Episode 313: The History of Alchemy (with Sara Norja)
/What you know about alchemy might only be a scratch on the surface. Metal to gold? It’s so much more than that! We’re joined by Sara Norja, who is teaching us the history of alchemy. Also featuring PhD swords, philology, and the alchemy of ISAAC NEWTON??
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of pseudoscience, stillbirth, death, and medical issues.
Guest
Sara Norja dreams in two languages and has a predilection for tea. Born in England to Finnish parents and settled in Helsinki, Finland, she lives for words, dance, and moments of wonder. She has a PhD in English language history; her dissertation was on early English alchemical manuscript texts. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in English and Finnish.
Housekeeping
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Transcritpt
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is Episode 313. All about the history of alchemy with Sara Norja. We are so excited to have the—I would say like occasional occasion, not a rare occasion but an occasional occasion. Where a Spirits listener gets in touch and it's like, hi, love you guys. I am an expert in this kind of stuff that I'd love to talk about my research on the show. And Sara, we are so, so excited to have you on the show talking about the history of Alchemy, and Finnish folklore, and like all kinds of stuff that interests you. So welcome. Thank you for coming.
SARA: Thank you so much for having me. I was really excited to get to be on the show, because I've listened to Spirits for years and enjoy it so, so much. And I'm like, do I even dare to send them an email? I mean, I guess I'm an expert. But you know, that doesn't mean anything when you've got impostor syndrome.
JULIA: Yeah. I say if you got a Ph.D., you're an expert.
SARA: I mean, to be fair, I do, I do have a Ph.D. So I guess—
AMANDA: You're like, it's true. I can't lie. I do. I do.
SARA: I cannot. Because I remember all those years.
JULIA: I remember all that time I spent on it. I feel like I should be an expert at this point. But sometimes your brain says no.
SARA: I technically only aged as much as the age during eight years of a Ph.D., but—
JULIA: Feels like longer sometimes in academia, doesn't it?
SARA: It really does. But you know, a good time. I got to look at a lot of cool, medieval and early modern manuscripts and other stuff like that. So so that's nice.
AMANDA: Yeah, speaking of which, I mean, my associations with Alchemy are mostly having it represented in fiction and books and TV shows and things like that, as you know, mad scientist searching for gold, searching for wealth, a thing that we used to do and has no relationship with the modern world. I'm sure none of that's true. So I'd love to hear if you could just start out by telling us about what specifically you studied and maybe what interested you about it initially.
SARA: Awesome. Yeah. I'm a Historical Linguist. So I approached Alchemy from a sort of the linguistic, philological point of view. I'm especially interested in English language, and Alchemical manuscripts.
AMANDA: What does philology mean?
SARA: Oh, yes. Good question. Philology is basically the study of texts, using methods like close reading, so really just looking deeply at the texts. Context is everything in philology. So, basically, it's Historical Linguistics, except you're looking at the context of the manuscripts that you're studying, or the people who owned them, stuff like that. And looking at the very nitty gritty, physical stuff, as well as historical stuff. I did. I did some like actual linguistic analysis in my Ph.D. as well. But that's less interesting than the material that I looked at, which was the English Alchemical work, the mirror of Alchemy. It was originally translated from Latin, and they got translated four times. So that's one of the things I was looking at, the translations were kind of the same, but also not. They exist in manuscripts from the 15th to 17th centuries. And also, there's a printed version from 1597. So I was basically comparing all of them, and it was cool.
JULIA: That's awesome.
SARA: Plus, I got to visit England and Copenhagen to look at the manuscripts. And I can tell you, there is no better feeling than being in an archive looking at manuscripts that are 100 years, sorry, a hundred, hundreds of years. And it's brilliant. One of my favorite things about research has been getting my hands into the manuscripts. Also got it pointed out. This is a PSA, you know, like, you're always sort of told in popular media that you need to wear white gloves.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: To look at the manuscripts. No.
AMANDA: Really?
SARA: Basically, if you wear gloves, your hands are going to be more clumsy. And thus, you might accidentally like rip a page or smudge something. Clean hands, no lotions or like perfumes or anything. That's the best possible thing.
AMANDA: Wow.
SARA: Yeah. This is one of those things that I get really annoyed by in like, every popular media of us. So just wanted to put that up.
AMANDA: Like no one does that. Put the gloves away.
SARA: You're not supposed to, hands are fine. They're much more dexterous, literally. Uh.
JULIA: I remember working in archives and the first day I was there, they were giving me a tour of the stacks. And then the person who was giving me the tour just handed me a book. And I was like, what is this? He's like, well, it's George Washington's diary. I'm like, do any gloves handling this? He's like, no, no, you're fine. The public doesn't touch those anyway. I'm like, huh.
