alchemist

Etymology

The word alchemy comes from Old French alkimie, used in Medieval Latin as alchymia. This name was itself adopted from the Arabic word al-kīmiyā (الكيمياء). The Arabic al-kīmiyā in turn was a borrowing of the Late Greek term khēmeía (χημεία), also spelled khumeia (χυμεία) and khēmía (χημία), with al- being the Arabic definite article 'the'. Together this association can be interpreted as 'the process of transmutation by which to fuse or reunite with the divine or original form'. Several etymologies have been proposed for the Greek term. The first was proposed by Zosimos of Panopolis (3rd–4th centuries), who derived it from the name of a book, the Khemeu. Hermann Diels argued in 1914 that it rather derived from χύμα, used to describe metallic objects formed by casting.

Others trace its roots to the Egyptian name kēme, meaning 'black earth', which refers to the fertile and auriferous soil of the Nile valley, as opposed to red desert sand. According to the Egyptologist Wallis Budge, the Arabic word al-kīmiyaʾ actually means "the Egyptian [science]", borrowing from the Coptic word for "Egypt", kēme (or its equivalent in the Mediaeval Bohairic dialect of Coptic, khēme). This Coptic word derives from Demotic kmỉ, itself from ancient Egyptian kmt. The ancient Egyptian word referred to both the country and the colour "black" (Egypt was the "black Land", by contrast with the "red Land", the surrounding desert).

History

Alchemy comprises a plurality of philosophical traditions extending across approximately four millennia and spanning three continents. The marked tendency of these traditions toward esoteric and highly symbolic modes of expression renders it difficult to reconstruct their patterns of mutual influence and genealogical relationships. Three major strands exist which appear to be mostly independent, at least in their earlier stages: Chinese alchemy, centered in China; Indian alchemy (Rasayana), centered on the Indian subcontinent; and Western alchemy, which occurred around the Mediterranean Basin and whose center shifted over the millennia from Greco-Roman Egypt to the Muslim world, and finally medieval Europe. Chinese alchemy was closely connected to Taoism and Indian alchemy with the Dharmic faiths. In contrast, Western alchemy developed its philosophical system mostly independent of but influenced by various Western religions. It is still an open question whether these three strands share a common origin, or to what extent they influenced each other.

Hellenistic Egypt

The start of Western alchemy may generally be traced to Hellenistic Egypt, where the city of Alexandria was a center of alchemical knowledge, and retained its pre-eminence through most of the Greek and Roman periods. Following the work of André-Jean Festugière, modern scholars see alchemical practice in the Roman Empire as originating from the Egyptian goldsmith's art, Greek philosophy and different religious traditions. Tracing the origins of the alchemical art in Egypt is complicated by the pseudepigraphic nature of texts from the Greek alchemical corpus. The treatises of Zosimos of Panopolis, the earliest historically attested author (fl. c. 300), can help in situating the other authors. Zosimus based his work on that of older alchemical authors, such as Mary the Jewess, Pseudo-Democritus, and Agathodaimon, but very little is known about any of these authors. The most complete of their works, the Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, were probably written in the first century AD.

Recent scholarship tends to emphasize the testimony of Zosimus, who traced the alchemical arts back to Egyptian metallurgical and ceremonial practices. It has also been argued that early alchemical writers borrowed the vocabulary of Greek philosophical schools but did not implement any of its doctrines in a systematic way. Zosimos of Panopolis wrote in the Final Abstinence (a.k.a. the Final Count) that the ancient practice of "tinctures" (the technical Greek term for the alchemical arts) had been taken over by certain "demons" who taught the art only to those who offered them sacrifices. Since Zosimos also called the demons "the guardians of places" (οἱ κατὰ τόπον ἔφοροι, hoi katà tópon éphoroi) and those who offered them sacrifices "priests" (ἱερέα, hieréa), it is fairly clear that he was referring to the gods of Egypt and their priests. While critical of the kind of alchemy he associated with the Egyptian priests and their followers, Zosimos nonetheless saw the tradition's recent past as rooted in the rites of the Egyptian temples.

Zosimos of Panopolis asserted that alchemy dated back to Pharaonic Egypt where it was the domain of the priestly class, though there is little to no evidence for his assertion. Alchemical writers used classical figures from Greek (e.g., Hades), Roman (e.g., Lucius), and Egyptian mythology to illuminate their works and allegorize alchemical transmutation. These included the pantheon of gods related to the classical planets, Isis, Osiris, Jason, and many others.

