Alchemical theory rests on a few core principles. The first is the unity of matter: all substances are forms of a single primordial substance, the prima materia, and can in principle be transformed one into another. The second is the doctrine of three principles: every substance contains sulphur (the combustible or active principle), mercury (the fluid or passive principle), and salt (the fixed or material principle), in different proportions. The third is the doctrine of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth, derived from Empedocles and Aristotle. The fourth is the principle of correspondence: as above, so below, the macrocosm and microcosm reflect each other.

Alchemical practice proceeds through a series of operations on a chosen material, conventionally divided into stages by colour. The four classical stages are nigredo (blackening, putrefaction, dissolution), albedo (whitening, purification), citrinitas (yellowing, illumination), and rubedo (reddening, completion, the philosopher's stone). Some treatises give seven, ten, or twelve stages. The operations include calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, and coagulation, organised in the formula Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, whose initials spell V.I.T.R.I.O.L. Each operation is simultaneously a chemical process in the flask and a transformation in the soul of the alchemist.

In practice

Practical alchemy survives today in three forms. Laboratory alchemy, sometimes called spagyrics, processes plant matter into tinctures by separation and recombination, following the methods of Paracelsus. The plant is fermented, distilled to extract the mercury (alcohol), the residue is calcined and leached to obtain the salt, and the three principles are recombined. The result is a tincture said to combine medicinal and energetic virtues. Manfred Junius and Frater Albertus published influential modern manuals of spagyrics in the twentieth century.

Spiritual alchemy uses the alchemical operations as a meditative path. Each stage of the work, from nigredo through rubedo, corresponds to a stage of inner transformation. The nigredo is the encounter with the shadow, the dissolution of false self-image. The albedo is purification and the recovery of the original face. The citrinitas is illumination of the intellect by spiritual light. The rubedo is the integration of soul and spirit. Carl Gustav Jung's Psychology and Alchemy (1944) and Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-1956) provide the foundational modern study of spiritual alchemy in depth-psychological terms. Combine alchemical reading with I Ching for cross-cultural transformation work.

Symbolic depth

The deepest claim of alchemy is the unity of inner and outer transformation. The work in the flask and the work in the soul are not two operations but one, separated only by the level at which they appear. The philosopher's stone, the goal of the great work, is at once a physical substance (allegedly capable of transmuting metals and prolonging life) and a state of consciousness (the integrated self, the unio mystica with the divine). The alchemists insisted that no one could attain the stone in matter who had not first attained it in soul.

Alchemy provides the symbolic backbone of much of Western esotericism. The marriage of sun and moon, of king and queen, of red king and white queen appears throughout Rosicrucian texts, in tarot (the Lovers, the Devil, Temperance, the Sun), and in Hermetic-Kabbalistic synthesis. The seven planets govern seven metals (Sun-gold, Moon-silver, Mercury-mercury, Venus-copper, Mars-iron, Jupiter-tin, Saturn-lead) and seven days of the week. Continue with Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Gnosticism, and Yin and Yang. The full glossary offers further study.

Also known as

• Hermetic Art
• Great Work
• Royal Art
• Spagyrics
• Ars Magna