AMANDA: And that's like half as old as a 1590-something text. That's amazing.
SARA: Yeah.
JULIA: I know. I feel like I would drop it immediately.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: I have walked around in the British Library with a huge stack of old books. And that was like, I probably should have taken them in at least a couple of sections to my table because that was scary. It was like, oh, my God, I might actually drop these priceless manuscripts onto the floor. But I didn't. You get really strong as well.
JULIA: I imagined.
AMANDA: Oh, I'm sure.
SARA: Arm day.
AMANDA: Forearm. Yeah, forearm strength, for sure.
SARA: Absolutely. But yeah, so in my Ph.D., I was looking at this very specific Alchemical text. So the different translations and how they related to each other, and also I looked at the manuscripts and a lot of detail because as I said, I love the material bits. And I looked at manuscripts that basically no one else has studied that much. Because even though alchemy has actually been studied a fair bit in the past 20 or so years, in terms of the sort of historical impact, and stuff like that. Alchemical texts haven't been used that much for language research. Actually, I found out a lot of things about the development of scientific language, even by looking at this one work, like the several versions of the single thing. So there's so much that could be done. If more people were working on alchemical texts. And this is basically my mission in academia to try to get more people to join me, to, to work on this stuff. And so yeah, then I ended up reading a load on the history of alchemy, in general, just way more than I should have, really, but that's what you do when you're doing a Ph.D. Also, in Finland, PhDs are free as a all education, which is amazing. So that meant I got to faff around for a while. And even though I obviously needed to get funding, I didn't need to pay university tuition. So that's why I spent many a year doing this.
JULIA: I do have to ask as someone who got a Ph.D. in Finland, did you get a sword?
SARA: I will get a sword.
JULIA: Yay!
AMANDA: Yay!
SARA: I'm so glad that everyone knows this. It's Glorious. I haven't got a sword yet because I graduated or I finished my Ph.D. last year, 2021. And you get the sword during the slight conferral ceremony. And I didn't make it to this year's one. So like I'm waiting for the next ceremony. But I've already set aside money to buy myself my silly top hat and my amazing sword.
AMANDA: Yay!
JULIA: Excellent.
SARA: This is very important. I was always gonna get the sword.
JULIA: Good, good.
AMANDA: Yeah. You know, what our listeners care about?
SARA: I do.
AMANDA: And one of the things they care about is, if they knew about it, they're waiting on tenterhooks for us to ask. And if they don't know about it, they're frantically googling Finnish Ph.D. sword.
SARA: Sadly, like because I did—I started doing Historical European Martial Arts, so like, basically fighting with big sword.
AMANDA: Oh damn.
SARA: Uh, recently, which is the coolest thing, basically. But unfortunately, it's a different kind of sword from the saber that you get for the Ph.D. So I'm going to need to learn a whole new fighting style I guess, to defend myself.
AMANDA: That's your decorative sword. That's the like breaking case of emergencies sword that lives on your wall most of the time.
SARA: It's true. I mean, I am gonna hang it on the wall. So.
JULIA: Plus, diversifying your fighting style is very, very important in defense, so.
SARA: That's true. That's true.
JULIA: Learning too is great.
SARA: Hey, like, gotta catch them all. When it comes to swords.
AMANDA: So can you give us a crash course in Alchemy? I'm sure that you have done this lots of times that people being like, oh, yeah, lead to gold. That's it, right? But it sounds like there are a lot of really important throughlines between like scientific inquiry and just chemistry and all kinds of ways in which Alchemy has set us up for society we live in now.
SARA: I would love to give you a crash course on Alchemy. And it's going to be like the tiniest scratch on the surface because I'm currently writing a nonfiction book on Alchemy in Finnish, and my manuscript is way too long. And there's just so much to say about the history of Alchemy, but I will try to be brief.
JULIA: Incredible.
SARA: Basically, the lead to gold thing is historically accurate. People were genuinely trying to transmute metals, especially lead to better ones, mainly silver and gold. So basically, the idea behind that, is that there were seven metals known in the ancient world until as far as the 16th century or so. People need the seven metals, you know, gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, mercury, and which one haven't I said Tin. There we go. So yeah, they were the seven metals that existed gold and silver, great, the others not so great. So basically, you want to get towards the more perfect metals. And the whole idea behind transmutation is basically, people believed that metals were kind of like, living things in the sense that they would grow and mature in the earth. And so the point of alchemy, one of the points of alchemy was to try to get those metals to mature faster through alchemical means. So the lead to gold thing is definitely true, but it's not the only sort of aspect of alchemy, that was important.
JULIA: So I just have a quick qualifying question about the metals. The basic concept is they believed like if you left Tin in the earth for long enough, it would turn to like silver or gold or something.
