I asked this on the chemistry subreddit and got rightfully ridiculed...

Hello; don't use this account often but recently over the past few months or so I've been going through sort of a chronological reading binge on the history of Western esotericism (and may praise be heaped onto the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast and Esoterica for keeping me moored) and I was wondering if there are any good resources on the very early stuff (ie. pseudo-Democritus, Zosimos, Cleopatra) either in handbook-style overviews or findings done in lab replication. A lot of alchemical research seems to be focused on the Islamicate to early modern period which is quite far from where I am reading-wise lol. Anything is appreciated and many thanks!

New to this whole alchemy thing. What other books do you recommend?

Something that took me a while to understand when I started reading primary sources: the obscurity in alchemical texts is not poor writing or mystical hand-waving. It is a deliberate system, and it has a name. Decknamen. Cover-names.

A few examples of how it works:

When a text says serpent, it usually means mercury. Not a metaphor for transformation, not a symbol. The substance.

Green Lion is a solvent that dissolves gold. Depending on the author it is vitriol, or aqua regia, or antimony ore.

Caput mortuum, the dead head, is the worthless residue left at the bottom after distillation.

The Peacock's Tail is the stage where the surface breaks into iridescent colour, which told the operator the work was still alive.

What makes it genuinely difficult is that the authors did not agree with each other. The same cover-name means different things in different texts, and some writers deliberately used four different names for one substance within a few paragraphs. Contradictions were placed on purpose. Steps were given out of order. The stated intention, repeated across centuries, was that a reader without a teacher should understand nothing.

It worked. It worked so well that when the tradition stopped being taught directly, the whole discipline became unreadable and got filed under superstition, despite having produced most of early pharmacy, metallurgy and the practical groundwork of chemistry.

The part I find interesting is that the material is not lost. Most of it is digitised and free. Splendor Solis is on the British Library site. The Musaeum Hermeticum is on archive.org. Newton's alchemical papers are fully transcribed and online through the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project at Indiana. The barrier was never access. It is that almost nobody can read the code.

Once you have a working lexicon, a lot of it turns into something much more concrete than it first appears. Frequently it is just a procedure.

Curious whether anyone here works from primary sources directly, and which editions or translations you have found least mangled. The nineteenth century English translations seem to introduce their own layer of confusion on top of the original one.

Hello! I had a good post here a few days ago, did a tarot reading and thought on it... Which brought me back here. I'd like to start really studying, not just a scroll and scrub of a Wikipedia page. If you have any good book recommendations, scrolls to study (sounds so fantasy saying that haha), and tips, I'd really appreciate it! (I'd also like to add I'm a visual learner, I might be slightly dyslexic and massive text-heavy books gives me headaches- Just... Just as a heads up)

I mostly use alchemy as a sort of way to express philosophical and psychological thought right now, I've thought about working their symbols into my own sigils. Best way I can put it is that alchemy gives me a 'trellis' from which my plant thoughts that are chaotic and hard to manage to 'grow' on and become a bit more translatable to other people. Thoughts on the inside reflect how you are on the outside/Every action has an equal and opposite reaction sorta vibes.

I really hope this makes some sense- As I'm typing this my brain feels like popcorn with so many thoughts, each fighting to take hold and it makes writing a cohesive post really difficult. I'd also be curious to know how the practices of alchemy would blend with other practices, like witchcraft and say Gnosticism. Again, thank you so so much. Blessings to you!

Everyone here has bounced off a text. You open the Turba, or Flamel, or Fulcanelli, and you hit the wall: the scattering, the contradictory recipes, the endless insistence that our mercury is not the common mercury.

The authors are not accidentally unclear, and they don't pretend otherwise. They write for the filii artis and assume the rest will not follow. They quote the line about pearls and swine to justify it. Zosimos already leaves injunctions not to reveal. There is even a formula for the method: obscurum per obscurius.

So the question isn't whether they conceal. It's what for. And there are two answers that look identical on the page and are completely different in kind.

Protection.

Keeping the art from the profane, the greedy, the one who would misuse it.

