Saturday, February 7, 2009

Intro to Alchemy


Alchemy is part of the mystical and mystery traditions of both East and West. In the West, it dates to ancient Egypt, where adepts first developed it as an early form of chemistry and metallurgy. Egyptians alchemists used their art to make alloys, dyes, perfumes and cosmetic jewelry, and to embalm the dead.

The early Arabs made significant contributions to alchemy, such as by emphasizing the mysticism of numbers (quantities and lengths of time for processes). The Arabs also gave us the term 'alchemy', from the Arabic term 'alchimia', which loosely translated means 'the Egyptian art'.

During medieval and Renaissance times, alchemy spread through the Western world, and was further developed by Kabbalists, Rosicrucians, astrologers and other occultists. It functioned on two levels: mundane and spiritual. On a mundane level, alchemists sought to find a physical process to convert base metals such as lead into gold. On a spiritual level, alchemists worked to purify themselves by eliminating the "base" material of the self and achieving the 'gold' of enlightenment.

By Renaissance times, many alchemists believed that the spiritual purification was necessary in order to achieve the mundane transformations of metals.

The alchemists relied heavily upon their dreams, inspirations and visions for guidance in perfecting their art. In order to protect their secrets, they recorded diaries filled with mysterious symbols rather than text. These symbols remain exceptionally potent for changing states of consciousness.

Philosophers Stone



Nature and significance

That both astrology and alchemy may be regarded as fundamental aspects of thought is indicated by their apparent universality. It is notable, however, that the evidence is not equally substantial in all times and places. Evidence from ancient Middle America (Aztecs, Mayans) is still almost nonexistent; evidence from India is tenuous and from ancient China, Greece, and Islamic lands is only relatively more plentiful. A single manuscript of some 80,000 words is the principal source for the history of Greek alchemy. Chinese alchemy is largely recorded in about 100 "books" that are part of the Taoist canon. Neither Indian nor Islamic alchemy has ever been collected, and scholars are thus dependent for their knowledge of the subject on occasional allusions in works of natural philosophy and medicine, plus a few specifically alchemical works.


The chemistry of alchemy


The alchemist added the action on metals of a number of corrosive salts, mainly the vitriols (copper and iron sulfates), alums (the aluminum sulfates of potassium and ammonium), and the chlorides of sodium and ammonium. And he made much of arsenic's property of colouring metals. All of these materials, except the chloride of ammonia, were known in ancient times. Known as sal ammoniac in the West, nao sha in China, nao sadar in India, and nushadir in Persia and Arabic lands, the chloride of ammonia first became known to the West in the Chou-i ts'an t'ung ch'i, a Chinese treatise of the 2nd century AD. It was to be crucial to alchemy, for on sublimation it dissociates into antagonistic corrosive materials, ammonia and hydrochloric acid, which readily attack the metals. Until the 9th century it seems to have come from a single source, the Flame Mountain (Huo-yen Shan) near T'u-lu-p'an (Turfan), in Central Asia.



"Transmutation" is the key word characterizing alchemy, and it may be understood in several ways: in the changes that are called chemical, in physiological changes such as passing from sickness to health, in a hoped-for transformation from old age to youth, or even in passing from an earthly to a supernatural existence. Alchemical changes seem always to have been positive, never involving degradation except as an intermediate stage in a process having a "happy ending." Alchemy aimed at the great human "goods": wealth, longevity, and immortality.



Regional variations

Chinese alchemy

Neither in China nor in the West can scholars approach with certitude the origins of alchemy, but the evidences in China appear to be slightly older. Indeed, Chinese alchemy was connected with an enterprise older than metallurgy--i.e., medicine. Belief in physical immortality among the Chinese seems to go back to the 8th century BC, and belief in the possibility of attaining it through drugs to the 4th century BC. The magical drug, namely the "elixir of life" (elixir is the European word), is mentioned about that time, and that most potent elixir, "drinkable gold," which was a solution (usually imaginary) of this corrosion-resistant metal, as early as the 1st century BC--many centuries before it is heard of in the West.

