Gold transmutation

And in 189 6 (and possibly even the year before, when Crowley had attended his lectures), Ramsay had asked his class to think of themselves as medieval students of alchemy. He asked them to imagine him as the alchemist Basil Valentine as he read to them one of Valentine s discourses on alchemy in class. Ramsay and Collie both would be at the center of what, in chapter 3,1 shall call the transmutational gold rush —when academic chemists, beginning around 1904 and following Ramsay s lead, attempted to use radiation to transmute the elements and specifically saw this practice in alchemical terms. 

What I am calling the transmutation gold msh, the efforts by Ramsay and several others to transmute an element artificially, was, in fact, a project... 

Even in stories in which a mad or criminal scientist uses atomic technologies to transmute gold into a virtually worthless metal, it is ultimately another scientist who, working with the federal government (or more specifically, with the Federal Reserve), saves the day for the United States. 

One of the best-known satires is The Alchemist, a comedy by Shakespeare s rival Ben Jonson, that targets not the pseudoalchemists but rather the gullible rich, who are so easily taken in. The play centers on the activities of Subtle, a butler who poses as an alchemist in his master s absence. With the aid of two accomplices, Face and Doll Common, Subtle swindles a number of people by engaging in quackery and he claims to be able to transmute gold. But of course comedies are supposed to end on a happy note. At the conclusion of the play Subtle s master returns unexpectedly, and his fraud is exposed. 

The mineral acids were far more important to the welfare of mankind, in fact, than gold would have been even if that metal could have been produced by transmutation. Gold s value would have disappeared as soon as it was no longer rare, whereas the mineral acids are the more valuable the cheaper and more plentiful they become. Nevertheless, such is human nature that the mineral acids made no great impression, while gold continued to be sought for avidly. 

Sir Isaac Newton spent much of his life pursuing an elusive dream, the transmutation of base materials into gold. Though he was not successful during his lifetime, he did manage to discover the equations of motion that, tliree centuries later, make alchemy possible on a computer. To perfonn this feat, Newton s equations need only be supplemented by the modem technology of free energy simulations. 

Adiramled. The art of alchemy or the generation of gold a course of practical lessons in metallic transmutation for the use of occult students being a new illumination regarding the secret science of the sages. Lightning Source. ISBN 0766175774... 

This is an interesting piece by Robert Boyle in the form of allegorical discourse about the possibility of alchemical transmutation. It was first published under the title Of a Degradation of Gold made by an anti-elixir a strange chymical narrative. London, 1678. This book is now extremely rare. The text below was transcribed for me by Justin von Bujdoss from the second edition, issued in London in 1739"... 

Deshpande, Vijaya. Transmutation of base-metals into gold as described in the text "Rasarnavakalpa" and its comparison with the parallel Chinese methods. Indian J HistSci 19(1984) 186-192. 

Clymer, Reuben Swinburne. Divine alchemy practical instructions for the transmutation of the baser metals into pure and shining gold. Quakertoiwn (PA) Philosophical Publ Co. 

Sadler, J .L. How to change stone into gold atomic theory of the solar system. Christchurch (NZ) Stone into Gold Transmuting and Research Co Ltd, 1962. 68p. 

An analysis of his works and letters reveals that although in his youth Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was not fundamentally opposed to the transmutation of metals, he later treated with mockery his friends who tried to make gold. Though he believed in the theory of elementary change, he denied its practical application in the transmutation of metals to silver or gold... 

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