Hey dear community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you had a great start to the new weekend! In this post, I would like to talk a little about alchemy and hope you can expand your knowledge.
Here you can see pictures of solid silver and copper and I would like to use these pictures to talk a little about the aspects of metal finishing in alchemy, which has played an important role. One of the main goals of the old alchemists was to produce gold artificially and one of the basics of alchemy was the thought that one could create gold or silver artificially and the alchemists were from the ideology of the assumption that this should be possible and already in the first writings attempts appear which had this as a goal. There were certainly thousands of experiments that focused on this goal and often there was also talk of certain substances with which this should be possible and there was probably an elixir or powder that had to be mixed with base metals to produce noble ones and also the well-known philosopher's stone appears in this context that should make this possible. The production of artificial metals was also closely linked to the teaching of the four elements of Aristotle and it was assumed that in gold the four elements are all connected to each other and nothing should stand in the way of the artificial creation of it. It took many steps to create gold artificially and within the Opus Magnum, which was also known as a great work, one needed different steps and needed knowledge in different areas and the procedure for creating the Opus Magnum was changed and adapted more and more over the centuries. In addition to the most important work steps, knowledge about the coloring and the different dyes was also needed for completion and also the understanding of the union of two principles such as the female or male principle was important for the finishing of metals. According to some views, the finishing was also linked to the process of maturation which took place in the interior of the earth in a natural way and the principle of finishing was also closely linked to mythological principles and is one of the most important parts of alchemy.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.