# Alchemy



## RJM Corbet (Apr 10, 2011)

ALCHEMY? Oh come on, let's have it?
If Isaac Newton was into it, there must be something there?
What were those guys really looking for?
Remember they operated at a time when if the church didn't like you they made a bonfire of you ...


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Apr 10, 2011)

What were they looking for?



Well technically alchemy as an art and practice DOES exist-TECHNICALLY.


I'm not talking about the bull plop of turning lead into gold, but medicine and cooking are both technically alchemy. What Isaac Newton and such were looking for, were probably knowledge more than anything. Knowledge, and perhaps riches. And I might even be able to say more on the matter if I hadn't gotten only 3.5 hours of sleep.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Apr 10, 2011)

Some were looking for gold, some for the perfect medicine that would cure all ills including old age (the Elixir of Life), some were seeking esoteric knowledge of the mechanics of the universe, and others were seeking spiritual enlightenment, which would then confer all of the above.  At the same time, many were also looking for practical applications, medicines, pigments, etc. while they were waiting for their alchemical experiments to mature (many of those took a long, long time, because they involved slowly heating things for weeks or months).

A great many of their "experiments" were actually demonstrations, like the experiments kids do in their chemistry classes: they wanted to see the principles involved in action.  But for the alchemist these observations were supposed to lead them to a higher understanding of ideas we would consign to philosophy or religion.  The practice of alchemy did occasionally lead to trouble with the Church, because the alchemist might stray into territory considered to be heresy or black magic, but they were most of them men of deep religious principles* -- some were even clerics.  Their symbolic language spoke of Greek and Roman gods, but these were metaphors for metals, processes, etc. Since the science of alchemy was already old by the Middle Ages, medieval alchemists were still using symbolism that dated back to classical times. This language was obscure, because they believed that those who _deserved_ to understand (by their virtue, by their diligence in seeking knowledge) _would_ understand.

Newton, I believe, was more magician than alchemist.



*These were the ones who were making a sincere effort to perfect the art.  But just as the practice of medicine attracted charlatans, alchemy attracted con men who were working the lead into gold angle to get others to invest money in their little ventures.  There were also those who were called "puffers" for the diligence with which they worked their bellows to keep the fires going.  These weren't interested in the science or the philosophy.  They simply wanted to make gold and become rich.


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## Ursa major (Apr 10, 2011)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> But for the alchemist these observations were supposed to lead them to a higher understanding of ideas we would consign to philosophy or religion.


In fact, before the term, scientist, was invented in the early nineteenth century, those studying nature and the physical universe were often called Natural Philosophers.


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## Nik (Apr 11, 2011)

My feeling was they were both trying to understand the universe and gain power over it. They made progress by accident until the rudiments of chemistry developed...

One gotcha: The infamous Philosopher's Stone that reputedly turned base metals to gold *could* have been a primitive electric cell...
Baghdad Battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## skeptical (Apr 11, 2011)

Isaac Newton was a mega-genius.  But he was also a man of his time, and it was impossible back then to avoid superstition's influence.   So Newton was, among other things, a very superstitious man.

My favourite is the colours of the rainbow.   Did you learn that at school?  ROY G BIV, or Richard of York gave battle in vain, as mnemonic for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

One small problem.   If you actually look very hard at a rainbow, or prism spectrum, you realise there are only six colours.  There is no indigo.    So why did Newton say seven?

In fact, that was pure superstition.   In those days, seven was regarded as a mystical number - God's own number.   Thus, there* had* to be seven colours, even if one need be invented for the job.


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## Interference (Apr 11, 2011)

For those interested:

YouTube - Alchemy - Sacred Secrets Revealed Part 1/8

Talking about turning lead into gold was purely allegorical at the time.  The Pope wouldn't have approved.


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## woodsman (Apr 11, 2011)

Wasn't Newton quite religous as well? There have been some huge pillars of science- Newton & Einstein being the favourites but, they're in no way infallible. 

I think it is possible to turn other metals into gold, at great expense and most easily from platinum so it's not worth it, using nuclear decay(?). I guess if we ever get fusion on the go we could potentially make gold thataways as well.


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## skeptical (Apr 11, 2011)

Atoms heavier than iron are made in supernova explosions. Ordinary suns are too weak to achieve that, the energy demands are so great.

Still think we might be able to make gold?


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## woodsman (Apr 11, 2011)

haha possibly, I just won't be the pulling the trigger...

Okay we'll stick with mercury and irradiation.


