Renaissance and early
modern Europe
During the Renaissance, Hermetic and Platonic foundations
were restored to European alchemy. The dawn of medical, pharmaceutical, occult,
and entrepreneurial branches of alchemy followed.
In the late 15th century, Marsilo Ficino translated the
Corpus Hermeticum and the works of Plato into Latin. These were previously
unavailable to Europeans who for the first time had a full picture of the
alchemical theory that Bacon had declared absent. Renaissance Humanism and
Renaissance Neoplatonism guided alchemists away from physics to refocus on
mankind as the alchemical vessel.
Esoteric systems developed that blended alchemy into a
broader occult Hermeticism, fusing it with magic, astrology, and Christian
cabala. A key figure in this development
was German Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), who received his Hermetic
education in Italy in the schools of the humanists. In his De Occulta
Philosophia, he attempted to merge Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and alchemy. He was
instrumental in spreading this new blend of Hermeticism outside the borders of
Italy.
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, (Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim, 1493–1541) cast alchemy into a new form, rejecting some of Agrippa's
occultism and moving away from chrysopoeia. Paracelsus pioneered the use of
chemicals and minerals in medicine and wrote, "Many have said of Alchemy,
that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but
to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines."
His hermetical views were that sickness and health in the
body relied on the harmony of man the microcosm and Nature the macrocosm. He
took an approach different from those before him, using this analogy not in the
manner of soul-purification but in the manner that humans must have certain
balances of minerals in their bodies, and that certain illnesses of the body
had chemical remedies that could cure them. Paracelsian practical alchemy, especially
herbal medicine and plant remedies has since been named spagyric (a synonym for
alchemy from the Greek words meaning to separate and to join together, based on
the Latin alchemic maxim: solve et coagula). Iatrochemistry also refers to the
pharmaceutical applications of alchemy championed by Paracelsus.
John Dee (13 July 1527 – December, 1608) followed Agrippa's
occult tradition. Although better known for angel summoning, divination, and
his role as astrologer, cryptographer, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I,
Dee's alchemical Monas Hieroglyphica, written in 1564 was his most popular and
influential work. His writing portrayed alchemy as a sort of terrestrial
astronomy in line with the Hermetic axiom As above so below. During the 17th century, a short-lived "supernatural"
interpretation of alchemy became popular, including support by fellows of the
Royal Society: Robert Boyle and Elias Ashmole. Proponents of the supernatural
interpretation of alchemy believed that the philosopher's stone might be used
to summon and communicate with angels.
Entrepreneurial opportunities were common for the alchemists
of Renaissance Europe. Alchemists were contracted by the elite for practical
purposes related to mining, medical services, and the production of chemicals,
medicines, metals, and gemstones. Rudolf
II, Holy Roman Emperor, in the late 16th century, famously received and
sponsored various alchemists at his court in Prague, including Dee and his
associate Edward Kelley. King James IV of Scotland, Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg,
Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, Julius Echter
von Mespelbrunn, and Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel all contracted
alchemists. John's son Arthur Dee worked
as a court physician to Michael I of Russia and Charles I of England but also
compiled the alchemical book Fasciculus Chemicus.
Although most of these appointments were legitimate, the
trend of pseudo-alchemical fraud continued through the Renaissance. Betrüger
would use sleight of hand, or claims of secret knowledge to make money or
secure patronage. Legitimate mystical and medical alchemists such as Michael
Maier and Heinrich Khunrath wrote about fraudulent transmutations,
distinguishing themselves from the con artists. False alchemists were sometimes prosecuted for
fraud.
