THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY

We must also notice that, although there cannot be the slightest doubt that the great majority of alchemists were engaged in problems and experiments of a physical nature, yet there were a few men included within the alchemistic ranks who were entirely, or almost entirely, concerned with problems of a spiritual nature Thomas Vaughan, for example, and Jacob Boehme, who boldly employed the language of Alchemy in the elaboration of his system of mystical philosophy. And particularly must we notice, as Mr. A. E. Waite has also indicated, the significant fact that the Western alchemists make... 

Elkins, James, ed. What Painting Is How to Think About Oil Painting Using the Language of Alchemy. New York and London Routledge, 1999. 

The man was speaking the language of alchemy. But the boy knew that he was referring to Fatima. 

However, the art of alchemy was most often what today we might categorize as both external and internal, embodied and spiritual, practical and abstract. The language of alchemy is one that combines sensory observations of materials and processes with a language for the phenomenology of inner experience. The concrete and the symbolic are interfused, eluding a clear distinction. 

Traditional accounts of Robert Boyle s matter theory, such as Marie Boas Hall s 1952 Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy, explicitly view Boyle s mechanical philosophy as an importation from physics, which he grafted onto a radically rewritten chemistry. As Boas Hall puts it, Boyle s new chemistry was a chemistry in which was incorporated a physicist s view of matter. The physicist s matter theory refers, of course, to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life s work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. According to Boas Hall, this physicist s theory was radically opposed to the chymical theory that predated Boyle and that he sometimes criticized—particularly the theory of three principles, mercury, sulfur, and salt, invented by Paracelsus in the early sixteenth century. The Paracelsian concept of the tria prima was, to paraphrase Boas Hall, a theory of forms and qualities, an animistic rewriting of Aristotle in the language of alchemy. A brief glance at Steven Shapin s 2996 The Scientific Revolution will show that the approach of Boas Hall is alive and well, hr his treatment of the mechanical philosophy as a whole. 

The Book of Alchemy teaches its readers how to penetrate the obscure symbolic language of the alchemists. . . understand how alchemical transformation can initiate a profound change of consciousness, claimed by practitioners to bring eventual union with the Divine. . . practice traditional meditations and exercises. . . prepare herbal alchemical elixirs to benefit the body. . . and discover how the alchemists search for purity can become a twenty-first- century model for spiritual development"... 

This is a chart showing the history of alchemical publication in all languages. Note the three main peaks the first in 1560-70 - the second 1610-1620 during the Rosicrucian period - and the third 1650-1685. There is a gradual dimishing in the number of alchemy books published through the 18th century with a small increase in publications around 1785... 

Leer, David Van. "Hawthorne s alchemy The language of science in "The Scarlet Letter"." In Nature transfigured Science and literature, 1700-1900, eds. John Christie and Sally Suttleworth, 102-120. Manchester Manchester Univ P, 1989. 

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Emope, Greek and Arab texts were translated from Arabic into Latin, the literary language of Emope. The first translation of an alchemical book from Arabic, The Book of the Composition of Alchemy, was prepared by Robert of Chester in 1144 CE in Spain (31). To the Four Elements, air, water, fire, and earth, Arab alchemists added mercury and sulfur. Paracelsus considered mercury and strlfirr as principles along with salt... 

The humanist, alchemist, and natural magician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim repeated many of these themes in his De incercitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio (written in 1526). Agrippa s relationship to alchemy was much more complicated than this text reveals, however. See Christopher I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels Cornelius Agrippa s Occult Philosophy (Leiden Brill, 2003), 76-93. 

Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press, 1994), "Alchemy as a Language of Mediation," "Consumption and Credit The Place of Alchemy in Johann Joachim Becher s Political Economy," in Alchemy Revisited, ed. Z. R. W. M. von Martels (Leiden Brill, 1990), 215-21, and "Curing the Body Politic Chemistry and Commerce at Court, 1664-70," in Patronage and Institutions Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, i oo ij o, ed. Bruce T. Moran (Rochester, N.Y. Boydell Press, 1991), 195-209. 

Albertus was aware of the growing interest in alchemy in his age, but he was skeptical about the possibility of true transmutation. He argued that alchemists simply created the appearance of precious metal, not the true metal. Yet, at the same time, he recounted stories such as the one about the power of a toad s gaze to crack fake emeralds and the one about the existence of a type of stone that would allow a person to understand the language of birds. In terms of matter theory and the elements, he was a devoted Aristotelian. Although he did not think Aristotle infallible, he accepted the basic element/quality/causes system of Aristotle and often used the system in his descriptions of things he observed. 

The Mysteries of Antiquity no longer exist, but in its place are now the Mysteries of Alchemy, which teaches the great Arcanum in the Picture-Language of hermetic Symbolism. 

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