What Is Alchemy?

Alchemy is the most mysterious and beguiling of all subjects. It is totally unique in its scope, in its ideas, and in the way that it is presented. Of all the esoteric spiritual subjects, and of all the philosophies that I have studies over the years, from kabbalah to buddhism to Plato and Aristotle I have found alchemy to be the most inspiring, the most beautiful, and the most fascinating.

Studying alchemy can be a very rewarding experience, and I would recommend it to anyone, but hand in hand with this goes the unavoidable fact that alchemy is also one of the most difficult and often impenetrable subjects that you can study. Anyone who tells you that they understand alchemy in all its forms and throughout all of its parts is either lying or desperately misguided.

In a way that is part of its appeal – and perhaps deliberately so. The old alchemical motto ‘obscurum per obscurius’, meaning ‘the obscure by the more obscure’ and refering to the traditional way that an alchemist explains himself certainly seems to revel in the air of mystery and secrecy which surrounds the subject of alchemy.

Most people know alchemy simply as the quest to make gold from ‘base’ metals such as lead, and this was indeed a major part of the alchemical endeavour, the ‘great work’ of the philosophers when interest in alchemy was at its peak around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. At that time those men who were obsessed with the idea of making gold and spent all day every day at their furnaces in their home made laboratories were know by the derogatory epithet ‘puffers and blowers’.

Despite the fact that these men were derided at the time, and that today most people think of alchemy and its ideas about turning lead into gold as nothing but deluded, superstitious nonsense it is interesting to note that it is actually possible to make gold from other metals. In fact, all gold which exists in the whole universe was made from other metals - through the processes of nuclear fusion burning inside the stars. The only reason that there are not alchemical factories on every street corner making gold is because of the technical difficulty and the energy requirements, not because it is impossible.

I think it is interesting to note this because although many people think that alchemy is something from the past, which has been superceeded and proved wrong by more modern scientific knowledge (in particular chemistry which can trace its origins to the experimentation of those ‘puffers and blowers’), alchemy was in many ways wise beyond its time and there is an underlying philosophy and spiritual / metaphysical vision behind it which is deep, profound, and contains a wisdom that is still relevant and useful to us today.

But this issue of making gold is just an interesting aside. Alchemy was and still is much more than the original ‘get rich quick’ scheme. The foundation of alchemy is a philosophy of transformation, evolution and perfection.

The alchemists believed that the universe itself was evolving towards perfection, and that the efforts of an individual human being could serve to help it on its way. It was from this basic philosophy that the idea of making gold cam about, because gold was considered to be the ‘perfect metal’, so it was thought that all metals were evoloving towards becoming gold, and that the philosopher could expedite this process and turn a less perfect metal into gold.

Also derived from this evolutionary idea were the quest for the infamous ‘philosophers stone’ – a substance with great magical powers to make anything perfect, and the ‘elixir vitae’, the elixir of life, which would perfect the human body and make anyone who drank it immortal.

This idea that a person with the proper wisdom and knowledge could play a part in the coninuing creation and evolution of the universe, combined with the deep spiritual convictions of those who created and practiced this art lead to some interesting theological ideas.

One of the most beautiful and inspiring of these ideas was that of the goddess Sophia, the divine feminine. According to this branch of alchemical thought it was not only mankind who was ‘fallen’ from a state of perfection, but also the feminine aspect of god, represented by the goddess Sophia. And so far from God being perfect and all powerful, and humanity needing to be ‘redeemed’ by God, it was the role of the alchemist to redeem God, to redeem the feminine wisdom of God and thereby to help bring the world to a state of perfection.

You can also find in alchemy many parallels to various eastern mystical traditions, such as Taoism and Tantra. A large part of the great work is based around the unification and balance of opposites, often represented by the sun and moon or by the Red King and White Queen. This parallels the unification of the divine masculine and divine feminine of Tantra, and the balancing of Yin and Yang in Taoism.

In more modern times the psychologist Carl Jung drew a large amount of the inspiration for his work from alchemy, and saw the great work as being identical to his process of ‘individuation’ which would unite the conscious ego with the power of the unconscious mind and create the perfectly balanced personality.

Alchemy has inspired many great thinkers over the years, and there are many great ideas to be found within its various threads. But it is worth remembering that there is no unified concept of what alchemy is, or what its aims are. Each writer has his own perspective, drawing on a huge well of symbols and ideas to express his thoughts.