Quotes on Alchemy

“I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no mere chemical fantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements, and to man himself.” – William Butler Yeats

“Medicine rests upon four pillars – philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics.” – Paracelsus

The average individual does not realize that life, consciousness, and intelligence are separate and apart from physical substance, merely functioning through chemical bodies during the temporary span which we call life in the chemical world. One of the great occult laws is that to function in any sphere or plane of substance in nature you must have a body sensitive to and capable of adjustment with that plane of substance. — Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” ― William H. Gass

“All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.” ― Paracelsus

“I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings.

They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them… Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.” — Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus

“The alchemical tradition assumes that every physical art or science is a body of knowledge which exists only because it is ensouled by invisible powers and processes. Physical chemistry, as it is practiced in the modern world, is concerned principally with pharmaceutical or industrial research projects. It is confined within the boundaries of an all-pervading materialism, which binds labor to the advancement of physical objectives.” – Manly Palmer Hall

“This is why alchemy exists,” the boy said. “So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: … Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life.” ― Hermann Franz

“Chymia, or Alchemy and Spagyrism, is the art of resolving compound bodies into their principles and of combining these again.” — Georg Ernst Stahl

“This process is alchemy: its founder is the smith Vulcan.” – Paracelsus

“The alchemical operation consisted essentially in separating the prima materia, the so-called chaos, into the active principle, the soul, and the passive principle, the body, which were then reunited in personified form in the coniunctio or ‘chymical marriage’… the ritual cohabitation of Sol and Luna.” – Carl Jung

“Alchemy is the art that separates what is useful from what is not by transforming it into its ultimate matter and essence.” — Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus

“For the alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. Only as a secondary consideration does he hope that some benefit may accrue to himself from the transformed substance as the panacea, the medicina catholica, just as it may to the imperfect bodies, the base or “sick” metals, etc. His attention is not directed to his own salvation through God’s grace, but to the liberation of God from the darkness of matter.” ― C.G. Jung

“In olden times gold was manufactured by science; nowadays science must be renewed by gold. We have fixed the volatile and we must now volatilize the fixed—in other words, we have materialized spirit, and we must now spiritualize matter.” ― Éliphas Lévi

“The secrets of alchemy exist to transform mortals from a state of suffering and ignorance to a state of enlightenment and bliss.” ― Deepak Chopra

“You are an alchemist; make gold of that.” – Timon in William Shakespeare