Although non-Chinese influences (especially Indian) are possible, the genesis of alchemy in China may have been a purely domestic affair. It emerged during a period of political turmoil, the Warring States Period (from the 5th to the 3rd century BC), and it came to be associated with Taoism--a mystical religion founded by the 6th-century-BC sage Lao-tzu--and its sacred book, the Tao-te Ching ("Classic of the Way of Power"). The Taoists were a miscellaneous collection of "outsiders"--in relation to the prevailing Confucians--and such mystical doctrines as alchemy were soon grafted onto the Taoist canon. What is known of Chinese alchemy is mainly owing to that graft, and especially to a collection known as Y¸n chi ch'i ch'ien ("Seven Tablets in a Cloudy Satchel"), which is dated 1023. Thus, sources on alchemy in China (as elsewhere) are compilations of much earlier writings.

The oldest known Chinese alchemical treatise is the Chou-i ts'an t'ung ch'i ("Commentary on the I Ching"). In the main it is an apocryphal interpretation of the I Ching ("Classic of Changes"), an ancient classic especially esteemed by the Confucians, relating alchemy to the mystical mathematics of the 64 hexagrams (six-line figures used for divination). Its relationship to chemical practice is tenuous, but it mentions materials (including sal ammoniac) and implies chemical operations. The first Chinese alchemist who is reasonably well known was Ko Hung (AD 283-343), whose book Pao-p'u-tzu (pseudonym of Ko Hung) contains two chapters with obscure recipes for elixirs, mostly based on mercury or arsenic compounds. The most famous Chinese alchemical book is the Tan chin yao ch¸eh ("Great Secrets of Alchemy"), probably by Sun Ssu-miao (AD 581-after 673). It is a practical treatise on creating elixirs (mercury, sulfur, and the salts of mercury and arsenic are prominent) for the attainment of immortality, plus a few for specific cures for disease and such other purposes as the fabrication of precious stones.




Indian alchemy



As in China and the West, alchemy in India came to be associated with religious mysticism, but much later--not until the rise of Tantrism (an esoteric, occultic, meditative system), AD 1100-1300. To Tantrism are owed writings that are clearly alchemical (such as the 12th-century Rasarnava, or "Treatise on Metallic Preparations").

From the earliest records of Indian natural philosophy, which date from the 5th-3rd centuries BC, theories of nature were based on conceptions of material elements (fire, wind, water, earth, and space), vitalism ("animated atoms"), and dualisms of love and hate or action and reaction. The alchemist coloured metals and on occasion "made" gold, but he gave little importance to that. His six metals (gold, silver, tin, iron, lead, and copper), each further subdivided (five kinds of gold, etc.), were "killed" (i.e., corroded) but not "resurrected," as was the custom of Western alchemy. Rather, they were killed to make medicines. Although "the secrets of mercurial lore" became part of the Tantric rite, mercury seems to have been much less important than in China.


Hellenistic alchemy


He is represented by a treatise called Physica et mystica ("Natural and Mystical Things"), a kind of recipe book for dyeing and colouring but principally for the making of gold and silver. The recipes are stated obscurely and are justified with references to the Greek theory of elements and to astrological theory. Most end with the phrase "One nature rejoices in another nature; one nature triumphs over another nature; one nature masters another nature," which authorities variously trace to the Magi (Zoroastrian priests), Stoic pantheism (a Greek philosophy concerned with nature), or to the 4th-century-BC Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was the first of a number of such aphorisms over which alchemists were to speculate for many centuries.

In 1828 a group of ancient papyrus manuscripts written in Greek was purchased in Thebes (Egypt), and about a half-century later it was noticed that among them, divided between libraries in Leyden (The Netherlands) and Stockholm, was a tract very like the Physica et mystica. It differed, however, in that it lacked the former's theoretical embellishments and stated in some recipes that only fraudulent imitation of gold and silver was intended. Scholars believe that this kind of work was the ancestor both of the Physica et mystica and of the ordinary artist's recipe book. The techniques were ancient. Archaeology has revealed metal objects inlaid with colours obtained by grinding metals with sulfur, and Homer's description (8th century BC) of the shield of Achilles gives the impression that the artist in his time was virtually able to paint in metal.

