Medieval and renaissance alchemical manuscripts are often wonderfully illustrated with detailed and complicated images of the individual steps in the process of alchemy.
In many of these images, the process depicted involves the use of a vessel of various shapes and materials. The alchemical process occurs in these vessels, including processes of combination, separation, dissolution, heating, and evaporation.
While the vessel, or vas, itself appears to be a commonly used piece of laboratory equipment, for the alchemist, the vessel was much more than that, as Jung describes:
“Although an instrument, it nevertheless has peculiar connections with the prima materia as well as with the lapis, so it is no mere piece of apparatus. For the alchemists the vessel is something truly marvelous: a vas mirabile….. One naturally thinks of this vessel as a sort of retort or flask; but one soon learns that this is an inadequate conception since the vessel is more a mystical idea, a true symbol like all the central ideas of alchemy” (CW Vol.14 251).The alchemical arts have a dual nature, one which may be described as external, embodied and practical, and another which is internal, spiritual, and abstract (Henderson and Sherwood 7). While there were certainly those who practiced alchemy in a physical way, that is, with laboratory equipment with the goal of transmutating a base material into gold (chrysopoeia), or developing an elixir of immortality (spagyrics), it is clear that the metaphor of a laboratory process was more valuable to alchemists as a way to describe what was a psychological and spiritual practice in an attempt to improve themselves as human beings (Henderson and Sherwood 7). Jung "sees a projection of the process of individuation in the steps performed by alchemists" and "devoted many years to the psychological interpretation of alchemical symbology" (Ellenberger 719).
In many of the beautifully illustrated alchemical texts, such as the Splendor Solis or the Mutus Liber, the alchemical vessels are usually shown to be transparent and probably made of glass. The advantages of using glass vessels allows the practitioner to see what is going on inside; the alchemical process becomes visible and observable. Glass gives one the ability to monitor the processes as well as control the heat being applied, as glass isn’t as conductive as metal. Glass is also quite moldable into the various and often complicated shapes needed for some processes, such as distillation. I believe that another reason that glass vessels are depicted is to emphasize the fragility and danger of the process -- the alchemist must use care in every process, every step, otherwise the vessel might break before the process is completed, with the real potential of injury. This is certainly true for practical alchemy but also true of spiritual or psychological alchemy, for as Jung points out, glass is "something like solidified water or air, both of which are synonyms for spirit" (CW Vol. 13 197).
Many metaphors are used to describe the vessels used in the alchemical processes and these are instructive as to their true purpose: spirit container, egg, vas cerebri, cranium, brain pan, Mother of the Stone, Luna, vas pellicanicum, uterus, womb, matrix, cup of Babylon, and the tomb of the dead (Henderson and Sherwood 40, Jung CW Vol. 13 83, CW Vol 14. 129-130, 180, 279). The alchemical vessel is often described with metaphors of gestation, such as an egg, uterus or womb. The "alchemical fire was said to need to burn for 40 weeks, the time needed for a human fetus" to come to maturity and be birthed (Henderson and Sherwood 5).
These descriptions let us know that the alchemical vessel is essentially us, our soul, our psyche. While couched in the language of metallurgy and chemistry, the processes imparted on the starting material, the prima materia, are the soul transformational processes that we undergo. Hillman notes that:
“…the words for alchemical vessels -- the shapes of soul in which our personality is being worked….presents an array of different qualities of vessel, different fragilities, visibilities, and forms: condensing coils, multiheaded alembics, pelicans, curcurbits, flat open pan. One uses copper or glass or clay to hold one’s stuff and cook it” (Alchemical Language 122).These processes are difficult and intensive. In "analytical psychology, the sealed alchemical vessel, or retort, symbolizes the privacy of the patient-therapist encounter" and the importance of confidentiality, keeping the vessel Hermetically sealed (Henderson and Sherwood 44). Sealing the vessel contains all the matter inside and as heat is applied, the pressure builds. As Louise von Franz has noted, the ’sealed vessel’ intensifies the effect of analysis: "It is also the torture of fire, intensifying the psychological process. One is roasted, roasted in what one is.… for you roast in what you are yourself and not in anything else; one could say that one is cooked in one’s own juice" (86).
