JOHN H. WOTlZ Carbondale. Illinois62901
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Some Latter-Day Alchemists
with the Universal Consciousness. An American military officer, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, published a similar interpretation in his "Remarks on Alchemy and Alchemists" in 1857 R. F. Trimble 19). Neither South nor Hitchrork hnd anv familiaritv with the Southern Illinois University practical, laboratory work of alchemy; they were devoted to Carbondale, IL 62901 that mvstical branch of the art which still exerts a nowerful The suicide of Dr. James Price in 1783 following his failure attracgon. Of the 58 titles listed under alchemy in ihe latest "Guide to Books in Print." a t least a auarter are works on t o suhstantiate a claim of transmutation (1) is a temotine symhol of the death of alrhemy attendant upon the rise of t h i mystical alchemy. new chemistr\,. But alchemv did not dirand alchemiits have At the turn of the centuw. there are three literaw fieures persisted in attempts to make the Philosopher's Stone up to who were more than mildi; interested in occult matters. the present dav. William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and dramatist, tells in his ~ i o f e s s o r~ k r d i n a n dWurzer, who became professor of autobiography (10) of meeting an Oxfordshire clergyman who chemistry and medicine at Marhure in 1804, thowht that the had an alchemical lahoratorv in a cellar where his Bishop fact of transmutation was incon'trovertible and that the couldn't see i t and who claimed t o have prepared the ~ l i x & of Life. However, being afraid to try it a t the time, he had put making of gold would soon be common among chemists (2). I'rofesaor Karl Schmieder of the Hunrgerschule in Kasuel, it away for when he was old. Alas, when he finally took it off the shelf todrink, it had all evaporated away. Yeats also tells author o f a history of alrhemy (1832),said he was con\,inred of meeting in Paris a "silent man whom I discover to he as a young man that alchemy was a fable hut that his historical Strindberg, and who is looking for the Philosopher's Stone' investigations convinced him that the Philosopher's Stone did exist (3). Hermann Kopp, the great historian of chemistry, (11). accused Schmieder of "Pseudopsie," that is, of seeing only Johan August Strindberg is remembered as a great Swedish dramatist, hut he was also an alchemist. In his autobiowhat one wants t o see and excludine anvthine contradictorv graphical novel "Inferno" (1897),he telle of this period in Paris t o it (4). Yet Kopp himself admitted that & n e stories df transmutation had been told in such detail by such reputable when he carried out exoeriments to move that sulfur is a men that it was as impossible for him to believe that they had compound of carbon, h;drogen and G y g m and that iodine lied or had been deceived as it was to believe that a transmucan be svnthesked from benzene. While walkinr! one das. he t tation had really occurred (5).In his Trait6 de chimie (1844), saw the ietters F and S intertwined on a wall. ~ e f i r sthoight A. E. Baudrimont mentioned a claim that oxveen was the this was a s i m about his personal life (his wife's name was "powder of projection" and went on to say that Le had hope Frieda), b u t t h e n "a light dawned upon me when the inof seeing a successful transmutation performed ( 6 ) . scription decomnosed before mv eves into the chemical Ir, may seem stranEe that so many professional chemists syn;bols for iron and sulfur (Fe and and revealed to me the entertained alchemical beliefs well into the 19th century, but secret of gold" (12). Th6 Svedberg, a 1926 Nobel Laureate, the immutability of elements rested solely on the lack of excharacterized his countryman's scientific writings as "little perimentally verifiable tmnsmutations. Even so acute a masterpieces of plausible idiocy, genuine gems of absurdity" chemist as Ostwald felt no mmoulsion to believe in the realitv (13). of atoms until 1909 (7). The third literary figure is the Austrian, Gustav Meyrink, In Eneland in 1850. Marv Anne South (later Atwood) author of the classic fantasv novel "The Golem" (1913-14). ,~~ publishes "A ~ u ~ ~ e s tl invq k& y into the ~ e r k e t i ~c ~ s t e r y ; ' He did carry out alchemica&&ments i d , in a letter dat& (8)in which she took the view that alchemv was concerned 1914. said that he believed he had found the true Prima Mawith the transmutation, not of matter hut of Man; its true aim teria'after a year's work. He adds that nitrogen is important was the development of an inner, hieher farultv so that Man in alchemical work because its atomic weieht is the sauare r w t " of the atomic weight of gold (14). could perceive the structure of the universe andcommunicate ~