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## Vertigo (Apr 11, 2011)

I think even things like Iron only start being made at the very end of most stars' life cycles. Most of their life is spend converting Hydrogen to Helium it is only the significantly heavier stars that are capable of fusing heavier elements up to Iron and then elements heavier than that, as skeptical says, are only formed when the star goes supernova. Also remember that most (I think) stars are not massive enough to go supernova. Our sun will not for example. It will become a red giant and then eventually throw off its outer layer to form a nebula and eventually cool into a white dwarf.





> Interestingly, the fact that our solar system contains heavy elements indicates that supernovae have occurred here before. Our sun is probably the third star to exist in this cosmic neighbourhood, and our solar system formed from the particles left over from prior stars destroying themselves in spectacular manner
> ​



 I guess that makes supernovae the ultimate alchemists!​​


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 12, 2011)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> ... Newton, I believe, was more magician than alchemist.


Yes, he was a mystical person. I hated him at school, he was so dry and boring. But he wasn't really like that at all. 
He's listed on Wikipaedia, among the 100 most influential people in history, as 2nd -- below Mohammed and above Jesus Christ, followed by Buddha and Confucius in 4th and 5th place respectively.
His father couldn't read or write. Isaac Newton was very religious, yet no wimp. He beat up a bully at school and rubbed his nose against a stone wall. He used to keep a book of all his sins, which included 'striking many.' He managed to get into Cambridge University, taught himself mathematics, because in those days it wasn't even a subject, paid little attention to the classical subjects, barely scraped through his exams -- and two years later, at the age of 18yrs, had streaked ahead of all the other mathematicians and invented calculus, whatever that is. A year Later Cambridge instituted the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, acknowledging mathematics, so to speak, and five years later Newton inherited the Chair from Isaac Barrow. Prof Stephen Hawkin now holds the same Chair.
The word 'alchemy' is derived from the Egyptian heiroglyph _KHMI_, which was a version of the Egyptian name for Egypt itself -- to which was added the Arabic definitive article _Al. _
Very ancient.
Isaac Newton, surely everyone agrees, was not a gullible man.
So why was he dabbling in pseudo-science?
What were the 'true' alchemists really looking for?
I am not ignoring the rest of your (true) observations, Teresa, just zooming in on Newton, for now


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## Vertigo (Apr 12, 2011)

He wasn't being gullible at all by his times. In his day the dividing line between science and what we would now call superstition wasn't just grey, it barely existed. This is what they were just beginning to define; just what was real and provable and what wasn't. Alchemy was pretty much the chemistry of the day.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 12, 2011)

Interference said:


> For those interested:
> 
> YouTube - Alchemy - Sacred Secrets Revealed Part 1/8
> 
> Talking about turning lead into gold was purely allegorical at the time. The Pope wouldn't have approved.


 
Thanks. Great. 



Vertigo said:


> He wasn't being gullible at all by his times. In his day the dividing line between science and what we would now call superstition wasn't just grey, it barely existed. This is what they were just beginning to define; just what was real and provable and what wasn't. Alchemy was pretty much the chemistry of the day.


 
Yes, it was the chemistry of the day. And yes, it was all mixed up with mysticism. I'm just suggesting perhaps there was a lot more to it than that? Have you had a look at the above YouTube? While I've gotya online: 42? C'mon, please? 42?


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## Vertigo (Apr 12, 2011)

Ah sorry RJM - I thought you had caught the reference - it is the answer to Life The Universe and Everything according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchikers Guide the Universe. A race built this huge computer the size of a planet to answer the question and it came up with the answer 42. When they complained it said they hadn't asked the right question! When asked what the question was it said it would take another generation or two to figure that out for them!


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## Nik (Apr 13, 2011)

"So why did Newton say seven ?"

According to Wiki (YMMV), he suggested five, then upped it to seven to match musical notes...

IMHO, there's also the possibility that a bystander commented that there were more than five colours: Seems that a proportion of the population are *tetrachromatic* due to a mutation on X-chromosome, so see a slightly wider range than us trichromats...
Wiki led me to a thought-provoking paper...
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 13, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> Ah sorry RJM - I thought you had caught the reference - it is the answer to Life The Universe and Everything according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchikers Guide the Universe. A race built this huge computer the size of a planet to answer the question and it came up with the answer 42. When they complained it said they hadn't asked the right question! When asked what the question was it said it would take another generation or two to figure that out for them!


 
Oh! Thank you. No, I read another story, titled 'The Meaning of Life', in which the number 42 came up, obviously a deliberate cross reference by the author, who is a member of this forum. Thanks Vertigo


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## Vertigo (Apr 13, 2011)

You're welcome RJM; if you like the sense of humour in them, the books are great, but the humour is somewhat off the wall. I loved them!