I’ve discovered that the more I study alchemical texts and images, the more it has transformed my lens for viewing my world, what I know call an "alchemical lens", rather than what I would call the "scientific lens" of objective observation. Once you develop an "alchemical lens or eye" you will see the use of alchemical vessels and alchemical processes everywhere driven by the transformational power of heat or fire (thermodynamically, spiritually, and psychologically).
When my coffee maker heats its reservoir volume to almost boiling and extracts the essence of the Starbucks French Roast, depositing into the open crucible/carafe the elixir of morning coffee, this is alchemy in the kitchen. When I dissolve dye powder into warm water laced with an amount of salt (to dissolve the dye more completely) or apply a hot steam iron to fabric dyed blue and it turns to purple, this is alchemy in my workshop. Returning to school and continuing my education involves the dissolution and transformation of old ideas, and the crystallization and distillation of new ideas.
In my own daily work as a crystallographer, I am using several versions of alchemical vessels and processes in my laboratory. In my efforts to crystallize a protein, I mix different amounts of my protein starting material with many different combinations of chemicals: solvents, salt buffers, polymers, and detergents, and place a small amount on a clean, round glass slide. The glass slide is inverted and sealed, with a small bead of vacuum grease, to a very small chamber containing a volume of the crystallization condition without protein, which creates a water differential between the chamber solution and the mixed solution on the glass slide. This technique is known as hanging drop vapor diffusion. I do not know which combination (known as the mother liquor) of conditions will grow crystals, so I must try hundreds and even thousands of experiments before I am successful.
Alchemists of the past understood that in order to be successful in the opus or "work", they would have to repeat the steps of the alchemical process many times. Patience and perseverance is considered key to success in the work. The name for an alchemists’ workspace is even redundant; the Latin origin of the word, laboratory, laborare, means "to labor" or to work. However, Mircea Eliade notes that the qualities and virtues of the alchemist show that the alchemical work was not merely performed in the laboratory, "He must be healthy, humble, patient, chaste; his mind must be free and in harmony with his work; he must be intelligent and scholarly, he must work, meditate, pray, etc" (159).
The process of crystallization is one of purification; the solution that is a combination of the protein and the potential crystallization condition is exposed to different conditions. The combined solution begins to dry as water is being evaporated off slowly, as the water content of the chamber solution and the protein drop equilibrates. If the conditions are exactly right, a crystallization event, or nucleation, occurs, and from this beginning, a crystal will begin to grow. Only the form of the protein with the lowest energy state will produce a crystal and is therefore the most natural and biologically active form of the protein. A crystal can only be formed of protein molecules that are all exactly the same, so any other forms of the protein, particularly the less-crystallizable forms, are left behind in the solution. The act of crystallization purifies the protein solution into its purest and most natural form.
The small glass slides are a version of the alchemical crucible, an open dish that facilitates evaporation of water, as Hillman describes, "…. A flat evaporating pan to steam off excess wetness so that a dry remainder could be used for further concoctions. Too much liquid and the soul substance tends to putrefy (Force of Character 83). Going through the evaporative process, we evolve off liquid/emotions and with it, impurities, leaving behind a more pure solution/self. The conditions are then improved for crystallizing the soul to its purest and most natural state. Jung states that salt "is not a very common dream-symbol, but it does appear in the cubic form of a crystal, which in many patients’ drawings represents the center and hence the self" (CW Vol.14 245). The shape of the crystal gives it a clear connection to the lapis, or Philosopher’s Stone, the alchemical goal. The open nature of the crucible also suggests a chalice, another open vessel (and one that is often thought to symbolize emotions) where a slow evaporation may take place. It also suggests the mythical Holy Grail, in its chalice form. Another connection to the Holy Grail made by Jung is to the form of the lapis, being close to the Hermetic vessel, noting that Wolfram von Eschenbach describes the Grail as the lapsit exillis (CW Vol.12 180n).
