alchemy

alchemy
alchemic /al kem"ik/, alchemical, alchemistic /al'keuh mis"tik/, alchemistical, adj.alchemically, adv.
/al"keuh mee/, n., pl. alchemies for 2.
1. a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold and with finding a universal solvent and an elixir of life.
2. any magical power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value.
[1325-1375; earlier alchimie < OF alquemie < ML alchymia < Ar al the + kimiya' < Gk kemeía transmutation; r. ME alconomye, equiv. to alk(imie) + (astr)onomye ASTRONOMY]

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Pseudoscience focused on the attempt to change base metals into gold.

Ancient alchemists believed that, under the correct astrological conditions, lead could be "perfected" into gold. They tried to hasten this transformation by heating and refining the metal in a variety of chemical processes, most of which were kept secret. Alchemy was practiced in much of the ancient world, from China and India to Greece. It migrated to Egypt during the Hellenistic period and was later revived in 12th-century Europe through translations of Arabic texts into Latin. Medieval European alchemists made some useful discoveries, including mineral acids and alcohol. The revival led to the development of pharmacology under the influence of Paracelsus and to the rise of modern chemistry. Not until the 19th century were the gold-making processes of alchemists finally discredited.

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Introduction
 a form of speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold and to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life.

      Alchemy was the name given in Latin Europe in the 12th century to an aspect of thought that corresponds to astrology, which is apparently an older tradition. Both represent attempts to discover the relationship of man to the cosmos and to exploit that relationship to his benefit. The first of these objectives may be called scientific, the second technological. Astrology is concerned with man's relationship to “the stars” (including the members of the solar system); alchemy, with terrestrial nature. But the distinction is far from absolute, since both are interested in the influence of the stars on terrestrial events. Moreover, both have always been pursued in the belief that the processes human beings witness in heaven and on earth manifest the will of the Creator and, if correctly understood, will yield the key to the Creator's intentions.

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 Islāmic 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 Islāmic 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.

      Nor is it really clear what alchemy was (or is). The word is a European one, derived from Arabic, but the origin of the root word, chem, is uncertain. Words similar to it have been found in most ancient languages, with different meanings, but conceivably somehow related to alchemy. In fact, the Greeks, Chinese, and Indians usually referred to what Westerners call alchemy as “The Art,” or by terms denoting change or transmutation.

The chemistry of alchemy
      Superficially, the chemistry involved in alchemy appears a hopelessly complicated succession of heatings of multiple mixtures of obscurely named materials, but it seems likely that a relative simplicity underlies this complexity. The metals gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, and tin were all known before the rise of alchemy. Mercury, the liquid metal, certainly known before 300 BC, when it appears in both Eastern and Western sources, was crucial to alchemy. sulfur, “the stone that burns,” was also crucial. It was known from prehistoric times in native deposits and was also given off in metallurgic (metallurgy) processes (the “roasting” of sulfide ores). Mercury united with most of the other metals, and the amalgam formed coloured powders (the sulfides) when treated with sulfur. Mercury itself occurs in nature in a red sulfide, cinnabar, which can also be made artificially. All of these, except possibly the last, were operations known to the metallurgist and were adopted by the alchemist.

      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 (ammonium chloride) in the West, nao sha in China, nao sadar in India, and nushādir 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.

      Finally, the manipulation of these materials was to lead to the discovery of the mineral acids, the history of which began in Europe in the 13th century. The first was probably nitric acid, made by distilling together saltpetre (potassium nitrate) and vitriol or alum. More difficult to discover was sulfuric acid, which was distilled from vitriol or alum alone but required apparatus resistant to corrosion and heat. And most difficult was hydrochloric acid, distilled from common salt or sal ammoniac and vitriol or alum, for the vapours of this acid cannot be simply condensed but must be dissolved in water.

Goals
      “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.

