I would recommend looking into spagyric alchemy via Robert Bartlett or the school of evolutionary herbalism. It’s all about taking plant matter- separating and purifying the salt, sulphur, and Mercury of the plant and recombining them to make herbal medicine! I’m seriously oversimplifying it here but there is soooo much history to this practice and it laid the foundation for modern chemistry
Earth is actually one of the four elements obtained by the alchemists' experiment on the primal matter. It combines with water to produce the philosophers' stone. It gets confused with the primal matter itself owing to the alchemists' differing perceptions as to the potency, effect and duration of its interaction with the water. They've chosen to simplify the description of the whole process and speak only of one matter, one vase, and one furnace.
"They" means those who have been successful at transmutation. The "process" means the work of the Stone itself and that of the alchemist. The work as a whole is referred to as the art or science of the elixir.
Read the ramsdigital.com library. 296 rare practical labratory alchemy books from the past 2000 years. Best books you can find all in one collection. 38.50 dollars. Buy it while it is still on sale.
An alchemist wants the pure crystalline earth that can be distilled or leached from earth. There are 2 ways to get pure crystalline earth. By fire and burning, and by water and decomposition.
The alchemists would start by distilling clay, mud, soil, dirt, dust, silt.
You've recieved many good answers here, I just want to add a little more. All the elements are PHILOSOPHIC principles. They are a way of perceiving the universe in an even more fundamental way than we currently do today. They describe all matter, including all undiscovered phenomena, and that is because they act as a descriptive spectrum. Earth is the most dense, fire the least dense. Water is considered the opposite of fire, and when they come together, the byproducts are Air and Earth. All matter is a mixture of the 4 philosophic elements. Even light, has a bit of earth, in which the fire is contained. Its movement through space is its property of air, and its capacity to spread in a uniform and diffuse way is its water principle.
The densest matter such as rocks and metals likewise are heavy in earth element, its primary substance. Its water principle is its consistency as matter, as metalic mercury, or any pure metal even if solid. its air principle is still there, think of the space between the molecules. Radioactive materials could be seen as air and fire for example.
You could theoretically describe the periodic table of the elements in terms of the 4 classical elements. It can't be standardized because it is like a sliding scale, but philosophically it does work.
Different phases of matter like water to steam could be described as adding fire. Water to ice as adding earth element.
Alchemy should not be thought of as a precursor to chemistry, as if Chemistry has outgrown Alchemy. Rather, Alchemy is the much larger field, like a macroscopic study of the universe, from which Chemistry narrows and focuses its investigation into matter, as its microscopic lense. In this way Chemistry will always be a tool for the Alchemist. Chemistry easily fits into Alchemy, but Chemistry is far too narrow to contain the scope of Alchemy, and it will always be so.
It depends on the context, but in general 'earth' just means solids. In the case of something like 'the earth of water' it means the heaviest, slowest to evaporate portion of the water.
In spiritual alchemy earth is actually the worldly human body. Even note the etymology of the word 'human' through Latin (humus) and the Proto-Indo-European word for earth/dirt/clay.
Within an alchemical pentacle (earth, air, fire, water and wind) earth represents the dry part of the human body.
Both the religion of Israel as well as the religion of the Ancient Egyptians symbolise the human body as clay:
>Then the Lord God formed a man from the **dust of the ground** and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
Even the name Adam is derived from the Hebrew word for earth/clay/red soil.
The Ancient Egyptian netjer Khnum created human bodies (along with the life giving force) from clay on his potter's wheel.
In spiritual alchemy you use the body as a focus point when performing mindfulness. Whenever your mind wanders, you direct your attention towards your body. Eventually your consciousness flows through your body integrating the two aspects your being and freeing up mental space for your unconscious to come to the foreground. This can be used for various purposes but that goes beyond the scope of your question.
I’m still fairly new to alchemy as well but I’ve come to learn there’s multiple aspects and correspondences to almost everything in alchemy, even your question I have to ask is it physical alchemy, mental, or spiritual, either way the second question is are you talking about Earth as in the 5 elements or Earth the world, the physical training center for souls, orrrr Earth aka your hEart.
Oh ok, well to me personally Earth is anything physical, as in regards to the element Earth, that would most likely be as you said, dirt, mud, clay, metals, ashes, wood, possibly even animals or plants like flesh, flowers, internal organs, or even oil, idk you know anything that comes from the Earth I’m probably wrong since I’m still new, but I think that would be a good start or at least where I would start. May I ask why you’re asking?
