Alchemy is an ancient practice cloaked in mystery and secrecy. Its practitioners mainly sought to turn lead into gold, a quest that has captured the imaginations of people for thousands of years. However, the goals of alchemy went far beyond simply creating some golden nuggets.
It is these other fields of the Alchempst, which lay rooted in a complex spiritual view of our planet, wherein everything around us contains a sort of universal spirit, (Job: chapter 12 verse 10) mentions it this way:"In whose hand is the soul of every living thing." metals were believed not only to be alive but also to have grown inside the Earth. When a base, or common, metal such as lead was found, it was thought to simply be a spiritually and physically immature form of higher metals such as gold.
To the alchemists, metals were not the unique substances that populate the periodic table instead, however, they believed that the same thing was in different stages of development or refinement on their ultimate way to spiritual perfection.
As James Randi notes in his "Encyclopedia of Claims, "Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural," "Beginning about the year 100 and reaching its flower in medieval times, alchemy was an art based partly upon experimentation and partly upon magic. Early investigators of natural processes centered their search on a mythical substance they knew as philosopher's stone, which was supposed to possess many valuable attributes such as the power to heal, to prolong life, and to change base metals into precious metal — such as gold." (This "philosopher's stone" was not a literal stone but instead a wax, liquid, or powder that held magical powers.)
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