The central figure in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος, 'Hermes the Thrice-Greatest'). His name is derived from the god Thoth and his Greek counterpart, Hermes. Hermes and his caduceus or serpent-staff, were among alchemy's principal symbols. According to Clement of Alexandria, he wrote what were called the "forty-two books of Hermes", covering all fields of knowledge.

Byzantium

Greek alchemy was preserved in medieval Byzantine manuscripts after the fall of Roman Egypt, yet historians have only relatively recently begun to study the development of Greek alchemy in the Byzantine period.

India

The 2nd millennium BC Vedas describe a connection between eternal life and gold. A considerable knowledge of metallurgy has been exhibited in a third-century AD Arthashastra, which provides ingredients of explosives (agniyoga) and salts extracted from fertile soils and plant remains (yavakshara) such as saltpetre/nitre, perfume (different qualities of perfumes are mentioned), and granulated (refined) sugar. Buddhist texts from the 2nd to 5th centuries mention the transmutation of base metals to gold. According to some scholars Greek alchemy may have influenced Indian alchemy but there are no hard evidences to back this claim.

The 11th-century Persian chemist and physician Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī, who visited Gujarat as part of the court of Mahmud of Ghazni, reported locals have a science similar to alchemy which is quite peculiar to them, which in Sanskrit is called Rasāyana and in Persian Rasavātam. It means the art of obtaining/manipulating Rasa: nectar, mercury, and juice. This art was restricted to certain operations, metals, drugs, compounds, and medicines, many of which have mercury as their core element. Its principles restored the health of those who were ill beyond hope and gave back youth to fading old age.

The goals of alchemy in India included the creation of a divine body (divya-deham) and immortality while still embodied (jīvan-mukti). Sanskrit alchemical texts include much material on the manipulation of mercury and sulphur, that are homologized with the semen of the god Śiva and the menstrual blood of the goddess Devī.

Some early alchemical writings seem to have their origins in the Kaula tantric schools associated to the teachings of the personality of Matsyendranath. Other early writings are found in the Jaina medical treatise Kalyāṇakārakam of Ugrāditya, written in South India in the early 9th century.

Two famous early Indian alchemical authors were Nāgārjuna Siddha and Nityanātha Siddha. Nāgārjuna Siddha was a Buddhist monk. His book Rasendramangalam is an example of Indian alchemy and medicine. Nityanātha Siddha wrote Rasaratnākara, which was also a highly influential work. In Sanskrit, rasa translates to "mercury", and Nāgārjuna Siddha was said to have developed a method of converting mercury into gold. An example of academic scholarship on Indian alchemy is The Alchemical Body by Indologist David Gordon White. A modern bibliography on Indian alchemical studies has been written by White.

Islamic world

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the focus of alchemical development moved to the Islamic World. Much more is known about Islamic alchemy because it was better documented: indeed, most of the earlier writings that have come down through the years were preserved as Arabic translations. The word alchemy itself was derived from the Arabic word al-kīmiyā (الكيمياء). The early Islamic world was a melting pot for alchemy. Platonic and Aristotelian thought, which had already been somewhat appropriated into Hermetic science, continued to be assimilated during the late 7th and early 8th centuries through Syriac translations and scholarship.

In the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the Arabic works attributed to Jābir ibn Hayyān (Latinized as "Geber" or "Geberus") introduced a new approach to alchemy. Paul Kraus, who wrote the standard reference work on ibn Hayyan, put it as follows:

To form an idea of the historical place of Jabir's alchemy and to tackle the problem of its sources, it is advisable to compare it with what remains to us of the alchemical literature in the Greek language. One knows in which miserable state this literature reached us. Collected by Byzantine scientists from the tenth century, the corpus of the Greek alchemists is a cluster of incoherent fragments, going back to all the times since the third century until the end of the Middle Ages.

The efforts of Berthelot and Ruelle to put a little order in this mass of literature led only to poor results, and the later researchers, among them in particular Mrs. Hammer-Jensen, Tannery, Lagercrantz, von Lippmann, Reitzenstein, Ruska, Bidez, Festugière and others, could make clear only few points of detail ....

The study of the Greek alchemists is not very encouraging. An even surface examination of the Greek texts shows that a very small part only was organized according to true experiments of laboratory: even the supposedly technical writings, in the state where we find them today, are unintelligible nonsense which refuses any interpretation.

