Spiritual Alchemy and Hermetic Chemistry: Understanding the Great Work Beyond Material Transformation

"Hermetic chemistry" operates in a subtle way, more interior and spiritual than exterior and material. In this subtle way of operating of hermetic chemistry lies the motivation for why in every alchemical laboratory - where chemical reactions could eventually be performed - there was always found a corner or adjacent room attributed exclusively to an oratory dedicated exclusively to spiritual exercises. History even tells of entirely "speculative" Alchemists who completely disinterested themselves from the practical realization of chemical reactions to dedicate themselves entirely and exclusively to the spiritual part of Alchemy, separating it from any practical laboratory experimentation. Therefore, when speaking of the Great Work, of the fabrication of the philosopher's stone, of converting lead into gold, one must be careful not to be deceived: before anything else, alchemists intend to allude to spiritual goals and realizations. When Alchemists speak of material metallic transmutations, as in the case of John Dee with Rudolf II of Habsburg, they treat them as a consequence, the transforming testimony, of an obtained power, of a realization and transmutation that previously occurred within the interiority of the Alchemist himself. The chemical operation in itself therefore seems to hold entirely secondary importance in alchemical thought. When it was performed, generally, it constituted only a meditative support, with modeling power by virtue of the law of homologation, and an exterior base for penetrating more deeply, through the law of symbolic correspondences, into the operations that the Alchemist performed in his interior laboratory. The alchemists themselves, in fact, did not look favorably upon those who interpreted their writings too literally: they called them "vulgar chemists," "blowers" or "smoky butterflies" and not rarely in their writings they admonish them, emphasizing that to interpret their writings one must often resort to allegory. Indeed from the Cosmopolitan we read: "If Hermes, Father of Philosophers, were to resurrect today together with the subtle Geber and the profound Raymond Lull, they would not be considered Philosophers by our vulgar chemists, who would almost not even deign to count them among their disciples, because they would not know how to perform all those distillations, circulations, calcinations, and all those innumerable operations, that our vulgar chemists have invented because they have poorly understood the allegorical writings of those Philosophers." Thus Artephius in the secret book of Artephius says "I assure you that whoever wants to explain what the philosophers wrote with the ordinary literal sense of words will find himself lost in the meanders of a labyrinth from which he can never save himself." Harsher is the warning of Cornelius Agrippa in the Declamatio de incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum who in an almost prophetic tone warns those who attempt to obtain the philosopher's stone exclusively with chemical reactions "in the end, after having lost the time and money you have spent on it, you find yourselves old, loaded with years, covered in rags, hungry, with a perpetual smell of sulfur and dirty and stained with zinc carbon, paralyzed from having manipulated quicksilver too much... and so unhappy that you would willingly sell your life and even your soul." Therefore - we have cited these three passages, but we could continue at length with citations - the alchemists seem to warn us from too superficial and literal an interpretation of their writings, they tell us that they refer to a jargon all their own, they resort to allegory and that they can hardly be understood. "Where I have spoken more clearly and more openly about our science, there I have spoken more obscurely and have hidden it" Geber, Summa. "Who has ears, let him open them and listen, who has a mouth, let him keep it closed" Turba Philosophorum. In light of these facts, let us therefore return to reexamine our definition of alchemy. What could the fabrication of the philosopher's stone mean, outside of symbols? What could this mysterious stone, medicine or elixir capable of transforming lead into gold, of making all metals purest, of guaranteeing eternal life etc. mean? Böhme in the Signature of Things tells us: "between eternal birth, reintegration and the discovery of the philosopher's stone there is no difference whatsoever." When one speaks of the philosopher's stone, one therefore speaks of a rebirth, of a rebirth, such are also the words of Hermes Trismegistus in the Corpus Hermeticum: "what more can I tell you son? A simple vision has occurred in me, I have come out of myself and have put on a body that does not die. Now I am no longer the same, I have had an intellectual birth." Therefore the alchemists speak of an intellectual rebirth, of a spiritual rebirth, of an immortal body but it is still not clear what they mean. To understand what the alchemists meant by rebirth, we must enter into their way of thinking, into their jargon and form a first idea about what they thought of the world, of men and of all things, because - as can easily be supposed - they had ideas quite different from those we usually have on the matter. Indeed the Alchemists believed that when God created men, he did not create them bound to a body of flesh subject to the law of death and corruption, but created pure spirits, immortal, forming part of a Single Cosmic Spirit. Furthermore they believed that God had given these spirits a power: the power to build themselves a spiritual body, in their image and likeness, drawing it from a matter, which obviously was not the matter that we usually conceive, but which was also impalpable and ethereal. This power had been given to them to build themselves a body in their image and likeness and therefore with particular characteristics: immune from death, resistant to the highest spiritual temperatures, ethereal and therefore not weighing down the spirit in its flights, which would finally allow it to access the most advanced divine contemplations. Therefore, synthesizing and simplifying, originally the alchemists considered three main things: the spirits of men forming parts of the one spirit...