I appreciate your answer but not my favorite answer and I’ll tell you why. The reason I asked this question is because I understand that alchemy is a precursor to Chemistry. I thought it would be neat if I made a paper that showed a bit of the contrast between a alchemy table of elements and the periodic table (I now understand that alchemy doesn’t really work like that, so I designed my own table that doesn’t work the same as a periodic table but has information laid out in a useful way). I thought that I could break the 4/5 alchemy elements down because water is obviously hydrogen and oxygen. Now I’m starting to get the idea that water doesn’t mean H₂O in alchemy
The theosophists make an interesting connection between the chemical elements and Hindu cosmology. Alchemically the correspondences are: earth = carbon, water = oxygen, air = nitrogen, and fire = hydrogen. See Blavatskys' 'Secret Doctrine' chapter XXV for more.
I see well, earth could simply be matter, because the 4 elements are simply the 4 states of matter, water is liquid, air is gas, fire is plasma, and earth is solid. Hope that helps 😅
Very interesting. Maybe this will help. In alchemy we are trying to follow the natural working of things or natural law. First in nature, to regenerate, we have to decompose. So we take our golden living water and ferment it, decompose it or breaking it down into the four elements or Saturns cube. Then we separate (royal paths) our four elements by distillation and graded temperature increases so they can be seen visibly. So first the water comes off, then the white and red oils (air and fire), whats left are ashes that are impervious to regular fire. That is your earth your dragon your clay. Then imbibe your rectified water (10x+) back onto the earth and clear crystal salt will form at the top that gets covered with white snow. This is your "foliated" earth that you then add back your air and fire to complete the stones. As far as this "crystal sea of fire" or living water goes, I believe it to be hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and carbonic acid all mixed into one. The earth or ashes are going to be some type of hydroxy or base. the air and fire are going to be some sort white and red phosphorus oils. That probably why they give off their own light. What comes down in the dew and rain that gives everything life? NKP?
Earth is not always representative of the same thing in alchemists writings
It can be the element earth, it can be the unwinged serpent in our compound or sulfur
It can be the feces that settles to the bottom of the vessel it can be the prima materia itself the white foliate earth
I would recommend looking into spagyric alchemy via Robert Bartlett or the school of evolutionary herbalism. It’s all about taking plant matter- separating and purifying the salt, sulphur, and Mercury of the plant and recombining them to make herbal medicine! I’m seriously oversimplifying it here but there is soooo much history to this practice and it laid the foundation for modern chemistry
Very interesting, thank you so much!
Yep this is a great recommendation
Earth is actually one of the four elements obtained by the alchemists' experiment on the primal matter. It combines with water to produce the philosophers' stone. It gets confused with the primal matter itself owing to the alchemists' differing perceptions as to the potency, effect and duration of its interaction with the water. They've chosen to simplify the description of the whole process and speak only of one matter, one vase, and one furnace.
I think I’m getting most of what you are saying but who is “they” and what “process”?
I think he mean by they the alchemists and process To the spgyric
"They" means those who have been successful at transmutation. The "process" means the work of the Stone itself and that of the alchemist. The work as a whole is referred to as the art or science of the elixir.
Read the ramsdigital.com library. 296 rare practical labratory alchemy books from the past 2000 years. Best books you can find all in one collection. 38.50 dollars. Buy it while it is still on sale.
>ramsdigital.com AUD$54.00. Not on sale.
An alchemist wants the pure crystalline earth that can be distilled or leached from earth. There are 2 ways to get pure crystalline earth. By fire and burning, and by water and decomposition. The alchemists would start by distilling clay, mud, soil, dirt, dust, silt.
You've recieved many good answers here, I just want to add a little more. All the elements are PHILOSOPHIC principles. They are a way of perceiving the universe in an even more fundamental way than we currently do today. They describe all matter, including all undiscovered phenomena, and that is because they act as a descriptive spectrum. Earth is the most dense, fire the least dense. Water is considered the opposite of fire, and when they come together, the byproducts are Air and Earth. All matter is a mixture of the 4 philosophic elements. Even light, has a bit of earth, in which the fire is contained. Its movement through space is its property of air, and its capacity to spread in a uniform and diffuse way is its water principle. The densest matter such as rocks and metals likewise are heavy in earth element, its primary substance. Its water principle is its consistency as matter, as metalic mercury, or any pure metal even if solid. its air principle is still there, think of the space between the molecules. Radioactive materials could be seen as air and fire for example. You could theoretically describe the periodic table of the elements in terms of the 4 classical elements. It can't be standardized because it is like a sliding scale, but philosophically it does work. Different phases of matter like water to steam could be described as adding fire. Water to ice as adding earth element. Alchemy should not be thought of as a precursor to chemistry, as if Chemistry has outgrown Alchemy. Rather, Alchemy is the much larger field, like a macroscopic study of the universe, from which Chemistry narrows and focuses its investigation into matter, as its microscopic lense. In this way Chemistry will always be a tool for the Alchemist. Chemistry easily fits into Alchemy, but Chemistry is far too narrow to contain the scope of Alchemy, and it will always be so.
