Alchemy - 3/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. But then again, he might not.

It is because of the alchemists that we have things like particle accelerators and atomic reactors. The whole of modern physics and chemistry is built on the work of alchemists theorizing about the nature of the world, and finding ways to practically test those theories. Alchemy became modern science. Alchemy was the chrysalis from which the butterfly of chemistry emerged.

To understand alchemy, we have to see the world like the alchemists did. The tricky part about thinking like an alchemist is un-learning all the scientific innovations that are common-sense these days. For example: can two water molecules be different sizes? Anyone who has taken a basic chemistry class will say “Of course not! One oxygen, two hydrogen. That’s water!”  but remember, we weren’t actually able to check until around 1930 when people invented electron microscopes. For most of history, there was a fair bit of argument here, and rightfully so! Science is all about making a theory, testing the theory, and then refining that theory based on the test. To understand alchemists, we have to roll back the clock to a time when the most refined theory of the world was from a dead Greek guy named Aristotle.

ALCHEMY: A PRIMER

Before we can climb the mountain of alchemy, we gotta establish a base camp. Even good scholars routinely get lost among the twisting popular misconceptions of alchemical history, so let us take a moment to clear things up.

One. Alchemy is not a monolithic tradition. There is no “one alchemy” handed down from master to student. 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 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.

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. Carl Jung is not a reliable source on alchemical history. His theory that alchemical literature is actually 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.

ANCIENT HELLENISTIC ALCHEMY

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 got tired of burning and pillaging his way through Egypt, and decided to leave the place in the hands of a Greek family called the Ptolemies. 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 burning and pillaging Egypt. Imperial conquest can be a big change, but for the would-be alchemists, it meant a bunch of fun new foreign books to read.

We do not know who actually 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. Democritus did not write them. The author is referred to as “Pseudo-Democritus.” Complicated webs of authorship are common when it comes to alchemical texts. If this is confusing, don’t worry, it will get worse.

The texts themselves are frankly a bit boring. They discuss things like the counterfeiting of metals and precious stones and how to dye metal different colors. There is no trace of mysticism or spirituality whatsoever. Crucially, they do discuss the preparation and transmutation of metals.