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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
practicing 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
grate 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 exilir often called the Philosopher`s 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 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
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