Alchemical Society members

Indeed, many Alchemical Society members came to see value in alchemy s insistence on the unity not only of nature but also of soul and body. This ethical imperative did not challenge the methods of modem science, but rather emphasized a worldview by which legitimate scientific understandings of nature could be held to have spiritual implications. The Society had clearly moved well away from Atwood s spiritual alchemy, which had little need for science at all. While Alchemical Society members, such as J. W. Frings, certainly noted the continuation of secret alchemical groups essentially practicing alchemy as... 

Occult Interest Books by Alchemical Society Members... 

Because of the asymmetry of power between science and occultism, and the ever-growing public faith in the authority of science, the members of a borderland institution like the Alchemical Society had to work self-consciously to solidify its public perception as a scientific society. But the subject of the Society—alchemy—already enjoyed considerable prestige in the occult community. So the Alchemical Society used the impressive scientific and educational credentials of its membership as part of its self-validation in the eyes of the scientific world and the broader public. Most formal mentions by the Journal of its members (either as authors of papers or as participants in the... 

A fifth position on alchemy held by Wellby and others—though a decidedly minority one—held that the alchemists had indeed effected transmutation of metals, created the elixir of life, and achieved other medical feats. Some believed that the adept achieved the spiritual and psychic power to transmute metals using only mental energy. Members of the Alchemical Society, including Waite, generally dismissed this idea (Journal of the Alchemical Society 1913a, 32). 

A complete list of those members mentioned in the minutes of the meetings of the Alchemical Society (though by no means a complete list of its members), along with their position within the Society and the date at which they joined the Society or were first mentioned ... 

Jollivet-Castelot, Francois. (President of the French La Societe Alchimique de France elected an Honorary Member of the Alchemical Society, March 1914)... 

Yet Muir s friend Sir William Ramsay—a far more accomplished scientist than Muir, and one of the most proficient laboratory researchers of his era—was much more engaged by the possibility that alchemy might offer insight into the goals and consequences of modem science. As we have seen, Ramsay was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, and he was deeply steeped in alchemical and Hermetic texts. His own chemistry pedagogy made room for alchemical history in his university classrooms in a way that had not been the case in the classes he had taken as a young man. 

Then in early 1678 Boyle got a letter from a man who identified himself as Georges du Mesmillet, the patriarch of Antioch, and the head of a society of alchemical adepts. In this letter the patriarch acknowledges Georges Pierre as his agent and tells Boyle that he will be nominated for membership in a secret society of alchemical masters. Boyle is informed that members of the secret society know... 

Winthrop has the claim to being the first in several fields he was the first alchemical adept in America he was the first Governor of Connecticut he was the Royal Society s first colonial member, being elected in 1663, and was the first astronomer of note in the New World. A successful doctor (he was a follower of Paracelsus), he also taught George Starkey. 

One of the greatest members of the Royal Society was Isaac Newton. Newton was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1702 and became its president in 1703, a post he held until his death, in 1727. Newton had already established his power as a scientist with his work on physics and mathematics, demonstrated principally in his famous book Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, or, more commonly, the Principia. Like Boyle, Newton claimed to be following Baconian method and looked at the universe from a mechanical point of view. Unlike Boyle, Newton was much closer to Gassendi on the nature of matter. His analysis of physics was based in large part on the properties of matter, particularly the property of gravity, which he argued was inherent in anything that contained mass. For many years, Newton s ideas about physics were widely known, but Newton was also very interested in alchemy and believed in transmutation. In part because alchemy was discredited later, this part of Newton s scientific work was not often mentioned by historians, but it is now clear that his alchemical work influenced both his approach to science and his belief in certain properties of matter that were used in his physics. 

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