It is different with Jabir's alchemy. The relatively clear description of the processes and the alchemical apparati, the methodical classification of the substances, mark an experimental spirit which is extremely far away from the weird and odd esotericism of the Greek texts. The theory on which Jabir supports his operations is one of clearness and of an impressive unity. More than with the other Arab authors, one notes with him a balance between theoretical teaching and practical teaching, between the 'ilm and the amal. In vain one would seek in the Greek texts a work as systematic as that which is presented, for example, in the Book of Seventy.

East Asia

Researchers have found evidence that Chinese alchemists and philosophers discovered complex mathematical phenomena that were shared with Arab alchemists during the medieval period. Discovered first in China before the Common Era, the "magic square of three" was propagated to followers of Jabir ibn Hayyan at some point over the proceeding several hundred years. Other commonalities shared between the two alchemical schools of thought include discrete naming for ingredients and heavy influence from the natural elements. The Silk Road provided a clear path for the exchange of goods, ideas, ingredients, religion, and many other aspects of life with which alchemy is intertwined.

Whereas European alchemy eventually centered on the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, Chinese alchemy had a more obvious connection to medicine. The philosopher's stone of European alchemists can be compared to the elixir of life sought by Chinese alchemists. In the Hermetic view, these two goals were not unconnected, and the philosopher's stone was often equated with the universal panacea; therefore, the two traditions may have had more in common than initially appears.

As early as 317 AD, Ge Hong documented the use of metals, minerals, and elixirs in early Chinese medicine. Hong identified three ancient Chinese documents—titled the Scripture of Great Clarity, the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs, and the Scripture of the Golden Liquor—as texts containing fundamental alchemical information. He also described alchemy, along with meditation, as the sole spiritual practices that could allow one to gain immortality or to transcend to a higher state of being. In his work Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature (317 AD), Hong argued that alchemical solutions such as elixirs were preferable to traditional medicinal treatment due to the spiritual protection they could provide. In the centuries following Ge Hong's death, the emphasis placed on alchemy as a spiritual practice among Chinese Taoists was reduced. In 499 AD, Tao Hongjing refuted Hong's statement that alchemy is as important a spiritual practice as Shangqing meditation. While Hongjing did not deny the power of alchemical elixirs to grant immortality or provide divine protection, he ultimately found the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs to be ambiguous and spiritually unfulfilling, aiming to implement more accessible practising techniques.

In the early 700s, Neidan (a.k.a. internal alchemy) was adopted by Daoists as a new form of alchemy. Neidan emphasized appeasing the inner gods that inhabit the human body by practising alchemy with compounds naturally found in the body, rather than the mixing of natural resources that was so emphasized in early Dao alchemy. For example, saliva was often considered nourishment for the inner gods and did not require any conscious alchemical reaction to produce. The inner gods were not thought of as physical presences occupying each person, but rather a collection of deities that are each said to represent and protect a specific body part or region. Although those who practised Neidan prioritized meditation over external alchemical strategies, many of the same elixirs and constituents from previous Daoist alchemical schools of thought continued to be utilized in tandem with meditation. Eternal life remained a consideration for Neidan alchemists, as it was believed that one would become immortal if an inner god were to be immortalized within them through spiritual fulfilment.

Medieval Europe

The introduction of alchemy to Latin Europe may be dated to 11 February 1144, with the completion of Robert of Chester's translation of the Liber de compositione alchemiae (Book on the Composition of Alchemy) from an Arabic work attributed to Khalid ibn Yazid. Although European craftsmen and technicians pre-existed, Robert notes in his preface that alchemy (here still referring to the elixir rather than to the art itself) was unknown in Latin Europe at the time of his writing. The translation of Arabic texts concerning numerous disciplines including alchemy flourished in 12th-century Toledo, Spain, through contributors like Gerard of Cremona and Adelard of Bath. Translations of the time included the Turba Philosophorum, and the works of Avicenna and Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. These brought with them many new words to the European vocabulary for which there was no previous Latin equivalent. Alcohol, carboy, elixir, and athanor are examples.

Meanwhile, theologian contemporaries of the translators made strides towards the reconciliation of faith and experimental rationalism, thereby priming Europe for the influx of alchemical thought. The 11th-century theologian Anselm of Canterbury put forth the opinion that faith and rationalism were compatible and encouraged rationalism in a Christian context. In the early 12th century, Peter Abelard followed Anselm's work, laying down the foundation for acceptance of Aristotelian thought before the first works of Aristotle had reached the West. In the early 13th century, Robert Grosseteste used Abelard's methods of analysis and added the use of observation, experimentation, and conclusions when conducting scientific investigations. Grosseteste also did much work to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian thinking.

