---
title: "Alchemy"
chunk: 10/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Western alchemical theory corresponds to the worldview of late antiquity in which it was born. Concepts were imported from Neoplatonism and earlier Greek cosmology. As such, the classical elements appear in alchemical writings, as do the seven classical planets and the corresponding seven metals of antiquity. Similarly, the gods of the Roman pantheon who are associated with these luminaries are discussed in alchemical literature. The concepts of prima materia and anima mundi are central to the theory of the philosopher's stone.

=== Magnum opus ===

The Great Work of Alchemy is often described as a series of four stages represented by colours.

nigredo, a blackening or melanosis
albedo, a whitening or leucosis
citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis
rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

== Modernity ==
Due to the complexity and obscurity of alchemical literature, and the 18th-century diffusion of remaining alchemical practitioners into the area of chemistry, the general understanding of alchemy in the 19th and 20th centuries was influenced by several distinct and radically different interpretations. Those focusing on the exoteric, such as historians of science Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, have interpreted the Decknamen ('code words') of alchemy as physical substances. These scholars have reconstructed physicochemical experiments that they say are described in medieval and early modern texts. At the opposite end of the spectrum, focusing on the esoteric, scholars, such as Florin George Călian and Anna Marie Roos, who question the reading of Principe and Newman, interpret these same Decknamen as spiritual, religious, or psychological concepts.
New interpretations of alchemy are still perpetuated, sometimes merging with concepts from New Age or radical environmentalism movements. Groups like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons have a continued interest in alchemy and its symbolism. Since the Victorian revival of alchemy, "occultists reinterpreted alchemy as a spiritual practice, involving the self-transformation of the practitioner and only incidentally or not at all the transformation of laboratory substances", which has contributed to a merger of magic and alchemy in popular thought.

=== Esoteric interpretations of historical texts ===
In the eyes of a variety of modern esoteric and neo-Hermetic practitioners, alchemy is primarily spiritual. In this interpretation, transmutation of lead into gold is presented as an analogy for personal transmutation, purification, and perfection.
According to this view, early alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 AD), highlighted the spiritual nature of the alchemical quest, symbolic of a religious regeneration of the human soul. This approach is held to have continued in the Middle Ages, as metaphysical aspects, substances, physical states, and material processes are supposed to have been used as metaphors for spiritual entities, spiritual states, and, ultimately, transformation. In this sense, the literal meanings of alchemical formulas hid a spiritual philosophy. In the neo-Hermeticist interpretation, both the transmutation of common metals into gold and the universal panacea are held to symbolize evolution from an imperfect, diseased, corruptible, and ephemeral state toward a perfect, healthy, incorruptible, and everlasting state, so the philosopher's stone then represented a mystic key that would make this evolution possible. Applied to the alchemist, the twin goal symbolized their evolution from ignorance to enlightenment, and the stone represented a hidden spiritual truth or power that would lead to that goal. In texts that are believed to have been written according to this view, the cryptic alchemical symbols, diagrams, and textual imagery of late alchemical works are supposed to contain multiple layers of meanings, allegories, and references to other equally cryptic works, which must be laboriously decoded to discover their true meaning.
In his 1766 Alchemical Catechism, Théodore Henri de Tschudi suggested that the usage of the metals was symbolic:

=== Psychology ===
Alchemical symbolism was important in analytical psychology. It was revived and popularized from near extinction by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was initially confounded and at odds with alchemy and its images but after being given a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Chinese alchemical text translated by his friend Richard Wilhelm, he discovered a direct correlation or parallel between the symbolic images in the alchemical drawings and the inner, symbolic images coming up in his patients' dreams, visions, or fantasies. He observed these alchemical images occurring during the psychic process of transformation, a process that Jung called "individuation". Specifically, he regarded the conjuring up of images of gold or Lapis as symbolic expressions of the origin and goal of this "process of individuation". Together with his alchemical mystica soror (mystical sister), Jungian Swiss analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung began collecting old alchemical texts, compiled a lexicon of key phrases with cross-references, and pored over them. The volumes of work he wrote shed new light on understanding the art of transubstantiation and renewed alchemy's popularity as a symbolic process of coming into wholeness as a human being, where opposites are brought into contact and inner and outer, spirit and matter are reunited in the hieros gamos, or divine marriage. His writings are influential in general psychology, especially for those interested in understanding the importance of dreams, symbols, and the unconscious archetypal forces (Jungian archetypes) that comprise all psychic life.
Both von Franz and Jung contributed significantly to the subject and work of alchemy and to its continued presence in psychology and contemporary culture. Among the volumes Jung wrote on alchemy, his magnum opus is volume 14 of his Collected Works, Mysterium Coniunctionis.

=== Literature ===