Alchemy
The
science by aid of which the chemical philosophers of medieval times attempted
to transmute the baser metals into gold or silver.
There is considerable divergence of opinion as to the etymology of the
word, but it would seem to be derived from the Arabic al=the, and
kimya=chemistry, which in turn derives from the late Greek chemica=chemistry,
from chumeia=a mingling, or cheein, `to pour out` or `mix', Aryan root ghu, to
pour, whence the word `gush'. Mr.
A. Wallis Budge in his "Egyptian Magic", however, states that it is
possible that it may be derived from the Egyptian word khemeia, that is to say
'the preparation of the black ore', or `powder', which was regarded as the
active principle in the transmutation of metals.
To this name the Arabs affixed the article `al', thus giving al-khemeia, or alchemy.
History
of Alchemy
From
an early period the Egyptians possessed the reputation of being skilful
workers in metals and, according to Greek writers, they were conversant with
their transmutation, employing quicksilver in the process of separating gold
and silver from the native matrix. The resulting oxide was supposed to possess marvellous
powers, and it was thought that there resided within in the individualities of
the various metals, that in it their various substances were incorporated.
This black powder was mystically identified with the underworld form of
the god Osiris, and consequently was credited with magical properties.
Thus there grew up in Egypt the belief that magical powers existed in
fluxes and alloys. Probably such
a belief existed throughout Europe in connection with the bronze-working
castes of its several races. Its
was probably in the Byzantium of the fourth century, however, that alchemical
science received embryonic form. There
is little doubt that Egyptian tradition, filtering through Alexandrian
Hellenic sources was the foundation upon which the infant science was built,
and this is borne out by the circumstance that the art was attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus and supposed to be contained in its entirety in his works.
The
Arabs, after their conquest of Egypt in the seventh century, carried on the
researches of the Alexandrian school, and through their instrumentality the
art was brought to Morocco and thus in the eighth century to Spain, where it
flourished exceedingly. Indeed,
Spain from the ninth to the eleventh century became the repository of alchemic
science, and the colleges of Seville, Cordova and Granada were the centres
from which this science radiated throughout Europe.
The first practical alchemist may be said to have been the Arbian
Geber, who flourished 720-750. From
his "Summa Perfectionis", we may be justified in assuming that
alchemical science was already matured in his day, and that he drew his
inspirations from a still older unbroken line of adepts.
He was followed by Avicenna, Mesna and Rhasis, and in France by Alain
of Lisle, Arnold de Villanova and Jean de Meung the troubadour; in England by
Roger Bacon and in Spain itself by Raymond Lully.
Later, in French alchemy the most illustrious names are those of Flamel
(b. ca. 1330), and Bernard Trevisan (b. ca. 1460) after which the centre of
interest changes to Germany and in some measure to England, in which countries
Paracelsus, Khunrath (ca. 1550), Maier (ca. 1568), Norton, Dalton, Charnock,
and Fludd kept the alchemical flame burning brightly.
It
is surprising how little alteration we find throughout the period between the
seventh and the seventeenth centuries, the heyday of alchemy, in the theory
and practice of the art. The same
sentiments and processes are found expressed in the later alchemical
authorities as in the earliest, and a wonderful unanimity as regards the basic
canons of the great art is evinced by the hermetic students of the time.
On the introduction of chemistry as a practical art, alchemical science
fell into desuetude and disrepute, owing chiefly to the number of charlatans
practising it, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century, as a school, it
may be said to have become defunct. Here
and there, however, a solitary student of the art lingered, and in the
department of this article "Modern Alchemy" will demonstrate that
the science has to a great extent revived during modern times, although it has
never been quite extinct.
The
Quests Of Alchemy
The
grand objects of alchemy were:
(1)
the discovery
of a process by which the baser metals might be transmuted into gold or
silver;
(2)
the discovery
of an elixir by which life might be prolonged indefinitely; and there may be
added
(3)
the
manufacture of and artificial process of human life. (for the latter see
Homunculus)
The
Theory And Philosophy Of Alchemy
The
first objects were to be achieved as follows: The transmutation of metals was to be accomplished by a powder, stone
or elixir often called the Philosophers Stone, the application of which would
effect the transmutation of the baser metals into gold or silver, depending
upon the length of time of its application. Basing their conclusions on a profound examination of natural processes
and research into the secrets of nature, the alchemists arrived at the axiom
that nature was divided philosophically into four principal regions, the dry,
the moist, the warm, the cold, whence all that exists must be derived.
Nature is also divisible into the male and the female.
She is the divine breath, the central fire, invisible yet ever active,
and is typified by sulphur, which is the mercury of the sages, which slowly
fructifies under the genial warmth of nature. The alchemist must be ingenuous, of a truthful disposition, and gifted
with patience and prudence, following nature in every alchemical performance.
