Bygone Beliefs [53]
means of the transmutation of man's soul into spiritual gold, is free to all; that it is, at once, the meanest and the most precious thing in the whole Universe. Indeed, I think it quite probable that the alchemists who penned the above-quoted passages had in mind the words of ISAIAH, "He was despised and we esteemed him not." And if further evidence is required that the alchemists believed in a correspondence between CHRIST--"the Stone which the builders rejected"--and the Philosopher's Stone, reference may be made to the alchemical work called _The Sophic Hydrolith: or Water Stone of the Wise_, a tract included in _The Hermetic Museum_, in which this supposed correspondence is explicitly asserted and dealt with in some detail.
[1] _A Discourse between Eudoxus and Pyrophilus, upon the Ancient War of the Knights_. See _The Hermetical Triumph: or, the Victorious Philosophical Stone_ (1723), pp. 101 and 102.
[2] JACOB BOEHME: _Epistles_ (trans. by J. E., 1649, reprinted 1886), Ep. iv., SE III.
Apart from the alchemists' belief in the analogy between natural and spiritual things, it is, I think, incredible that any such theories of the metals and the possibility of their transmutation or "regeneration" by such an extraordinary agent as the Philosopher's Stone would have occurred to the ancient investigators of Nature's secrets. When they had started to formulate these theories, facts[1] were discovered which appeared to support them; but it is, I suggest, practically impossible to suppose that any or all of these facts would, in themselves, have been sufficient to give rise to such wonderfully fantastic theories as these: it is only from the standpoint of the theory that alchemy was a direct offspring of mysticism that its origin seems to be capable of explanation.
[1] One of those facts, amongst many others, that appeared to confirm the alchemical doctrines, was the ease with which iron could apparently be transmuted into copper. It was early observed that iron vessels placed in contact with a solution of blue vitriol became converted (at least, so far as their surfaces were concerned) into copper. This we now know to be due to the fact that the copper originally contained in the vitriol is thrown out of solution, whilst the iron takes its place. And we know, also, that no more copper can be obtained in this way from the blue vitriol than is actually used up in preparing it; and, further, that all the iron which is apparently converted into copper can be got out of the residual solution by appropriate methods, if such be desired; so that the facts really support DALTON'S theory rather than the alchemical doctrines. But to the alchemist it looked like a real transmutation of iron into copper, confirmation of his fond belief that iron and other base metals could be transmuted into silver and gold by the aid of the Great Arcanum of Nature.
In all the alchemical doctrines mystical connections are evident, and mystical origins can generally be traced. I shall content myself here with giving a couple of further examples. Consider, in the first place, the alchemical doctrine of purification by putrefaction, that the metals must die before they can be resurrected and truly live, that through death alone are they purified--in the more prosaic language of modern chemistry, death becomes oxidation, and rebirth becomes reduction. In many alchemical books there are to be found pictorial symbols of the putrefaction and death of metals and their new birth in the state of silver or gold, or as the Stone itself, together with descriptions of these processes. The alchemists sought to kill or destroy the body or outward form of the metals, in the hope that they might get at and utilise the living essence they believed to be immanent within. As PARACELSUS put it: "Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue . . . the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue." It seems to me quite obvious that in such ideas as these we have the application to metallurgy of the
[1] _A Discourse between Eudoxus and Pyrophilus, upon the Ancient War of the Knights_. See _The Hermetical Triumph: or, the Victorious Philosophical Stone_ (1723), pp. 101 and 102.
[2] JACOB BOEHME: _Epistles_ (trans. by J. E., 1649, reprinted 1886), Ep. iv., SE III.
Apart from the alchemists' belief in the analogy between natural and spiritual things, it is, I think, incredible that any such theories of the metals and the possibility of their transmutation or "regeneration" by such an extraordinary agent as the Philosopher's Stone would have occurred to the ancient investigators of Nature's secrets. When they had started to formulate these theories, facts[1] were discovered which appeared to support them; but it is, I suggest, practically impossible to suppose that any or all of these facts would, in themselves, have been sufficient to give rise to such wonderfully fantastic theories as these: it is only from the standpoint of the theory that alchemy was a direct offspring of mysticism that its origin seems to be capable of explanation.
[1] One of those facts, amongst many others, that appeared to confirm the alchemical doctrines, was the ease with which iron could apparently be transmuted into copper. It was early observed that iron vessels placed in contact with a solution of blue vitriol became converted (at least, so far as their surfaces were concerned) into copper. This we now know to be due to the fact that the copper originally contained in the vitriol is thrown out of solution, whilst the iron takes its place. And we know, also, that no more copper can be obtained in this way from the blue vitriol than is actually used up in preparing it; and, further, that all the iron which is apparently converted into copper can be got out of the residual solution by appropriate methods, if such be desired; so that the facts really support DALTON'S theory rather than the alchemical doctrines. But to the alchemist it looked like a real transmutation of iron into copper, confirmation of his fond belief that iron and other base metals could be transmuted into silver and gold by the aid of the Great Arcanum of Nature.
In all the alchemical doctrines mystical connections are evident, and mystical origins can generally be traced. I shall content myself here with giving a couple of further examples. Consider, in the first place, the alchemical doctrine of purification by putrefaction, that the metals must die before they can be resurrected and truly live, that through death alone are they purified--in the more prosaic language of modern chemistry, death becomes oxidation, and rebirth becomes reduction. In many alchemical books there are to be found pictorial symbols of the putrefaction and death of metals and their new birth in the state of silver or gold, or as the Stone itself, together with descriptions of these processes. The alchemists sought to kill or destroy the body or outward form of the metals, in the hope that they might get at and utilise the living essence they believed to be immanent within. As PARACELSUS put it: "Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue . . . the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue." It seems to me quite obvious that in such ideas as these we have the application to metallurgy of the