      Alchemy was not original in seeking these goals, for it had been preceded by religion, medicine, and metallurgy. The first chemists were metallurgists, who were perhaps the most successful practitioners of the arts in antiquity. Their theories seem to have come not from science but from folklore and religion. The miner and metallurgist, like the agriculturalist, in this view, accelerate the normal maturation of the fruits of the earth, in a magico-religious relationship with nature. In primitive societies the metallurgist is often a member of an occult religious society.

      But the first ventures into natural philosophy, the beginnings of what is called the scientific view, also preceded alchemy. Systems of five almost identical basic elements were postulated in China, India, and Greece, according to a view in which nature comprised antagonistic, opposite forces—hot and cold, positive and negative, and male and female; i.e., primitive versions of the modern conception of energy. Drawing on a similar astrological heritage, philosophers found correspondences among the elements, planets, and metals. In short, both the chemical arts and the theories of the philosophers of nature had become complex before alchemy appeared.

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 (medicine, history of). 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 (Daoism)—a mystical religion founded by the 6th-century-BC sage Lao-tzu—and its sacred book, the Tao-te Ching (Daodejing) (“Classic of the Way of Power”). The Taoists were a miscellaneous collection of “outsiders”—in relation to the prevailing Confucians—and such mystical (mysticism) 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 Yün 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 (Yijing)”). 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 chüeh (“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.

      Altogether, the similarities between the materials used and the elixirs made in China, India, and the West are more remarkable than are their differences. Nonetheless, Chinese alchemy differed from that of the West in its objective. Whereas in the West the objective seems to have evolved from gold (gold processing) to elixirs of immortality to simply superior medicines, neither the first nor the last of these objectives seems ever to have been very important in China.

      Chinese alchemy was consistent from first to last, and there was relatively little controversy among its practitioners, who seem to have varied only in their prescriptions for the elixir of immortality or perhaps only over their names for it, of which one Sinologist has counted about 1,000. In the West there were conflicts between advocates of herbal and “chemical” (i.e., mineral) pharmacy, but in China mineral remedies were always accepted. There were, in Europe, conflicts between alchemists who favoured gold making and those who thought medicine the proper goal, but the Chinese always favoured the latter. Since alchemy rarely achieved any of these goals, it was an advantage to the Western alchemist to have the situation obscured, and the art survived in Europe long after Chinese alchemy had simply faded away.

      Chinese alchemy followed its own path. Whereas the Western world, with its numerous religious promises of immortality, never seriously expected alchemy to fulfill that goal, the deficiencies of Chinese religions in respect to promises of immortality left that goal open to the alchemist. A serious reliance on medical elixirs that were in varying degrees poisonous (poison) led the alchemist into permanent exertions to moderate those poisons, either through variation of the ingredients or through chemical manipulations. The fact that immortality was so desirable and the alchemist correspondingly valued enabled the British historian of science Joseph Needham (Needham, Joseph) to tabulate a series of Chinese emperors who probably died of elixir poisoning. Ultimately a succession of royal deaths made alchemists and emperors alike more cautious, and Chinese alchemy vanished (probably as the Chinese adopted Buddhism, which offered other, less dangerous avenues to immortality), leaving its literary manifestations embedded in the Taoist canons.

Indian (India) alchemy
      The oldest Indian writings, the Vedas (Veda) (Hindu sacred scriptures), contain the same hints of alchemy that are found in evidence from ancient China, namely vague references to a connection between gold and long life. mercury, which was so vital to alchemy everywhere, is first mentioned in the 4th- to 3rd-century-BC Artha-śāstra, about the same time it is encountered in China and in the West. Evidence of the idea of transmuting base metals to gold appears in 2nd- to 5th-century-AD Buddhist texts, about the same time as in the West. Since Alexander the Great had invaded India in 325 BC, leaving a Greek state (Gandhāra) that long endured, the possibility exists that the Indians acquired the idea from the Greeks, but it could have been the other way around.

      It is also possible that the alchemy of medicine and immortality came to India from China, or vice versa; in any case, gold making appears to have been a minor concern, and medicine the major concern, of both cultures. But the elixir of immortality was of little importance in India (which had other avenues to immortality). The Indian elixirs were mineral remedies for specific diseases or, at the most, to promote long life.

