Tuesday, April 25, 2006

ZOMG! Alchemy! Vol. 2
All right, folks, I promised it, so here it is. The article on alchemy, condensed (sort of). No pictures this time, sorry--you can use the ones in the other post for reference to symbols.
All the information here was garnered from Alchemy: The Great Secret and another book my grandma had that I don't know the title of. Alchemy something-or-other. I didn't use any web sources because I couldn't find any that didn't want my money, and if I'm going to spend money it ought to be at a real bookstore for a real book that I can browse before buying.

In this mini-article I will cover the very basics of the practice and concepts of alchemy; not the history, however, because I find history quite dry, frankly.

The Goal

Obviously there had to be a reason alchemy was studied and formulated. Most people are mistaken and believe that the sole purpose of alchemy was to make lead into gold; others think of it as a sort of potion-making. Neither is entirely correct. While alchemists did a great many experiments with chemicals and partially founded the practice of modern medicine, and while many also sought to transmute lead into gold, there was a great deal of philosophy and even spirituality behind the ideas of alchemy.

This is immediately apparent when reading translated excerpts from the Tabula smaragdina, the Emerald Tablet, which supposedly was written by Hermes (or if you're Roman, Mercury, or if you're Egyptian, Thoth) on an emerald that fell from Lucifer's forehead when he was cast out of heaven. That lore alone should suggest a great deal of religious ideas permeating alchemy. Anyway, some of the excerpts describe a "One" who is synonymous with nearly any religion's "God", whose power created all things through the "power of the Sun. We assume this power is the manipulation of alchemy, and can be tampered with by humans in order to "achieve glory throughout the world" and "ward off all shadows".

So the basic idea is that everything can achieve unity, and probably should. Sounds good, lets move on. What is the specific goal of alchemy, then? Power? Oneness? Not quite. Hermetists (the nifty name for followers of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus) believed that everything was one already. Everything was unified with everything else, and especially unified with the aforementioned "One", or the "universal Mind". So this couldn't be their goal, as it was already so. Alchemists want, plain and simple, to figure out how stuff works. What makes such a thing happen? What is such a thing made of? Where did it come from? Where did we come from? It was, like most religions, an attempt to understand human existence and this complicated world around us. Naturally there were different specifics, varying from person to person, but alchemy was a unique fusion of philosophy and science.

Break It Down

The science of alchemy has quite a singular characteristic, in that it is very, very simplified. Of course there's "real" science involved, but from an idealogical standpoint it is broken down a great deal. Alchemy utilizes the well-known four elements used time and time again: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. These are categorized by four characteristics: hot, cold, wet, and dry. Air is hot and dry, Water cold and wet, Earth cold and dry, Fire hot and wet (I'm not sure why, but that's what Edward Kelly says). These are known as the Four, and their properties are vital to the creation of the Philosopher's Stone.

The elements can also be broken down according the the Three, which are both attributes and elements of their own. They are Mercury, which represents the volatile, Sulphur, which represents the stable, and Salt, which represents the prima materia, the spirit, the quintessence. I can't remember which elements go with Mercury or Sulphur, but I will remedy that next time I go visit my grandmother.

Metals were especially important to alchemists as they were of the "realm" closest to humans. There were only seven, and each corresponded to a heavenly body: the moon, sun, or one of the five planets visible to the naked eye. These are also called the planetary gods, as each is represented by a Roman (or Greek, if you prefer) god. Venus is copper, Mars is iron, Jupiter tin, Saturn lead, Mercury... mercury, the Moon, or Diana, silver, and the Sun, or Apollo, gold. The creation of the Philosopher's Stone was called the "work of the Sun" on the Emerald Tablet, as a vital step required one to change certain materials into gold. This is probably the origin of the lead-into-gold generalization.

The Opus Magnum

In case you haven't taken Latin like me, "opus magnum" means "great work", and is often used in reference to the Philosopher's Stone. The Philosopher's Stone was the means by which to control pretty much everything, and was a perfectly harmonious blend of all characteristics. Dear Hiromu Arakawa did her research and made the Stone red--the only describeable color the Philosopher's Stone is proposed to be. The three basic colors used often in alchemical images and texts are black, the Nigredo, white, the Albedo, and red, the Rubedo. (Green also appears as the life force.) These three colors represent the three successful stages of the Philosopher's Stone.

There are a number of prescribed ways of making the Philosopher's Stone. There is the "dry" way, which is quicker and uses a great deal of metallurgy, but it was not favored by many alchemists. Instead, the "wet" way was preferred, and it had anywhere from ~~

I'm taking a break. I'll finish this later. So tired... =_=
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