The terms "chemia" and "alchemia" were
used as synonyms in the early modern period, and the differences between
alchemy, chemistry and small-scale assaying and metallurgy were not as neat as
in the present day. There were important overlaps between practitioners, and
trying to classify them into alchemists, chemists and craftsmen is
anachronistic. For example, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), an alchemist better known
for his astronomical and astrological investigations, had a laboratory built at
his Uraniborg observatory/research institute. Michael Sendivogius (Michał
Sędziwój, 1566–1636), a Polish alchemist, philosopher, medical doctor and
pioneer of chemistry wrote mystical works but is also credited with distilling
oxygen in a lab sometime around 1600. Sendivogious taught his technique to
Cornelius Drebbel who, in 1621, applied this in a submarine. Isaac Newton
devoted considerably more of his writing to the study of alchemy (see Isaac
Newton's occult studies) than he did to either optics or physics. Other early
modern alchemists who were eminent in their other studies include Robert Boyle,
and Jan Baptist van Helmont. Their Hermeticism complemented rather than
precluded their practical achievements in medicine and science.
Later modern period
Robert Boyle
The decline of European alchemy was brought about by the
rise of modern science with its emphasis on rigorous quantitative
experimentation and its disdain for "ancient wisdom". Although the
seeds of these events were planted as early as the 17th century, alchemy still
flourished for some two hundred years, and in fact may have reached its peak in
the 18th century. As late as 1781 James Price claimed to have produced a powder
that could transmute mercury into silver or gold. Early modern European alchemy
continued to exhibit a diversity of theories, practices, and purposes:
"Scholastic and anti-Aristotelian, Paracelsian and anti-Paracelsian,
Hermetic, Neoplatonic, mechanistic, vitalistic, and more—plus virtually every
combination and compromise thereof."
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) pioneered the scientific method in
chemical investigations. He assumed nothing in his experiments and compiled
every piece of relevant data. Boyle would note the place in which the
experiment was carried out, the wind characteristics, the position of the Sun
and Moon, and the barometer reading, all just in case they proved to be
relevant. This approach eventually led
to the founding of modern chemistry in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on
revolutionary discoveries of Lavoisier and John Dalton.
Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn
for the first time between "alchemy" and "chemistry". By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now
restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that
alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud.
In order to protect the developing
science of modern chemistry from the negative censure to which alchemy was
being subjected, academic writers during the 18th-century scientific Enlightenment
attempted, for the sake of survival, to divorce and separate the
"new" chemistry from the "old" practices of alchemy. This
move was mostly successful, and the consequences of this continued into the 19th,
20th and 21st centuries.
During the occult revival of the early 19th century, alchemy
received new attention as an occult science. The esoteric or occultist school, which arose
during the 19th century, held (and continues to hold) the view that the
substances and operations mentioned in alchemical literature are to be
interpreted in a spiritual sense, and it downplays the role of the alchemy as a
practical tradition or protoscience. This interpretation further forwarded the view
that alchemy is an art primarily concerned with spiritual enlightenment or
illumination, as opposed to the physical manipulation of apparatus and
chemicals, and claims that the obscure language of the alchemical texts was an
allegorical guise for spiritual, moral or mystical processes.
In the 19th-century revival of alchemy, the two most seminal
figures were Mary Anne Atwood and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who independently
published similar works regarding spiritual alchemy. Both forwarded a
completely esoteric view of alchemy, as Atwood claimed: "No modern art or
chemistry, notwithstanding all its surreptitious claims, has any thing in
common with Alchemy." Atwood's work
influenced subsequent authors of the occult revival including Eliphas Levi,
Arthur Edward Waite, and Rudolf Steiner. Hitchcock, in his Remarks Upon
Alchymists (1855) attempted to make a case for his spiritual interpretation
with his claim that the alchemists wrote about a spiritual discipline under a
materialistic guise in order to avoid accusations of blasphemy from the church
and state. In 1845, Baron Carl Reichenbach, published his studies on Odic
force, a concept with some similarities to alchemy, but his research did not
enter the mainstream of scientific discussion.
In 1946, Louis Cattiaux published the Message Retrouvé, a
work that was at once philosophical, mystical and highly influenced by alchemy.
In his lineage, many researchers, including Emmanuel and Charles d'Hooghvorst,
are updating alchemical studies in France and Belgium.
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