The Laboratory as Temple

The Sacred Art of Alchemy

There is something deeply mysterious about the old alchemical laboratory.

Glass vessels glowing over flame. Herbs steeping in spirit. Vapours rising through an alembic before condensing, drop by drop, into another vessel. Ash being washed, filtered and returned to the substance from which it came.

To the modern eye, it can look like an early form of chemistry.

To the alchemist, however, something much more profound was taking place.

The laboratory was a place of transformation. Not only of matter, but of the person working with it.

More Than the Search for Gold

Western alchemy is often reduced to one idea: the attempt to turn lead into gold.

But the tradition was far richer than this.

Alchemy developed through a complex meeting of Greek philosophy, Egyptian craft traditions, Arabic alchemical scholarship and, later, European Christian and Hermetic thought.

At its heart was the belief that nature was not static.

Matter could be separated, purified, transformed and reunited into a more refined state. And because the human being belonged to nature, the same processes observed within the laboratory could also become a mirror for inner transformation.

This is where one of alchemy's most enduring ideas emerges:

Solve et coagula.

Dissolve and recombine.

Break something apart. Discover what it contains. Purify its parts. Bring them together again.

It is both a laboratory instruction and a philosophy of transformation.

As Above, So Below

The traditional alchemist did not necessarily see a plant, mineral or metal as inactive matter.

Nature existed within a living cosmos.

The planets, metals, plants, seasons and human body were understood through networks of correspondence. The movements of the heavens were reflected within earthly things. An idea often expressed through the Hermetic phrase:

As above, so below.

Gold belonged to the Sun.

Silver to the Moon.

Copper to Venus.

Iron to Mars.

Tin to Jupiter.

Lead to Saturn.

Mercury held its strange place between worlds: fluid, elusive and transformative.

Working with matter therefore meant working within a much larger pattern.

Time mattered.

The vessel mattered.

And the disposition of the person performing the work mattered too.

The Work of Separation

One of the most beautiful ideas within plant alchemy is that the plant is not treated simply as a collection of useful chemical constituents.

In the later Paracelsian and spagyric tradition, substances were understood through three philosophical principles: Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. Representing different qualities within matter.

Sulphur was associated with the philosophical oil, the soul of the plant.

Mercury with volatility, spirit and transformation.

Salt with structure, body and what remains fixed.

The work of the spagyrist was to separate these principles, purify them and eventually reunite them.

Fire as Teacher

Perhaps this is why fire occupies such a powerful place in alchemy.

Fire reveals.

Under heat, the volatile separates from the fixed. What once appeared to be one thing reveals itself to contain many. The alchemist watched these transformations carefully.

Calcination. Distillation. Dissolution. Separation. Purification. Recombination.

They were physical operations performed upon matter, but over centuries they also accumulated philosophical and spiritual meaning.

The laboratory became a place in which the invisible could be contemplated through the visible.

Returning to the Laboratory

This understanding of alchemy has begun to shape our work more deeply.

The more time we spend distilling, calcining, separating and recombining plants, the harder it becomes to experience the process as simply making a herbal preparation.

There is slowness to it.

Attention.

Repetition.

A relationship with fire, plant, vessel and time.

And somewhere amongst the glassware, smoke, ash and strange little transformations, the laboratory begins to feel like a temple.

Perhaps that is part of what the old alchemists understood.

That transformation cannot be hurried and that sometimes something must be broken apart before its nature can be understood.

And that working upon matter can, in unexpected ways, begin to work upon us too.