Contributed by Annabelle 

( MelMel106)

Notations for those considering the path of an…
Alchemist

Beginnings: Tudor England and Natural Magic: c.1500-1600AD

To escape from accusations of witchcraft, alchemists devised a system of classification which divided magic into two categories, light and dark, good and evil. Of course, their system of 'natural magic' was the good sort, working solely with the magic that existed in all natural things. The other, evil, sort was sorcery, whose practitioners were accused of gaining power from the devil to aid their own ends. The famous natural magician and alchemist Giambattista della Porta wrote:

Alchemists and their counterparts in astrology and natural magic gained a great deal of power in the period corresponding to the Tudor reign in England. Knights, lords and even kings were known to show an interest in alchemical experiments. Queen Elizabeth I of England is known to have consulted an astrologer to ascertain the best date for her coronation, and later in life was the patron of a project to discover the Elixir of Life, as was the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Even ships would not leave port if an astrologer foretold bad tidings. 

There are two sorts of magic: the one is infamous, and unhappy, because it has to do with foul spirits, and consists of enchantments and wicked curiosity, and this is called sorcery, an art which all learned and good men detest... the other magick is natural, which all excellent wise men embrace, and worship with great applause."

Alchemical Elements

- Hydrargum/Quicksilver, later Mercury.

- Brimstone, later Sulphur.

- Salt.

These new elements had new properties, and this excited the alchemists, who believed that they could now make new and different substances, or, even better, make valuable ones easily.

For instance, it was clearly possible to remove the liquidity from mercury in order to make pure silver. This became a common theme in alchemy: If a substance had a list of properties, i.e. acidity, solidity, waxiness or flammability, then that substance could be made from other materials that shared some properties but differed in others. For instance, in theory it might be possible to make gold from sulphur, lead and mercury because it will have the yellowness from the sulphur, the metallicity from the lead and the shininess from the mercury.

The Spheres

The concepts of animal, vegetable and mineral are fairly familiar to most people. Minerals are not alive and cannot move, vegetables are alive but cannot move, and animals are alive and can move. Alchemists first devised this system and linked each of the spheres to one of their new elements. 

-The animal sphere was linked to mercury, probably due to its mobile nature

-The vegetable sphere was linked to sulphur.

-The mineral sphere was linked to salt.

Some alchemists believed that the whole of divine Creation was based upon their spheres. Hence, God made the mineral sphere first, then the vegetable sphere, then the animal sphere. In addition, He made each sphere from the previous one, and, with the right tools of transformation, the skilled alchemist might be able to do the same.

The transformation index went like this (spheres are color-coded)

Rocks » Base metals (i.e. iron) » Precious metals (i.e. gold)...

Simple plants (i.e. grasses) » Complex plants (i.e. trees)...

Simple animals (i.e. worms) » Complex animals (i.e. mammals) » Man

Concepts of Proto-Science:

(A) The Philosopher's Stone

This was, perhaps, the most sought-after of alchemical theories. With the philosopher's stone, the alchemist would possess the power of a god, able to progress the transformation index at will. The philosopher's stone, also called the Red stone, was never found over the three hundred years that alchemists pursued it (except in the pages of fiction). 

By accelerating the natural transformations that led to the formation of the universe, the alchemist could change lead into gold, or potentially 'grow' a homunculus, a tiny man acting as assistant and familiar to the alchemist.

In addition, when ground up and boiled in water, the philosopher's stone would give rise to an Elixir of Life, which cured all ailments and made the drinker live forever. 

Since the possession of the philosopher's stone would enable the alchemist to both live forever and turn base metals into gold, it is unsurprising that it was very popular. Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen wrote in 1999 that:

  " The big goals of alchemy were recipes... for things like The Elixir of Life, which would make you live forever, and How To Turn Lead Into Gold, which would give you lots of money to finance your immortal lifestyle."

However, as I wrote previously, many alchemists did not prescribe to the Transformation Index theory, and although some used other methods to turn base metals into gold, many were perfectly content performing basic chemistry and some physics.

(B) The Alkahest:

A rather less useful substance was the alkahest or universal solvent, which would dissolve anything. Despite the practical problems of storing such a solvent (what would you put it in?), many alchemists were greatly excited by the concept of the alkahest. The idea was first suggested by Arabic scholars before the Crusades, but only after the Renaissance did European alchemists start exploring the possibilities, once again without success.

While searching for the universal solvent, alchemists made stronger and stronger acids, including aqua fortis (concentrated nitric acid), and aqua regia (King's water, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids) which could dissolve gold, but were left to bitterly agree that the closest thing to a universal solvent was the thing they had started out at: water.

New Chemical Methods:

While alchemists were not chemists in the modern view, they certainly developed some decent chemical skills while they were searching for their various goals. 

For a start, they learned how to prepare a wide range of chemicals and materials, and modified versions of their methods are still used today. These include:

- Alloys (Steel in particular.)
-Acids and Alkalis. 
- Alcohols other than ethanol.
-Perfumes.

All of these were seen as 'progress' to the alchemists, and alchemists typically regarded any progress as beneficial to the enlightenment of mankind.

In addition, while making these innovations (and a great many more unsuccessful ones!), they discovered a wide range of modern chemical processes, for instance:

- Distillation. 
- Condensation & Reflux. 
- Evaporation.  
- Aerobic and Anaerobic combustions.

Distillation in particular was seen as an exciting discovery. If, for instance, rose petals were crushed and dissolved in alcohol, the distilled product (rose oil) could be made into perfume. However, what made the alchemists even more excited was their idea that this distilled oil was something they called 'essence of rose' and contained a blueprint for everything that made a rose into a rose. Alchemists worked tirelessly to obtain catalogues of natural essences, making them out of small animals as well as plants.

Alchemical Mistakes

This was not the only misunderstanding that alchemists made while studying the world around them. Due to the fairly hazy scientific nature of their work, many mistakes were made. 

For instance, alchemists claimed magnetism was a magical force which occurred because magnetic objects had magical 'sympathetic ties' between them. They used this as proof that natural magic existed, and that there were other ways of obtaining magic other than through evil diabolic means. These sympathetic ties covered medicine too. Some scholars believed the rather absurd notion that if a person was injured by a weapon, then the weapon should be treated rather than the person because of the sympathetic ties between the weapon and the wound it caused.

Less far-fetched mistakes covered optics: alchemists thought that prisms changed white light into the rainbow, rather than splitting the light as we know now; and the theory of octaves, which was believed (mistakenly) to control the motion of the planets and even defined one of the earliest periodic tables, long after alchemy had fallen in popularity.