Entropy and Rarefaction in Alchemy

Indeed, alchemical disarticulation efforts—aimed at generating “chaos” in an organized molecular structure, almost as if designed to disarticulate and demolish a momentary order—present an interesting analogy to the close repetitions observed in old analog computers of the 1970s: programming computers to iterate, or continually repeat the same equations, led to chaos, giving rise to so-called strange attractors. This led to the dynamic growth behaviors that mathematicians are so familiar with.

On the alchemical side, Alchemists’ Mercurius is what emerges only after illogically continuous repetitions of the same volatilization operations. I say illogically because in chemistry, a few distillations-sublimations-fusions would suffice to refine matter, since this is what chemists seek. Instead, Alchemical Mercurius is not a refinement of the starting matter, but is comparable to the spirit of life that emerges only after a “disarray” of at least seven or nine continuous volatilizations-sublimations-fusions. At the end of the exhausting, or violent, alchemical works on a metallic body, Mercurius is what remains, and preferably inside a “handy” casing, called Mercurius Philosophorum, or “fixed” Mercurius.

One could superficially summarize the alchemical works by saying they are an accelerated entropy, compared to the times programmed by nature. However, “destroying the crust” is a spagyrists jargon. An alchemist would say it is a matter of “spiritualizing” the body. In fact, alchemists “destroy” the body’s crust to extract alchemical “time”. But I think destroy is not the right word.

To better define alchemical works we should use the word rarefy. We have already seen, in fact, how it is an alchemical belief that “time” is contained in greater “quantity” in the gaseous states of matter than in the solid ones.

It is not a secret that alchemists believe they can treat time as a substance, however ineffable. For in Alchemy, time is almost synonymous with the spirit of life.

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in isolated systems can only increase. This means that, normally, the decay products cannot rearrange themselves to create the original particle. Indeed, entropy particularly affects isolated systems.

Or, perhaps, who knows, Alchemy could escape the law of entropy that affects isolated systems precisely by going not beyond isolated systems, but returning to the original form before they were formed.

Alchemists call it “transmutation into the archetype”.

For an alchemist who deals exclusively with metals, the situation is much less traumatic. Since we cannot “break” the isolated biological system and transform it into an open one, we must imagine that in this less complicated realm there exists a “spark” that does not decay. Alchemists call it the “seed of metals”.

For an alchemist who deals exclusively with metals, the situation is much less traumatic. Since we cannot “break” the isolated biological system and transform it into an open one, we must imagine that in this less complicated realm there exists a “spark” that does not decay. Alchemists call it the “seed of metals”.

If you replace the word “seed” with “nature” perhaps we can understand how little distance there is between the world of those with DNA and the simple metallic world.

The alchemical seed is not chemistry but physics. Indeed, it is a reduction to physics.

I see that the damage caused by the spagyric mental model applied to Alchemy is almost irreversible. So let’s try to subvert the “chemical” model by talking about atoms, that is, the world that modern physicists place between the micro and the macro: the subatomic particles that belong to the micro, with their physical laws, such as quantum mechanics, and the bodies that belong to the macro and Einstein’s discoveries. Well, when the ancient alchemists spoke of “nature,” they meant a force that “shaken” the atoms and made them sway.

I mean something more substantial and evident to Neolithic human kind. How could one in primitive times practice the wave functions of subatomic particles?

Primitive people had the strength of their bodies, above all, which they never separated from their minds. Body and mind were one in their culture.

In fact, that’s what they did. By “nature” alchemists mean sound, the most primitive form of energy and power.

… aside from the fact that a vibration can pass from one body to another, and so, in a certain sense, continue its journey.

Not if operated with some special precautions.

Not being a physicist, I don’t know what to answer you, except to quote the Plotinus’ sentence “It is the body that is inside the soul and not the other way around”. Maybe, we modern still have hope of simplifying the thorny issue of “body and soul” if we consider the soul as a “field” in which a body ends up.

Until the Baroque era, an alchemist would have responded that the “alchemical” particle was drawn to reunification with the divine sphere. However, at the beginning of scientific investigation, in the eighteenth century, alchemists were already beginning to propose experimentally replicable explanations; in fact, they tended a little too pragmatically to replace the divine sphere with magnetism or mesmerism. At the dawn of alchemical times – I mean when the word Alchemy was created – there was instead a tendency towards a realliance with the archetypal or memory world.