Alchemy 19-oct-2023

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ALCHEMY

What would it mean to un-bake a cake?

These days, that would mean something atomic. It would mean throwing baked goods into the beam of a particle accelerator, or leaving a tin of pastries in an unshielded atomic reactor. Theoretically, it could be done, but peeling a cake apart, proton-by-proton, would be a painstaking and ludicrously expensive process.

In the second century, it would mean something alchemical. It would mean distilling the cake down to its elemental essences, purging its impurities, and then slowly reintroducing new materials until it transmutes into what you want. However, you aren’t even sure if such a thing is possible. Transmuting a cake into something else is getting uncomfortably close to playing God, and he might be mad if you edge in on his turf.

The eternal question with alchemy is how. How did we get from essences and alembics run by mercury-poisoned scholars, to particle accelerators and nuclear reactors run by radiation-poisoned scholars? The simple answer is practice, and a whole lot of writing things down. The slightly less simple answer is that modern science is built on the work of alchemists theorizing about the nature of the world, and finding ways to practically test those theories. Alchemy is one of the many great rivers that feed the lake of modern science. We, dear reader, are the horny salmon making our way upstream. This is easier said than done.

To understand alchemy, we have to see the world like the alchemists did. Chemistry is complex enough, and we are going to spend the next few thousand words doing it wrong on purpose. For example: Alchemists did not think the world was made of atoms. The fundamental particle of alchemy is called the “Corpuscle.” (It rhymes with “Core bustle.”) They are like atoms, but where atoms are all the same size, and cannot be divided, corpuscles can be any size, and they are infinitely divisible. Where nowadays we understand atoms to be clouds of particles, corpuscles are like infinitely small wads of clay. Modern atomic science hinges on standardized weights and measurements, but alchemical particles can be different sizes, weights, and masses. They can nested inside of each other, or marbled together in many different textures and forms like the nuts and marshmallows in a scoop of rocky road.

Why did they think the world worked that way? Try to put yourself in some 2nd century alchemical shoes. If you knew nothing about the universe,  what seems more likely: “Iron works like the clay I dug out of the river yesterday, but very small.” or “Iron is made of a pattern of trillions of little orbs that are uniform and identical in every way.” And let us say you want to argue with another alchemist about this. How would you go about proving your theory? It’s going to be a while before you can get your hands on an electron microscope. You can only use what materials you can get your hands on.

We will start with the basics, back at a time when the sharpest picture of the world was from our friend Aristotle.

ALCHEMY: A PRIMER

A word of warning for the road ahead. Alchemy is a difficult thing to study. Many of these texts are written in coded language, and properly deciphering them requires knowledge of historical chemistry, theology, and languages. Sure, you can read classical Arabic, but do you know enough about 4th century metallurgy, and Alexandrian Judaism, to decipher what chemical process is happening?

Without mincing words, the last century or so has been disastrous for alchemical scholarship. The sheer difficulty of these texts has led to a rash of scholars who reject the idea that they are even about proto-chemistry at all, claiming that alchemical literature is simply coded psychological allegory. This idea is nonsense. But if I want to claim that alchemy “isn’t really about the chemicals” what are you going to do? Learn classical Greek just to prove me wrong? The result of this is a vicious cycle of bad citations that is only now being untangled. Even good scholars routinely get lost among the twisting popular misconceptions of alchemical history. So let us take a moment to debunk some misconceptions:

One: Alchemy is not a monolithic tradition. There is no “one alchemy” handed down from master to student. It is not a single tradition that “goes back to the Egyptian god Thoth.” Physics works the same wherever you are. Two people on opposite sides of the world can independently figure out how to mix flour and water together to make bread. Theories of alchemy are complex as cultures, and as diverse as cuisines.

Two: Alchemy is not primarily concerned with the psychic, the spiritual, or the self-transformative. Alchemy is about physical materials, not what the physical materials may represent spiritually. Some alchemists were indeed mystics and magicians, and pondering the nature of nature is a natural fit for religious thinkers, but alchemy is always primarily about ordinary metallurgy.

Three: Alchemy was not “opposed to science.” Alchemy, like mathematics, was one of the practices that became modern science. See our earlier metaphor about horny salmon.

Four: Up until around 1800, alchemy and chemistry were the same thing. Similar to the early days of astrology/astronomy. They were not meaningfully distinct in any way. The only exception to this is the label “Chymistry” used to describe the transitional period between alchemy and chemistry in the late 1700s.

Five: I am not afraid to name names. Carl Jung is not a reliable source on alchemical history. His theory that alchemical literature is some form of coded psychological self-help literature is unsupported and ahistorical. The idea that alchemy was “never really about the metals” has been actively harmful to the field. For the last century or so, even credible historians have seen alchemy as a bunch of psychological mumbo-jumbo, and thus denied it a place in proper scholarship, or worse, described it as backwards superstition in opposition to the logic and reason of the enlightenment.