      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 Rasārṇava, or “Treatise on Metallic Preparations”).

      From the earliest records of Indian natural philosophy, which date from the 5th–3rd centuries BC, theories of nature (nature, philosophy of) 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. The Indians exploited metal reactions more widely, but, although they possessed from an early date not only vitriol and sal ammoniac but also saltpetre, they nevertheless failed to discover the mineral acids. This is the more remarkable because India was long the principal source of saltpetre, which occurs as an efflorescence on the soil, especially in populous tropical countries. But it lacks the high degree of corrosivity of metals possessed by the vitriols and chlorides and played a small part in early alchemy. Saltpetre appears particularly in 9th- to 11th-century-AD Indian and Chinese recipes for fireworks, one of which—a mixture of saltpetre, sulfur, and charcoal—is gunpowder. Saltpetre first appears in Europe in the 13th century, along with the modern formula for gunpowder and the recipe for nitric acid.

Hellenistic (Hellenistic Age) alchemy
      Western alchemy may go back to the beginnings of the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BC–c. AD 300), although the earliest alchemist whom authorities have regarded as authentic is Zosimos of Panopolis (Egypt), who lived near the end of the period. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Synesius, the latest author represented, lived in Byzantium in the 4th century. The earliest is the author designated Democritus but identified by scholars with Bolos of Mende, a Hellenized Egyptian who lived in the Nile Delta about 200 BC. 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 hydōr (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” (xērion), 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.

      Thus, Greek alchemy came to resemble, in both theory and practice, that of China and India. But its objectives included gold making; thus it remained fundamentally different.

Arabic (Arab) 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-Rāzī to have been written during the reign of Caliph al-Maʾmūn (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.

      The existing versions of the Book of the Secret of Creation have been carried back only to the 7th or 6th century but are believed by some to represent much earlier writings, although not necessarily those of Apollonius himself. He is the subject of an ancient biography that says nothing about alchemy, but neither does the Emerald Tablet nor the rest of the Book of the Secret of Creation. On the other hand, their theories of nature have an alchemical ring, and the Book mentions the characteristic materials of alchemy, including, for the first time in the West, sal ammoniac. It was clearly an important book to the Arabs, most of whose eminent philosophers mentioned alchemy, although sometimes disapprovingly. 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-Rāzī (Rāzī, ar-) (c. 850–923/924), a Persian physician who lived in Baghdad. The most famous was Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, Abū Mūsā), 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 Jābirian writings are very similar to those of ar-Rāzī.

      Ar-Rāzī 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 (ammonium chloride). Much is made of sal ammoniac, the reactive powers of which seem to have given Western alchemy a new lease on life. Ar-Rāzī and the Jābirian 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.

      Ar-Rāzī's writing represents the apogee of Arabic alchemy, so much so that students of alchemy have little evidence of its later reorientation toward mystical or quasi-religious objectives. Nor does it seem to have turned to medicine, which remained independent. But there was a tendency in Arabic medicine to give greater emphasis to mineral remedies and less to the herbs that had been the chief medicines of the earlier Greek and Arabic physicians. The result was a pharmacopoeia not of elixirs but of specific remedies that are inorganic in origin and not very different from the elixirs of ar-Rāzī. This new pharmacopoeia was taken to Europe by Constantine of Africa (Constantine The African), a Baghdad-educated Muslim who died in 1087 as a Christian monk at Monte Cassino (Italy). The pharmacopoeia also appeared in Spain in the 11th century and passed from there to Latin Europe, along with the Arabic alchemical writings, which were translated into Latin in the 12th century.

Latin alchemy
      In the 12th century the Christian West began to shed its habit of indifference or hostility to the secular literature of ancient and alien civilizations. Christian scholars were particularly attracted to Muslim Spain and Sicily and there made translations from both Arabic and Greek works, many of which were in some degree familiar, but some of which, including the literature of alchemy, were new.

