Quotes About Alchemy

if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.

The old stars-and-moons act was a good way to farm the unduly trusting. But the need to raise money in the first place seemed to call into question one's own ability to turn lead into gold. (Enoch in Boston, 1713)

In fact, I would probably sound like a seventeenth-century alchemist or something.

if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than Alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago

Emotion is energy in motion. When you move energy, you create effect. If you move enough energy, you create matter. Matter is energy conglomerated. Moved around. Shoved together. If you manipulate energy long enough in a certain way, you get matter. Every Master understands this law. It is the alchemy of the universe. It is the secret of all life.

Soros regards himself as more a philosopher than a hit man. His book The Alchemy of Finance (1987) begins with a bold critique of the fundamental assumptions of economics as a subject

The alchemy of a fight card is a mysterious thing. Even the most meticulous matchmaking can sometimes misfire.

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astonomy takes the place of astrology.

Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, just as alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens.

Alchemy, however, is a chaste prostitute, who has many lovers but disappoints all and grants her favors to none. She transforms the haughty into fools, the rich into paupers, the philosophers into dolts, and the deceived into loquacious deceivers…. —Trithemius, Annalmm Hirsaugensium Tomi II, S. Gallo, 1690, 141

calcination

Let that vile sand which you trample under foot be cast into the furnace, let it melt and seethe there, it will become a splendid crystal, and it is thanks to it that Galileo and Newton will discover stars.

Mercy, she had discovered, made mad alchemy: a drop of it could dilute a lake of hate.

Había descubierto que la clemencia era capaz de una alquimia increíble: una sola gota podía diluir un lago de odio.

What was alchemy? It was metallurgy wrapped in mysticism. The pursuit of the spiritual by way of the material. The great and noble effort to master the elements in order to achieve purity, perfection, and divinity.

We cooks have the highest intelligence, and we have opinions about everything. Why? Because the qualities we have come to know as 'taste' and 'a deft hand in the kitchen' are essentially courage, and that is the prerequisite to alchemy: a set of nerves so steely and seasoned, which always know how much garlic, how many chilis, how much salt and pepper to put into each dish, at any second, in any situation, in any city, for every mouth, for every type of hunger.

There were dozens of papers with complex numerical and alchemial figuring on them, and even a piece of stationary that began My beautiful one in Sebastian's cramped handwriting. She spared a moment to wonder who on earth Sebastian's beautiful one could be--she hadn't thought of him as someone who ever had romantic feelings about anyone.

There was malachite green, and red; the intense red known as worm scarlet—tola'at shani in Hebrew—extracted from tree-dwelling insects, crushed up and boiled in lye. Later, when alchemists learned how to make a similar red from sulfur and mercury, they still named the color "little worm"—vermiculum. Some things don't change: we call it vermilion even today.

Magia est pars practica scientiae naturalis (Magic is the practical part of natural science)

Paracelsus... beholds the darksome psyche as a star-strewn night sky, whose planets and fixed constellations represent the archetypes in all their luminosity and numinosity. The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands.

You are the alchemist of your life.

When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance. Technology

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.