THE BASICS OF ALCHEMY

Alchemy attempts to produce precious metals, stones, and medicines through the manipulation of elemental essences. There are several theories as to how this might be done. One camp theorizes that substances can be changed via altering the ratios of their platonic elemental essences. Another camp theorizes that all materials can be reduced to a primal form the Prima Materia. Once this is achieved, a substance called the philosopher's stone can be added to the vessel like yeast in bread, causing the desired substance to form. This process is known as the “Opus Magnum'' or Great Work.

The Great Work comes in several basic stages. These stages are named according to the colors that appear in the vessel. They are: blackening (nigredo), whitening (albedo), yellowing (citrinas), and reddening (rubedo). These colors are the result of heating a copper-mercury amalgam. As the mercury evaporates, the substance will change color. This process has been described by alchemists as cauda pavonis, “peacock’s tail.”

These stages can additionally be broken down into several steps. The number of these steps will vary from alchemist to alchemist, but the most common form of the process involves ten steps. They are:

1. Calcination. Meaning oxidation by heating. Whenever you see an alchemist describe something as a “calcinate” that means its oxidized. Rusty iron is “iron calcinate” old green copper is “Copper Calcinate”
2. Solution. Meaning ”dissolution in “sharp” (or mercurial) liquids.” This means breaking a substance down by bathing it in acids.
3. Putrefaction. Decomposition. Now that you’ve broken your substance down with acids, you’ve got toboil it in warm compost to induce fermentation. At this stage the substance turns a nasty black color, and is often described by alchemists as the “Black Raven'' which is soon resurrected as the “white dove,” thus marking the end of nigredo, and the beginning of albedo.
4. Reduction, The recovery of the fugitive “spirits” (“spirit” in this context means a volatile substance) during the calcination process by means of a fluid (“philosophical milk”), whereupon a yellow coloration (citrinitas) appears. Basically, you’re adding back what you boiled off earlier. You know you’re doing it right when it turns yellow.
5. Sublimation. Adding the volatile, “spiritual” matter back to the vessel causes a violent reaction, and a red coloration. Alchemists often describe this as the raging of the “red dragon.” This is where rubedo occurs.
6. Coagulation or Fixation. The reaction dies down, and the substance begins to solidify. This is the coagula part of solve et coagula. Congratulations, you have yourself some stable Prima Materia.
7. Fermentation. This is a rare step. Some alchemists like to add a little bit of gold at this stage to act as a sort of “Yeast of Gold” to speed up the process.
8. Lapis philosophorum. The Philosopher’s Stone. Now your prima materia can grow into ultima materia, (supreme matter). This bit is usually described as a heavy, dark red, mildly shiny, powder or stone. When you heat it up, it turns kinda waxy, but solidifies again when it cools. (What the alchemist has probably done at this point is produce mercury(II) sulfide, better known as Cinnabar.)
9. Multiplication. Now that you have your philosopher's stone, you can shave off bits of residue, and use that to make more. This of this similarly to how you can cut a mushroom in half, plant both halves, and get two mushrooms.
10. Projection. Now thatyou’ve got your philosopher's stone, it’s time to make some gold. All you’ve got to do is get some dust from the philosopher's stone, and mix it into your base metal. If you’ve done your alchemy right, it should make the base metal change color until it looks like gold. In later, medical applications of alchemy, this is the point where you apply your panacea (universal medicine that cures all ills.)

ALEXANDRIA, CRADLE OF THE ALCHEMISTS

What we would recognize today as alchemy started in the Ptolmeic era. For those that don’t know, that was the period of time when Alexander the Great finished slaughtering and conquering his way through Egypt, and died. Alexander’s generals convened to determine who would run the country to just got done slaughtering their way through. They chose General Ptolemy, who also happened to be the head of one of the most politically powerful families in greece. They would last from around 305 BCE until around 30 BCE, when an Alexander the Great fan club called the Roman Empire would try their hand at slaughtering and conquering Egypt. The good news was that the Ptolemies loved themselves some libraries.

If you showed up to the big fancy port in Alexandria, and you had a book, some nice people from The local Library of Alexandria would show up, take your book, make a copy of it, and return the book when they were done with it. This made Alexandria an excellent place to be if you liked to learn things, or if you were a librarian who enjoyed bullying merchants.

Folks got their hands on Greek natural philosophy, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, as well as mythologies from Greece, Egypt, and Judea. What information we have from this era is scant and precious, but history is a machine we can understand. When diverse knowledge is compressed into a tight space, and made available, it creates an explosion of innovation. What you have here is a recipe for a Unique Moment in History. In this case, the birth of Alchemy.

We do not know who wrote the first complete alchemical texts. Physika kai Mystika (“Natural and Secret Questions”) and Peri Asēmou Poiēseōs (“On the Making of Silver”) are both attributed to the Greek philosopher Democritus. In all likelihood, however, they were likely authored by a 3rd century Egyptian Neopythagorean named Bolos of Mendes.