      The Greek alchemy of the Venice–Paris manuscript had much less impact than the work of ar-Rāzī and other Arabs, which emerged among the voluminous translations made in Spain about 1150 by Gerard of Cremona. By 1250 alchemy was familiar enough to enable such encyclopaedists as Vincent of Beauvais to discuss it fairly intelligibly, and before 1300 the subject was under discussion by the English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon (Bacon, Roger) and the German philosopher, scientist, and theologian Albertus Magnus (Albertus Magnus, Saint). To learn about alchemy was to learn about chemistry, for Europe had no independent word to describe the science of matter. It had been touched upon in works concerned with other forms of change—e.g., the motion of projectiles, the aging of man, and similar Aristotelian concepts. On the practical side there were also artists' recipe books; but for the first time in the works of Bacon and Albertus Magnus change was discussed in a truly chemical sense, with Bacon treating the newly translated alchemy as a general science of matter for which he had great hopes.

      But the more familiar alchemy became, the more clearly it was understood that gold making was the almost exclusive objective of alchemy, and Europeans proved no more resistant to the lure of this objective than their Arabic predecessors. By 1350, alchemical tracts were pouring out of the scriptoria (monastic copying rooms), and the Europeans had even taken over the tradition of anonymity and false attribution. One authority wrote at length about supposed disagreements between two Arabs, Iahiae Abindinon and Geber Abinhaen, who were probably two versions of the name of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. The most famous Jābirian work in Europe, The Sum of Perfection, is now thought to have been an original European composition. At about this time personal reminiscences of alchemists began to appear. Most famous was the Paris notary Nicolas Flamel (1330–1418), who claimed that he dreamed of an occult book, subsequently found it, and succeeded in deciphering it with the aid of a Jewish scholar learned in the mystic Hebrew writings known as the Kabbala. In 1382 Flamel claimed to have succeeded in the “Great Work” (gold making); certainly he became rich and made donations to churches.

      By 1300 alchemists had begun the discovery of the mineral acids, a discovery that occupied about three centuries between the first evidence of the new strong water (aqua fortisi.e., nitric acid) and the clear differentiation of the acids into three kinds: nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric. These three centuries saw prodigious efforts in European alchemy, for these spontaneously reactive and highly corrosive substances opened a whole new world of research. And yet, it was of little profit to chemistry, for the experiments were inhibited by the old objectives of separating the base metals into their “elements,” concocting elixirs, and other traditional procedures.

      The “water of life” (aqua vitae; i.e., alcohol (distilled spirit)) was probably discovered a little earlier than nitric acid, and some physicians and a few alchemists turned to the elixir of life as an objective. John of Rupescissa, a Catalonian monk who wrote c. 1350, prescribed virtually the same elixirs for metal ennoblement and for the preservation of health. His successors multiplied elixirs, which lost their uniqueness and finally simply became new medicines, often for specific ailments. Medical chemistry may have been conceived under Islām, but it was born in Europe. It only awaited christening by its great publicist, Paracelsus (1493–1541), who was the sworn enemy of the malpractices of 16th-century medicine and a vigorous advocate of “folk” and “chemical” remedies. By the end of the 16th century, medicine was divided into warring camps of Paracelsians and anti-Paracelsians, and the alchemists began to move en masse into pharmacy.

      Paracelsian pharmacy was to lead, by a devious path, to modern chemistry, but gold making still persisted, though methods sometimes differed. SalomonTrismosin, purported author of the Splendor solis, or “Splendour of the Sun” (published 1598), engaged in extensive visits to alchemical adepts (a common practice) and claimed success through “kabbalistic and magical books in the Egyptian language.” The impression given is that many had the secret of gold making but that most of them had acquired it from someone else and not from personal experimentation. Illustrations, often heavily symbolic, became particularly important, those of Splendor solis being far more complex than the text but clearly exercising a greater appeal, even to modern students.

