Where did the idea of alchemy come from?
Who first came up with the idea that we could turn lead into gold with the methods available to humans in the pre-technological era?
I don’t think I’m going to answer that question today, but maybe someone else already has. My story, which is presented as a bedtime story for a young person on a far planetary colony from Earth, entitled The First Alchemist, is based on my deduction that the mysterious and beautiful gold spots on the monarch butterfly chrysalis are actually the biological waste products of the transforming butterfly.
Take a listen!
Thanks to Patrick Doyle of Edwardsburg, MI, for recording and mastering the audio files.
For those of you who don’t have the patience to listen, here’s the text!
As the story intends to illustrate, the main purpose of alchemy has always been not the transformation of lead or waste products into gold, but the transformation of our inner mental and emotional conflict into inner harmony. Some years ago I had the insight that simply having the willingness to perform the laboratory experiments, which required careful tending to keep the temperatures correct for extended times, would result in increased patience, certainly one of the foundations of spiritual transformation.
If you are interested in the origins of alchemy, and meaning it has for us today, check out this website:
Where we find the following quote: According to Dubuis, and others, for alchemy to be real alchemy, it must work on all levels of creation – spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. While one or more can be left out and a transmutation of some sort effected, the results are not considered to be alchemical.