Hi,
yesterday I wrote about astrology and I also mentioned alchemy so I will continue with that.
So alchemy in reneissance was very real. It was a study with combination of chemistry, physics and medicine. There were two main things that alchemists cared about: Philosopher’s stone and the Elixir of life.
Alchemy was kind of connected to astrology because the known celestial objects for example were connected to various metals.
Sun – gold, Moon – silver, Venus – copper, Mercury – mercury :D, Mars – iron, Jupiter – tin, Saturn – lead.
Alchemists were strictly against adding another metal, why? Because they did not have enough planets!
Their quest simply was to take metal and transform it to the best form – gold. It was said that those metals normally “were in season (is this some kind of phrase?)” in Earth’s crust.
There was one way to get gold, Philospher’s stone also called Red lion.
The symbol of Philospher’s stone
That was hypothetical stone or red dust that if you mix with metal it will create pure gold. If you saw Harry Potter movie, this is used there in first part.
The second thing that was alchemist trying to make was the Elixir of life. Hypothetical liquid which should be able to cure any disease, even deadly one like cancer.
Across centuries people were also trying to find what was called: Emerald tables. Those were tables where all the important stuff for alchemy was hidden. Also as you can see the fourth best metal in the row was mercury. Since mercury is a bit poisonous some people died from it, I believe that it really fascinated people that something so dense is liquid, but I do not get why they had to drink it immediately!
There are two important people in alchemy of reneissance: John Dee and Edward Kelly, I will talk about them some other time though, look forward.
Dragallur
To read some more stuff: 1) 2)
Science and rationality 