Transcription
The image of the alchemist has long endured as a solitary figure toiling at all hours among piles of arcane tomes, glass and metallic vessels bubbling away, all slowly transforming substances within the hermetic egg. And then, as if by divine illumination, the colors within the vessel shift and alter through the blackest night of the *nigredo*, through the illumination of the peacock's feather, until finally blazing red appears and the process of transmutation is had, led to gold, the base into the pure, transformation of the metals, and the transformation of the alchemist.
This lone figure of the alchemist, with perhaps only a single assistant, surrounded by infernal heat and noxious fumes, isn't totally off the mark for the period since the introduction of alchemy into Europe, starting in the early 12th century. But by the mid-15th and especially by the mid-17th century, the figure of the alchemist was undergoing a tremendous tectonic change. Within the chaos of the Holy Roman Empire, a new type of alchemist was emerging. They labored in specially built labs, were state-funded, and bound by legal and financial contracts, focusing on explicit quantitative results. They were subject to quasi-public analysis and vetting of their work and results, and their career readily intersected with the birth of industrial mining and systematic metallurgy. These new alchemists grew out of the artisanal, esoteric craft world of the Middle Ages, somewhere between being a prophet and a proto-chemist, to become integrated into the emergent pre-capitalist social economy as something truly modern. These were the entrepreneurial alchemists.
Join me as I delve into the world of princes and bankers, mine operations, and this uniquely posed alchemical class whose place in the rise of modernity we're only really now beginning to understand. If you're interested in magic, hermetic philosophy, alchemy, Kabbalah, or the history of the occult, make sure to subscribe and check out my other content on topics in esotericism, including curated playlists on many of these topics, including alchemy. And also, if you want to support this work of providing accessible, scholarly, and free content on topics of esotericism here on YouTube, I'd hope you consider taking a look at my Patreon or considering a one-time donation to the channel. Or you could even use the really cool Super Thanks option below the video. But now, let's turn to the world of the entrepreneurial alchemists, true mavericks of modernity. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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One of the biggest difficulties of studying alchemy these days is getting beyond the glare of alchemy as a kind of glorified synonym for self-help or the psychologization of alchemy, introduced by Carl Jung. Of course, these are interesting in their own right, especially Jung's reading, or misreading, if we're going to be a bit more honest. But alchemy, at least from a historical standpoint, had little to nothing to do with the inner subjective transformation of the alchemist, any more than any other medieval conception of the aim of any craft work, or that's laying bricks or being a scribe. Alchemy wasn't uniquely poised as an inner subjective transformation.
So, what I mean by alchemy in this episode is going to be a complex of theories and technologies which aimed at, among other things, the production of a universal solvent, substantial transmutation, that whole lead into gold business, life-extending medicines, all of which integrated both natural and metaphysical philosophy. That metaphysical philosophy is mostly just Platonized Aristotelianism. Now, there are a ton of misconceptions about historical alchemy. I've actually made an entire episode about some of the more pernicious misconceptions that people have, and I have a whole playlist on actual historical alchemical theory and practice, focusing primarily on actual medieval texts. Though, in this episode, we're not going to be getting into the more technical side of alchemical theory and practice. However, if you want to check out an episode where I do explore that in more depth, I'd really recommend my episode on the *Summa Perfectionis*. This early 14th-century handbook is probably the greatest alchemical textbook ever produced in Europe, and if you want to get a really solid, actual, real historical understanding of alchemy as practiced in pre- and early modern Europe, you probably want to check out the *Summa Perfectionis* in my episode on that text.
But since the birth of alchemy in Europe with the translation of *On the Composition of Alchemy* on February the 11th, 1144, by Robert of Chester, the alchemist had remained somewhat of a marginal figure. Their entire project, at least the project of substantial transmutation, had been called into question by figures like Thomas Aquinas. Yeah, St. Thomas Aquinas doubted the entire possibility of substantial transmutation. Further debates on whether nature, as created by God, could be fundamentally improved upon by art, alchemical or otherwise, mired the project further. With alchemy never rising to university-level recognition, unlike, for instance, astrology, something we now consider to be equally esoteric, nor ever did it obtain the protections and social affirmations of having anything like a guild, unlike other crafts that certainly intersected with alchemical theories and practice, like medicine, glass making, and metallurgy. That saying, that rather marginal position in society would begin to shift, especially by the mid-15th century, as economic and social tides began to tectonically move, especially in Central Europe.
