Atomic Alchemy and the Gold Standard

The preceding chapters have portrayed the consequences for science and for occult alchemy of their mutual interest in material transmutation. This chapter explores different cultural consequences of modem alchemy in relationship to monetary anxieties during the Depression Era. In particular, it narrates how the idea of modern alchemy intensified questioning of the gold standard and of the moral foundation of scientific aspiration. By the late 1920s and 

It has been commonly understood that the carnage and tragedy of the First World War and the economic crises that followed it steered Soddy into economics (Merricks 1996, 108). Other notable public figures, such as Ezra Pound, followed a similar path for like reasons—though Pound s political sympathies moved him into fascism, while Soddy remained on the Left. As we shall see, however, Soddy s alchemical interests helped him connect chemistry to monetary theory. He would eventually cast that relationship as both moral and scientific. 

In one sense, the gold standard already was a moral notion for economists. It was the prime manifestation of what Nicholas Mayhew has called a moral idea of money (2000, xi)—the idea that a gold-backed currency is a constant and unchanging currency unit with which to measure personal or public obligations (xi). The gold standard was meant to ensure stability in both the domestic economy and international trade, and it was almost an article of faith for most economists. As Mayhew notes, So irrevocable did it all seem that when the [British] National government of 1931 did eventually devalue and abandon gold, its Labour Cabinet predecessors complained that no one had told them you could do that (214-15). 

But a different moral conception of value was employed by occultists, who rescripted the nature of a gold standard. In 1907, the year of Ramsay s 

But if a man, having the gold of truth, lazily hoards it, too idle to seek to put it out to interest, or from any other motive misuses it, then is that man rich in knowledge but poor in love to his fellowman and thus intellectually despising him, he will find it hard to enter into the kingdom, and regeneration will not come near him. 

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