The Great Work, the Magnum Opus, breaks down the existing relationship between them, activating each separately, and leading them from an ignorant and inert state to perfection. The hermetic philosophy maintains that everything – animal, vegetable, and mineral – contains these three elements, but in an unawakened form. The alchemical operation works on three levels of being at once – on body, soul, and spirit. However, the belief that it could be only obtained by divine grace led to the development of esoteric or mystical alchemy and this gradually developed into a devotional system where the mundane transformation of metals became merely symbolic of the transformation of sinful man into a perfect being through prayer and submission to the will of God. The elixir is credited with the power of prolonging human life indefinitely. Exoteric alchemy is concerned with attempts to prepare a substance, the philosopher’s stone endowed with the power of transmuting the base metals lead, tin, copper, iron, and mercury into the precious metals gold and silver. Today most scholars see alchemy of a twofold nature, an outward or exoteric, and hidden or esoteric. For most people alchemy was nothing more than the dubious sensation of making gold and the elixir of life. Īmong all the known secret sciences alchemy is probably the most veiled and at the same time the most misunderstood discipline. Other scholars consider it more likely that the word is derived from chymia, a Greek word relating to the casting of fusion of metal. Some scholars believe that it is associated with the Egyptian word chem, signifying “black” and relating to the description of Egypt as “The Land of the Black Soil”. Al means “the”, but the meaning of the second word is not quite clear. The immediate derivation of the word alchemy is from the Arabic al kimia. It has attracted many types of people with widely differing motivations. Along with it there is Spiritual Alchemy, the Alchemy of the Soul in Man, meaning the transmutation of the animal nature into the Higher Self, man's inner Ego, and its reabsorption into the Universal or World-Soul.Īlchemy has a history stretching back for at least two thousand years and has been practiced in Eastern, Arabic, and Western societies.

The transmutation of metals and the fabrication of gold was the material aspect of alchemy. The other being the Elixir of Life, the potion thought to prolong life indefinitely. The Philosopher’s Stone is the legendary substance needed for this process and one of the two key things sought after by Alchemists. Alchemy is a science which seeks to convert one species of metal into another, namely base metals into noble metals, especially gold.

Taschen alchemy