From roughly 1450 to 1550, the traditional economy of the Middle Ages had begun to significantly falter. One might even say dramatically collapse. The aftermath of the Black Death saw a massive historical spike in base wages, non-stop war in Central Europe greatly drained royal coffers, Renaissance prestige building projects were real expensive, and attempts at political centralization in those areas came at heavy, heavy prices. Further, medieval mining technology struggled to keep up with the ever-growing demand for all forms of metal, from precious metals for purely economic interests like gold and silver, and others needed to increasingly keep up with the firearms race that ramped up in Central European warfare. You just need a lot of iron to make guns. Solutions in the forms of water pumps, forced ventilation, and mechanical haulage were developed to push mining below the water line into the noxious deep. Maybe they went too deep, but these solutions were tremendously expensive and required further debt from early banks like the House of Fugger. Even wealthy lords would often have to sell primitive joint shares to fund new mines or to reopen previous ones as new technology came online, despite the fact that they actually had absolute royal prerogative to mineral rights. Otherwise, they had absolute right, but without the technology, they couldn't reach below the water line and had to actually get joint-stock companies up and running to access the very metal on their own land. Yeah, all that divine right of kings stuff bows to technology every time.
All this worked. By 1520, Central Europe saw between a five and six-fold increase in copper and silver mining yields. For instance, in Saxony, yields from silver mines came to make up thirds of state revenue by 1530, and this enriched the Fugger banking dynasty to the point where they could actually bribe enough of the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire to ensure Charles V's election. They bribed hundreds of states to make that happen. By the 1520s, Central European mines were actually producing about 90 metric tons of silver annually. Then came the bust. Mines stagnated again, falling by more than 50 percent in some areas. And to compound the problem, huge amounts of silver were now being imported from the Spanish, from the Americas. This American silver flooded the European market, and by the 1590s, as much American silver entered Europe as was produced during the entire boom of the period of the 1520s. That's mind-boggling. Of course, this all had the effect of driving up inflation and driving down the price of European silver, already unable to compete with all that American silver.
At the same time, population levels were returning to pre-Black Death levels, and the economy was actually booming with intra-European and international trade expanding rapidly. There was massive growth in the cities, and the increased hegemony of the mercantile class was producing something like the very early bourgeoisie and a middle class. Then even the American silver began to dry up, despite the brutality and the technologies used to extract and purify it. This massive economic boom, however, was met with a significant precious metal famine and galloping inflation, leading to further debt and conflict. Sounds like now.
What was needed, and desperately needed, especially in Central Europe, was a controlled, steady source of precious metals to underwrite currency, provide investment power, act as a hedge against the boom-bust cycle, and make all those princes an attractive trading partner on the national and international stage. Well, if those precious metals were not going to come from the mines, where are they going to come from? You guessed it. Enter the alchemists.
While alchemy was a bit of a marginal form of craft work during its early stint in Europe, the theory, practice, and literature, and the social organization of the alchemist was anything other than stagnant. Innovation and dynamism, experimental repetition brought more highly developed theories and laboratory practices into the alchemical world. The unregulated world of alchemy, detached, remember, from the conservative nature of the guilds and the universities, brought both tremendous innovation in the alchemical world, but also persistent accusations of fraud, which were true, and even sometimes they got involved in necromancy. Which, can you, can you, can you blame it, brother? But at this juncture, the princes of Central Europe were compelled by social and economic forces much greater than any prince or alchemist could even imagine. This is proto-capitalism, and the god-like power of the market demanded precious metals. And if there were any chance, any chance at all, the alchemists were up to the task. Then the gamble could be worth it.
In fact, one can trace a pretty strong correlation between precious metal famines in Central Europe up to this point in the mid-17th century and the print run volume of alchemical literature more generally. Precious metal famines meant more alchemical literature, because who doesn't want a bunch of silver? But rather than a courtly one-off display of alchemical prowess, this was a social phenomenon, a kind of alchemical arms race in the courts of Central Europe. But how do you vet the would-be court alchemist? And again, we're not talking about the ability to produce a few grams of gold in a cramped out kitchen lab or with a one-off transmutation with some mysterious red powder in front of Rudolph II. These princes are looking to hire alchemists to work at the industrial level, hoping to produce metric tons of precious metals per annum. They are hoping to turn alchemical production into something like an artificial mine where gold and silver are produced effectively by fiat. Of course, that would lead to total value-based and hyperinflation. So that also meant very careful control of this alchemical power, if it could be found.
