The Notorius World Of Alchemy
Of all the old sciences, alchemy has been probably the most abused and misunderstood.
The popular notion of the alchemist is of someone pre-occupied with vain attempts to turn lead and other base metals into gold.
But behind the metallurgical strivings of the alchemist, lay a highly complex view of our species and the universe which is still valid today, though it stems from a tradition foreign to orthodox science. The basic premise of alchemy is embodied in the saying: “As above, so below.” In other words the human race and the natural world are reflections of a pattern in the devine world-”God made man in his own image.” Humans, it is held, belong to the material and the divine world since they contain a spark of the universal spirit which at the original fall become imprisoned in matter.
They also have an individual soul and a material body. In alchemical terms, the body, souls and spirit correspond to salt, sulphur, and mercury, which also represent three universal forces, the Trinity of Christian terminology and the three “Gunas” of the Hindus.
By freeing their spirits from the bonds of matter, humans can once glimps again their lost divine perfection. In this belief, the alchemists belonged to an ancient Gnostic tradition, which was surpressed by the early Christian church but survived in the Hermetic currents which ran underground through European thought and occasionally, as in the Renaissance, flourished more openly.
Source: the lost symbol