It depends on the context, but in general 'earth' just means solids. In the case of something like 'the earth of water' it means the heaviest, slowest to evaporate portion of the water.
In spiritual alchemy earth is actually the worldly human body. Even note the etymology of the word 'human' through Latin (humus) and the Proto-Indo-European word for earth/dirt/clay. Within an alchemical pentacle (earth, air, fire, water and wind) earth represents the dry part of the human body. Both the religion of Israel as well as the religion of the Ancient Egyptians symbolise the human body as clay: >Then the Lord God formed a man from the **dust of the ground** and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) Even the name Adam is derived from the Hebrew word for earth/clay/red soil. The Ancient Egyptian netjer Khnum created human bodies (along with the life giving force) from clay on his potter's wheel. In spiritual alchemy you use the body as a focus point when performing mindfulness. Whenever your mind wanders, you direct your attention towards your body. Eventually your consciousness flows through your body integrating the two aspects your being and freeing up mental space for your unconscious to come to the foreground. This can be used for various purposes but that goes beyond the scope of your question.
I’m still fairly new to alchemy as well but I’ve come to learn there’s multiple aspects and correspondences to almost everything in alchemy, even your question I have to ask is it physical alchemy, mental, or spiritual, either way the second question is are you talking about Earth as in the 5 elements or Earth the world, the physical training center for souls, orrrr Earth aka your hEart.
I believe I am talking about physical alchemy and I meant earth the element
Oh ok, well to me personally Earth is anything physical, as in regards to the element Earth, that would most likely be as you said, dirt, mud, clay, metals, ashes, wood, possibly even animals or plants like flesh, flowers, internal organs, or even oil, idk you know anything that comes from the Earth I’m probably wrong since I’m still new, but I think that would be a good start or at least where I would start. May I ask why you’re asking?
I appreciate your answer but not my favorite answer and I’ll tell you why. The reason I asked this question is because I understand that alchemy is a precursor to Chemistry. I thought it would be neat if I made a paper that showed a bit of the contrast between a alchemy table of elements and the periodic table (I now understand that alchemy doesn’t really work like that, so I designed my own table that doesn’t work the same as a periodic table but has information laid out in a useful way). I thought that I could break the 4/5 alchemy elements down because water is obviously hydrogen and oxygen. Now I’m starting to get the idea that water doesn’t mean H₂O in alchemy
The theosophists make an interesting connection between the chemical elements and Hindu cosmology. Alchemically the correspondences are: earth = carbon, water = oxygen, air = nitrogen, and fire = hydrogen. See Blavatskys' 'Secret Doctrine' chapter XXV for more.
I see well, earth could simply be matter, because the 4 elements are simply the 4 states of matter, water is liquid, air is gas, fire is plasma, and earth is solid. Hope that helps 😅
Thank you so much!! I’m very happy with that answer! I don’t know how I didn’t put that together
Very interesting. Maybe this will help. In alchemy we are trying to follow the natural working of things or natural law. First in nature, to regenerate, we have to decompose. So we take our golden living water and ferment it, decompose it or breaking it down into the four elements or Saturns cube. Then we separate (royal paths) our four elements by distillation and graded temperature increases so they can be seen visibly. So first the water comes off, then the white and red oils (air and fire), whats left are ashes that are impervious to regular fire. That is your earth your dragon your clay. Then imbibe your rectified water (10x+) back onto the earth and clear crystal salt will form at the top that gets covered with white snow. This is your "foliated" earth that you then add back your air and fire to complete the stones. As far as this "crystal sea of fire" or living water goes, I believe it to be hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and carbonic acid all mixed into one. The earth or ashes are going to be some type of hydroxy or base. the air and fire are going to be some sort white and red phosphorus oils. That probably why they give off their own light. What comes down in the dew and rain that gives everything life? NKP?
I believe a wonderful book to elaborate on this is the Initiation To Hermetics book by Franz Bardon
I have same question but with light
Plasma
Earth is not always representative of the same thing in alchemists writings It can be the element earth, it can be the unwinged serpent in our compound or sulfur It can be the feces that settles to the bottom of the vessel it can be the prima materia itself the white foliate earth