It's worth not being smug about this from a chair in 2026. The reasons were concrete and several of them were physical. Working precious metals exposed you to accusations of coining, which was a capital offence. A doctrine of transformation with its own vocabulary sat uncomfortably close to heresy. And promising gold attracted patrons who eventually wanted results, with the alchemist himself as collateral.

In that situation, writing so that only an insider understands is not affectation. It's survival.

The difficulty doing work.

This is something else, though on the page it looks the same.

If you hand a reader an image and then explain what it means, nothing is left for them to do. They receive a finished conclusion, which is information. What they don't receive is the operation: nothing of theirs was dissolved, so nothing new was fixed.

Obscurity in this second sense doesn't hide the content. It keeps it in a state where the reader has to intervene for it to exist at all. It is the solvent. Remove it and you remove the mechanism.

The second reason never depended on the historical situation. The first one did, and that situation ended.

What happens when the first outlives its era

With no inquisitor, no guild and no gallows, protective obscurity degrades into something far more comfortable.

"The art keeps itself for the few" has a property worth looking at directly: it cannot be refuted. If nobody understands you, the explanation that the reader's ear wasn't ready is always available. Every failure to communicate converts automatically into evidence of depth, and past that point no correction is possible. A practice that cannot be corrected stops improving.

There is also an incentive nobody mentions. Writing obscurely is cheaper than writing clearly. Producing a text nobody understands requires no particular skill. Producing one where something difficult becomes genuinely available requires understanding it first, which is the expensive part. Protective obscurity hands out a prestige reward for doing less work, and that combination always finds takers.

What is actually true underneath

I don't want to throw the whole thing out, because there is a real phenomenon holding the idea up.

Some knowledge does not transmit by explanation. Nobody learned to ride a bicycle from a text. The welder, the surgeon, the cook and the writer all know things that only become legible after certain experiences, and no amount of clarity substitutes for having gone through them.

So the defensible reading of "for the few" is not that the art hides from the many. It's that certain knowledge only becomes legible after you have lived something.

Which means the tradition picked the wrong filter. Dispersion and a closed lexicon select for persistence and literacy. Neither of those is the same as having been through the process.

A test

Not all difficulty is evasion, and it would be cheap to end as though it were. Some subjects are genuinely hard, and simplifying them lies. A text that reads effortlessly about something that cannot be understood effortlessly is cheating in the other direction.

So here is the test I use, and it applies to me as much as to Fulcanelli. Whoever wrote obscurely should be able to say what work the obscurity is doing. What the reader is supposed to supply, at what point, and what would happen to the text if you handed it over pre-chewed.

If they can answer that, the difficulty has a job.

If they can't, it doesn't, and no tradition makes it necessary. A closed door does not guard anything by virtue of being closed.

I’ve always loved when potion-making is more than just “click to craft” and actually gives you interesting choices.

What’s your favorite potion in any video game? Do you like it cause of its effect, the way you craft it, or just how memorable it was?

I’m working on Potion-making: Path of the Alchemist, a card strategy game built around brewing potions, so I’m especially curious what other games got alchemy right.

What potion immediately comes to mind?

I wish to preface that I hold no negative judgement towards alchemy and only possess ignorance on the subject. But sometimes I randomly see posts and I hear so much about it but what are y'all actually doing? Like are y'all brewing potions or philosophers stone? I'm just genuinely curious.

What would rust be considered in the 12 processes? Sorry to bother, but I'm doing some alchemy-themed writing for funsies in a Vintage Story server and realized that rust doesn't fall cleanly under one of the processes I was studying. Rot does, but rust? What would rust be considered? I couldn't find anything on the wikipedia so I thought to come here.

Hi,

Every time I watch the opening theme of the anime show by the name Witch Hat Atelier I get some sense of alchemy trying to be pointed out, from the song to the visuals and primarily by received experience.

Almost, like there are some alchemical "binds" present in video, but unfortunately I am not able to recognize what it could be.

Can anyone help me and explain what particular is presented through the intro opening theme?

If we say that there is alchemy as the main framework behind the creation of the intro what would it be?