Democritus is praised by most of the other authors in the Venice-Paris manuscript, and he is much commented upon. But only Zosimos shows what had become of alchemy after Bolos of Mende. His theory is luxuriant in imagery, beginning with a discussion of "the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and binding the spirits within bodies" and continuing in the same vein. The "base" metals are to be "ennobled" (to gold) by killing and resurrecting them, but his practice is full of distillation and sublimation, and he is obsessed with "spirits." Theory and practice are joined in the concept that success depends upon the production of a series of colours, usually black, white, yellow, and purple, and that the colours are to be obtained through Theion hydor (divine or sulfur water--it could mean either).

Zosimos credits these innovations mainly to Maria (sometimes called "the Jewess"), who invented the apparatus, and to Agathodaimon, probably a pseudonym. Neither is represented (beyond Zosimos' references) in the Venice-Paris manuscript, but a tract attributed to Agathodaimon, published in 1953, shows him to be preoccupied with the colour sequence and complicating it by using arsenic instead of sulfur. Thus, the colour-producing potentialities of chemistry were considerable by the time of Zosimos.

Zosimos also shows that alchemical theory came to focus on the idea that there exists a substance that can bring about the desired transformation instantly, magically, or, as a modern chemist might say, catalytically. He called it "the tincture," and had several. It was also sometimes called "the powder" (xerion), which was to pass through Arabic into Latin as elixir and finally (signifying its inorganic nature) as the "philosopher's stone," "a stone which is not a stone," as the alchemists were wont to say. It was sometimes called a medicine for the rectification of "base" or "sick" metals, and from this it was a short step to view it as a drug for the rectification of human maladies. Zosimos notes the possibility, in passing. When the objective of alchemy became human salvation, the material constitution of the elixir became less important than the incantations that accompanied its production. Synesius, the last author in the Venice-Paris manuscript, already defined alchemy as a mental operation, independent of the science of matter.


Arabic alchemy

Arabic alchemy is as mysterious as Greek in its origins, and the two seem to have been significantly different. The respect in which Physica et mystica was held by the Greek alchemists was bestowed by the Arabs on a different work, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistos, the reputed Hellenistic author of various alchemical, occultic, and theological works. Beginning "That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above," it is brief, theoretical, and astrological. Hermes "the thrice great" (Trismegistos) was a Greek version of the Egyptian god Thoth and the supposed founder of an astrological philosophy that is first noted in 150 BC. The Emerald Tablet, however, comes from a larger work called Book of the Secret of Creation, which exists in Latin and Arabic manuscripts and was thought by the Muslim alchemist ar-Razi to have been written during the reign of Caliph al-Ma'mun (AD 813-833), though it has been attributed to the 1st-century-AD pagan mystic Apollonius of Tyana.

Some scholars have suggested that Arabic alchemy descended from a western Asiatic school and that Greek alchemy was derived from an Egyptian school. As far as is known, the Asiatic school was not Chinese or Indian. What is known is that Arabic alchemy was associated with a specific city in Syria, Harran, which seems to have been a fountainhead of alchemical notions. And it is possible that the distillation ideology and its spokeswoman, Maria--as well as Agathodaimon--represented the alchemy of Harran, which presumably migrated to Alexandria and was incorporated into the alchemy of Zosimos.


Those who practiced it were even more interested in literal gold making than had been the Greeks. The most well-attested and probably the greatest Arabic alchemist was ar-Razi (c. 850-923/924), a Persian physician who lived in Baghdad. The most famous was Jabir ibn Hayyan, now believed to be a name applied to a collection of "underground writings" produced in Baghdad after the theological reaction against science. In any case, the Jabirian writings are very similar to those of ar-Razi.

Ar-Razi classified the materials used by the alchemist into "bodies" (the metals), stones, vitriols, boraxes, salts, and "spirits," putting into the latter those vital (and sublimable) materials, mercury, sulfur, orpiment and realgar (the arsenic sulfides), and sal ammoniac. Much is made of sal ammoniac, the reactive powers of which seem to have given Western alchemy a new lease on life. Ar-Razi and the Jabirian writers were really trying to make gold, through the catalytic action of the elixir. Both wrote much on the compounding of "strong waters," an enterprise that was ultimately to lead to the discovery of the mineral acids, but students have been no more able to find evidence of this discovery in the writings of the Arabic alchemists than in those of China and India. The Arabic strong waters were merely corrosive salt solutions.



Visit us at:

Peace & Blessings,


Sign up for my newsletter:

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this great education!!! Love your blog!!!
    Love and blessings,