Re the number of colours, I don't think it is too important. There are, of course, not 5 or 7 or any absolute number of colours and I'm sure Newton was well aware of that; it is a continuous spread of all the frequencies in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. Where you decide to put boundaries (and how many) between the "colours" is purely an arbitrary decision for convenience.

And Newton did indeed increase his "number" of colours in the spectrum from 5 to 7 (adding orange and indigo) in order to match them to the notes in the major scale in music. However he could have as easily listed 25 colours, if he could have dreamt up names for them.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 13, 2011)

Newton was the first to analyse the spectrum of white light, to realize that the different colours of light refract at at different angle (ie: red bends at a greater angle than blue) and that the colour 'red' is emitted by an object that absorbs the rest of the spectrum, except for red. He invented that. It was one of the first, earliest, things he did. C'mon ...


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## Vertigo (Apr 14, 2011)

Sorry I think you have misunderstood me. I didn't say he didn't discover the spectrum of light... of course he did. I merely said that splitting the spectrum into 7 discreet colours or 5 or 10 or a hundred is completely arbitrary and that he certainly appreciated that. In fact he drew a circular diagram (following the lead of painter colour circles) to illustrate where he had placed those divisions.


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## Nik (Apr 14, 2011)

Sorry RJM, you have refraction backwards...

For 'normal' materials such as optical glass...
"...different wavelengths of light will travel at different speeds, and so the light will disperse into the colours of the visible spectrum, with longer wavelengths (red, yellow) being refracted less than shorter wavelengths (violet, blue)."


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## Vertigo (Apr 14, 2011)

Whoops I missed that Nik, but it doesn't really change the point he was making, I think he just misunderstood mine


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 14, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> Whoops I missed that Nik, but it doesn't really change the point he was making, I think he just misunderstood mine


 
Sorry, Vertigo. I did skirt the point you were making. Yah. It's like music: it's arbitary. Western music has a scale of 7 whole notes + 5 semi-tones = 12. Indian, African, Chinese music, treat the sounds differently.
I was just saying that Newton knew what he was doing, and since he invented it, give him his seven colours, if that's how he wanted it?
I stand corrected as regards refraction.
But its an interesting point, which touches on quantum mechanics. Sound is sound. As soon as you take a particular sound and call it 'middle C', the rest of the scale exists around that decision. But the original decision about what note you're going to call 'C' is entirely arbitary?
I really do enjoy learning from these forums. I, too, like the way the threads go off in their own direction, after a while. Thank you.


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## Interference (Apr 14, 2011)

I think the colours got named because there were things you could see in nature that were those colours.  I haven't completely worked this through, but I think I might be close.  Non elemental colours, or primary colours, of orange and green, for example, are seen in nature and are distinctly different from yellow or blue things.  Perhaps violet is quite common as well in some places.  Indigo was the real stretch since it's really just dark blue.

Seven was the magic number, though, so seven it had to be.  Seven chakras, seven stages of alchemical development, seven dwarves (or Characteristics of Man, which was the reason for that choice in that story) etc ...


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 14, 2011)

Perhaps it _is_ a _magic_ number? Newton was a serious mathematician, I don't believe he would be influenced by 'mystical' sidelines unless he, scientifically, believed them worth investigating? I wish everyone would watch the YouTube link you posted earlier in this thread ...


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## Interference (Apr 14, 2011)

There's mysterious stuff in there   And not at all divergent from the philosophy of the time, and thus the science.

I hope no one else watches it - we Magi need our secrets, y'know


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 14, 2011)

Interference said:


> You didn't watch the Alchemy You Tube closely enough, did you, Rog?  There's mysterious stuff in there  And not at all divergent from the philosophy of the time, and thus the science.


 
Thank you for the edit! I'm terrified of arguing with you! Yes, everyone should watch it. What's ten minutes of your life? It's the merging of the mystical with the science that I'm getting at. That's the whole point I'm trying to make -- that science and 'mysticism' are getting closer, not further apart. To me, the further science advances, the more mystical it gets. Newton, the scientist, has been removed from Newton the (serious) alchemist -- by science. I'm defending alchemy. The 'true' alchemy. It's not an ancient mumbo-jumbo pre-chemistry that is no longer relevant. I also wish everyone would read that book I mentioned. The alchemical texts all refer to Moses being an alchemist. Why reject that outright? But I can't see a 'scientist' reading it with an open mind.