He must recollect that like draws to like, and must know how to obtain
the seed of metals, which is produced by the four elements through the will of
the Supreme Being and the Imagination of Nature.
We are told the original matter of metals is double in its essence,
being a dry heat combined with a warm moisture, and that air is water
coagulated by fir, capable of producing a universal dissolvent.
These terms the neophyte must be cautious of interpreting in their
literal sense. Great confusion
exists in alchemical nomenclature, and the gibberish employed by the scores of
charlatans who in later times pretended to a knowledge of alchemical matters
did not tend to make things any more clear. The beginner must also acquire a thorough knowledge of the manner in
which metals grow in the bowels of the earth.
These
are engendered by sulphur, which is male, and mercury, which is female, and
the crux of alchemy is to obtain their seed - a process which the alchemist
philosophers have not described with any degree of clarity.
The
physical theory of transmutation is based on the composite character of
metals, and on the existence of a substance which, applied to matter, exalts
and perfects it. This, Eugenius
Philalethes and others call 'The Light'.
The elements of all metals is similar, differing only in purity and
proportion. The entire trend of
the metallic kingdom is towards the natural manufacture of gold, and the
production of the baser metals is only accidental as the result of an
unfavourable environment. The
Philosopher's Stone is the combination of the male and female seeds which
beget gold. The composition of
these is so veiled by symbolism as to make their identification a matter of
impossibility. Waite, summarising
the alchemical process once the secret of the stone is unveiled, says:
"Given the matter of the stone and also the necessary vessel, the
process which must be then undertaken to accomplish the `magnum opus' are
described with moderate perspicuity. There
is the calcination or purgation of the stone, in which kind is worked with
kind for the space of a philosophical year. There is dissolution which prepares the way for congelation, and which
is performed during the black state of the mysterious matter.
It is accomplished by water, which does not wet the hand.
There is the separation of the subtle and the gross, which is
to be performed by means of heat. In
the conjunction which follows, the elements are duly and scrupulously
combined. Putrefaction afterwards
takes place. `Without which pole no seed may multiply.'
"Then,
in the subsequent congelation the white colour appears, which is one of the
signs of success. It becomes more
pronounced in cibation. In
sublimation the body is spiritualised, the spirit made orporeal, and again a
more glittering whiteness is apparent. Fermentation
afterwards fixes together the alchemical earth and water, and causes the
mystic medicines to flow like wax. The
matter is then augmented with the alchemical spirit of life, and the exaltation of the philosophic earth is accomplished by the natural
rectification of its elements. When
these processes have been successfully completed, the mystic stone will have
passed through the chief stages characterised by different colours, black,
white and red, after which it is capable of infinite multication, and when
projected on mercury, it will absolutely transmute it, the resulting gold
bearing every test. The base metals made use of must be purified to insure the
success of the operation. The
process for the manufacture of silver is essentially similar, but the
resources of the matter are not carried to so high a degree.
“According
to the "Commentary on the Ancient War of the Knights" the
transmutations performed by the perfect stone are so absolute that no trace
remains of the original metal. It
cannot, however, destroy gold, nor exalt it into a more perfect metallic
substance; it, therefore, transmutes it into a medicine a thousand times
superior to any virtues which can be extracted from its vulgar state.
This medicine becomes a most potent agent in the exaltation of base
metals.”
There
are not wanting authorities who deny that the transmutations of metals was the
grand object of alchemy, and who infer from the alchemistical writings that
the end of the art was the spiritual regeneration of man.
Mrs. Atwood, author of "A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic
Mystery", and an American writer named Hitchcock are perhaps the chief
protagonists of the belief the by spiritual processes akin to those of the
chemical process of alchemy, the soul of man may be purified and exalted.
But both commit the radical error of stating the the
alchemical writers did not aver that the transmutation of base metal into gold
was their grand end. None of the
passages they quote, is inconsistent with the physical object of alchemy, and
in a work, "The Marrow of Alchemy", stated to be by Eugenius
Philaletes, it is laid down that the real quest is for gold.
It is constantly impressed upon the reader, however, in the perusal of
esteemed alchemical works, that only those who are instructed by God can
achieve the grand secret. Others,
again, state that a tyro may possibly stumble upon it, but that unless he is
guided by an adept he has small chance of achieving the grand arcanum.
It will be obvious to the tyro, however, that nothing can ever be
achieved by trusting to the allegories of the adepts or the many charlatans
who crowded the ranks of the art. Gold
may be made, or it may not, but the truth or fallacy of the alchemical method
lies with modern chemistry. The
transcendental view of alchemy, however, is rapidly gaining ground, and
probably originated in the comprehensive nature of Hermetic theory and the
consciousness in the alchemical mind that what might with success be applied
to nature could also be applied to man with similar results.