SARA: Not quite so the— the idea was that like in nature, so like, in deep, deep, deep in the Earth, like in the, in the actual mines and stuff. Like basically, metals would kind of mature there and, and stuff. And there were very specific conditions for things to become gold and such. So basically, because people didn't know quite what the—you know, it was hard to recreate those conditions. So then they, they tried to just do it with heat, because obviously, people had observed that inside the Earth, it's really hot. Like it gets hotter. So thus, using an oven to heat things up and mix things makes sense.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: So that's, that's definitely one aspect. But in addition to the sort of like, transmutation of alchemy. So transmutation means the changing one metal to the other, specifically to gold, or silver.
AMANDA: Just like the X-Men. I think it makes total sense when you drill down on it, right? Like you—you go deep into the Earth and you find the metal there, must much like a moss or mushrooms or produce like it must have come somehow from some way. And they're not wrong. Like there are specific chemical conditions that lead to the creation of metals, they just didn't know that it has to be like 2000 degrees Kelvin, or whatever.
SARA: Exactly. I mean, there's a lot about alchemy that makes sense. And I'll get to that in a tiny bit. So yeah, there's basically three main themes to alchemy, European alchemy, and I actually, I will note that throughout I'm speaking about European alchemy, because the—was also alchemy and like China and India, but it's very different and hasn't been studied that much yet. So I'm focusing on the European stuff. But so basically, the three main themes are transmutational Alchemy. So changing metals to different metals, medical alchemy, which I'll get back to, because it is indeed, very cool. And then thirdly, the sort of mystical alchemy, which a lot of people think is the actual and only alchemy. I feel. The sort of like, oh, yes, Alchemy is magic, magic chemistry, which is how it's done in a lot of TV and books and everything like, Alchemy is always magical chemistry, when in fact, historically, it's a lot more complex than that. I mean, shocking.
JULIA: All of fiction got it wrong. Unbelievable.
SARA: I mean, honestly, I've been trying to look for fiction, that really does it right, and there isn't that much. And maybe I just need to write some because um, I wear too many hats. And in addition to being an academic, I also write fiction. So.
JULIA: Always an option.
AMANDA: I would read it.
SARA: I've been thinking about this, like, oh, it's not like ultimate history is like ultimate physics.
AMANDA: Exactly.
SARA: Like this world where alchemy just works. And actually, that's a really great, like, sort of segue into what I was going to say about, like, the logic of alchemy.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: Especially as it was seen in the European Middle Ages. So basically, most people probably know Aristotle's four elements. So you know, the basically Avatar The Last Airbender elements.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: Fire, Water, Earth. So yeah, basically, the logic was that all metals and all substances are formed of these different elements in different proportions. So quite logically, if you change the proportions of something, to like, the proportions of gold, it will then become gold.
AMANDA: Sure.
SARA: I feel like this makes sense when your worldview is like that.
AMANDA: Sure.
SARA: And you know, that's, that's logical. And another related theory, which came about in the Middle Ages, was that metals specifically are formed from mercury and sulfur, which are not quite the same thing as the actual physical items. This is going to be a common theme because alchemy is like, is this but it's not that. I don't know. I've only studied this for eight years.
JULIA: It sounds like it's a lot of assumptions made off of observation that are just off the off—like going the wrong branch.
SARA: Yeah.
JULIA: Like there's one right way and there's one wrong way. And they're like that one, the wrong one.
SARA: Pretty much. And umm. A lot of alchemy really does make sense if you just accept the worldview of the time, which is why, for instance, I've studied it mainly as like an early science, because the texts that I was studying in my Ph.D. treated alchemy very much as an early science. So that's one major thing.
AMANDA: That's something that I really appreciate about doing the show and studying folklore and kind of ways of thinking and parsing the world in the past, like, that's the work of history, right? To kind of make the past, better understandable to us. And sometimes, uncovering more details makes it feel more remote. But a lot of the time for me, it's like no, people are making logical conclusions based on the evidence they have, like learning about development of astronomy, you know, until we had telescopes that were good enough, there's no possible way for us to know the things we knew. Like we invented math to understand the relationships between forces and things.
SARA: Yep.
AMANDA: And this makes total sense that like, yeah, of course, if you go into a cave and unearth gold like you do next door in a different cave mushrooms, like sure they, they develop from conditions that are similar. It—I think gives us a lot more empathy for people in the past and for me makes the decisions we're making now, it kind of removes my hubris a little bit to be like, no, no, like, we are just kind of the only modern people who've ever understood things. People understood things plenty well. We just had less information than we do now.