Modern alchemy
      The possibility of chemical gold making was not conclusively disproved by scientific evidence until the 19th century. As rational a scientist as Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) had thought it worthwhile to experiment with it. The official attitude toward alchemy in the 16th to 18th century was ambivalent. On the one hand, The Art posed a threat to the control of precious metal and was often outlawed; on the other hand, there were obvious advantages to any sovereign who could control gold making. In “the metropolis of alchemy,” Prague, the Holy Roman emperors Maximilian II (reigned 1564–76) and Rudolf II (reigned 1576–1612) proved ever-hopeful sponsors and entertained most of the leading alchemists of Europe.

      This was not altogether to the alchemist's advantage. In 1595 Edward Kelley, an English alchemist and companion of the famous astrologer, alchemist, and mathematician John Dee, lost his life in an attempt to escape after imprisonment by Rudolf II, and in 1603 the elector of Saxony, Christian II, imprisoned and tortured the Scotsman Alexander Seton, who had been traveling about Europe performing well-publicized transmutations. The situation was complicated by the fact that some alchemists were turning from gold making not to medicine but to a quasi-religious alchemy reminiscent of the Greek Synesius. Rudolf II made the German alchemist Michael Maier a count and his private secretary, although Maier's mystical and allegorical writings were, in the words of a modern authority, “distinguished for the extraordinary obscurity of his style” and made no claim to gold making. Neither did the German alchemist Heinrich Khunrath (c. 1560–1601), whose works have long been esteemed for their illustrations, make such a claim.

      Conventional attempts at gold making were not dead, but by the 18th century alchemy had turned conclusively to religious aims. The rise of modern chemistry engendered not only general skepticism as to the possibility of making gold (gold processing) but also widespread dissatisfaction with the objectives of modern science, which were viewed as too limited. Unlike the scientists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the successors of Newton and the great 18th-century French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier limited their objectives in a way that amounted to a renunciation of what many had considered the most important question of science, the relation of man to the cosmos. Those who persisted in asking these questions came to feel an affinity with the alchemists and sought their answers in the texts of “esoteric,” or spiritual, alchemy (as distinct from the “exoteric” alchemy of the gold makers), with its roots in Synesius and other late Greek alchemists of the Venice–Paris manuscript.

      This spiritual alchemy, or Hermetism, as its practitioners often prefer to call it, was popularly associated with the supposititious Rosicrucian brotherhood, whose so-called Manifestoes (author unknown; popularly ascribed to the German theologian Johann Valentin Andreä) had appeared in Germany in the early 17th century and had attracted the favourable attention not only of such reforming alchemists as Michael Maier but also of many prominent philosophers who were disquieted by the mechanistic character of the new science. In modern times alchemy has become a focal point for various kinds of mysticism. The old alchemical literature continues to be scrutinized for evidence, because alchemical doctrine is claimed to have on more than one occasion come into the possession of man but always again been lost. Nor is its association with chemistry considered accidental. In the words of the famous 19th-century English spiritual alchemist Mary Anne Atwood,

Alchemy is an universal art of vital chemistry which by fermenting the human spirit purifies and finally dissolves it. . . . Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the finding of the Sophia in the mind.

Assessments of alchemy

Accomplishments
      The most persistent goals of alchemy have been the prolongation of life and the transmutation of base metals into gold. It appears that neither was accomplished, unless one credits alchemy with the consequences of modern chemotherapy and the cyclotron.

      It has been said that alchemy can be credited with the development of the science of chemistry, a keystone of modern science. During the alchemical period the repertoire of known substances was enlarged (e.g., by the addition of sal ammoniac and saltpetre), alcohol and the mineral acids were discovered, and the basis was laid from which modern chemistry was to rise. Historians of chemistry have been tempted to credit alchemy with laying this base while at the same time regarding alchemy as mostly “wrong.” It is far from clear, however, that the basis of chemistry was in fact laid by alchemy rather than medicine (medicine, history of). During the crucial period of Arabic and early Latin alchemy, it appears that innovation owed more to nascent medical chemistry than to alchemy.