Through much of the 12th and 13th centuries, alchemical knowledge in Europe remained centered on translations, and new Latin contributions were not made. The efforts of the translators were succeeded by that of the encyclopaedists. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were the most notable of these, their work summarizing and explaining the newly imported alchemical knowledge in Aristotelian terms. Albertus Magnus, a Dominican friar, is known to have written works such as the Book of Minerals where he observed and commented on the operations and theories of alchemical authorities like Hermes Trismegistus, pseudo-Democritus, and unnamed alchemists of his time. Albertus critically compared these to the writings of Aristotle and Avicenna, where they concerned the transmutation of metals. From the time shortly after his death through to the 15th century, more than 28 alchemical tracts were misattributed to him, a common practice giving rise to his reputation as an accomplished alchemist. Likewise, alchemical texts have been attributed to Albert's student Thomas Aquinas.

Renaissance and early modern Europe

During the Renaissance, Hermetic and Platonic foundations were restored to European alchemy. The dawn of medical, pharmaceutical, occult, and entrepreneurial branches of alchemy followed. In the late 15th century, Marsilio Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum and the works of Plato into Latin. These were previously unavailable to Europeans who for the first time had a full picture of the alchemical theory that Bacon had declared absent. Renaissance Humanism and Renaissance Neoplatonism guided alchemists away from physics to refocus on mankind as the alchemical vessel.

Esoteric systems developed that blended alchemy into a broader occult Hermeticism, fusing it with magic, astrology, and Christian Kabbalah. A key figure in this development was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), a German who received his Hermetic education in Italy in the schools of the humanists. In his De Occulta Philosophia, he attempted to merge Judaism's Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and alchemy. He was instrumental in spreading this new blend of Hermeticism outside the borders of Italy.

Paracelsus, born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), cast alchemy into a new form, rejecting some of Agrippa's occultism and moving away from chrysopoeia. Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine and wrote, "Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines."

His Hermetical views were that sickness and health in the body relied on the harmony of humankind as the microcosm and Nature the macrocosm. He took an approach different from those before him, using this analogy not in the manner of soul-purification but in the manner that humans must have certain balances of minerals in their bodies, and that certain illnesses of the body had chemical remedies that could cure them. Iatrochemistry refers to the pharmaceutical applications of alchemy championed by Paracelsus.

John Dee (13 July 1527 – December 1608) followed Agrippa's occult tradition. Although better known for angel summoning, divination, and his role as astrologer, cryptographer, and consultant to Elizabeth I of England, Dee's alchemical Monas Hieroglyphica, written in 1564 was his most popular and influential work. His writing portrayed alchemy as a sort of terrestrial astronomy in line with the Hermetic axiom as above, so below. During the 17th century, a short-lived "supernatural" interpretation of alchemy became popular, including support by fellows of the Royal Society: Robert Boyle and Elias Ashmole. Proponents of the supernatural interpretation of alchemy believed that the philosopher's stone might be used to summon and communicate with angels.

Later modern period

The decline of European alchemy was brought about by the rise of modern science with its emphasis on rigorous quantitative experimentation and its disdain for "ancient wisdom". Although the seeds of these events were planted as early as the 17th century, alchemy still flourished for some two hundred years, and in fact may have reached its peak in the 18th century. As late as 1781 James Price claimed to have produced a powder that could transmute mercury into silver or gold. Early modern European alchemy continued to exhibit a diversity of theories, practices, and purposes: "Scholastic and anti-Aristotelian, Paracelsian and anti-Paracelsian, Hermetic, Neoplatonic, mechanistic, vitalistic, and more—plus virtually every combination and compromise thereof."

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations. He assumed nothing in his experiments and compiled every piece of relevant data. Boyle would note the place in which the experiment was carried out, the wind characteristics, the position of the Sun and Moon, and the barometer reading, all just in case they proved to be relevant. This approach eventually led to the founding of modern chemistry in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on revolutionary discoveries and ideas of Lavoisier and John Dalton.

Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn for the first time between "alchemy" and "chemistry". By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud. In order to protect the developing science of modern chemistry from the negative censure to which alchemy was being subjected, academic writers during the 18th-century scientific Enlightenment attempted to divorce and separate the "new" chemistry from the "old" practices of alchemy. This move was mostly successful, and the consequences of this continued into the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

During the occult revival of the early 19th century, alchemy received new attention as an occult science. The esoteric or occultist school that arose during the 19th century held the view that the substances and operations mentioned in alchemical literature are to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, less than as a practical tradition or protoscience. This interpretation claimed that the obscure language of the alchemical texts, which 19th century practitioners were not always able to decipher, were an allegorical guise for spiritual, moral or mystical processes.

