What does Veeky Forums think of Alchemy?

It coexisted and was influenced a great deal by the Islamic world.

Not everyone is like you mr high IQ, ironically I'm 2 years away from my Phd in History and my dissertation is very related to occult (pre renaissance though, so no flash grimoires)
They were also mad about Amulets, something they took from the Late Antique eastern roman empire

Nah, I was talking about the Harry Potter shit.

>mfw someone who had a meme tier response gets envious when someone else took their chance to expand.

Although HP really was a kindle for me, searching for "spell books" when I was 12, Ars Magica truly sparked my interest, making me serioulsy interest in occult, its basically Harry Potter for grown ups, or Magical version of Vampire the masquerade (both from the same companies, and both have Tremere on it) Do check Ars Magica out a very brilliant rpg imho, I later found it it was very popular with grad students later on

What's your dissertation about? I have interest in occult stuff too.

kek get real faggot

I don't want to doxmyself since telling it basically would allow you to pinpoint who I am (call me old fashioned but just in case) but lets say its about how common people used magic in late roman empire. I heavily used PGM (Greek Magical Papyri, a collection of spells found in egpyt) alongside Christian accounts on magic and amulets etc.

If you have an interest in Occult do check out Picatrix and PGM, both of them are fun (and legible) to read than lesser key of solomon

Understandable. Thanks for the suggestions.

Alchemy is a poetry of the mineral world. Sadly, in the current age, we gave up more subjective views on such understanding of physical world under the pressure of scientific cold hearted dogmas.

>the pressure of scientific cold hearted dogmas
Are you telling me you would have been comfortable with bullshit alchemist theories being put to practice in the manufacture of medicine or explosive/flammable materials?

The greatest achievemnt of the alchemists was the development of distillation which led to the creation of many fine liquers

What happened during the Eleusinian Mysteries?

Christianity as the official religion of the empire happened

It is more about how modern science mechanically generalized to many fields much beyond its grasp. Cliche notion of love being chemicals is one of the prime examples of that. It also shows how deep it goes as people generally notice an only first layer of cynicism there, but fail to understand the much more critical mind flow of thought, that associated chemicals with aspects supposedly less personal than any feelings. We rarely claim that chemicals are love, the second part of an equation. That was the statement that is very legit for alchemists who can understand Mercury and Sulphur beyond their common, chemical properties. Today we are sure, that such sentimental aspects from the past don't influence what happens in the industry or all kinds of scientific experiments. It doesn't mean that this views couldn't be properly used to create complex or deeper outlook on our spiritual and mental lives.

Cryptography

Cool as a historical phenomenon. But after the rise of science, alchemy changed into a completely metaphorical way of thinking, which makes me totally lost.

Bro it's like, turning lead into gold is metaphor for like, turning your shit soul into something better, or your boring persona into something reasonable, or your pudgy body into nice to look at.

Pro-tip: esoteric bullshit is still believed by a fuckload of people out there and there's a huge industry that surrounds it. I find it amusing when people claim that science has replaced all that when people make millions selling homoeopathic 'medicine'.

I'm fairly certain historical alchemists quite literally looked into turning lead into gold. And why wouldn't they?

Well yes they did that too. Like, for real.

>The idea of a monolithic, constant, and ancient “tradition” within alchemy received a boost from the development of the spiritual interpretation of alchemy in the 19th century. A key event here was the publication of Mary Anne Atwood’s Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850). Atwood reduced all “true” alchemy to a quest for spiritual elevation operating through Mesmeric trances, the knowledge of which, along with → animal magnetism, she believed to be a secret tradition dating back at least to the ancient Greeks. Alchemical writers who apparently busied themselves with actual laboratory operations, were, according to Atwood, mere “literal souls” who failed to perceive the hidden truth of alchemy, and were not “real” alchemists at all; they were in fact, in her words, as “blind” as the chemists and other scientists of her day.

>Such a division – which plays upon a common rhetorical device employed in early modern alchemical texts where the wise author routinely differentiates himself from imposters and false alchemists – helped give rise to a putative division of alchemy into “esoteric” and “exoteric” aspects. These terms are still encountered today, but when they are applied to early modern alchemy their validity is questionable. There is no evidence that a majority, or even a significant fraction of pre-18th century European alchemical writers and practitioners saw their work as anything other than natural philosophical in character, as even the prolific occultist writer → A.E. Waite (1857-1942) was forced to admit toward the end of his career in 1926.

You will never become an alpha bull if you won't change your approach to "esoteric bullshit".

People ate psychedelic substances