And this is where we get these interesting social dynamics of the alchemy-prince relationship. The scale here is really breathtaking. But again, how do you vet an alchemist with no university training or publicly vouched degree and no guild by which quality and secure knowledge were usually vouchsafed? Well, the first was what we might consider a kind of controlled proof of concept, or an alchemical elevator pitch, so to speak. And the second was entering into formal legal agreements with the alchemist, basically making them a court contractor. Yeah, can you imagine being an alchemical contractor?
The first, the alchemical proof of concept, was relatively simple. They had to achieve public transmutation and have the alchemical precious metals that they transmuted tested by the expert assayers employed by the mining wing of the prince's investment portfolio. By this point in mining and minting history, making money, the metallurgy of assaying precious metals was pretty far advanced, probably thanks to the alchemist, and gold and silver could be tested for a high degree of purity with a pretty high degree of accuracy. So how in the hell did the alchemist actually pass this test, given that substantial transmutation is kind of impossible without nuclear bombardment?
Well, there was almost certainly some degree of fraud here. We actually know of court cases where fraud was detected, and those alchemists were hanged. Though sleight of hand was also taken into account. But I think there's something actually more interesting going on here as well. And actually, more prescient forms of transmutation apparently popularly involved the use of silver Brabant vealers. Now, these silver coins minted in Brabant actually did contain a small amount of gold, which with the right flux could be separated off the silver, separating it off from the gold, resulting in apparent transmutation of the silver of the coin into gold. While the amount was relatively tiny, the flux was pretty cheap, it's mostly seashells and things, and working at orders of magnitude, imagine here, any production of gold from silver by transmutation was a boon. It didn't matter if you worked at massive scales, you could get a ton of gold here.
Several other apparent modes of transmutation are noted in a great article by Karpanko, including gold suspended in acid solutions, which are then chemically fixed at the same time as the introduction of base metal like lead, which had little or nothing to do with the actual chemical process. In both cases, however, gold was always present in the crucible. There was never any transmutation. Now, the degree to which this is fraud, or maybe the alchemist actually did believe they were achieving transmutation, is up for debate. But what matters here is that the alchemists did have access to technologies, technologies that the princes did not have, which made them objectively useful to these courts. From improvements in heating technology, like the shift from wood charcoal to coal, the working of assaying of metals, which the alchemist had a pretty good grasp over, and especially the ability to develop complex processes by which to better separate precious metals from other ores, like copper, or even silver from gold, like with the Brabant vealers. Alchemy was objectively progressive, despite the limitations of the subjectivity of the time. The advance of the concrete in the negation of the abstract. Yeah, history proceeds without any of us knowing what in the hell's going on most of the time.
But getting in the door was not total freedom for the alchemist, as freedom is always recognition of the reality of necessity. The alchemist entered from the relative fringes of society into an increasingly bureaucratic world of the state and proto-capitalism, as moderated by the king of bureaucracy, the contract, as contracted by the state. The alchemist could no longer labor under the aegis of abstraction. It just couldn't theorize its way about the nature of transmutation. These contracts, many of which survive, provide concrete, quantitative conditions by which alchemical success was defined. The expectations of yields down to pretty specific measurements, these specifications needed for the setup of an alchemical lab, even the layout of what an alchemical lab would look like, how much staff it would have, and even the required provisions, down to the healthcare of the alchemist in the condition that something were to go wrong. Further political and religious protections are often offered to the alchemist, and this is incredibly important, considering the constant religious strife and the shifting alliances within the world of Central Europe at this time, along with access to becoming titled landed gentry.
