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From: Leigh@alexandria.com (Leigh Daniels)
Subject: Re: a question about alchemy...
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993
Peggy Brown writes:
When doing chemistry my understanding is that people just follow a recipe and add X, Y, and Z then STIR, HEAT, SHAKE for 2 minutes and SERVE on a CHILLED plate - exactly according to directions.
Now is alchemy the same way or must the mage also make a wish that chemicals will mix and/or behave in a way different than ordinary?
Alchemy seems to be governed by a macrocosmic uncertainty principle (kind of like organic chemistry, where there can be more than one outcome depending on the conditions of the experiment... inorganic chemistry is much more predictable). You can follow the recipe (assuming you have decoded it correctly in the first place) and still not get the result. It depends a lot on your inner state. Also, some substances can be affected by the presence of people other than the alchemist in the laboratory.
It also seems that proportions are different for different people, so you can only use someone else's recipe as a starting point.
Wishing (or visualization and invocation) can sometimes be effective, but again it is hit-or-miss. The slow pace seems to be an essential part of how it develops you spiritually.
One could ask how much is art and how much is science, but that leaves too much room for obfuscating under the bed as alchemists are prone to do, so please answer according to the intent of how I asked it.
I think it needs both art and science. The science provides the technical foundations that let you work efficiently and safely. The art provides the spiritual dimension, the macrocosmic uncertainty effect of the alchemist on what is being created.
**Leigh
ALCHEMY - THE FORERUNNER OF MODERN CHEMISTRY
When we think of alchemy, we think of magicians trying to change lead into gold. Yet alchemy was actually the study of chemistry from the 3rd century BC all the way through the next 2000 years. The word probably comes from the Greek chemeia, which meant to transmute or change matter; and that's what alchemy, like chemistry itself, has always been concerned with.
Alchemy originated when Aristotle took up an older idea that all matter combined the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He guessed that these elements could be changed - transmuted - by the action of heat and cold, or dampness and dryness.
Aristotle's ideas were developed first by the Greeks after him, and then by Arab scientists. From time to time, alchemy mired itself in metaphysical razzle-dazzle. The practical Romans had no taste for it at all. So, as civilization spread north into Europe, alchemy all but vanished until the 13th and 14th centuries, when scholars began to reread the old Greek and Arabic texts.
Of course, alchemy promised great wealth to anyone who figured out how to transmute other metals into gold. It might seem a waste that so many alchemists devoted their lives to that, but the spin-off was enormous. By trying to understand transmutation, they learned about practical metallurgy, about extracting metals from ores, and about chemical reaction. Their results were reported in terms alien to our ears, but the late medieval chemists were surprisingly able metallurgists.
Late-17th-century chemists saw matter as made up of three elements, or "earths," as they were called: Vitreous earth gave solidity to matter; fluid earth gave it liquidity; and fatty earth, which was later called phlogiston, gave it combustibility. These were the old Aristotelian elements of earth, water, and fire - without air! Air was thought to be inert and not a part of other materials.
All the while, a more and more analytical science was being built on these ideas. The alchemical view of matter did not give way to an atomic theory until less than two hundred years ago. And then it did not give way completely. When people realized that heat was not a part of matter, they replaced phlogiston with caloric. Caloric was another Aristotelian substance that occupied all matter and flowed from hot bodies to cold ones. Even after the atomic theory of matter replaced the various earths, caloric was still being used to describe heat when my grandfather was a little boy.
So before we write alchemy off as simply a form of magickal workings, we had better ask what our own chemistry will look like in the 22nd century.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ALCHEMY
The Alchemy Website
Crystal Links: Alchemy
The Alchemy Lab
Sacred Texts: Alchemy Index
Mystica: Alchemy
Crystal Links: Alchemy Index
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reminds us of who we are and why we keep this book.
BOOK OF SHADOWS BLESSING
I will serve the Great Goddess
And give reverence to the Great God
I am a Pagan Witch
A stone in the ancient circle
Standing firmly
Balanced on the earth
Yet open to the winds of heaven
And enduring through time
May the old gods witness my words
Blessed be.
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So mote it be.
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