SARA: Absolutely. And I'm pretty sure that in 100 years, a lot of things that we're all about in terms of science will be considered pseudoscience things and weird. Like alchemy as these days considered a pseudoscience. And it—it does bring me comfort. It's like, well, we—we don't know everything. And people back then didn't know everything, but they were really trying. And what I find fascinating about alchemy is how it ties together, like with things like weird mysticism and folklore, but also with, for instance, the scientific revolution, because wild facts that some people know but many people don't, is that Isaac Newton was an alchemist.
JULIA: Woah!
SARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: That's awesome.
SARA: Dude who invented the theory of gravity was also extremely invested in alchemy, and specifically also finding the philosopher's stone, which is actually an important term that I haven't brought up yet. But yeah, Isaac Newton was really into alchemy, there's a whole website dedicated to his alchemical manuscripts. That's one of the facts that blew my mind. So I always want to share it. And it also shows how something as remote feeling as alchemy, as it like science is actually not that far divorced from things that we consider sciences these days. It's just that they definitely were on the wrong track when it comes to how the world actually works. But a lot of the sort of experimentational mindset, things like that were happening in alchemy. And it's actually really hard to distinguish between alchemy and chemistry in the early modern period. So especially in like the 16th and 17th centuries, basically, at some point, Alchemy fades away to become this sort of weird mystical thing. And chemistry becomes the actual science. But there's a period of a couple of 100 years where it's just a bit vague, and the terms are used interchangeably. And a lot of different things are meant by both alchemy and chemistry. And it's really interesting, and I—I love how it just the sort of vagueness of alchemy is delicious to me. Alchemy, I feel it's somehow really interstitial, in a way, sort of lives—lives in the margins, even though at some point, it was really popular. You'd think that alchemy is like a medieval thing maybe. I don't know if you think that but—
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: [18:57]
AMANDA: That’s kind of my assumption. Yeah.
SARA: When you think of alchemy, it's medieval. Correct?
AMANDA: Yeah, maybe until like early Renaissance very slightly. But I ma— those terms are vague to me. So it's—it's more a vibe than, like historical period, what I'm describing.
JULIA: Yeah.
SARA: Yeah. And actually, the sort of Renaissance vibe is basically what you'd want. Because yes, alchemy was very cool in the Middle Ages. But basically, the Renaissance and sort of early modern period, in general, was when alchemy was really hot. Like so many people were looking for the philosopher's stone. So many people were like, really into just making gold. And also a lot of like, kings and princes were really into having their own court Alchemist.
AMANDA: As like, a fashionable thing or as a strategically helpful thing?
SARA: As both really, but it was especially strategically helpful because I just start a thing today where like, apparently, at around that time, so like around the 16th century, there wasn't actually that much precious metal available in Europe.
AMANDA: Sure.
SARA: A lot of it was being brought from, like the Americas. But there wasn't that much stuff out there. So people were genuinely concerned that they wouldn't have enough gold to have a currency.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: And thus, Alchemy became a nice solution. It's like, hey, if this guy can actually make gold, then we're set. So yeah, that—that was definitely a sort of like, it wasn't just weird, mystical, or, like, fashionable. It was—they tried to help the sort of economic situation.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah, no, again, like people were making policy decisions in the past before we call it the policy decision. Like—
SARA: Absolutely.
AMANDA: That is very strategically useful. This might be a silly question. But like, why were they so confident they could do it? Like, did people pretend they did it? Did people think they did it? Was there sort of just endless hope? Like, what was the attitude and the evolution like?
SARA: You actually nailed quite a few of the attitudes. Because like, with all things alchemy, people's attitudes wildly differed through the ages and—and throughout, even—even just the early modern period. People did genuinely believe that it was possible to transmute metals. This is partially because back in the day, the sort of—for instance, the lead, they were using, the other sort of raw materials weren't as pure as they would be these days. So there might be like traces of gold or other stuff, and some of the other like materials that they used, not necessarily just metals, but other solvents and things. They could have small traces of precious metals. And thus, when you left with some kind of hint of gold, you're like aye.
AMANDA: Something happens. Yeah.
SARA: This is gonna work. But there were like, throughout the history of Western Alchemy, there were debates about whether it actually works, whether transmutation is a thing or if it's just all a lie. And there were also a lot of people who were just going around tricking people. So there's a lot of different ways that you can sort of perform an alchemical transmutation, and fake it. So you can like I was just reading about one today, where you know, you just have—you have like a rod that you'd use for stirring like a metal rod, and it's hollow, and you shove some gold up it, and then you put a little wax seal at the bottom. And when you stir your lead, which is molten because you know, you want to use a fire, you stir with the rod, and the wax melts, and a bit of gold goes in. And whoever you want to impress is like, okay.
JULIA: There's gold there now.
SARA: So there were a lot of alchemists, like genuinely trying to do this. And then there were people who were like, I could, you know, do this, like fake demonstration, and then ask for some gold so that I can make more gold. Because—and also, like, all the materials needed for alchemy, were very expensive. Because you'd need a good laboratory, you'd need really, really expensive things. So that is one way that people were sort of just duping each other. But people did genuinely believe that it was possible because of the things I mentioned before about just the logic of, okay, so if everything's just mercury and sulfur in different proportions, if we change the proportions, we can create this better metal. That's the logic. But obviously, a lot of people were also really critical. And there's actually a huge amount of really alchemy critical literature, kind of throughout the history of alchemy. Because a lot of people like no, it's just fake, and they're just, you know, doing it for the money and this is how they will fool you. And it's possible that some of them just had bad experiences with Alchemist, you know.
AMANDA: Sure.
SARA: Like sour grapes.
JULIA: Like Harry Houdini and spiritualists.
SARA: Oh yeah. Yeah.
AMANDA: Exactly. Who tends to become alchemists? Like, how do people get into it?
SARA: Various ways. So um, you'd need to be able to know how to read and write if you were going to be get further an alchemy by yourself. Because um, a lot of the information was transmitted through manuscripts and later in printed books. So a lot of alchemists, especially in the Middle Ages tended to actually be members of the clergy, which might be a bit surprising, but they were, you know, they wanted to get riches for them on a street or just, you know, just get some gold, I guess.
JULIA: Plus, they're educated people with time on their hands.
SARA: Exactly. And like, basically, education was the thing that a lot of alchemists did have. And they needed to know Latin, especially at the start. One of the things I was looking at in my Ph.D. was how even in the 15th century when English was still very much a language of the people and it wasn't a language of science that much. Even then they were translating alchemical stuff into English so that people who didn't know Latin could still have access to this information. So alchemy was sort of part of this, like democratization of science, and—
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: Stuff like that. So you could also be an alchemist if you weren't like university educated. Oh, and alchemy was never a university discipline in the Middle Ages. It's possible that they, at the universities, they considered it to be too practical because it did always involve the practical work. It wasn't as [25:34] as mathematics or something. But then again, you've got medicine, which is also very practical. So I don't really know why it wasn't one of those sort of core disciplines. But it wasn't. So it wasn't available there. But also, alchemists didn't actually form guilds, unlike a lot of other medieval professions. So alchemy was kind of in the middle and a bit like, not really ostracized, but just sort of the odd one out. But yeah, you could definitely become an alchemist, even if you didn't have that much of an education, especially later on. So people would become these, like, sort of entrepreneurial, and alcumus are like more like sort of artisans, rather than scholars. So there's definitely a sort of development in that direction.
AMANDA: A practicing Alchemist.
SARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Working alchemist.
SARA: Exactly.
AMANDA: An Alchemist of the people.
SARA: Yeah, that's—that's a very, very much sort of like, it's not like a strict divide. But there is definitely the stereotype of the sort of scholar Alchemist who's like, I mean, probably does experiments and stuff. But it's very much about reading all the classical literature translated, from Arabic into Latin, because that was the thing. Alchemy came into Europe originally from the Arabs. So um.
AMANDA: It's going well.
SARA: It's a very multicultural science, even in Europe. So yeah, you'd either have that. Or then you'd have the guy who's like, at the fire, just going like, okay, I'm gonna make some gold. I learned from my master how you need to do this. And I don't know how to read.
AMANDA: Right.
SARA: But who cares? So.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I watched close enough, it's fine.
SARA: Yeah.
AMANDA: It's fine. It's fine.
SARA: So there's that—that sort of master and apprentice vibe, but also a lot of learning from books and stuff like that. And obviously, we have—most of our evidence is in the form of writing. So that's probably a bit skewed. But there's also a lot of archaeological evidence of like laboratories and various weird and cool alchemical stills and, like vessels and stuff like that.
AMANDA: I mean, of course, there is, but I never thought to Google image search that and so I know what I'm doing after we hang out today.
JULIA: There you go.
SARA: There's—there's a lot of stuff out there, like LM books, and crucibles, and other things with cool names.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: A lot of which were actually borrowed from Arabic as words, like alambic. It's got the Arabic owl, like definite article there. Originally what became alchemy originated in like Egyptian and Greek thinking about the world, about matter in general. And also, in ancient Egypt, they were pretty good at metallurgy, like as we know—
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: A lot of amazing jewelry, and dyes, and everything. So a lot of that sort of chemical experimentation, combined with Greek theories about the world. And that sort of became what we know is alchemy. When Greek civilization basically collapsed, the Arabs sort of took, took that and preserved all that knowledge and developed their own stuff. And then eventually, in around the 1100s, when though, like, at that point, Spain was an Arab, controlled country, mostly. But Western Europeans came into contact with Arabs a lot during that time. And also with the sciences, which were very exciting and great and really well developed. All the Europeans like, oh my god, actual science. So alchemy is part of that transmission of—of science basically. So even though I'm talking about European alchemy, it's still very related to the whole sort of cultural areas around the Mediterranean basically. And that shows in things like the names of things, even just the name alchemy. So the owl at the start is again, the definite article in Arabic.