Says Mr. Waite, "The gold of the philosopher is not a metal, on
the other hand, man is a being who possesses within himself the seeds of a
perfection which he has never realised, and that he therefore corresponds to
those metals which the Hermetic theory supposes to be capable of developing
the latent possibilities in the subject man."
At the same time, it must be admitted that the cryptic character of
alchemical language was probably occasioned by a fear on the part of the
alchemical mystic that he might lay himself open through his magical opinions
to the rigors of the law.
Records
Of Actual Transmutations
Several
records of alleged transmutations of base metal into gold are in existence.
These were achieved by Nicholas Flamel, Van Helmont, Martini,
Richthausen, and Sethon. For a
detailed account of the methods employed the reader is referred to several
articles on these hermetists. In
nearly every case the transmuting element was a mysterious powder or the
"Philosopher's Stone".
Modern
Alchemy
That
alchemy has been studied in modern times there can be no doubt.
M. figuier in his "L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes", dealing
with the subject of modern alchemy, as expressed by the initiates of the first
half of the nineteenth century, states that many French alchemists of his time
regarded the discoveries of modern science as merely so many evidences of the
truth of the doctrines they embraced.
Throughout
Europe, he says, the positive alchemical doctrine had many adherents at the
end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.
Thus a "vast association of alchemists", founded in
Westphalia in 1790, continued to flourish in the year 1819, under the name of
the "Hermetic Society". In
1837, an alchemist of Thuringia presented to the Societe Industrielle of
Weimar a tincture which he averred would effect metallic transmutation.
About the same time several French journals announced a public course
of lectures on hermetic philosophy by a professor of the University of Munich.
He further states that many Honoverian and Bavarian families pursued in
common the search for the grand arcanum.
Paris, however, was regarded as the alchemical Mecca.
There dwelt many theoretical alchemists and "empirical
adepts". The first pursued
and arcanum through the medium of books, the other engaged in practical
efforts to effect transmutation.
M.
Figuier states that in the forties of the last century he frequented the
laboratory of a certain Monsieur L., which was the rendezvous of the
alchemists in Paris. When
Monsieur L`s pupils left the laboratory for the day, the modern adepts dropped
in one by one, and Figuier relates how deeply impressed he was by the
appearance and costumes of these strange men. In the daytime, he frequently encountered them in the public
libraries, buried in gigantic folios, and in the evening they might be seen
pacing the solitary bridges with eyes fixed in vague contemplation upon the
first pale stars of night. A long
cloak usually covered the meagre limbs, and their untrimmed beards and matted
locks lent them a wild appearance. They
walked with a solemn and measured gait, and used the figures of speech
employed by the medieval illumines. Their
expression was generally a mixture of the most ardent hope and fixed despair.
Among the adepts who sought the laboratory of Monsieur L., Figuier
remarked especially a young man, in whose habits and language he could nothing
in common with those of his strange companions.
He confounded the wisdom of the alchemical adept with the tenets of the
modern scientist in the most singular fashion, and meeting him one day at the
gate of the Observatory, M. Figuier renewed the subject of their last
discussion, deploring that " a man of his gifts could pursue the
semblance of a chimera." Without
replying, the young adept led him into the Observatory garden, and proceeded
to reveal to him the mysteries of modern alchemical science.
The
young man proceeded to fix a limit to the researches of the modern alchemists.
Gold, he said, according to the ancient authors, as three distinct
properties:
(1)
that of
resolving the baser metals into itself, and interchanging and metamorphosing
all metals into one another;
(2)
the curing of
afflictions and the prolongation of life;
(3)
as a
'spiritus mundi' to bring mankind into rapport with the supermundane spheres.
Modern
alchemists, he continued, reject the greater part of these ideas, especially
those connected with spiritual contact. The
object of modern alchemy might be reduced to the search for a substance having
the power to transform and transmute all other substances into one another -
in short, to discover that medium so well known to the alchemists of old and
lost to us. This was a perfectly
feasible proposition. In the four
principal substances of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and azote, we have the
tetractus of Pythagoras and the tetragram of the Chaldeans and Egyptians.
All the sixty elements are referable to these original four.
The ancient alchemical theory established the fact that all the metals
are the same in their composition, that all are formed from sulphur and
mercury, and that the difference between them is according to the proportion
of these substances in their composition.
Further,
all the products of minerals present in their composition complete identity
with those substances most opposed to them. Thus fulminating acid contains precisely the same quantity of carbon,
oxygen, and azote as cyanic acid, and "cyanhydric" acid does not
differ from formate ammoniac. This
new property of matter is known as "isomerism".
M.
