I bought "alchemy and mysticism" by Alexander Roob, is it a good book for beginners Veeky Forums...

I bought "alchemy and mysticism" by Alexander Roob, is it a good book for beginners Veeky Forums? Have any of you read it?
It is a pretty book tho

good for an overview, but when dealing with hermetics and rosicrucianism it's best to read source texts, because basically everything post-golden dawn will be tinted by their bastardizations

not him but could you give some examples to look out for such changes if possible?

Not him, but alchemy went through a new interpretation starting somewhere around with A Hermetic Inquiry by Mary Anne Atwood, where it was considered a symbolic representation of a spiritual process. Carl Jung likewise greatly bastardized it, in accordance with his psychological theories.

Adam McLean is probably the greatest living public authority on it today – his site, Levity, is quite excellent and he has published a series of books. You could start with his commentary on the Mutus Liber.

The Great Art by Dom Pernety is a good introduction to the oldschool interpretation.

Thank you very much.
captcha: PLANAR FAIRWAY

no, it's not good for beginners, more of an art history book

The problem surrounding alchemy is: who can actually interpret the texts? Who can tell me what Philalethes was talking about, or Ripley, or Geber?

If, like most people, you don't have the first clue, then how can you tell me what alchemy is and is not?

Same goes for the Emerald Tablet and the Hermeticum, or any of the Eastern texts.

I'm not dissuading anybody from reading them, but I just don't trust anyone whether he be Manly Hall or whomever, that goes on and on about alchemy and so forth, but cannot even explain the first thing about the texts.

you act like there is no scholarship on the issue. maly hall is about as far as you can get from legitimate

So you can point me to someone who can interpret the texts and apply them?

>and apply them
user...

People ITT are arguing that alchemy is not a symbolic representation, and therefore something physical and material.

If this were the case, then the only use of the text would be in their application in physical reality, no?

the people in this thread who are accusing jung, etc. of "bastardizing" the texts by interpreting them as strictly psychological and parroting something they read in evola. the entire history of alchemy is a history of macrohistoric revisions, pseudepigraphical texts, fraudulent appeals to ancient authority, misinterpretations of kabbalah, hermetism, neoplatonism, etc. jung is just another part of this tradition. the language used to describe aspects of alchemy—spiritualism, psychology, theurgy, and on and on, will have different meanings for different writers/scholars. there are absolutely alchemists who intended to literally change lead into gold. they thought this was possible in a completely different intellectual atmosphere of aristotelian metaphysics (the middle ages and the renaissance.) alchemy goes away with the enlightenment and returns with romanticism, bowdlerized to remove the more embarrassing parts, and with the spiritual/psychologic aspects of the practice emphasized.
alchemy needs to be understood temporally as part of a greater western esoteric tradition. check out wouter hanagraff's western esotericism for the perplexed, and the dictionary he edited (dictionary of gnosticism and western esotericism.)

>wouter hanagraff
interesting. I have come across him before in a lecture about bohme

You're not stating anything I disagree with. My point was that no one I've come across can actually tell me what Alchemy "is". Until then I don't trust anyone who speaks about it.

Is it true that modern science evolved out of alchemy? If it did, in which fashion?

no one says what it is, because their answer would be wrong—it is a complex phenomenon that has manifested in different way in different times for different reasons

Read The Forge and the Crucible for a good introduction to alchemy.

so how do i make a philosopher's stone to make infinite gold

>So you can point me to someone who can interpret the texts and apply them?
dude, alchemy is an old form of chemistry, there is no reason to try to apply it

>Carl Jung likewise greatly bastardized it
Carl Jung is the sole reason Alchemy is studied today. If it weren't for him, alchemical treaties would still collect dust in antiquary shops. We have to thank Jung and Von Franz for translating these texts and formulating an analytic method that paved the way to a greater comprehension of the discipline.

that doesn't mean it doesn't have a root. every imitation has an original model

That doesn't contradict what he said though.

Hall is really that bad? I'm not saying I don't believe you, but what makes him illegitimate?

hall, blavatsky, etc. —basically anyone who is in themselves a figure in western esotericism, will not be great for history. their books are interesting as metahistory and to see how they form all things into a narrative, but in terms of actual, positive history, the scholarship is just super dubious; there's lots of wishful thinking, extreme superlatives, correspondences that don't exist, etc. templar legends, as filling the gap for the transfer of knowledge, is a great example of the type of move that people like hall make frequently, just less conspicuously