Alchemy
A tradition of transformation concerned with matter, symbol, purification, refinement, and the movement from the unrefined toward the perfected.
Definition
Alchemy is a historical, symbolic, philosophical, and practical tradition that studies transformation through images of matter, fire, vessel, metals, planets, purification, dissolution, union, and refinement.
Expanded Explanation
Alchemy is often remembered as the attempt to turn base metals into gold, but its meaning is much broader.
It includes laboratory practice, natural philosophy, symbolic interpretation, spiritual refinement, medicine, metallurgy, art, and the study of change. In alchemical symbolism, metals, colors, planets, animals, vessels, and stages may all describe processes of transformation.
Within hermetic alchemy, alchemy is approached as a language of transformation. It asks what must be dissolved, purified, joined, refined, and brought into a more complete form.
Alchemy is closely connected with Hermeticism because both traditions study correspondence, hidden order, symbolic meaning, and the transformation of the student through disciplined knowledge.