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## Interference (Apr 14, 2011)

ERK!!!!!

No, I'm not terrifying!!!!

I'm just messin' wit' ya


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## Metryq (Apr 14, 2011)

skeptical said:


> My favourite is the colours of the rainbow.   Did you learn that at school?  ROY G BIV



Yeah, I saw them at a club once.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 14, 2011)

Isaac spins in his grave ...


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## Interference (Apr 14, 2011)

... to the beat 


I said this somewhere else here - maybe even on this thread, I really don't recall - but the way things are going, with religion exploring science and science touching on the metaphysical, they are bound to find the source of their "truth" somewhere in between and that source is going to be exactly the same thing.

Science will call it the G.U.T. and the church will call it the G.O.D.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 28, 2011)

After reading Clark Heinrich's 'Strange Fruit' I have come away with the firm conviction that the 'true' alchemists were trying to refine the religious ecstacy producing active ingredient of the _Amanita Muscaria _mushroom from the ibotenic acid and other poisonous substances the mushroom contains from, would you believe it, urine, in which the _muscimol_, as opposed to the ibotenic acid, becomes concentrated. Truly the 'heaven or hell' experience, depending on how the mushroom was cured, etc.
Moses was perhaps into the Aminita Muscaria, and alchemist texts all say Moses was an alchemist.
Phosphorus was discovered by boiling urine.
There is that famous painting 'The Alchemist' -- the flask glowing with phosphorus in a dark room. Then there's the little peeing boy statue in Copenhagen. I know how this sounds. But read the book -- read the book. Perhaps it will change your whole view of religion, alchemy and numerous secret societies such as the Rosicrutians. At the least it should make you wonder. Otherwise you'll just put it aside. It will certainly put you off messing around with amanita muscaria for fun. What's to lose?
There. That should put the cat among the pigeons (I'm too tired to compose an original cliche today) ...


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## Vertigo (Apr 28, 2011)

I can certainly believe the urine bit; as I understand it, the Lapland Shamans used to feed Amanita Muscaria to their reindeer and then they drank the urine. Let the reindeers deal with the poison (not sure what other effects they suffered but I believe they were very happy to eat said mushrooms). A common symptom of the Amanita Muscaria is supposed to be a sensation of flying and that is reckoned to be the origins of Santa Claus "flying" in a sleigh pulled by reindeers; these Shamans also entered the local peoples winter homes (dug into the ground for insulation) via the smoke hole and proceeded to hand out presents of charms and talismans. Go figure!

So extracting the active ingredient via urine would seem a strong possibility.

Incidently, for anyone unaware, the Amanita Muscaria is the classic mushroom beloved of pictures of faeries etc. big wide cap, red with white dots (remains of the white skin that initially covers the red body underneath). I believe it is also the mushroom Lewis Carroll is supposed to have been experimenting with at the time of writing Alice in Wonderland (another symptom is a feeling of being out of proportion to your surrounding - a sensation of growing bigger or smaller.


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## Interference (Apr 28, 2011)

When extracting the urine, do remember to smile ....


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 28, 2011)

RJM Corbet said:


> So why was he dabbling in pseudo-science?



Because he was working at a time when there was very little, if any, general scientific framework to explain even the most ordinary phenomenon.

And there certainly was no modern understanding of the theory of matter, the periodic table, the concept of elements, etc.

Hence he was engaged, as were others, in trying to understand the fundamental properties of matter.

At the time, this would pretty much have been called "Alchemy", and from that the field of chemistry evolved.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 30, 2011)

I said:


> Because he was working at a time when there was very little, if any, general scientific framework to explain even the most ordinary phenomenon.
> 
> And there certainly was no modern understanding of the theory of matter, the periodic table, the concept of elements, etc.
> 
> ...



Newton wrote a 'Principia Chemica' to rival his 'Principia Mathematica' but it was lost in a fire in 1677, along with his most important alchemical writings,which contained so much experimental detail that, apparently, he just could not repeat the exercise. Judging by the effect of the 'Mathematica' it would probably have jumped chemistry a couple of centuries forward, had it survived ...



Vertigo said:


> I can certainly believe the urine bit; as I understand it, the Lapland Shamans used to feed Amanita Muscaria to their reindeer ...



Yes, a little bit at a time, over a few weeks, so as not to make the reindeer sick -- or horse, or child, or  whatever was chosen by the particular culture in question. Newton was a very proud and respected man, as were many alchemists. The church was still very powerful in Newton's time. He didn't want that sort of stuff getting out, now did he?


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