Volume 57, Number 9, September 1980 1 645
There have been gold-makers who repudiated alchemical theories and claimed to use onlv conventional nhvsical and chemical methods. Among such hyperchemists or &himists wni C . T. Tifferrnu. who claimed. in the IRSO's, to have made gold from 'Mexican silver and wpper by reactinn with nitric acid that had been exposed to the sun ( 1 5 ) . Mexican silver, in the form of coins, alsu served as the starting material for Dr. Stephen H. Emmens in the 1890's. He subjected thissilver to continuous, heavy hammering while preventing any rise in temperature. This converted some of the silwr to gold. The \lint. Kmmens claimed this to pwdurt was sold to the I:.& he a straightforward iwhni(al prucess that had nothing todo with alchemy, although a new, intermediate suhstan(.e he called argentallrum urnsinvolved. When Sir William Crookes failed to duolicnte Emmens's work. Kmmens attrihuted the failure to the use of pure silver, a trace of gold being necessary as a kind of catalyst. His Mexican coins were certified to contain one ten-thousandth of a part of gold (16). Alchemists have nersisted into the twentieth centurv. The pseudonymous ~uicanellipublished "Le mystere deseathQderales" and "Les demeures philosophiales" in 1926 and 1928. The books are well on the way to hecoming an accepted Dart of the traditional alchemical canon. Fulcanelli himself appears to have joined St. Germain and Flamel as one of the immortal adepts (17). A California couple, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ingalese, claimed to have prepared the Oils of Sulphur, Mercury, and Copper and to have combined them into the White Stone in 1917 and the Red Stone in 1920. The White Stone was used to resuscitate a women assumed to have been dead for half an hour i\--,. lRl In 1940, a London osteopath, Archibald Cockren, published "Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored" in which he claimed to have v r e ~ a r e dthe Oil of Gold and the Mercurv of the ~hilosopherl.The latter was a volatile liquid with H subtle odor like " d e w earth on a June mornine." (19). Be'fore he could carry ouGhr nrxt step in the preparation of the Stone, he was killed during a bomhine raid t20).'l'here were alrn the alchemists, ~ i e t z e i a n d~ e i t i e rin , the Third Reich at that time whose correspondence survived the war and has been published (21).
646 1 Journal of Chemical Education
A contemvorarv alchemist. Armand Barbault. uses dew to prepare a tincture of gold of the first degree which has extraordinary medicinal value. He describes the vr6cess in ereat detail in h:ls h w k (22). He depends henvilv on a s t n h i a n d on his wife's intuition and states That a woman's ht4v is ahsolutely essential. So, a brief survey of alchemy since the chemical revolution shows that the reasonable expectation that alchemy could not survive the new chemistry was wrong. We should recognize from this fact that alchemy has little to do with reason. I t is faith, the evidence of things not seen, that is the motivating force of alchemy and no amount of evidence to the contrary will do away with the dream of the Philosopher's Stone. Llterature Clted 11) Holmyard, E. 1.. "Alchemy".
Penguin Books. Harmondsuorth. 1951, p. 261.
121 Kopp. H., "Db Alchemio in Aolterer und Neuemr Zeit ,Teil2. G e q Olmn Verl-8-
buchhsndlung, Hildesheim, 1 B Z (reprint of 1886 edition>. p. 171. (8) Ref. 12). Teil 2. p. 179. (11 Ref. (21,Teil 2, p. 180. 15) Kapp, H.,"Goschichteder C b m i e , Vol. 2, Georg Olms Vorlapshuchhandlunp, Hildesheim. 1962 Ireprintof1844edition1, p.261. (61 Partington,J. R.,"A HirloryotChemirtry". Vol. 4, MaeMillsn & Ca., Londan. 1964.
-". ,a.
.,o*.
171 Ret (6).Vol.4, p. 597. (8) Republished a:Alwmd.M. A.."Hermdic PhdosophyandAl&cmv,"The J v l i a n h , New York, 1360. (9) See, for e m p l e . W&te'sintrduction ta: Waite. A. E.. "AlchemktaThmlgh t h e w Rudolf Steiner Publications, Rlauvelt. N.Y. 1970 (reprint of"Liver of Alehemystic Philosophers". 1888).
(10) "Tk Avtohingrxphy af William Butler Ysats." Collier Bnaks, New York, 1965, p.
..... .- .... 115) Figuicr. L., '"L'Alehimie et lea alehimists". 3rd Ed.. Haehette, Paris. 1860, p. 280. 116) Hering. D. W., '"Foihl~aandFallacies ofSeienee". Van Nostrand, New York. 1924,pp. 6669: see alsoreL (181, p. 25. 1171 Soo for example. Pauwels, L., and Belgier, J.. "The Morning of the Magicism: (Tro~lolor:Myers, R.1 Stein & Day, New York, 1964,pp. 62.3.75-80. (18) FranLlyn. J.. IEdilnr) "A Dictionary nf the Oeeulf"CauserayBab, NeaYork. 1913 (reissue of English edition. 19351. p. 27. (19) Cmkren, A. " Alchemy Rediscnvered and Retored," David MeKw Philadelphia,
Spearmen. London, 1975 (French original>969)
