Alchemy was born when everything was lost.
In that second-third century of the Common Era, the words “alchemy,,“theurgy”, and “divination” arose already separate from the true ancient wisdom: nature.
Everything can only be understood in its entirety.
Unfortunately, due to our mind’s field limitations, we walk in segments, and if we go too far, we get lost in an explosion of points. Beyond the knowledge acquired from individual sciences, and despite philosophical views continuing to fluctuate from one system to another, we are left with the task of understanding, unless we transform ancient learning into meaningless chaos. But, a suspicion arises: similarly to modern Physics, Alchemy could be self-creative like the branches of a family’s genealogical tree.
Métis
Her name meant Wisdom, but also a skill – or the intelligence of cunning – Métis was exercised on very different levels, but always for practical purposes: the bricklayer, the politician, the helmsman, the weaver. All protean realities that did not lend themselves to the immutable reasoning of abstract philosophical conjecture, and one which philosophers hastened to reject as ‘non-knowledge’. Even today it is incomprehensible to us that ancient symbolism is based on the practice of ancient crafts. Furthermore, the scholar must accept that a good percentage of esoteric symbolism reflects the science of matter, i.e. Alchemy.
Theurgy
If the word Alchemy is relatively recent, so is the word Theurgy. First attested in the fragmentary Chaldean Oracles and widely respected and used by later Neoplatonic philosophers, the meaning of Theurgy is disputed. Although it means “work of God” or “divine work”, it also designates a set of ritual routines coupled with a lifestyle based on ethical and intellectual practices. The aim of Theurgy was contact, assimilation, and, ultimately, union with what was defined as “divine”. In some ancient cultures Theurgy was considered such a complex discipline that it became a “sacred game”. Indeed, an actual “sacred hunt”, given the difficulty for the deities to capture a human being.
Sacred Game
Had it not been a real sacred game, we need to deepen why the ancient Celtic and Hittite deities who presided over the Chthonic world were often portrayed with gaming boards. However, the prohibition of practicing on the ritual board for purely recreational purposes was well known. It is easy to say that the gambling part of this priestly game soon entered the popular imagination: a ritual that puts the living in contact with the underworld can only be defined as “taking a huge risk” or at least “enduring a great fright”. Which humans, needless to say, find very exciting
Alchemy is Physics.
A simple Physics, within the reach of the Neolithic, but Physics nonetheless.
Alchemists, unknowingly, called their physics a “living organism”.
At the dawn of time, everything was said to pulsate with transformations—yes, even metals. Many millennia later, however, in the imagination of the new alchemists, the ancient definition of “living organism” began to lose its organic part allure and they found it more effective to represent the ancient Art of Fire as a mechanism of metamorphosis, roughly represented by its gears and movements. It was from then on that the Philosophers’ Stone began to be spoken of as a “living object”. The sources of energy and movement remained the cosmos and the alchemical principles.
Stars vs Sun.
Stars were considered the source of any alchemical movement. And the sun of any wind.
Alchemists called cosmic movements “cyclical motion of the philosophical sea”.
Strange for us today to know that, at certain times of the year, the alchemists’ stellar ocean could actually bypass the sun’s influence on the earth. With the help of the moon and the night sky, the stars have the ability to penetrate the most unreachable recesses of the earth’s crust. In fact, ancient agricultural calendars indicated stellar cycles rather than the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
Air, the swinging tool.
If you interrupt it, you have worked in vain.
Take Care, Alchemist, not to cut the ties.
For alchemists there were no clear boundaries between objects, but a continuum so dense that it could be cut with a knife, although invisible, ethereal and formless. Dust, nourishment of life, primary matter and bridge between different densities, Air forms the loom. For the ancients, the peculiar airborne alchemical “humidity” was not caused by terrestrial waters but by the proximity of the moon. In fact, the “space” between the moon and the earth was called “air“. While the upper part was called the aether. The latter has very little to do with the modern conception: in fact, it is closer to fire than to a void.
Water, everything that flows and grows.
Mind, the deities were called “those who flow“.
“Pouring water” was synonymous with bringing to life.