The protein crystals that form are so small (usually less than 100 microns in length) that they can be only seen using a microscope; they must be illuminated and magnified to be visible to the human eye. The transparency of the glass cover slides is very important at this step for both illumination and for recording the results. The data record for the crystallization experiments includes photography because it is only in the imaging of the experiments can we determine success or failure. The ability to amplify the objective view of the experimental results is crucial to understanding whether or not a crystallization experiment is a success or failure. Without illumination, transduction of light, and amplification of the image, the experiment is useless.
Amplification was also important to alchemists and was actually considered theory as Jung points out, "The method of alchemy, psychologically speaking, is one of boundless amplification…. This amplificatio forms the second part of the opus, and is understood by the alchemist as theoria"(CW Vol.12 289).
Crystallographers use both concrete and metaphorical descriptive language to personally communicate our results to other crystallographers: blocks, needles, plates, shards, rods, oil, crystal balls, crashed, showered out, pruned, skin, pseudo-crystal, fried egg, seaweed, goo, gelatin, twinning, mosaic, dead, etc…. Each individual crystallographer tends to make up descriptive nomenclature based on their personal experience.
The alchemists of the past also had to invent their own metaphorical language to describe their processes. "The profound darkness that shrouds the alchemical procedure comes from the fact that although the alchemist was interested in the chemical part of the work he also used it to devise a nomenclature for the psychic transformation that really fascinated him" (Jung, CW Vol.12 289).
Crystallography is a monotonous and rather lonely experimental science. It’s monotonous because thousands of nearly identical experiments must be performed before a success is noted. And it is lonely in two ways, there are very few people in the discipline as it is so specialized, and the laboratory needed for crystallization must be secluded in order to minimize external forces such as light and vibration. Crystals grow only in a protected and internalized environment.
Practical alchemists of the past lived a marginal existence, working in secret and obscurity, for obvious reasons: their work was in many ways heretical to the established church, the mystery of the alchemical operation gave them the mystique and stigma of sorcerers, and the work was often physically dangerous, sparking building fires or poisoning the practitioner.
Today, I believe that the direct descendents of practical alchemists are actively working in the field of biotechnology and the alchemical vessel of the renaissance is now the small, polypropylene plastic centrifuge tube of today’s PCR (polymerase chain reaction) experiment. Biotechnology is a field that generates both great promise and great apprehension. With the human genome sequencing completed and rapid advances in stem cell research, we are at a place in our history where we can interfere with human evolution at will. A biological version of the alchemical vessel is the human stem cell, which holds the promise of many medical cures, due to its pluripoietent qualities (that of the prima materia) of transformation into a number of tissue types, including cardiac muscle, pancreatic cells, hepatic tissue, and neuronal cells. It is my opinion that currently stem cell work is being marginalized by political ideology, making it very difficult for this work to go forward, but this situation is very fluid, with research policies still nascent (Monitoring Stem Cell Research http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/stemcell/index.html .
Who are the direct descendents of the spiritual alchemists? There are esoteric groups and secret societies (and those not-so-secret) that are working with ancient, medieval, and renaissance alchemical materials in a spiritual way (outside of an
analytical psychological environment). One such group is The Philosophers of Nature http://www.mcs.net/~alchemy, who have an esoteric school teaching primarily spiritual alchemy with some practical work, including courses in spagyrics, for the advanced student.
One of the largest alchemy-related websites is Adam McLean’s "The Alchemy Web Site" http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html the online archive of McLean’s life’s work, making alchemical texts more readily available to the interested public. He has deposited hundreds of hand-colored alchemical images, texts of alchemical works (many his own translations) articles on alchemy, an extensive alchemical bibliography, as well as home-study courses in spiritual alchemy. McLean also publishes the "Magnum Opus" series, which re-prints difficult to obtain alchemical works in volume editions that are hand made and sometimes hand colored as well. Having traveled to and worked with museums and esoteric libraries around the world, his site has the most extensive library of alchemical works on the Internet.