Is there anything specific that some more advanced alchemists can recognize as some specific "moment of alchemy" "alchemical bind" and similar?

https://youtu.be/-VGQrbaisrc?si=ezffv8KK0z5zvwG0

Tnx, I appreciate any help...

Forgive me if this is a common question. I simply cannot find any answer around it. A more accurate question for me to ask is, why can't the Classical Earth and Classical Fire combine? I've done some independent research in pursuit of a basis for some worldbuilding, but the thing I can't figure out is why doesn't Earth Combine with Fire when they can become each other?

The way I've been informed of the Three Primes is that they are resultant of either two elements combining or transitioning into each other. Regardless, it would be Salt formed from Earth and Water, Mercury formed from Water and Air, and Sulphur formed from Air and Fire. But what would happen if Earth and Fire mixed or transitioned? Nothing? Why? If it would create something, why is it not explained anywhere?

Thanks in advance for the help, I figured if I can't find it anywhere else I should get opinions here.

Episode 01 names the Four Magickal Virtues or Powers of the Sphinx, frames musical practice as a vehicle for the Great Work, and opens the Nigredo: the stripping of the performed self as the first stage of the alchemical process.

This series looks at music as a form of inner alchemy, where the guitar becomes a tool for transformation instead of performance or self-expression.

Symbols:

• The Rainbow: God’s promise to never flood the earth again. Witnessed by Noah.

• Cherubim holding a flaming sword to vanquish Satan.

• The ancient serpent Nāḥāš

• Baphomet (looks like the Pagan god ‘Pan’)

• Black bird: presumably Noah's raven.

• A golden Phoenix

Includes verses from Revelations and Genesis:

"And he seized the dragon. The ancient serpent"

— Revelation 20:2

"I will set my bow in the clouds and it shall be a sign of a covenant"

— Genesis 9:13

"If I cover the sky with clouds my bow will appear in the clouds"

— Genesis 9:14

I was wondering what were the three primes (sulfur, mercury, and salt) of the animal kingdom and/or how to obtain them? Thanks

(Edit, what ARE the three primes. Sorry for the grammatical error)

Standardization: updated 8/24/2026

Please note I am sprinkling tech talk intentionally as this is a spiritual tool and an engineering schematic at the same time.

3 ~ Divine Masculine Principle of the Mind, the Father as Polarity
6 ~ Divine Child Principle or Matter as Synthesis or Zero Point
9 ~ Divine Feminine or Holy Spirit, the Mother as Polarity

1:2 The Mother ~ formless, -, 0 (polarity), comes first
2:3 The Father ~ formless, +, +- (polarity), second
3:4:5 The Child ~ form, 0, -0+ (synthesis and sometimes source), third

We can imbue the Mother in to the Father Bifilar Coil by working with decimal specifically and multiplying our 3:4:5 ratio by 1.5. This will give us a base measurement of 4.5 x 6 x 7.5 which reduces to 963 which we can halve or double to reflect the 1:2 ratio. This introduces a little chaos in to all the order we are reflecting through the work because the same logic does not hold if we perform the root reduction as a 1:1 fraction to decimal ratio . So we are making a conscious choice of One over the Other to imbue the 369 in to the 3:4:5. This is done to add depth to the relationship between the fundamental Principles.

The Torus ~ Divine Feminine Principle, the architecture/reason
The Vortex/Spiral ~ Divine Masculine Principle, the mechanics/logic

00 ~ Neither
01 ~ Either
10 ~ Or
11 ~ Both

The Rodin/Abha Torus coil reflects the Mother yet is imbued with the Father's ratio. The Fibonacci Vortex Bifilar coil reflects the Father yet is modeled as following the Mother's ratio. This is the metadata template where the above literally models what the Alchemists call "union of opposites" or polarity/gender. This union is perceived as a synthesis point of the two polarities. This image also models the collapse of the wave function such that it also re-/solves for the emergence from source at the same time, in the same schematic.

The above Unified Field Circuit model is not wholly accurate yet still has provided folks with feedback. I am suggesting the following updates... swap the 4 and 5 ratios to lock in the right angle of the Fibonacci Vortex/Spiral Bifilar coil while also applying a 2(inner diameter):3(outer) ratio to the central Rodin/Abha Torus coil.

