It seems to me you are starting out with a one-sided view of alchemy as
purely spiritual or metaphorical. The way I understand it, that
perspective is the result of Jung's work. There have always been and
continue to be alchemists who do not consider alchemy to be a
metaphorical or symbolical endeavor but a physical/spiritual one. They
call themselves practical alchemists. Are you intending to limit
yourself to spiritual alchemy? Just curious.
I would also argue that alchemy is no more a pseudoscience than paganism
is a pseudoreligion.
Harry Roth
Ty Falk wrote:
>Greetings!
>
>I'm writing because I require some assistance on a little project I'm
>working on. It is far larger in scope then anything I've attempted
>before. One of the aspects of mysticism that I've begun to teach as a
>normal part of my coursework is that of Alchemy, both as a system for
>internal change, as well as an external pseudoscience and system of
>allegory. The more I read about it, the more fascinating it becomes.
>What I noticed, however, is that, at least from what I've seen, the
>treatment of alchemy and the people who practice it is always as a
>side note in some other context, such as the exodus from Spain as a
>result of the Inquisition. I have yet to really come across anything
>that gives alchemy real spotlight treatment (granted, I've only really
>begun to traverse some of my newer sources). I want to do something
>that gives a relatively scholarly history of the concept from the
>scientific as well as mystical aspects, with a second section on
>practical application for the modern practitioner.
>
>Now I can handle the section on application well enough, it's the
>historical portion I'm finding daunting. I think the sort of
>symbolic/interpretive approach of, among others, Geertz, will be
>rather useful for doing this because of how allegorical and symbolic
>the tradition of Alchemy is. And I'm not above splashing some other
>theory here and there where needed. So in that vein I had a few
>questions.
>
>Firstly, has this been done before? As I said I have found a few books, but they
>seem to either treat the subject as secondary, or be rather limited in
>scope. (I have The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century
>by Grossinger on order, just waiting for it to come in.)
>
>Other then Hutton's book "The Triumph of the Moon", Adler's "Drawing
>Down the Moon", and Barrett's "A Brief History of Secret Societies",
>are there any modern texts you would recommend on the subject or that
>you think would give me a better context in which to do my analysis? I
>was already shown from this very site:
>http://www.alchemy-bibliography.co.uk/newthismonth.shtml
>
>There is a fair bit of occult literature that is circulated in
>electronic form. For example, one of the classic texts is "The
>Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz". This can be a difficult
>book to find a printed copy of, but is readily available on line from
>sites such as:
>
>http://www.sacred-texts.com/ and
>http://www.alchemywebsite.com/index.html
>
>
>How concerned should I be about being able to find physical copies to
>cite with regards to some of these texts? How should I treat different
>editions or translations?With regards to sources, how deep should I go
>check validity? Should I go back to a sources' sources'? Or would just
>the sources of the book I'm using suffice?
>
>Anything else you can think off of the top of your head, people or
>resource wise, that might be of use to me?
>
>Preciate it!
>
>Ty Falk
>~~~~~~~
>Erisian
>Anthropologist
>Grand Rapids, MI
>
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