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One has to remember that alchemy was as much a religious and spiritual pursuit as anything resembling proto-science, and understand that occultists were working
by krapp 2y ago
One has to remember that alchemy was as much a religious and spiritual pursuit as anything resembling proto-science, and understand that occultists were working from a worldview which was nominatively deterministic - meaning the names and properties of things in the natural world held inherent power and reflected a higher, divine nature ("as above, so below")
The transmutation of metals in alchemy is a metaphor for the transmutation of the soul, from its base and sinful nature ("lead") to divinity ("gold".) The means of purifying one was the means of purifying the other, and the "philosopher's stone" alchemists often sought to achieve this was credited for doing both.
Also... it was often an easy grift to get room and board (and money) from wealthy patrons.
Here is a good /r/AskHistorians thread about this[0].
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/114vo4m/alchemy_famously_sought_to_turn_lead_into_gold/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/114vo4m/alch...
- tanseydavid 2y agoThank you for this. Here's a pull quote from the linked article: Broadly speaking, alchemical writings are not just concerned with the manipulation of physical matter; rather, alchemy can be viewed as a philosophy that synthesizes chemistry and spirituality. A common overarching idea is that transmuting materials is directly analogous to the purification of the soul - alchemists were, in general, trying to advance *spiritual* enlightenment as well as *intellectual* enlightenment. It's important to understand this mindset in order to grasp what they were trying to achieve with metallurgy.