Women

Several women appear in the earliest history of alchemy. Michael Maier names four women who were able to make the philosophers' stone: Mary the Jewess, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Medera, and Taphnutia. Zosimos's sister Theosebia (later known as Euthica the Arab) and Isis the Prophetess also played roles in early alchemical texts.

The first alchemist whose name we know was Mary the Jewess (c. 200 A.D.). Early sources claim that Mary (or Maria) devised a number of improvements to alchemical equipment and tools as well as novel techniques in chemistry. Her best known advances were in heating and distillation processes. The laboratory water-bath, known eponymously (especially in France) as the bain-marie, is said to have been invented or at least improved by her. Essentially a double-boiler, it was (and is) used in chemistry for processes that required gentle heating. The tribikos (a modified distillation apparatus) and the kerotakis (a more intricate apparatus used especially for sublimations) are two other advancements in the process of distillation that are credited to her. Although we have no writing from Mary herself, she is known from the early-fourth-century writings of Zosimos of Panopolis. After the Greco-Roman period, women's names appear less frequently in alchemical literature.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance, due to the emergence of print, women were able to access the alchemical knowledge from texts of the preceding centuries. Caterina Sforza, the Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola, is one of the few confirmed female alchemists after Mary the Jewess. As she owned an apothecary, she would practice science and conduct experiments in her botanic gardens and laboratories. Being knowledgeable in alchemy and pharmacology, she recorded all of her alchemical ventures in a manuscript named Experimenti ('Experiments'). The manuscript contained more than four hundred recipes covering alchemy as well as cosmetics and medicine. One of these recipes was for the water of talc. Talc, which makes up talcum powder, is a mineral which, when combined with water and distilled, was said to produce a solution which yielded many benefits. These supposed benefits included turning silver to gold and rejuvenation. When combined with white wine, its powder form could be ingested to counteract poison. Furthermore, if that powder was mixed and drunk with white wine, it was said to be a source of protection from any poison, sickness, or plague. Other recipes were for making hair dyes, lotions, lip colours. There was also information on how to treat a variety of ailments from fevers and coughs to epilepsy and cancer. In addition, there were instructions on producing the quintessence (or aether), an elixir which was believed to be able to heal all sicknesses, defend against diseases, and perpetuate youthfulness. She also wrote about creating the illustrious philosophers' stone.

Modern historical research

The history of alchemy has become a recognized subject of academic study. As the language of the alchemists is analysed, historians are becoming more aware of the connections between that discipline and other facets of Western cultural history, such as the evolution of science and philosophy, the sociology and psychology of the intellectual communities, kabbalism, spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, and other mystic movements. Institutions involved in this research include The Chymistry of Isaac Newton project at Indiana University, the University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO), the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and the University of Amsterdam's Sub-department for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. A large collection of books on alchemy is kept in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam.

Journals which publish regularly on the topic of Alchemy include Ambix, published by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and Isis, published by the History of Science Society.

Core concepts

Western alchemical theory corresponds to the worldview of late antiquity in which it was born. Concepts were imported from Neoplatonism and earlier Greek cosmology. As such, the classical elements appear in alchemical writings, as do the seven classical planets and the corresponding seven metals of antiquity. Similarly, the gods of the Roman pantheon who are associated with these luminaries are discussed in alchemical literature. The concepts of prima materia and anima mundi are central to the theory of the philosopher's stone.

Magnum opus

The Great Work of Alchemy is often described as a series of four stages represented by colours.

nigredo, a blackening or melanosis

albedo, a whitening or leucosis

citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis

rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

Modernity

Due to the complexity and obscurity of alchemical literature, and the 18th-century diffusion of remaining alchemical practitioners into the area of chemistry, the general understanding of alchemy in the 19th and 20th centuries was influenced by several distinct and radically different interpretations. Those focusing on the exoteric, such as historians of science Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, have interpreted the Decknamen ('code words') of alchemy as physical substances. These scholars have reconstructed physicochemical experiments that they say are described in medieval and early modern texts. At the opposite end of the spectrum, focusing on the esoteric, scholars, such as Florin George Călian and Anna Marie Roos, who question the reading of Principe and Newman, interpret these same Decknamen as spiritual, religious, or psychological concepts.

