I've been Reading old alchemical books and there's no seperation between spiritual and physical alchemy. Whether you believe it possible or not to have a physical element or not. The truth is in ancient texto ( prior to the 17th century) there is no separation. Thereon many new writers started believing that Alchemy was much more intelectual than physical and even denied any claims that such a thing as a Stone Capable of granting Immortality and Turning metals into higher perfection possible were metaphores for spiritual development...
Before that everything that I read about the quest and the Stone itself makes it clear that ( according to those sources) The spiritual ( Metaphysical) and Substance (Physical) cannot be separated, thus there wouldn't be any separation between Physical alchemy and Spiritual Alchemy. One cannot master one level without the other. The gap appeared in late writings .
It doesn't matter whether it's physically possible to create such a thing as a Philosopher's stone. to be Honest it's not even a stone.according to the lore. what matters is the knowledge one gains while studying it.
The most fascinating thing is how many authors used Alchemy to write their masterpieces.
About real spiritual alchemy is good book The secret of the golden Flower. Taoist spiritual alchemy book. Translantion by Richard Willhelm. And for comparison is good literature about chakrayoga, but tranlantion original eastern texts, not fictions our western "experts". For example Gheranda samhita, Shiva samhita, Sat chakra nirupana and so on.
But there are another terms. For example chakra Ajna in yoga is the Heavenly heart in The secret of the golden flower.....
Re: Ancient Alchemy By: AwakeTooLong / Knowledgeable
Post # 23 Feb 15, 2016
The corpses found in the Franklin house were part of early, illegal, anatomical research. Whether Franklin was even aware of this occurring is debatable. Hewson Hunter, a notable pioneer in the early field of human anatomical research (and grave robbing), was a tenant in the Franklin House. This is far more probable, and logical, than any leaps to "Oh my god, Ben Franklin was a Satanist."
There was no separation between spiritual and physical alchemy because the sciences did not, at first, see a difference between spiritual "sciences" and the physical. Any science at all was generally attributed to alchemy, as there were few distinct classifications in the fields of learning; indeed there was almost no classification to speak of, and those that existed were varied depending on the source.
The division between spiritual and physical alchemy occurred as science became more formalized and structured. Eventually spirituality became something wholly different, and alchemy simply became science. Why? Because science offers observable evidence while spirituality does not.
It always amuses me when people claim that ancient Alchemists were trying to get gold from "base2 metals. That was not quite the case. In order to understand the "ancient" thinking about what they saw, you have to understand what they were looking at; before microscopes! Let's take gold.It is a "pure" right? No, it isn't!
Gold can range from the deep and dull "orange", to almost pure white; because of the "impurities" in the raw metal.
Now, if the ancient Alchemist arranged his "samples" of gold from dull to bright; it would seem to him that gold actually "grew" in stages!
And that is what the ancient Alchemist was trying to do! Not to change base metal into gold; but to "grow" gold!
And in the days before microscopes you cannot blame them for that belief!
If you read the original writings though it's far more than that. They weren't actually using metals to change other metals. Most writings cannot be taken literally and things like Mercury, Sulfur and other references are nothing more than metaphors.
Whether you believe in it or Not Changing metals into gold was actually a purpose. At the time they thought that All metals aside from gold weren't perfect yet.
Alchemy is seen as te science that accalerates nature. Alchemists believed that they were just making metals achieve their highest potencial. According to Alchemical lore all metals are the same, only at different stages of perfection. Some unininitiated would indeed dilute metals thinking they were making more gold... but it is specifically stated in most writings that the gold obtained from the Work is purer than any other gold and has no impurities in it. Whether or not that was ever possible to achieve is debatable but they were at the time based on weight and certain other techniques to accurately determine the purity of a certain metal
