The phenomenon that alchemists have always tried to explain with the means of the physics of their time was the “reciprocity” between us and the cosmos. See Robert Fludd’s cogwheels.
It is truly astonishing that with every change of technical-scientific imaginary there was a collective craze for Alchemy. The last one, the Fulcanelli era, in the roaring twenties of the twentieth century, was atomic energy; In very ancient times, the models were fire, wind, ocean, thunder, the breath and the heartbeat; Between the Baroque era and the eighteenth century it was the turn of mechanics: ad example, the solar system was a machine, the water circuit was a hydraulic system, the human body was a thermal system. Back then it was perfectly exhaustive to represent the interactions between human beings and the cosmos by cogwheels and gears that started from inside the skull and reached the sun (further on it was too complex to describe).
Today alchemists have adopted a modern language and represent the reciprocity with “fields”…
Our current scientific imagination operating on the basis of particles and wave functions is proving so fascinating that it has suppressed interest in Alchemy. Anyway, we cannot fail to notice how the concept of field offers interesting insights into the explanation of the reciprocity between us and the cosmos.
How did Plotinus’s saying: “The soul is not in the body, but the body is in the soul” influence the concept of “field” in Alchemy?
Plotinus’ saying “The soul is not in the body, but the body is in the soul” changes the perception that we moderns have of the entire paradigm of baroque hermetic science, because it affirms the concept of “field”. In fact, if one does not understand the alchemical “fields” one cannot figure out Alchemy.
Can you better explain the concept that in Alchemy everything happens nearby?
In laboratory Alchemy we can notice how great effects occur around and in the vicinity of officially “worked” materials. This also happens for alchemists and their environment. A very striking example is that small aurora – very similar to aurora borealis/australis – that appeared next to the Philosophical Egg when the Last Cooking went terribly wrong.
Was it perhaps for the “field” reason that the places where alchemical works of a certain importance were carried out had to be abandoned soon after?
Legends, traditions and historical curiosities seem to confirm this. For example, Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis prescribes it among the obligations.
For ancients, the void didn’t exist, but the densities of a continuum…
The ancients were so sure that there was a dense continuum between objects that many superstitions led to “cutting with swords and knives”.
Today, in quantum field theory, even empty space is an exciting place to be.
The overall minimum energy wave function is the one in which every single mode has the lowest possible energy. It is a single state, which physicists today call“vacuum”. When quantum field theorists talk about a vacuum, they are not referring to an empty room, or even to a region of interplanetary space devoid of matter. What they mean is “the minimum energy state of a quantum field theory”.
Superstitions aside, it seems almost just a different lexicon between ancient alchemists and modern physicists. In fact, alchemists, did not imagine a static soul-field, but one in constant movement.
Soul-field movement? Like a machine?
For the ancients, the soul was almost an engine – a concept that is too modern, by the way. To better explain this movement, we could say that the power of movement of the soul is one of “attraction”, like a magnet on iron.
This doesn’t surprise me, in fact for Thales the soul was so mixed everywhere that all things were full of deities.
For alchemists, the soul is mixed in the universe like natural magnets. In addition to the theories of “movement” and “magnet”, in Alchemy we also talk about the theory of “bait”.
What’s the difference between magnets and baits in Alchemy?
I can answer with an example: common fire (not the element) is sometimes used as bait for the Spiritus Mundi, given the similarity of “growth”, in fact, the baroque alchemists spoke of similarity of form, of movement, of function. Ultimately, the word bait is very specific and different from magnet: a bait is certainly useful to the fisherman who wants to catch a fish from the water (always keeping in mind that the symbol of the sea indicates the ocean of forces that move around the alchemist). The word magnet instead defines the existence of a specific channel. Specially, we will see later how Mercurius acts as a magnet for both the Spiritus Mundi and the stars.