Classics of Alchemy

Alchemy was at once a practical chemistry, a philosophy of nature and a symbolic language for spiritual transformation. Its texts are deliberately obscure, written in images, riddles and allegories that assume a patient reader.

This workshop gathers the canonical authors, Paracelsus, Basil Valentine and Michael Maier, beside the great anthologies such as the Hermetic Museum, and the later interpretive studies that read alchemy as inner work. Start with the anthologies; they show how alchemists read one another.

Alchemical texts were written to conceal as much as to reveal, using animals, kings and planets as names for substances and processes. Read with patience, and use the emblem books and later dictionaries as keys. A useful order is to start with the collected tracts of the Hermetic Museum, move to individual authors such as Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, and only then approach the most allegorical works. The shelf covers both practical chemistry and spiritual interpretation; noticing which a given author is doing, or whether he makes any distinction, is part of the pleasure of the reading.