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ALCHEMY: ONE PAIN, NO GAIN

Human civilization has long witnessed "no pain but gain" dogmatists.

By Mush BoxeyPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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The archetypes are, for the most part, from tales. Legends have "Midas and the Golden Touch", the fairy "The Goose that Laid The Golden Eggs", "Once Upon A Time" and series of similar motif stories.

Such a matter-be-turned-into-gold obsession did, one way or another, act as a precursor to alchemy.

Alchemy had a notorious history with several different schools. The most popular of which was the medieval Western's, with the iconic image of long-bearded scholars immersing in the dark rooms of books and boiling liquid glass jars.

The school is believed to have derived from Egypt, where the metallurgical technology had been adopted as early as by the end of the 4th millennium BC. Even in the prehistoric period (pre-Dynastic - around 3100 BC), ancient Egyptians had been capable of exploiting mineral ores, refining metals, manufacturing copper and iron tools and weapons. They were even believed to hold the copper alloys making technology.

Sulfur and mercury - the two necessary alchemy materials - were discovered and applied in metallurgical techniques as early. Mercury might dissolve several other metals (even gold and silver) to form amalgams, and adding sulfur would eventually colour the alloy products.

Alexander the Great's Egypt conquest later turned Alexandria into the ancient world's intellectual and academic centre. At a similar stake to other conquests, this gave the very grounds for people/ideas / good network between Greece and Egypt - the two formerly Brobdingnagians.

Greece "exported" Aristotle's dogmas (Alexander's teacher) to the new land. Among which was his perception of the universe's nature: all the matters they had and would discover were made up of four essential elements: earth, water, air, and fire and it was the earth that had bred metals. Such a perception; together with the Egyptians' already thriving metallurgical industry, in all likelihood, laid alchemy's very foundation.

Since the dawn of Arab Muslims, withal the fall of the Roman Empire, the alchemy-knowledge-storage centre had been moved to Damascus and Baghdad (modern-day Syria and Iraq's capitals). Given that, the Arabs did not merely feast on prior alchemy discoveries and Aristotle's perception. They also attributed the metal differences to their varied mercury and sulfur contents.

Alchemy was later scholarly introduced to medieval Europe (circa XII-XIII century) through document translations from Arabic to Latin.

From ideologies and observations, alchemists firmly believed that either transmutation or chrysopoeia was pretty much within reach. Such a bigot tied them up to the labs, going all out to create the Philosopher's Stone - the magical compound capable of transmuting metals into precious ones - gold, and silver.

Still, gold was never the only purpose to pursue alchemy.

The old East's school, on the other hand, poured it on hunting down an imperishable life and mental serenity. Under the influence of Taoist ideology and beliefs on immortal life, elixirs - another more "Eastern" branch of alchemy - was invented by ancient Chinese, in a great attempt to create the Elixir of Immortality.

Ridiculously enough, instead of reversing ageing, those elixirs somewhat earlier put people away. Before they could experience "immortality", the royal members had been done away with as a consequence.

At least 3 Tang emperors died of poisoning upon consuming sulfur and mercury "substandard" elixirs. Trying to find an eternal life elixir, the accidentally exploded sulfur and kali nitrate mixture instead turned out gunpowder - Chinese's national pride as one of their four greatest inventions.

Western alchemists later became as much bigoted that the Philosopher's Stone could extract the elixir of immortality, curing all diseases, purifying soul, or even religiously enlightening people.

To all appearances, their pursuing "ultimate goals" did many a time bush up their works. Documents and books on alchemy were pretty much written in a scribbled and mysterious way that only their fellow workers could ever understand.

Metals were offtimes represented in symbols and "code names", to illustrate, "stinking spirit" was sulfur, while stibnite was documented as "grey wolf". This, in all likelihood, helps further explain the perpetual alchemy prejudices, which consider the philosophy somewhat mysterious ancient magic.

While alchemists' success got on the governors' nerves since they believed it would disrupt the market, Catholicism the predominant community as well considered it a form of evil taboo magic.

fact or fiction
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About the Creator

Mush Boxey

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

I'm a writer!

Welcome to my life!

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