New interpretations of alchemy are still perpetuated, sometimes merging with concepts from New Age or radical environmentalism movements. Groups like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons have a continued interest in alchemy and its symbolism. Since the Victorian revival of alchemy, "occultists reinterpreted alchemy as a spiritual practice, involving the self-transformation of the practitioner and only incidentally or not at all the transformation of laboratory substances", which has contributed to a merger of magic and alchemy in popular thought.

Esoteric interpretations of historical texts

In the eyes of a variety of modern esoteric and neo-Hermetic practitioners, alchemy is primarily spiritual. In this interpretation, transmutation of lead into gold is presented as an analogy for personal transmutation, purification, and perfection.

According to this view, early alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 AD), highlighted the spiritual nature of the alchemical quest, symbolic of a religious regeneration of the human soul. This approach is held to have continued in the Middle Ages, as metaphysical aspects, substances, physical states, and material processes are supposed to have been used as metaphors for spiritual entities, spiritual states, and, ultimately, transformation. In this sense, the literal meanings of alchemical formulas hid a spiritual philosophy. In the neo-Hermeticist interpretation, both the transmutation of common metals into gold and the universal panacea are held to symbolize evolution from an imperfect, diseased, corruptible, and ephemeral state toward a perfect, healthy, incorruptible, and everlasting state, so the philosopher's stone then represented a mystic key that would make this evolution possible. Applied to the alchemist, the twin goal symbolized their evolution from ignorance to enlightenment, and the stone represented a hidden spiritual truth or power that would lead to that goal. In texts that are believed to have been written according to this view, the cryptic alchemical symbols, diagrams, and textual imagery of late alchemical works are supposed to contain multiple layers of meanings, allegories, and references to other equally cryptic works, which must be laboriously decoded to discover their true meaning.

In his 1766 Alchemical Catechism, Théodore Henri de Tschudi suggested that the usage of the metals was symbolic:

Psychology

Alchemical symbolism was important in analytical psychology. It was revived and popularized from near extinction by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was initially confounded and at odds with alchemy and its images but after being given a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Chinese alchemical text translated by his friend Richard Wilhelm, he discovered a direct correlation or parallel between the symbolic images in the alchemical drawings and the inner, symbolic images coming up in his patients' dreams, visions, or fantasies. He observed these alchemical images occurring during the psychic process of transformation, a process that Jung called "individuation". Specifically, he regarded the conjuring up of images of gold or Lapis as symbolic expressions of the origin and goal of this "process of individuation". Together with his alchemical mystica soror (mystical sister), Jungian Swiss analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung began collecting old alchemical texts, compiled a lexicon of key phrases with cross-references, and pored over them. The volumes of work he wrote shed new light on understanding the art of transubstantiation and renewed alchemy's popularity as a symbolic process of coming into wholeness as a human being, where opposites are brought into contact and inner and outer, spirit and matter are reunited in the hieros gamos, or divine marriage. His writings are influential in general psychology, especially for those interested in understanding the importance of dreams, symbols, and the unconscious archetypal forces (Jungian archetypes) that comprise all psychic life.

Both von Franz and Jung contributed significantly to the subject and work of alchemy and to its continued presence in psychology and contemporary culture. Among the volumes Jung wrote on alchemy, his magnum opus is volume 14 of his Collected Works, Mysterium Coniunctionis.

Literature

Alchemy has had a long-standing relationship with art, evident in both alchemical texts and mainstream entertainment. Literary alchemy appears throughout the history of English literature from William Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling, and also the popular Japanese manga Fullmetal Alchemist. Here, characters or plot structure follow an alchemical magnum opus. In the 14th century, Chaucer began a trend of alchemical satire that can still be seen in recent fantasy works, such as those of the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Another literary work inspired by the alchemical tradition is the 1988 novel The Alchemist by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho.

Visual artists have had a similar relationship with alchemy. While some used it as a source of satire, others worked with the alchemists themselves or integrated alchemical thought or symbols in their work. Music was also present in the works of alchemists and continues to influence popular performers. In the last hundred years, alchemists have been portrayed in a magical and spagyric role in fantasy fiction, film, television, novels, comics, and video games.

Science

One goal of alchemy, the transmutation of base substances into gold, is now known to be impossible by means of traditional chemistry, but possible by other physical means. Although not financially worthwhile, gold was synthesized in particle accelerators as early as 1941.