Figuier's friend then proceeds to quote support of his thesis and operations
and experiments of M. Dumas, a celebrated French savant, as is well known to
those of Prout, and other English chemists of standing.
Passing
to consider the possibility of isomerism in elementary as well as in compound
substances, the points out to M. Figuier that if the theory of isomerism can
apply to such bodies, the transmutation of metals ceases to be a wild,
unpractical dream, and becomes a scientific possibility, the transformation
being brought about by a molecular rearrangement.
Isomerism can be established in the case of compound substances by
chemical analysis, showing the identity of their constituent parts.
In the case of metals it can be proved by the comparison of the
properties of isometric bodies with the properties of metals, in order to
discover whether they have any common characteristics.
Such experiments, he continued, had been conducted by M. Dumas, with
the result the isometric substances were to be found to have equal
equivalents, or equivalents which were exact multiples of one another.
This characteristic is also a feature of metals.
Gold and osmium have identical equivalents, as have platinum and
iridium. The equivalent of cobalt
is almost the same as that of nickel, and the semi-equivalent of tin is equal
to the equivalent of the two preceding metals. M. Dumas, speaking before the
British Association, had shown that when three simple bodies displayed great
analogies in their properties, such as chlorine, bromide, and iodine, barium,
strontium, and calcium, the chemical equivalent of the intermediate body is
represented by the arithmetical mean between the equivalents of the other two.
Such a statement well showed the isomerism of elementary substances,
and proved that metals, however dissimilar in outward appearance, were
composed of he same matter differently arranged and proportioned.
This theory successfully demolishes the difficulties in the way of
transmutation. Again, Dr. Prout
says that the chemical equivalents of nearly all elemental substances are the
multiples of one among them. Thus,
if the equivalent of hydrogen be taken for the unit, the equivalent of every
other substance will be an exact multiple of it - carbon will be represented
by six, axote by fourteen, oxygen by sixteen, zinc by thirty-two.
But, pointed out M. Figuier's friend, if the molecular masses in
compound substances have so simple a connection, does it not go to prove the
all natural bodies are formed of one principle, differently arranged and
condensed to produce all known compounds?
If
transmutation is thus theoretically possible, it only remains to show by
practical experiment that it is strictly in accordance with chemical laws, and
by no means inclines to the supernatural. At this juncture the young alchemist proceeded to liken the action of
the Philosopher’s Stone on metals to that of a ferment on organic matter.
When metals are melted and brought to red heat, a molecular change may be
produced analogous to fermentation. Just
as sugar, under the influence of a ferment, may be changed into lactic acid
without altering its constituents, so metals can alter their character under
the influence of the Philosopher’s Stone. The explanation of the latter case is no more difficult than that of
the former. The ferment does not take any part in the chemical changes it
brings about, and no satisfactory explanation of its effects can be found
either in the laws of affinity or in the forces of electricity, light, or
heat. As with the ferment, the
required quantity of the Philosopher’s Stone is infinitesimal.
Medicine, philosophy, every modern science was at one time a
source of such errors and extravagances as are associated with medieval
alchemy, but they are not therefore neglected and despised.
Wherefore, then, should we be blind tot he scientific nature of
transmutation?
One
of the foundations of alchemical theories was that minerals grew and developed
in the earth, like organic things. It
was always the aim of nature to produce gold, the most precious metal, but
when circumstances were not favourable the baser metals resulted.
The desire of the old alchemists was to surprise nature’s secrets,
and thus attain the ability to do in a short period what nature takes years to
accomplish. Nevertheless, the
medieval alchemists appreciated the value of time in their experiments as
modern alchemists never do. M.
Figuier`s friend urged him not to condemn these exponents of the hermetic
philosophy for their metaphysical tendencies, for, he said, there are facts in
our sciences that can only be explained in that light.
If, for instance, copper be placed in air or water, there will be no
result, but if a touch of some acid be added, it will oxidise.
The
explanation is that "the acid provokes oxidation of the metal because it
has an affinity for the oxide which tends to form." – a material fact
most metaphysical in its production, and only explicable thereby.
He
concluded his argument with an appeal for tolerance towards the medieval
alchemists, whose work is underrated because it is not properly understood.
Literature
Atwood,
A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mastery, 1850
Hitchcock,
Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists, Boston, 1857
Waite,
Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, London, 1888
The
Occult Sciences, London, 1891
Bacon,
Mirror of Alchemy, 1597
S.
le Doux, Dictionnaire Hermetique, 1695
Langlet
de fresnoy, Histoire de la Philosophie Hermetique, 1792
Theatrum
Chemicum, 1662
Valentine,
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, 1656
Redgrove,
Alchemy Ancient and Modern
Figuier,
L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, Paris, 1857