You can purchase supplies and apparatus for your practical alchemical experiments online with The Crucible Catalog http://www.crucible.org including beautiful hand-blown glass alembics, pelicans, and retorts, as well as crucibles, basic chemicals and even the seven metals ruled by the planets: gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead. And at The Alchemy Lab web site http://www.alchemylab.com you can read back issues of The Alchemical Journal, browse through a list of recommended books and upcoming lectures and workshops, or register for home courses in both practical and spiritual alchemy.
There are several efforts today in University chemistry departments to recreate practical alchemical processes of the past. For example, the work of Sir Isaac Newton, whose alchemical research was carefully hidden even after his death, is the focus of the University of Indiana http://www.indiana.edu/~college/WilliamNewmanProject.shtml. Professor Newman is a science historian, but with the help of the Indiana University Chemistry Department, recreations of Newton’s oven and experiments are being studied and realized.
A unique and unusual form of an alchemical vessel is seen in a recent experiment performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In what appears to be an alchemical process in reverse, "charged gold atoms were accelerated to close to the speed of light" and then "smashed together". What was expected was a "quark-gluon plasma" in gas form; something that would mimic the material that "filled the Universe in the first microseconds" after the Big Bang. The surprise is that the plasma turned out to be a liquid -- an intensely hot ("150,000 times hotter than our sun") yet a "perfectly uniform liquid", in other words a cosmological prima materia (Peplow, par. 2, 4, 11).
Alchemical apparatus and processes are almost ubiquitous if you see with an "alchemical lens". While the alchemical laboratory glassware of the past is still in use today in modern laboratories (although often in altered forms) a common laboratory exists in every household, the kitchen, which is rich in alchemical symbolism, apparatus, and processes. The modern alchemist may focus on the spiritual aspects of alchemical symbolism but clearly some are interested in the practical laboratory experiments of the past, mixing and heating metals and creating tinctures and elixirs.
Whether we are working with the prima materia of base metal, our psyche, stem cells, or the earliest cosmological matter in the Universe, the symbology of the diverse forms of alchemical vessels provide a rich psychological environment in which to dwell.
Works Cited
The Alchemy Lab (also hosts The Alchemy Journal and The Emerald Tablet Exchange). Hauck, Dennis William. 3 Apr. 2005. http://www.alchemylab.com
The Alchemy Web Site. McLean, Adam. 1 Feb. 2005. http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
The Crucible Catalog. 15 Mar. 2005. http://www.crucible.org
Early Universe was a Liquid: Quark-gluon Blob Surprises Particle Physicists. Peplow, Mark. 11 par. 20 Apr. 2005. http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050418/pf/0504185.html ;;
Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Ellenberger, Henri. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. Basic Books, 1970.
Franz, Marie-Louise von. Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980.
Henderson, Joseph L. and Dyane N. Sherwood. Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis. NY: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.
Hillman, James. Therapeutic Value of Alchemical Language. Dragonflies: Studies in Imaginal Psychology 1/1. p. 33-42. 1978. Reprinted in Methods of Treatment in Analytical Psychology. I.F. Baker Ed. p. 118-26. Fellbach: Verlag Adolf Bonz, 1980.
--- The Force of Character. New York: Random House, 1999.
Jung, Carl Gustav. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 12, 2nd edition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 13, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.
--- The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Vol. 14, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.
Monitoring Stem Cell Research. The President’s Council on Bioethics. Leon Kass, Chairman. 13 Feb. 2005 http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/stemcell/index.html
Newton’s Alchemy, Recreated. Newman, William. 12 Mar. 2005. http://www.indiana.edu/~college/WilliamNewmanProject.shtml
About the Author
C. Clogston is a protein chemist and crystallographer working in biotechnology with degrees in Biology and Mythological Studies. Clogston is currently a Ph.D candidate in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, and can be reached at [email protected] ;;