Alchemy in Europe and the Middle East - Practical Origins In Hellenistic Egypt, Theoretical Foundations In Antiquity, Medieval Arabic Alchemy, The Latin Middle Ages
spiritual soul metals matter
To a modern observer, alchemy likely connotes only the transmutation of base metals into gold, or perhaps a more metaphorical transformation of the soul. In its roughly two-thousand-year history, however, alchemy's practices and ideas have ranged much more broadly, encompassing everything from the production of dyes, medicines, precious metals, and gemstones to assaying techniques, matter theory, and spiritual practices linking the manipulation of matter to changes in the alchemist's soul. Although all of these dimensions were present from alchemy's beginnings, practitioners have chosen to highlight particular facets of their art at different times. Any definition of alchemy, therefore, must be both sensitive to its historical permutations and broad enough to include each of its chemical, pharmacological, metallurgical, and spiritual components. To be more precise, one may speak of technical or practical alchemy, spiritual alchemy, natural philosophical alchemy, transmutational alchemy, and medical alchemy (often referred to as iatrochemistry or chimiatria). This essay offers an overview of alchemy's changing meaning over its rich and long history.
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The rich cultural resources of the Hellenistic world further developed alchemy's theoretical foundations. From Stoic matter theory, pneuma, or spirits, replaced Aristotelian forms as the active defining force of matter. From Babylonian astrological traditions alchemists adopted the identification of the seven metals (gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead) with the seven planets…
When Islamic empires expanded into centers of Hellenistic culture in the seventh century, Muslim natural philosophers and physicians inherited the Greek alchemical tradition. From the eighth to the tenth centuries, scholars in intellectual centers like Baghdad synthesized the basic elements of the Greek alchemical tradition. The anonymous editor of the Turba philosophorum (Crowd of philosophers; c…
In the twelfth century, Europeans such as Gerard of Cremona, Daniel of Morley, and Robert of Ketton began to translate more than seventy Arabic texts into Latin, introducing Europeans for the first time to the alchemical corpus and the Arabic term al-kimiya, which became the Latin alquimia, alkimia, alchimia, or alchemia. By the end of the century, translations from Morienus, the Corpus Gabirianum…
The fifteenth-century rediscovery of the ancient Hermetic corpus and a concurrent revival of Neoplatonism introduced learned Europeans to ancient connections among alchemy, gnosis, and magic. Alchemy's renewed associations with magic and nature's occult forces broadened the primarily technical and natural philosophical discussions of alchemy of the Middle Ages. Hermetic philosophers …
Although it has been assumed that alchemy was inconsistent with new ideas about nature associated with the scientific revolution or that the promoters of the "new science" rejected alchemy, historians now refuse simple narratives associating the scientific revolution with the decline of alchemy. During the seventeenth century, alchemy continued to be a vibrant field of natural philos…
Baldwin, Martha. "Alchemy and the Society of Jesus in the Seventeenth Century: Strange Bedfellows?" Ambix 40 (1993): 41–64. Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early M…
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