Alchemy symbols
Wealth and stability produce greater advances in art, science, philosophy, etc. In broadest strokes, while the Roman empire provided relative stability, its culture and influence dominated the western world. With that in mind, the next important aspect of alchemy is its migration from Egypt and the surrounding Hellenic, Greek speaking world to that of the Arabic Middle East.
Alchemy symbols free#
If you’d like to skip it and continue on to just the topic of alchemy, you’re free to view or hide it as you wish: This next section will be a bit of divergence into a very generalized history for the purpose of context. Wise readers would do well to form their own conclusions about the nature of any work, practitioner and academic alike. Later iterations of alchemy cast it in exclusively allegorical and spiritual realms, disparaging any connection to early practitioners who sought to craft gold from lead. Science is relegated to one far end (as it reasonably should be) but the esoteric view need not confine itself to the exact opposite. The material nature of metals or the planets and their assigned metaphysical properties exist at opposite ends of a spectrum. Alchemy, much like astrology, has at its core these two seemingly opposed components. There is no reason that Zosimos can’t be respected for his scientific and spiritual endeavors in the context of when he lived. Both extreme views ignore elements of the contrary and are lesser for it.
One could read early alchemical authors such as Zosimos as early chemists who should be praised for their advanced, scientific minds or as authors of allegorically veiled spiritual secrets. However, doing so is anachronistic and dulls the impact of the material. It is tempting to look to the past and apply such labels retroactively to authors and their intent. Once western culture began to prioritize reason over religious authority in matters of the material world and humans’ place in it, previously conflated practices like alchemy and chemistry were more formally separated in discussion and practice. Before the Enlightenment, this convergence of science and the supernatural is well described as “natural philosophy”. Since there was essentially no distinction between what people understood of the physical world and the divine, metaphysical forces were equally considered in the theories of how and why the results of the experiments appeared as they did. Zosimos describes his work and experiments in a way that closely mirrors the core of the scientific method today carefully thought out experiments, recording results, detailing all the materials including advanced equipment, and theories developed from direct observation.
Principie as a “ chrysopoeian“, meaning “one who makes gold”, and this more accurately reflects the goal of these early “alchemists”. Zosimos is described by the historian of science Lawrence M. While the terminology and theories described by Zosimos, such as dividing the nature of metals into a “spirit” and “body”, would characterize them as “magical” or “occult” to modern readers, alchemy at this point in history was much closer to chemistry than any metaphysical process. Not only were they interested in the functional aspects of the craft, but as early as 300 AD the writings of Zosimos of Panopolis describe and underlying theoretical framework with which these early “alchemists” hoped to manipulate physical materials. Despite not understanding the scientific functions that produced the results, ancient and premodern artisans were adept at this early metallurgy and chemistry. Humans had been working with metal and chemicals for thousands of years prior, creating alloys and manufacturing artificially created compounds. Of course, this is only as far back as we can trace it based on written evidence. Like so many staples of western occultism, alchemy has its origins in the multicultural world of Hellenized Egypt around the first century.