What is alchemy - Part I (Roberto Renzetti) - THE FOUR ELEMENTS

What is alchemy - Part I (Roberto Renzetti)

THE FOUR ELEMENTS

The theory of the elements constituting the world is as ancient as the classical Greek thought itself. His synthesis and last elaboration was of Aristotle in the fifth century BC The four elements (from Empedocle) are those that we empirically observe around us: earth, water, air, fire. The order is not indifferent because the elements have different dignities. The earth that lies lower (falls to the bottom in the water and falls through the air) is the most vulgar element. The water is above the earth but falls into the air and therefore is higher than the earth. Further up there is the air rising from the water upwards and even more worthy is the fire that rises even in the air. The mixing in various proportions of these four elements creates the vulgar world that is under the Moon (the sky of the Moon). One immediately understands how this basis of thought is fundamental for a cultured alchemy. But the theory of the four elements provides for the other.

The four elements must be endowed with what Aristotle calls primary qualities. They must be:

- sensitive to touch;

- be likely to cause qualitative changes;

- they must form pairs of opposites:

         hot Cold;

         wet-dry;

         heavy-light;

         Dense-rare;

         rough-smooth;

         hard-soft;

         durable-fragile.

The elements are not immutable. Each of them can be transformed into any other by changing a quality (or both) fundamental in its opposite. The EARTH is cold-dry; the FIRE is hot-dry; the AIR is wet-warm; WATER is cold-wet. The easiest transformations are between elements that have a quality in common and, given the qualities of each element, the transformation of water into the air (or vice versa) is just as easy as that from air to fire (etc.). The transformation from air to ground (or vice versa) is difficult. In addition to the said transformations, there may also be unions between elements that exchange their qualities in order to produce two more. For example: water (cold - wet) + fire (hot - dry) can originate earth (cold - dry) + air (hot - humid) and to understand what Aristotle refers to, just think of a fire that goes off with 'water.

Other qualities, sensations and colors of the four elements (also assigned to them after Aristotle) are:

EARTH: solid and black;

FIRE: light and red;

AIR: gas and white;

WATER: liquid and blue.

The two fluid elements (air and water) are assigned the property to transfer heat (dark fluid) and light (luminous fluid) but also the influences (Energheia) of the whole universe that move the air (winds) and the sea and originate the lightning fertilizers of the earth.

The four elements never exist in pure form:

- the land dominates in heavy objects;

- air dominates in light objects;

- the metals must also be composed of water in order to explain the fusion;

- smoke consists of fire and earth;

- objects that float have an air percentage greater than that of earth.

The four elements had an associated symbolism, and the iconographic part always assumes an important evocative power in every magical art:

FIRE Triangle pointing upwards to indicate ownership of ascending to the sky

WATER Triangle pointing downwards to indicate the property of descending towards the earth cut by a segment, to indicate the extension capacity

AIR Triangle pointing upwards cut by a segment, to indicate the extension capacity

EARTH Triangle pointing downwards to indicate the ability to fall downwards. (3)

Above the sky of the Moon, as mentioned, there is a perfect, eternal, immutable universe that can not be made of the same materials that make up the changing world, the one where things are generated, corrupted and modified. It is here that the other constituent element of the universe is born, what Aristotle calls ether and which will properly be called the fifth element or better the fifth essence.

This vision, never separated from the metaphysical part that concerned man and his attainment of perfection, through various transformations that tended precisely to that, was made its own by Arab alchemy. That fifth Aristotelian element could have escaped somewhere and find itself also in the sublunar world. His search for mixing with certain mixtures characterized an era. It is the history of the research of the philosopher's stone (or elixir), that which, together with vulgar metals, would have turned them into gold. But in this metaphor there is all the power of the search for a metaphysical entity that would have allowed the attainment of that desired end both in the mineral world and in the animal world (man): perfection. Through this stone, which would cure every evil, even immortality would be reached (theories attributed to the alchemist Geber or Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan). In any case, at least, total wisdom.

That thing that changes the metals into gold has other extraordinary virtues: such as, for example, keeping human health intact until death and not letting death pass (if not after two or three hundred years). Indeed, whoever knew how to use it could become immortal. (Jan Amos Komenesky, from the Abraham of the world and paradise of the heart of 1631)

The mystique of Christianity could not be lacking in this search for perfection and in fact many Christian thinkers entered the world of alchemy (at first opposing it but then embracing it).

My amature translation.....from Italian