Plotinus had an innate distrust of materiality – a common characteristic of Platonism – believing that phenomena and forms were a pale image or imitation/mimesis of something higher and more comprehensible, which was “the truest part of authentic Being”. Starting from these assumptions, what would alchemists work on?
Always Plotinus, always Enneads: “Matter is incorporeal because it is prior to the body.”
So you’re suggesting that alchemists work to extract something that is prior to the body?
Have you deduced that alchemists work to extract matter from the body? In this case, what would differentiate alchemy from spagyrics? Plato himself, in the Timaeus, gives a valuable indication: matter is the receptacle par excellence.
The initial visibility of the receptacle may be linked to the presence of the traces of the forms. I have again quoted from Timaeus. But you will have understood that I want to get to the four alchemical elements.
The four alchemical elements have nothing to do with forms. They have more to do with the states of matter, even though they cannot be identified with them. The ancient Greeks, who invented them, used them as symbols of function, not even within what is commonly called matter. But we will analyze them in a separate section.
Are we talking about Alchemy or Plato and the Platonists?
Since Plato’s Timaeus was considered by early medieval alchemists to be the alchemical text par excellence—along with texts by Arab authors—we cannot ignore these thoughts. Although I find the fragments by Plato’s precursors, the Pre-Socratics, more interesting. Plato, in my opinion, is a magnificent writer; the others, the most ancient, were true natural philosophers.
If we start discussing mathematics and forms, we’ll never get out of this. Let’s stick to classical alchemy, that of the stills.
I see. But Alchemy was primitive before it was “classical” and there is evidence that it was much more perfect before the misleading era of stills.
To resume: matter is prior to the body and is “infinite” in the sense of formlessness. An entire philosophy speaks of matter as an abyss and of the stormy sea as a symbol of Hyle, matter. How can we concretely translate these concepts into Alchemy?
Without delving too deeply into pure ideology—in the sense of a set of ideas or beliefs shared by a group—I’ll answer you bluntly: matter-receptacle-abyss is represented in Alchemy by the Nigredo, or black phase. From the Nigredo onward, in fact, nothing in the body subjected to the “sacrifice” or encounter with the “divinities” will ever be the same again. To put it simply, alchemical matter is after the body and prior to the body.
“Take the body from that which has a body and give a body to that which has no body”?
Yes. I believe that the famous saying in Turba Philosophorum fits perfectly with the black phase. But many alchemists will refute this with the incontrovertible fact that the true alchemical matter is the Spiritus Mundi, or spirit of the world, in its various “incarnations.. And this is precisely the other undeniable fact: the alchemist does not “maneuver” spirits, but rather shuttle substances in which—it is hoped—these famous spirits, too ineffable to be extracted, flow. Pay attention to this verb “to flow”. Because, after all, the Philosopher’s Stone flows.
So, the actual alchemical matter as an incorporeal substance is nothing more or less than a fluctuation?
Mind: a fluctuation that an alchemist receives and does not manage.
No fumes, vapors, gases, semi-plasmic substances or fourth degrees of matter?
In Alchemy, these are merely “tools of the work”. With smoke and vapor, the alchemist lifts and slams down until the form and structure are destroyed. After the smoke, one arrives at putrescent blackness, always.
Yet, in few other lexicons is the word “matter” used as frequently as in Alchemy: Materia Prima, Prima Materia, Materia Secunda, Materia Tertia, Materia Proxima (first matter, primary matter, second matter, third matter, proximity matter). Are all these materials to be understood as incorporeal?
Absolutely. Alchemists always understand these different aspects as a progression toward the final stage. Alchemists call them “vessels”, precisely because they carry alchemists across the waves of different philosophical seas. Do you know why the aspects you mentioned never have a well-defined shape and chemical substance? Because the “chemical” paths to obtain them are many and varied.
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