The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy Second Edition

This is a fantastic resource, incredibly comprehensive especially as it includes an insightful discussion of Jung's researches into alchemy. It also investigates the history of metal-working and the way it affects the development of alchemy. Eliade is a marvellous researcher and writer, his use of references is exhaustive and illuminating. Oddly enough he does not include a chapter on Arabic alchemy although he refers to it and it seems very important.

Classic Mircea. It'll teach you how humans taught themselves metallurgy.

Interesting take on the rise of secular chemistry and its de-sacralization from its "mythic" roots and the attempt to recapture the Age of Gold in a present Age of Iron.

Read everything he ever wrote— especially this.

Analysis of alchemy and the philosophy(s) of the practice. Again get our you esotoric dictionary as the man was in love with $2 words when 5 cent ones would have sufficed.

Cool stuff.

If I had my time over again I would read these three books on alchemy in the following order: All of them are excellent in their own sphere to introduce a complex process.
(1) The Forge and the Crucible - Eliade
This is an excellent prehistory of alchemy showing the patterns of thought out of which Alchemy most probably arose. An easy read.
(2) Anatomy of the Soul - Edinger
Set out according to seven processes involved in alchemy Calcinatio, Solutio, Coagulatio, Sublimatio, Mortificatio, Separatio, Coniunctio, this is an accessible book that puts each process in reasonably neat boxes, (though the considerable overlap and intermingling is acknowledged). The approach is somewhat mechanical.
(3) Alchemy, an Introduction... - Von Franz.
More 'organic' than Edinger, Von Franz has a very warm and human touch. She deals with the origins of alchemy in Egypt and Greece and delves into the 'Aurora Consurgens', attributed to Aquinas. She includes relevent and interesting case material. Being a transcription of lectures, it is a little haphazard, though none the less informative for that.

I became attracted to comparative mythology for a number of reasons. First was Finkelstein and Silberman's "The Bible Unearthed", which I stumbled upon. There was a bookstore in a theater. It went out of business. But, I was in there a month before; because I'm interested in 'everything' and connections between everything, I checked out the Archaeology section. Besides all kinds of "forbidden" archaeology, there was "The Bible Unearthed." And, for the first time in my life, I found that someone could make a scientific analyses of the Bible. The Bible Unearthed is more about the Old Testament than the New. But, in studying the old testament scientifically, one runs into one of the greatest archaeology mysteries . . . still - the Aegean Apocalypse, or collapse, or whatever you want to call it. It's a time, around 1200 B.C. when the world of Troy, the Minoans, the Hittites, and the original Babylonians went away. Only the Egyptians survived. Out of the ashes, the world of the Greeks and Hebrews, who picked up on the Phoenician alphabet innovation came.

The 1200 B.C. date tends to mark the beginning of the 'iron' age for western culture(and Near east). Like the Aegean apocalypse mystery, the iron age is still a little bit of a mystery. It may never be solved, no matter how sophisticated our scence/mathematical age becomes. I'd like to point out that I did start finding the New Testament interesting as well.

I learned of sungods soon after, and found myself learning even more religion than I ever thought I would. I was always interested in how conception works in mathematics. Quickly, everything is a structure; a structure is like a sentence; it has a relation/verb that connects two elements/nouns - generally speaking. One can change the elements sometimes; sometimes different nouns make sense with a given verb. Other times, once can change the verb. This changes the structure. But, changing the nouns, and seeing the same structure in many different concrete manifestations is what mathematicians/symbolic logicians call abstraction. A concept is generally equated with an abstraction. I had been into all this(and much more - see Jacob Bronowski's "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination") for a decade or more in my youth before I learned of all kinds of analogous sungods. I had hit upon this idea that mythology is analogy just like abstractions are, and so got even more into mythology and religion than I ever wanted to.

Mircea Eliade "The Forge and the Crucible" came to my attention; I don't know how. I heard of it here and there; then, I finally found it in my community college library. I've only just now gotten around to reading it.

What I find remarkable about it is that it finds much of Greek and Gnostic Christianity myths without getting much into the sungods. Actually, she does hint at some sungods stuff when she mentions chariots. I mean to suggest she picks up and makes independent confirmation of many ideas from many others that she doesn't reference. Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough" is the first book(as far as I know) that talks about religion and magic. That there was a magic world before religion(religion is mythology politicized).

I should say I've found, through reading other comparative mythology books, iron age stuff in the Old Testament; my favorite is Judges 1:19, where god can't help the Hebrews wipe out the canaanites because they have chariots of iron. There's other stuff that suggests that iron wielders were treated as magicians. On the one hand, they'd want iron workers for the advanced technology(more advanced than bronze works), and on the other hand, they'd want to keep them on a leash. They don't want them going to other tribes and giving those powers to others. There was a real firght for blacksmiths(perhaps the reason for the Aegean collapse? They went to war with another for their survices?)