Davin Wrote:I don't know about alchemy -- it traditionally hasn't had anything to do with healing. It was mostly about things like turning lead into gold (which wouldn't be a great idea in a gold-based economy, anyway).
Would it be better balance if some other faction could do that sort of pseudo-scientific experimentation? Assuming, of course, that anything productive actually manages to come from alchemy in the first place.
Alchemy (from Arabic: al-kīmiyā) was an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific
tradition practised throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, originating in Greco-Roman Egypt in the first few centuries.
Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation
of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold);
the creation of an elixir of immortality; the creation of
panaceas able to cure any disease; and the development of an alkahest, a universal solvent.The perfection of the human body
and soul was thought to permit or result from the alchemical magnum opus and, in the Hellenistic and Western mystery
tradition, the achievement of gnosis. In Europe, the creation of a philosopher's stone was variously connected with all
of these projects.
In English, the term is often limited to descriptions of European alchemy, but similar practices existed in the Far East,
the Indian subcontinent, and the Muslim world. In Europe, following the 12th-century Renaissance produced by the
translation of Medieval Islamic works on science and the rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy,
alchemists played a
significant role in early modern science (particularly chemistry and medicine). Islamic and European alchemists developed
a structure of basic laboratory techniques, theory, terminology, and experimental method, some of which are still in use
today. However, they continued antiquity's belief in four elements and guarded their work in secrecy including cyphers
and cryptic symbolism.
Their work was guided by Hermetic principles related to magic, mythology, and religion.
Modern discussions of alchemy are generally split into an examination of its exoteric practical applications and its
esoteric spiritual aspects, despite the arguments of scholars like Holmyard and von Franz that they should be understood
as complementary. The former is pursued by historians of the physical sciences who examine the subject in terms of
early chemistry, medicine, and charlatanism, and the philosophical and religious contexts in which these events occurred.
The latter interests historians of esotericism, psychologists, and some philosophers and spiritualists. The subject has
also made an ongoing impact on literature and the arts. Despite this split, which von Franz believes has existed since the
Western traditions' origin in a mix of Greek philosophy that was mixed with Egyptian and Mesopotamian technology,
numerous sources have stressed an integration of esoteric and exoteric approaches to alchemy as far back as
Pseudo-Democritus's first-century AD On Physical and Mystical Matters (Greek: Physika kai Mystika).
Although alchemy is popularly associated with magic, historian Lawrence M. Principe argues that recent historical research
has revealed that medieval and early modern alchemy embraced a much more varied set of ideas, goals, techniques, and practices:
