With no /a/ or /x/, what was alchemy about?

>>3252513
It was a mix of actual knowledge and mysticism wrapped up in a pseudoscientific framework.

The closets analogy to something I could point to in modern life is certain forms of martial arts, the generally eastern ones which wrap up actual fighting techniques with stuff about how to control your body, or to achieve enlightenment through proper form.

>>3252520
what the lad here says

Alchemy was the study of chemical/medicinal applications of transformation and purification.
The true extent of the spiritual or theological dimension of the work is a bit up for debate as this feature wasn't really popularized
until the 1850's by Mary Anne Atwood and also Jung. Though, that said, alchemists (at least in the west) while not necessarily using it as a spiritual
practice did commonly subscribe to Aristotelian or Neoplatonist frameworks as the grounding where the science was rooted.
Most alchemical texts, while seemingly mystical in their methods of description, were practical in nature:
> Moreover, the inspection of private manuscript materials, for example the laboratory notebooks of George Starkey (1628-1665, alias Eirenaeus Philalethes, a favorite example for Jung), indicate clearly how he consciously encoded laboratory results in extravagant allegorical guise for public view while he maintained clear, precise expressions for private circulation, and even how he went about deciphering the metaphorical texts of his predecessors into chemical operations he could test practically in the laboratory.
Also, I recall having read that certain results described by alchemists have been replicated by modern chemists.
Alchemy, free from anachronisms, was a system of chemistry or transformation based upon metaphysical paradigms and was practical in nature,
and has a spiritual dimension such as any craft (i.e. masonry, martial arts, fine arts, etc.), but had been overstated by earlier researchers.

>>3252513

They were looking for God and how to reach him.

You don't think they were trying to literally turn lead into gold do you?

>>3252513
It was a milestone on the process of science evolving as a form on inquiry separate from pure philosophy or mysticism.

>>3252520
Not to get off topic, but the stuff about how to control your body in eastern martial arts is actually very practical, its just poorly understood because it uses pseudo-scientific language as explanations of how it works

>>3252589
>You don't think they were trying to literally turn lead into gold do you?

Well if they managed to pull it off wouldn't that have been notable?

>>3252589
Its pretty clear they were, among other things.

there certainly were those who saw alchemy as a manifestation of magic, and explained how it interrelated with other types of magic, but at the same time many saw it as grounded in for lack of a better term, naturalistic laws. and saw things like the Thoth stone as coded guides rather than a mystical thing (though in fairness it probably was originally a mystical thing)