Alchemy Exhibition

Malachias Geiger, Microcosmus. München 1651, emblem 5.

From 3 January 2000 to September 2000, the library showed an exhibition on alchemy, highlighting the practical and symbolical aspects of alchemy, the influence of Paracelsus and the dissemination of Paracelsian medicine together with some of the opponents to alchemy. The exhibition contained printed books and manuscripts, mainly from the 16th-18th centuries, and three alchemical miniatures from the 15th century.

About alchemy

According to current definitions alchemy is an art which aims to change impure metals into silver or gold. Roger Bacon (ca 1214-after 1292) broadened its scope: he described the 'alkimia speculativa' as a science which studied the inanimate world. One aspect involved the research into the causes, the characteristics and the transmutation of the metals. The refining of metals was looked upon as an intervention in their natural origins. Metals waxed inside the earth as in a womb: the art accelerated the growth process and improved the unripe fruit. This course of events was associated with the curing of a body: the process which was to refine the metals might also be able to cure the human body of all ailments.
These descriptions highlight a number of alchemical aspects which continued to exist throughout history: the pursuit of making gold, a natural-philosophical concept to fit this pursuit, applications for the alchemist and his fellow men, analogical reasonings and organic metaphors.

The alchemist went about his business using simple instruments: an oven for heating, retorts for distilling, and materials such as ores and minerals to make acids. The apparatus and the phases in the process generated a repertory of symbols and metaphors. Fire stood for both destruction and life force, the retorts were a reflection of the cosmos in which the creation was re-enacted, during distillation vapours would rise, - 'spirits'- which precipitated as a result of condensation and descended as it were into matter: the body had to become spirit, as the motto ran. In the retorts a process of death and resurrection was taking place, which could be indicated using imaged derived from the Passion. The studies of Carl Gustav Jung point to the correspondences between alchemy and mysticism: the alchemist was to live through the process of transmutation.

Alchemical texts can be read partly literally, partly allegorically and mystically, although the precise relationship is only rarely obvious. Within the history of science it has long been customary to regard alchemy as proto-chemistry. The texts were interpreted as exactly as possible by substituting symbols with current chemical symbols. This proved more or less successful especially in the interpretation of seventeenth-century texts. The psycho-analytical approach is not concerned with this. Both viewpoints involve anachronisms, because the history of alchemy is regarded from a modern perspective.

Broadly speaking the history of Western alchemy may be phased as follows.

Around the middle of the twelfth century the first translations from the Arabic begin to appear. (Arabic alchemy partly goes back to Greek texts). At the same time the works of Aristotle are introduced in the Latin West. Although Aristotle does not discuss alchemy at all, his Meteorologica becomes an authoritative text, not in the least because of Arabic additions relating to alchemy.

Following the introduction of the art, alchemical texts are produced in the fourtheenth century containing allegories deriving from Biblical texts.

After the invention of printing it takes another century before a wave of alchemical texts floods the market. Around 1550 a number of compendia appears with Latin translations of by now classical texts such as the Rosarium Philosophorum and the Turba Philosophorum. Metallurgic manuals are also brought on the market, including Georg Agricola's De Re Metallica (1556). A new genre is introduced, that of the 'Libri Secreti', DIY-books with secret recipes in all kinds of fields, including alchemy. Natural-philosophical handbooks appear which indirectly relate to alchemy, such as Giambattista della Porta's Magia Naturalis (1558). The appearance of Paracelsus (1493-1541) is decisive for the subsequent history of alchemy. Paracelsus set little store by transmutation, but he did prepare iatro-chemical medicine with the aid of distillation. Paracelsistic terminology came to be adopted by mystics and theosophers, amongst whom Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605) and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). These natural-philosophical speculations are generally set within a Neoplatonic framework and are heterodox and anti-Aristotelian.

The early seventeenth-century witnesses a flowering of emblematic literature which makes use of earlier trends and at the same time enriches them with allegories based on classical texts which may be interpreted alchemistically, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses.

In the late seventeenth century alchemistic insights are incorporated into the new corpuscular theories which come to dominate the atomistic-mechanistic world picture. This type of alchemy gradually takes on an experimental character whereby an attempt is made to express its findings in clear language. The traditional alchemistic termimology is retained by Pietists, and more and more acquires a symbolical nature. The distinction between a 'chymist' and an 'adept' - who knows the secret of alchemy - becomes ever larger.

With the advance of gas chemistry and the dissolution of the elements at the end of the eighteenth century the universe becomes less of a mystery. The life force pervading the universe, once called the Philosopher's Stone, the Quinta Essentia, or the World Soul, is identified as oxygen. The dark symbols of alchemy slumber on in esoteric societies to awaken eventually in Jungian psychoanalysis.

Frank van Lamoen