But also, what would happen in the result of fraud or failure to complete the contracted project? Well, you can imagine what happened in the case of fraud. They killed the alchemist. Some princes even had gold-bladed gibbets just for fraudulent alchemists. But the princes further protected themselves and encouraged the alchemist to make very reasonable claims by making all the initial investments to initiate the project. Debts accrued to the alchemist personally, which they paid off via successful transmutation or some other contracted goal. Of course, this had the effect of tempering the stated abilities of the would-be alchemist. You didn't want to claim that you could make gold by the metric ton, do a small transmutation to get you in the door, run up a huge debt, and then get yourself publicly hung on a gold-plated gibbet. I say that, but a bunch of alchemists did do that. They did get themselves hung. Further, making huge claims, even with small successes, could lead you to basically becoming taken hostage and forced to make gold under the threat of death. This, in fact, happened to Edward Kelley, John Dee's former medium. I've even made an episode about his career as an alchemist. He was much more interesting than just a guy who talked to angels, but that's that's pretty interesting. Regardless, you can check out that episode above.
If you like these contracts and contractual agreements, have the long-term effect of actually shifting alchemical theory and practice, at least in Central Europe. Now, large-scale transformational alchemy was never in the cards, because not even small-scale transmutation is in the cards. But the alchemists did have an enormous secondary skill set, which made them enormously valuable in these experimental social spaces and the economy of state technology more generally. This is sort of like secondary technology that we get from the space race. Getting to the moon is interesting, but it's getting computers down to the size of like phones that's really, really fascinating. With custom-built labs, actual staff to aid them, courtly resources, and more realistic goals, alchemists shared innovations in heat and heat control, including the shift away from wood charcoal to lignite, great improvements in the extraction and purification of metals and chemicals, especially potassium nitrate, necessary for gunpowder, which is actually a rather reliable means of obtaining silver and gold. Gunpowder developments in chemical procedures, such as the use of acids and bases, marked increases in controlled chemical procedures, such as sublimation and distillation, all of which underwrite modern chemistry. I could name a dozen of these, if not more.
Alchemical literature, especially in Central Europe, came to look a lot more like exoteric mining and assaying literature. And with the rise of centralized states came better protection for things like intellectual property, like proto-patents. Of course, with state protection, less secrecy was actually necessary, and the esoteric dimensions of alchemy began to waft away as this process went forward. The contracts became less and less about specific results in terms of precious metal transmutation and production, and more like modern research laboratories, with the success of secondary technologies eventually eclipsing expectations of transmutation altogether. Of course, they held out hope people would make gold.
But the more exotic dimension of alchemical work would also lead to an internal reaction as well. It was also at this juncture that alchemical language and ideas began to reach a much wider audience, and its allegories, especially the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and by extension, of the individual Christian's resurrection through Christ, were taken up into the early speculative theosophical literature, marking the very beginnings of alchemy as a kind of allegory for spiritual or personal transformation. That's where we begin to get the kernel of the idea of alchemy as a kind of inner work. More on that process later.
To be sure, the entrepreneurial alchemist represents one of the trajectories which alchemy took during the 16th and 17th centuries in Central Europe. Of course, in other regions, highly conservative medieval-style alchemy continued, and in others, Paracelsian alchemy deeply discounted the aim of substantial transmutation at all, focusing on distinctively other alchemical aims, especially now what we might call the rise of pharmacological medicine. At the same time, over there in England, Boyle and Newton were hard at work in their alchemical labs. Newton, the more conservative, sometimes even more medieval-style alchemist, and Boyle were following Irenaeus Philalethes and van Helmont in their quest for the *alkahest*, a kind of universal solvent and chemical analyst.
Yet, the social and economic conditions which gave rise to the entrepreneurial alchemists are also some of the same conditions that gave rise to modernity itself, from state bureaucracies to heavy industry and early capitalism. And in that way, the alchemist can be found at this unique fulcrum of world history, transmuting history itself. In many ways, we think of the alchemist as medieval, but in this way, they bequeath us some aspects of modernity.
If you're interested in alchemy, make sure to check out my alchemy playlist and read the list of general recommended readings in the description. For more on the specifics of entrepreneurial alchemy, the very two best volumes are *The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire* by Pamela Smith, and especially *Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire* by Tara Nummedal. Without these two amazing works of scholarship, this episode wouldn't be possible. I can't say enough good about both of these works and how they actually deeply pushed forward our understanding of actual historical alchemy, and both are absolutely necessary reading. And the Nummedal text, I have to say, is truly outstanding, the kind of thing I read cover to cover in like an afternoon, it was that engrossing, because I'm an alchemical weirdo. More on alchemy in the future, best believe it. I love alchemy, so wonderfully esoteric, and now kind of exoteric. Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, religion, and apparently proto-capitalism and mining.