      But those who explore the history of the science of matter, where matter is considered on a wider basis than the modern chemist understands the term, may find alchemy more rewarding. Numerous Hermetic writers of previous centuries claimed that the aims of their art could yet be achieved—indeed, that the true knowledge had been repeatedly found and repeatedly lost. This is a matter of judgment, but it can certainly be said that the modern chemist has not attained the goal sought by the alchemist. For those who are wedded to scientific chemistry, alchemy can have no further interest. For those who seek the wider goal, which was also that of the natural philosopher before the advent of “mechanical,” “Newtonian,” or “modern” science, the search is still on.

Interpretations
      Charlatanism was a prominent feature of European alchemy during the 16th century, and such monarchs as Rudolf II—even if they had mainly themselves to blame—were not entirely without reason in incarcerating some of their resident adepts. The picturesqueness of this era, which also saw the birth of the modern science of chemistry, has led many historians of chemistry to view alchemy in general as a fraud.

      Other historians of chemistry have attempted to differentiate the good from the bad in alchemy, citing as good the discovery of new substances and processes and the invention of new apparatus. Some of this was certainly accomplished by alchemists (e.g., Maria), but most of it is more justifiably ascribed to early pharmacists.

      Scholars generally agree that alchemy had something to do with chemistry, but the modern Hermetic holds that chemistry was the handmaiden of alchemy, not the reverse. From this point of view the development of modern chemistry involved the abandonment of the true goal of the art.

      Finally, a new interpretation was offered in the 1920s by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (Jung, Carl), who, following the earlier work of the Austrian psychologist Herbert Silberer, judged alchemical literature to be explicable in psychological terms. Noticing the similarities between alchemical literature, particularly in its reliance on bizarre symbolic illustrations, and the dreams and fantasies of his patients, Jung viewed them as manifestations of a “collective unconscious” (inherited disposition). Jung's theory, still largely undeveloped, remains a challenge rather than an explanation.

Robert P. Multhauf Robert Andrew Gilbert

Additional Reading
John Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica: A Catalogue of the Alchemical, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Books in the Collection of the Late James Young of Kelly and Durris, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1954), the most important bibliography of alchemy, carefully and copiously annotated; Alan Pritchard, Alchemy: A Bibliography of English-Language Writings (1980), a comprehensive work, valuable for its listing of secondary material; M. Berthelot and Ch.-Ém. Ruelle (eds.), Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 3 vol. (1887–88, reprinted 1967), the principal source for all studies of Hellenistic alchemy, although its accuracy has often been impugned; Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (1967; originally published in German, 1960); C.A. Burland, The Arts of the Alchemists (1967), a valuable source for iconography; Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, 2nd ed. (1978; originally published in French, 1956), a comparison of alchemy with the practices of the primitive metallurgist; Richard Russell (trans.), The Works of Geber (1678, reprinted 1928; originally published in Latin, 1545), the most famous and important medieval Latin work on alchemy; E.J. Holmyard, Alchemy (1957, reprinted 1968), a general history; C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 2nd rev. ed. (1968, reprinted 1980; originally published in German, 2nd rev. ed., 1952), a classic psychological interpretation of alchemy; Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (1970), a popular work but with a detailed consideration of occult ideas; Robert P. Multhauf, The Origins of Chemistry (1967), a discussion of Greek, Arabic, and European alchemy, with an extensive bibliography; Praphulla Chandra Ray, A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century, A.D., 2 vol. (1902–09), a valuable study; Herbert Silberer, Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism (1917, reprinted 1971 as Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts; originally published in German, 1914), an early Freudian interpretation of alchemy; Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (1968); H.E. Stapleton, “The Antiquity of Alchemy,” Ambix, 5(1 and 2):1–43 (October 1953), on the relationship between Greek and Arabic alchemy; F.S. Taylor, “A Survey of Greek Alchemy,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 50:109–139 (1930), an excellent English-language summary; Arthur Edward Waite, The Secret Tradition in Alchemy: Its Development and Records (1926, reprinted 1969), a spiritual interpretation; and Ambix (3 times per year), the journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry and the principal source of new historical research.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

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