alchemy

alchemy, an art of ancient but uncertain origins, can be interpreted as an enquiry into man's relationship with the cosmos and the will of the Creator, manifested as either a devotional philosophy transforming sinful man into perfect being (‘esoteric’), or attempted transmutation of base metals into gold or silver (‘exoteric’), or an inextricable mixture of both. The catalyst required was the elixir of life, tincture, or philosophers' stone, the preparation of which long obsessed men of all ranks, despite its futility.

Probably arising in Hellenistic Alexandria, alchemy (al-kimia) was transmitted to Europe through Islamic culture, via 12th-cent. translations into Latin by men like Robert of Chester, Adelard of Bath, and the encyclopedist Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Whilst earlier Taoist alchemists had aimed principally for longevity, if not immortality, medieval western alchemists' objectives were gold-making or creating superior medicines, drawing on Aristotelian theory of the four ‘elements’ (air, fire, earth, water), old ideas that the planets were connected to certain metals, animistic beliefs, and current technical knowledge. The medieval idea of unity of matter justified the approach that if lead and gold were both dense and soft, then merely changing greyness to yellowness should convert the common metal into the precious one. Obsession with chemical colour changes (series of black, white, iridescent, yellow, purple, red) was matched by symbolic and enigmatic language, as the basic procedures of calcination, sublimation, fusion, crystallization, and distillation absorbed much time and expense.

Since the gold-makers' skills rendered them vulnerable to avaricious magnates, caution and circumspection were advisable, but public credulity encouraged conjuring and dishonesty; Chaucer's bitterness in ‘The Canon's Yeoman's Tale’ suggests that he himself had been taken in. Practical alchemy, nevertheless, had much to offer medicine, giving rise to metallic rather than herbal remedies, much favoured by Paracelsus, and eventually to iatrochemistry.

Despite interest from John Dee, Kenelm Digby, the ‘Wizard’ 9th earl of Northumberland, Walter Ralegh, and even Charles II, alchemy received its death-warrant in the mid-17th cent. when Robert Boyle demolished the theory of the four ‘elements’. Although it had led to the discovery of alcohol and the mineral acids, historians of chemistry view alchemy in general as fraudulent. Yet growing dissatisfaction with the mechanistic objectives of modern science has renewed interest in the alchemists' wider goals and debate about man and Creator.

A. S. Hargreaves