The books themselves are, in all honesty, quite boring. They contain a primordial version of alchemy, without a trace of magic or mysticism. On one hand, this is where we see the first recipes for gold-production, (Chrysopoeia), but on the other hand, the major concern of these texts seems to be the counterfeiting of precious metals and stones. This boring-ness is significant. The roots of alchemy are not grand mystical or psychological designs, they are grounded in ordinary, material, experiences like a merchant overcharging for bad copper.

MIRRIAM OF ALEXANDRIA

Alchemy is defined by both a theory and a practice. Just thinking about how metals work isn’t alchemy. Messing about with metals and a kiln isn’t alchemy. But once you’ve got some theories about metals, and a way to test them, then you’re doing alchemy.

Alchemical history proper begins on the north shore of Egypt, in the city of Alexandria, with a woman named Mirriam.

In the 1st century, most alchemy in Egypt was heavily tied to the House of Life, the state temple system. Most of what Egyptian temple alchemists did was build statues of the Gods. Color was important to Egyptian religion. When one was building a statue of the gods, it was important to get the color just so. Each of the big gods got their own color association. White for Horus, black for Anubis, green for Osiris, etc. If you were commissioned by the government to make a statue of Horus, the metal had to be white. Egyptian alchemists were primarily concerned with transforming the color of metals, they didn’t seem to care much about making metals from scratch.

But the House of Life alchemists weren’t the only game in town. They had private competitors. Running an alchemy lab is expensive. It takes expert labor and all sorts of expensive and exotic ingredients, not to mention the cost of fuel. One of the only institutions that could afford to compete with the House of Life, was Alexandria’s local Synagogue.

Where the House of Life alchemists enjoyed government funding, they also did not have much professional freedom. If the government wanted 500 statues of Osiris, you had to fill the order. By contrast, Jewish alchemists had to compete by learning and innovating as fast as possible. Alexandria’s Jewish quarter was a wellspring of cutting-edge alchemical theories, techniques, and technology.

Mirriam of Alexandria, aka Mary the Prophetess, Maria Hebrea, and Mary the Copt, was one such innovator. In her work, we see the first evidence of both an alchemical theory and practice. Mirriam did not simply create recipes for gold, she theorized about the nature of gold, and how those theories could be tested. It is difficult to summarize the sheer magnitude of her contributions to alchemical and scientific history without getting lost in the technical details. She is credited with the invention of dozens of materials, techniques, theories, and devices that would shape alchemy for centuries. To illustrate her contributions, she is the Marie in Bain-Marie, literally “Mary’s bath.” While she likely did not invent the technique, whenever chefs today make a double-boiler to melt chocolate, they are performing a technique popularized nearly two thousand years ago by an Alexandrian alchemist.

The Tribikos: A type of alembic with three “arms”, long tubes with vessels at the ends, used to distill substances and collect their vapors.

The Kerotakis: When used properly, this device creates an airtight seal in which substances are continually distilled, congealed, and distilled again. This “circulation” process of purification is often depicted as an ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, which itself became a central image of alchemy. (for those familiar with chemistry, the kerotakis is essentially a Soxhlet extractor.)

The Bain Marie: If you’ve ever wondered who the “Marie” in “Bain Marie” was, here you go. What we now know of as the double boiler was used extensively by alchemists throughout the years when gentle heat was needed.

Let’s say you want to make a philosopher's stone. Maria argued that the fundamental method was a process of distillation, sublimation, and rectification.

The Inversion of Nature: To volatilize the fixed, and fix the volatile. Or, to make the solid into fluid, and to make the fluid into solids. This allows the alchemist to break apart substances into their constituent parts.

The Union of Opposites:

First and foremost, is the Axiom of Maria: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” This describes the process of splitting a substance into its constituent parts so that it may be recombined into a new form.

(These are gonna be fodder for some good illustrations)

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the Thrice-Great! Legendary sage, founder of Alchemy and Hermeticism, inventor of numbers and mathematics, stuffed like a turducken with the knowledge of Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish wise-men of old. Our first mention of Hermes Trismegistus goes back to the 5th century B.C.E. He is one of those figures everyone wants to claim. Over the years he would be interpreted as everything from an aspect of the god Hermes, to an aspect of the god Thoth, to an identity of Moses. The legend of Hermes Trismegistus runs its way through the literature of damn near every religion and culture to visit the mediterranean, as such, it is one of the axis upon which the wheel of western esotericism turns.

The answer to most questions around Hermes Trismegistus is “It depends.” Was he a man or a god? It depends on who was writing about him. Some Egyptians interpreted him as closer to a god, or a descendant of the gods. Some Greeks wrote that he was born a normal man, and later defied. St. Augustine wrote that he was a normal guy, who existed three generations after Moses. Did a man named Hermes Trismegistus ever actually exist? We have no idea. His legend is a stew of lore relating to Thoth, The local god of the city of Hermopolis, and Hermes. Thus it is difficult to say anything definitive about the man, if he ever existed at all.