As Above, So Below – Understanding Alchemy
Of all the ancient sciences, alchemy has been perhaps the most abused and misunderstood. The popular conception of the alchemist is of someone preoccupied with vain attempts to turn lead and other base metals into gold. But behind the metallurgical striving of the alchemist, lay a highly complex view of the human 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 humankind and the natural world are reflections of a pattern in the Divine 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
