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myOtaku.com: DefaultAlchemy
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Friday, November 4, 2005
New Means of Me: Alchemy
Hello everyone! I'm back!!! I am also known as Skyerainofsorrow!
*Chuckles*
Well my site is going to be about Alchemy because I'm really psyched about it! Enjoy!
Alchemy hovered between worlds. It emerged in a time-between-times, after a Dark Age had brightened but before a Renaissance had dawned. It came from Arab and Greek sources, but it flourished in theWest. It lay between faith and philosophy; it still dreamed of heaven, but it focused on the Earth. Alchemy sought abundance in this world for the sake of living men.
Alchemists aimed to transmute base metals into gold. Why gold? Evidently because observation declares that gold is the principle of wealth. A man who has drink may not have food, or he may have these but lack fine clothing, or horses, or mansions, or lands. But a man who has gold may have all these and more. Gold is special; it is not just one kind of wealth among many: it is a means to the rest. Gold is the means to everything that can be bought.
But what is the means to the means? What is the means to gold? Alchemists proposed to use the philosopher's stone, a mysterious, unknown substance which they believed to have the power to transmute base metals into gold. If they could find the philosopher's stone, gold would become plentiful and (so they thought) wealth would be abundant. Thus, for centuries, alchemists sought the philosopher's stone.
Their quest for the philosopher's stone can be viewed as irrational silliness or the highest idealism. There was no reason to expect such a "stone" to exist, but what alchemists hoped to gain by means of the philosopher's stone is the sum of all human ambition. Transmutation of metals was the least of the stone's supposed powers.
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