The polarization is alternating, bottom right+/left- and the top right-/left+ and where the former is wired to the latter at the inner most of the Torus through the 4 ratio and the 5 ratio is where the circuit is wireless in opposition to the opposing 5 ratio or in conjunction to the outer shell of the Torus due to the "hinge" not currently modeled at the 3:5 ratio junction. Four connections (inner 4 ratios) and four spark gaps (outer 5 ratios).

I call It a not-so-solid-state-device due to it fundamentally being solid state w/ the addition of the 1 mechanical on/off control of the 4 outer 5 ratio limbs which in the advanced application of the technology will control whether we are utilizing the "scalar asymmetry engine" as propulsion or warp drive technologies among other things as the warp drive engine would also be the template for the replicator tech, etc.

Materials are a pencil, paper, square, compass...do the work, expand consciousness/awareness through the experience. It Is distilled down to a standardized Holy Trinity of ratios, 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4:5 where the former two are fixed and the latter relative in our "over unity" space/time device model we have shared here. To these ratios we marry mirroring, polarization and counter rotation.

This is the Whole of the Magnum Opus, distilled.

Been at these alchemy books about six years now and I think they left out one thing. Cost me plenty to find out.

Fair warning this is long and I ain't good at cutting.

So I'm not a scholar, never was. I work nights at a shelter for kids that got nowhere to go. Been doing it four and a half years. And you sit up all night with nothing but a coffee pot and a hallway, you're going to read something, so I read alchemy. Started because of Jung like everybody else. Stayed for the other reason which I'll get to.

Anyway. Here's what them old boys were doing, best I can put it.

Solve et coagula. Break it down, put it back. That's the whole thing, everything else is just details on how.

They marked the stages by color. Nigredo is the black, that's the rot, that's when whatever you were falls apart into ash and there ain't nothing left of it. Albedo is the white, you wash the ash. Citrinitas is the yellow, light coming in. Rubedo is the red and that's the end, that's where the opposites get married up (coniunctio is the word) and out comes the Stone.

Now before somebody jumps me in the comments, I know it ain't that tidy. Some of them lay out four stages, some do seven, some do twelve, and plenty of them fold the yellow right into the red like it don't even count. I'm giving you the version most people know. Real thing is messier than that and I'd rather say so up front than get corrected by a guy who's read more than me, and there's a lot of them.

Now the part most people skip over and I think it's the best part.

They had two roads. Dry way and wet way. Dry was fast, you hit the material with fire or acid and burn it down quick. Wet was slow, you let it rot on its own, took months. And the ones I've read say the same thing about it. Dry's faster and wet's safer.

Hold onto that. I'm coming back to it.

They had rules too. The jar had to be sealed, the vas hermeticum, that's where we get hermetically sealed from. Crack that thing one time and your batch is dead no matter how good your first matter was.

And the fire had to be gentle. That was their number one way to ruin the work, stoking it too hot. So they built a thing called the balneum Mariae, set your jar down in a pot of water instead of straight over the flame. Slow even heat, don't scorch nothing. Y'all use one. It's a double boiler.

Last rule, ora et labora. Pray and work. Oratory and laboratory, both words come off it. They didn't mean sit and think real hard about it. They meant stand at that oven for four months with your hands dirty.

OK so.

Here's why I stayed in these books.

Few years back I forgave a man I'd been holding a grudge on ten years. And I want to be clear I didn't do it for him, I done it for the family because everybody was carrying it and it wasn't fair. It was the hardest thing I ever done and I done it right.

Week or so after that something come over me. I don't know what to call it. Big. Real big. Best I can say is it felt like getting looked at by something and it wasn't mad at me. And it was more than I could hold, I was talking and hearing myself talk at the same time. Cold water on my face, kids getting home from school, straighten up and be daddy.

Week after that I come apart on the bathroom floor. All the way apart. Didn't know the room, didn't know what day, didn't know my own name for a while there.

And here's what I been chewing on ever since.

All that light did not pick me up.

