| |
| | The Alchemist's Tale by John Granger (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) |
 | | The alchemist, like all traditional or non-modern people, understood man to be essentially spirit (as man is created by the Spirit), then soul, then physical body, rather than the reverse. |
 | | In saying this I am not seeking to deny that alchemists also knew and practiced metallurgical procedures such as the purification and alloying of metals; their real work, however, for which all these procedures were merely the outward supports or “operational” symbols, was the transmutation of the soul. |
 | | The Western alchemist by attempting to “kill” the ingredients, to reduce them to the materia prima, provokes a sympatheia between the “pathetic situations” of the substance and his innermost being. |
| www.touchstonemag.com /docs/issues/16.9docs/16-9pg34.html (5334 words) |
|