From here, the ancient ritual of libations. However, it was difficult for alchemists to clearly distinguish between the functions of air and water. Rain, dew, hail, and snow are “air” as long as they hover in the sky. But once collected, alchemists work with them as aqueous substances, in the sense that they have the property of flowing. The role of water in Alchemy is to return the spirit to its earth. This sentence is physics, in the sense that, once contaminated by water – I mean alchemical – earth acquires the property of “flowing”, and, consequently, it takes on the solvent function of water. The whole operation is called “returning the spirits to the earth”.
Earth, everything which unites sky and earth exists in the world of the living.
For alchemists, the sky is built on earth. They called this construction “PhilosophersʼStone”.
Earth is the secret refuge and the “storehouse” of the stars.
Alchemical earth is supreme, not because it is made of earth or stone, but because it “repeats” the universe. The alchemist’s quintessential earth is Mercurius, which can emerge from many alchemical paths. It is said that stellar influences are stored there.
Fire, unruly–unrestrained–unstoppable.
Simply, the spark. Yet we can define it as ‘that which gives a form’. More than an element, it is a directive.
The alchemist’s task is to amplify the weak cosmic fire.
Which is a bit like what the Greek god Hephaestus did: to amplify Zeus’ weak cosmic fire. But, are we talking about fire as an alchemical principle or common fire, the kind that burns, so to speak? If alchemical works are performed through burning fire, it is because we need to generate changes in state of matter, thus bringing the spirit of the world, Spiritus Mundi, to the surface. As for the other fire, the one produced by the “seed” of time, we only know that it is the “bearer” of information, uncontrollable and growing, symbolically represented by the ordinary fire. The beginning and end of the alchemical work. Anyway, it is neither Hephaestus nor Athena who personify Alchemy, but Hermes/Mercury.
“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle”.
And then we went out to see the stars again – Dante Alighieri, final verse (139) of Canto XXXIV of the Inferno.
For the ancients, what was sacred had to be reduced to the form of a toy.
The Inferno/Hell of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy symbolically represents the alchemist’s forge. The rotation of spinning tops can attract or repel, that is, create or cause it to be absorbed into the bottom from which life emerged. The little angels, or even Hecate, who lived in a world between earth and sky were not the only ones allowed to play with those rotating tools. The children who play with it, however, knew well that the charm of a spinning top comes from its ungovernability and noise. Are we talking about the entry and exit of the cosmos or are we just representing the path of the sun? Both have a deep meaning.
Igitur tela laboris stetit haec tenta lateribus,
and so the canvas of the work remained hanging still pulled by the weights.
Like all human works, something happens that interrupts them. Unless they continue in the transmutation.
Opus Imperfectum, unfinished work. This website, if not closed, will undergo profound transformations.The first reason is the depressing realization that AI LLMs have turned the human informational web into a marginalized land of conquest and oblivion. The other reason is the respect I owe to readers, in the sense that I didn’t feel like repeating the same articles over and over again after having already explained the operational and symbolic basics in previous articles. No wonder, Alchemy doesn’t have all the nuances and variations that symbolism seems to give it. It is called “Fulcanelli’s anti-theft device”, which basically consists of multiplying the terms and problems, so as to give Alchemy a much more complex image than it actually is: the same problem is treated in part countless times, completely varying the terms of the exposition, so that one gets the impression that different things are being treated. Of course, the result is mesmerizing, as are the puzzles and conundrums.
Driven by residual courage, or imprudence, I instead decided to gather together what I could say about Alchemy in an orderly and organic way – respecting the limited human mind, that is in segments. More, the Anatomy of an Alchemical Machine, is an ancient form magister-puer – master pupil – of ordering questions and answers to form a simple and quick exhaustive pattern. But, unlike modern faqs, everything should be read from beginning to end, because in Alchemy losing the thread means losing everything. As for me, I just hope I haven’t left behind just a bunch of semantic bits to the AI statistical oracles. Not even tangible sounds.
Anatomy of an Alchemical Machine.
Which I called Materiarius.
The humble Materiarius is the invisible pivot of the world machine.
So invisible that it can be imagined as an emission point. Materiarius in Latin means unskilled laborer with purely executive duties. I have my good reasons for trying to immerse you in the imagery of the alchemists of the Baroque era – a time when many educated people felt it their mission to write a treatise on Alchemy so that their heirs could find it in the library. Some of them had even set up extraordinary cabinets of curiosities, and they would have displayed the new monster among dressed automatons, stuffed exotic animals, and dried plants.