AMANDA: Wow!
SARA: And the kami taught is a bit contested. It's the same route as chemistry. This is the Linguist getting excited.
AMANDA: Hell yes. Do it.
SARA: Says the same route as chemistry but we don't know what the chem actually means. There are some theories that it's the same word as Kemet, which is the old word for Egypt, which means like black land.
AMANDA: Right.
SARA: But it might also come from a Greek word meaning some kind of medicine. So it's as a mystery as many things related to alchemy. Oh.
JULIA: Yeah. Well, that's the problem with the history and folklore and everything like that is, there's never really like a clear path of like, this is how it started. This is how we got here. There's so many different offshoots and the understanding that because a lot of these traditions are oral traditions, we're never going to know the exact pathway it took from then to now.
SARA: Yup. Which is also really fascinating, because it means we can still be studying that stuff in the 21st century, which is really cool.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And luckily, we teach it in schools now because we think it's practical, and it's fine.
SARA: I liked my chemistry lessons, I guess. We actually made like salty licorice during chemistry lessons. I feel this is probably a very Finnish thing.
AMANDA: That's amazing.
SARA: I don't remember what the specific bits of.
JULIA: I wish we had made candy or anything interesting and fun in our chemistry classes. That's probably why I didn't like chemistry that much.
AMANDA: I know.
SARA: Ammonium chloride.
AMANDA: Oooh.
SARA: We made ammonium chloride, like basically just enough to put on a bit of paper, and then you got to lick it. And it tastes like salty licorice, which is a Finnish classic thing to eat. So.
AMANDA: Damn, it's amazing.
SARA: Like the true—the true alchemy of like, gross things becoming a delicious sweet.
AMANDA: That's amazing.
JULIA: Incredible.
AMANDA: I would love to hear more about how alchemy was introduced to Europe. But first, let's break for a quick refill.
JULIA: Let's go.
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JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. The days here are getting shorter, but in my mind that just means I get to spend more time cuddled up on the couch being cozy, reading a book, or watching TV with Jake. And that's really nice, isn't it? So think about that as w,e tell you a little bit about what's going on here at Spirits and some of our sponsors. But first, let me thank our newest patron Elizabeth. Elizabeth joins the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Cicuta Maculata, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Megan Moon, Nathan, Niki, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, Spooky Lore, and Zazi. And of course our legend-level patrons, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Ginger Spurs Boi, Morgan, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty.
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Amanda has turned me on to romance novels y'all and I have not looked back since, is The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton. Imagine regency romance novel plus pirates, plus magic because the pirates don't sail ships, they sail houses. And it is adorable and fun and starts with an assassination attempt and goes even wilder from there. So check it out. That's The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton. I also want to recommend another show from the Multitude collective right now. I want to recommend another show that I am a player on and that's Join The Party. Join The Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators that make each other laugh each week. If you think me and Amanda make each other laugh each week, Join The Party ups that game, seriously. 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SARA: I actually wanted to continue about the sort of Arabic loanwords thing in terms of the word Elixir, which is probably familiar to you is like an Elixir of life.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Oh, sure. Yeah.
SARA: What does the Elixir of life like? What does it—what do you think about when you think about that term?
JULIA: I picture a tiny glass vial full of gold liquid that like a king commissioned from an alchemist, and it's going to extend his life forever. So he can always be king.
AMANDA: Second it.
SARA: Yep. So I'm glad that you mentioned sort of indefinitely because I feel like a lot of people think that the Elixir of life in European alchemy is all about immortality. But actually, that is a misconception. It was more about just lengthening your life. because in the Christian worldview, immortality would actually be unChristian, because you need to have, you know, second coming and everything. So the point of the Elixir was to try to create some kind of nice medicine that would extend your life. And even in the Old Testament, there were examples of people living to be really old, like hundreds of years. So that's basically what people were going for. In Chinese alchemy, the Elixir is more related to immortality, because that's the thing and the sort of traditions around that part of the world. So I think it's another really interesting example of how like, the sort of culture that you're in, also determines the alchemy, basically.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: And this way, I would love to know more about Chinese and Indian alchemy, but they're really—a lot of the research done on those is pretty old, and very—done by Europeans. So it's not like great. So I should—after I finished my book on European alchemy, I will definitely be looking into what's been done on alchemies around the world, because there's a lot.
JULIA: That's awesome.
AMANDA: And we'll have to have you back to talk all about it. But that's a really wonderful segue into medical alchemy, which makes again, a ton of sense now that you say it, but I'd love to hear more about what that was, what the project was, and how it was distinguished from spiritual.
SARA: Excellent. Medical alchemy became a really big thing again, in the Renaissance period. Alchemy in general, like I said, was really big back then. But especially medical alchemy was the greatest thing. This is basically not entirely due to but due in great part to this one guy called Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.
AMANDA: Oh, my that kept going.
JULIA: I'm going to be Bombastus—
AMANDA: Yea—
JULIA: From now on. That's my new name.
SARA: He changed his name to Paracelsus. For I've considered obvious reasons, because—
AMANDA: Good branding decision, for sure.
SARA: And I will actually point out for all the Full Metal Alchemist fans out there, the Van Hohenheim guy in that show is totally a reference to this guy.
JULIA: There you go.
SARA: Paracelsus was this really weird guy who basically wanted to fight the medical establishment of his time, which was really like, basically, the medicine of that time operated on completely different logic from what it does these days. And that only started to change, like, well, when we got stuff like microscopes, and could actually observe how bodies work and stuff.
AMANDA: Where they're like, wait, what if we washed our hands after touching corpses before delivering babies?
SARA: Its the Miasma. But yeah, Paracelsus was like, apparently this really, like terrible person. He just like insulted, everyone, traveled around Europe. Got banned from a lot of countries because of his awful personality. He was also a really great reformer of medicine. So he theorized that basically, medicine is chemistry, which, as we know, these days, not—not too badly wrong, when you want to make medicine, it's pretty useful to use some nice healing potions that are based on like actual chemical reactions. But so yeah, he was—he was really into medical alchemy. And he basically popularized the whole thing. So basically, the point of medical alchemy was to create different medicines to you know, cure various diseases, you know, do whatever medicine does, but achieved in ways that were achievable through alchemical means. And also one thing that was major at that point and around the 1500s, by that time, distillation, which had developed a lot through alchemy, was so good at that point, that you could get really strong alcohol, and like preserve things in it. And also like dilute things and you know, there was a lot of stuff you could do with distillation. And I still think it's really cool that like, we basically get whiskey because of alchemy in a way which—
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Yes.
SARA: I love whiskey. So it's great. Like looking at or—or even rum, you know, looking at a rum still, it's like a you know, that's—that's alchemy. It's just how it is.
AMANDA: A 100%.
SARA: But yeah, medical alchemy was—was really big on—on that kind of thing. Just you know, trying to heal people, creating a lot of medicines. A lot of women were actually really into medical alchemy. So alchemy is very male-centric, but there actually are quite a lot of women, even known by name. And a lot of them were active in the 1500s and 1600s. And that's obviously when we just get more records in general and a lot more women were able to read and write at that point. So especially noble women were really into making medicines and like—
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: Creating all sorts of concoctions in their laboratories, which is cool.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: I feel like that's why so many, like young girls have that idea of like, I'm gonna make potions in the woods outside my house.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: It was just—we're just learning from our uh forefathers here. So.
SARA: Oh definitely.
JULIA: Or foremothers, I guess.
AMANDA: So I mean it kind of is what it says on the Tin, is then spiritual alchemy. How is that distinguished?
SARA: So spiritual alchemy is a sort of, it's an interesting thing because I feel like at least to me, when I started researching alchemy, I was like, okay, so it's all about the weird symbols and the spiritual stuff. And you probably want to like somehow ascend towards God or whatever. But actually, it's—it's sort of like strand that runs through alchemy, but becomes more dominant towards like the sort of modern period even. So basically, people were always really into the spiritual parts as well. Like, because alchemy was born, and especially at the point where Muslims encountered it and Christians. So then it was really strongly tinted by the idea that like, okay, so God is what will finally decide. Or you know, God is the one who's going to decide if this works, which is actually really handy. Because if you've done everything, right, but it still doesn't work. Well. God just wasn't favorable. It wasn't your day.
JULIA: Hmm. Make sense.
AMANDA: Which again, it must not be that different from crops failed inexplicably. Children were stillborn, people [46:30], you shouldn't expect them. Like a thing you thought worked wouldn't work? It's not, you know, it's not the sort of laughable excuse that I think we're kind of led to believe, depending on where you grew up in what your values were.
JULIA: Yeah.
SARA: Yeah. Basically, like alchemy as a gift of God is the theme that runs through from the very early Arabic alchemy period to like, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. So that's one aspect of spiritual alchemy. Also, some alchemists thought that in order to actually make the philosopher's stone, so the thing that will actually transmute your metals, you need to be really pure, and like, religious and faithful and everything. So that's—that's one aspect. But then spiritual alchemy really developed into its own thing, especially in like the 19th century. So like, sort of the early Victorian era, and later.
