Alchemy

Alchemy is the Hermetic art of transformation. Outwardly it sought to transmute base metals into gold by means of the philosopher's stone, the goal of the long laboratory labour called the Great Work (magnum opus). Inwardly — and inseparably, for its adepts — it was a spiritual discipline: the purification, death, and rebirth of the alchemist's own soul, mirrored in the changes of matter.

Born in the crucible of Greco-Egyptian Alexandria (its first named master is Zosimos of Panopolis), refined through the Arabic world, and authorized by the Emerald Tablet, alchemy rests on the doctrine of correspondence: its watchword 'dissolve and coagulate' describes a work of breaking down and reuniting that is at once chemical and a purification of the spirit.