Alchemy

Alchemy is a historical tradition that combined practical work on materials with theories of matter and symbolic transformation. Its practitioners pursued techniques such as transmutation and the preparation of medicines.

Chrysopoeia: The alchemical pursuit of making gold from base metals. It was the clearest practical expression of alchemy’s ambition to transform matter.
Alexandrian alchemy: The early alchemical tradition that developed in Hellenistic Egypt, especially around Alexandria. It brought Greek philosophical ideas together with Egyptian craft practices.
Maria the Jewess: An early alchemical author credited in later sources with devices including the bain-marie. Her attributed apparatus illustrates the practical craft associated with early alchemy.
Chemistry: The science of matter, its properties, composition, and transformations. Modern chemistry inherited experimental practices while replacing many alchemical explanations.
Alchemical symbolism: A system of images and coded language used to represent alchemical substances, operations, and transformations. Symbols let alchemical texts connect laboratory procedures with spiritual meanings.
Philosopher's Stone: A legendary substance believed to enable metallic transmutation and, in some traditions, produce an elixir of life. Alchemical accounts cast it as the agent that could complete transmutation.
Zosimos of Panopolis: A Greek-speaking alchemist of late antiquity whose writings are among the earliest surviving alchemical works. His writings preserve early accounts of alchemical operations and their symbolic interpretation.
Geber: The Latin name associated with medieval alchemical texts, including works distinct from the Arabic Jabirian corpus. Latin Geber texts helped establish alchemy in medieval European learning.
Iatrochemistry: A medical approach that applied chemical principles and remedies to the body. It was a distinctive branch of alchemical practice centered on healing.
Opus magnum: The alchemical great work: a process of transformation associated with producing the philosopher’s stone. The great work could signify both material achievement and inner transformation.

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