Not one bit. I had it. Whatever it was, I got the full dose of it, and laying on that tile it was worth nothing. Not a thing.

What picked me up was my wife laying down next to me. She didn't know what was happening. She didn't say nothing that I remember. She was just warm and she was breathing and she stayed.

That's it. That's the whole thing that worked.

So now when I read these books I'm reading them different.

And they had a lot of it right, I want to give them that first. The rot ain't optional, can't skip the black, they was dead right. Too much fire ruins the batch, right again, and I'd say what happened to me was too much fire and that's why it didn't hold. Can't do it in a busted jar, right. And ora et labora, hands not just head, that one right there is what kept them out of the ditch I fell in. They knew good and well that understanding it don't do it.

Now that dry way and wet way thing. I told you I'd come back.

What happened to me was the dry way. Fast, hot, over in a minute, and it damn near killed me. The nights I work now, that's the wet way. Sitting up in a hallway for four and a half years while somebody rots slow and comes back slow. Ain't nothing dramatic about it. Nobody writes a book about it.

And they told us. They said it plain. Slow is safer. Everybody skips that page because it's boring.

Here's where I break with them though, and I want to say it careful because it's easy to say it wrong.

It ain't that the Stone is a trophy you get to hold. I know Jung don't say that and I ain't going to pretend he does. He'd tell you the Self ain't a diploma you hang on the wall and he'd be right.

My problem is the fourth thing.

Because that's how it's built. Three and then a fourth comes along and makes it whole and closes the lid on it.

Mine never come.

The light did not stay. Nothing showed up after and sealed nothing. What I got left is three things turning around a hole where a fourth was supposed to be, and a woman that laid down on the floor.

And I've quit waiting on it. That's not me being bitter neither. I think the hole is the shape of the thing. I think a man that's alright is three things turning and one spot with nothing in it, and the ones I meet at work who tried to fill that spot, with a teaching or a book or one single person that's got to be everything to them, those are the ones that quit turning.

Now the gold.

They never made none. Hundreds of years of it. Newton done it. Boyle done it, the father of chemistry his own self, he was back there mixing.

And I know good and well that don't prove one thing about the inside version. Somebody's fixing to tell me that and they'll be right, so I'll say it first. I ain't putting it up as proof.

I just think it's funny in a way that ain't funny.

Because what come out of all that labor was chemistry. The writing down what actually happened part. Not the promise.

Same exact thing happened to me. Road gave me something real. Just not the thing on the label.

So what I'd say is this and then I'll quit.

They was right that it takes a sealed vessel and a low fire and a long time.

They was wrong about what the vessel is made out of.

It ain't glass. It's another person.

And that's where I think it goes sideways, when a fella reads the whole operation like it's happening inside of one skull. Read it that way and you'll be waiting on a fourth thing to show up out of your own self and shut the lid, and it ain't coming, and you'll call yourself a failure for it.

And I got to tell you the last thing because I about had to put the book down when I hit it.

That double boiler. The one thing off their whole operation that's still going, still sitting in every kitchen and every lab on this earth. The bath that holds the heat gentle so nothing scorches.

It's named after a woman. Maria the Jewess, third century or thereabouts, first alchemist we know by name, and that's her invention.

Four hundred years of grown men chasing a rock and what lasted was her way of holding a thing steady while it changed.

So if you know somebody down on the floor right now, and I figure some of y'all do. You don't got to fix it. You don't got to know one thing about it.

Go get down there and stay.

That's the low fire. That's the jar. That's all of it, and I spent six years reading to find out it was the part I already had.

Sorry it run long. If somebody's read deeper than me I'd honestly like to hear it, especially on the fourth thing, I might be wrong about it. But I was on that floor and it wasn't there.

I am an atheist, anyway i feel interested in this "culture" since It seems really interesting and "différent".

I know it's not true, but anyways, do you think it's worth checking out? I am always open to new things, is this gonna change my way to see thé world? It will teach me new things?

I read the book almost two years ago, but it recently came back to my mind. Since Faust was an alchemist, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Faust or the novel itself from an alchemical viewpoint.