AMANDA: They were horny for spiritualism of all kinds.
SARA: They was—It was, it really fits in with the whole, like, excitement about everything, occult.
AMANDA: Yes.
SARA: And at that point, Alchemy had developed into this sort of occult thing, because, you know, chemistry was a thing, and no one really believed that you could make the Philosopher's Stone anymore. So alchemy had just become the sort of historical thing of the past, basically. But then people got really excited about like, the whole symbolic nature of like, okay, so let's create the Philosopher's Stone of my heart. And like, you know, my soul will ascend towards God, just like the metals developed towards gold and things like that. So it became a really big thing. And there were even a lot of people who theorized that alchemy was never actually about the laboratory work, it was always about, like, you know, making yourself the vessel for the transmutation. So there was a lot of wild stuff going on. And that really influenced a lot of modern people's views on alchemy, I think
JULIA: Interesting.
AMANDA: Yeah. Cause that's the most recent sort of depiction or example we have.
JULIA: Yeah.
SARA: Yeah. Although, interestingly, I feel like because there's a lot of people said, like, oh, yeah, like, Alchemy died out. And then it came again. And actually, the more I've researched it, the more it was actually going on somewhere all the time. And even to this day, there's this website called alchemy forums. Those people who seem to be doing actual physical alchemy that, like, it's a bit weird to me. I mean, it's cool that people do this, but like, I'm not sure if they're doing it from a historical recreation point of view, or if they think that something will happen. But um. But these days definitely the more common thing is like spiritual alchemy, and I feel like I was looking at stuff like alchemy talk and alchemy on Instagram. And it felt like a lot of that was just about like, you know, just spiritual ascendance and not even using alchemical symbols. So, I was a bit disappointed honestly. I wanted them to use weird alchemical symbols.
AMANDA: You're like, asked me about the language, I know about it.
JULIA: Yeah.
SARA: It's like, ah, I mean, it was like any kind of, you know, spiritual, you can ascend thing and I was like, yeah, but talk about the Philosopher's Stone. Like, let's do real alchemy here.
JULIA: Let's do the real stuff. None of this morality science thing that you're trying to do over there. No, no, no.
SARA: I feel like these—these days. It feels like alchemy is just like it can mean any sort of magic, that means transformation, which is basically, from what I gather, the main point of a lot of modern magic. So, you know, I feel the term has been diluted a bit.
AMANDA: Seems like that.
JULIA: Maybe it's just because people don't have as a fantastic and understanding about it as you do in the history, in the context of it.
SARA: Yeah. And that's—that's like a lot of, I mean, it's not like it's the most normal thing that we learn about in school, even though a lot of people probably learned about the Philosopher's Stone. And obviously, there are books that have popularized some of this, which I shall not name because of reasons of evil [50:36]
AMANDA: Bad people. Yeah.
SARA: But that's probably why a lot of people know the Philosopher's Stone. So there's definitely not been that much popularizing of alchemy. Although I do have a book recommendation.
AMANDA: Oooh, please.
SARA: So if—if you want to read like a sort of well-researched, but also very accessible book on the history of alchemy. It's called Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe. So yeah, Secrets of Alchemy is a really good book. I think it's accessible to people who are not historians, or, you know, know nothing about alchemy.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SARA: It's very related to the sort of scientific history of alchemy, but I think it's a great read. So if you want to kind of get a more coherent account of alchemy, that's definitely where you should go.
AMANDA: Well, sorry, you're talking to two people who are fascinated in the thing that you've just spent many years of your life studying. And we can only touch on so much in a seven-hour-long podcast episode. But I would love to invite you to let folks know where they can follow you online if they want to stay up to date on your work and the book that you're eventually publishing.
SARA: Absolutely. So um, I am still on Twitter, sporadically. I'm at suchwonderings. S U C H W A N D E R I N G S. Why did I pick such a long username, who knows? I'm also under that same name on Instagram, which is where I hang out a bit more these days. And my website is saranorja.com. And that's where you can find my writerly things. Not so much my academic things, but I do have an orchid ID, so you can go and check out my research if you desperately want to.
AMANDA: I guarantee you people will.
SARA: That's where I hang out. And please, you know, send me a message on Instagram or tweet at me. Well, Twitter still exists. Happy to answer any questions about alchemy and all of that.
JULIA: Amazing.
AMANDA: Beautiful. Well, we'll have to have you back to talk about one of the thousand things I have been thinking about [52:36] on this episode. But Sara, thank you so much. And folks as you are out looking for the Philosopher's Stone of your chemistry lab or your heart, remember.
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
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AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!