The alchemists tried not only to change base metals into gold but also rejuvenate their bodies, integrate their personalities, and perfect the very essence of their souls. Although they spoke of retorts, furnaces, and chemicals, they were really talking about synchronous changes taking place in their own bodies, minds, and souls.

Somehow I don’t that they had a biological mindset when tinkering in their labs.  The original Royal society and the Rosicrucians would be rolling in their graves.

Reminds me of a story about one of the first experiments that the Royal Society of London performed in the war over who ruled the world, magic or natural law “science”.  They took a spider and placed it in a cirle of unicorn horns (rhinos really).  The magical theory was that a creature of evil (spider) would be repulsed by a force of good.  The spider should have been stuck in the circle with no way to get out.  Instead the spider crawled over the circle of horns and comfortably settled into a corner of the ceiling.  There is a reason why Issac is known as a great scientist and not a great alchemist or magician.  It is because they found that science, not magic was the one pulling the strings.  Issac came to resist any form of magical explaination, going from its top practisioner to its top critic.  No observer effect there!

They are just trying to be Rosicrucians while being relevent to the modern age.  Even Free Masons without any of the required knowledge, relevence and ability.  Sad that this is what the “craft” is being labeled as (if anyone knows what I mean in the term).  I’ll continue with a real craft and focus on signaling cascades and mitogen-activated protein kinases in basidiomycetes.  Can’t wait for the mercury immortality elixers to come back online again.

I note their promises don’t actually mention actual lead into actual gold- it’s all about those easily placebo’ed ‘spiritual’ effects. 

Why Las Vegas, famed for turning Gold and Dreams into Dross and Bankruptcy.  If they really wanted to transmute base metals, surely they should hold the conference at Cern?

Speaking of overly credulous folks, did anyone else catch the “Digging for the Truth” (I think that’s what the show is called) episode on the History Channel recently where they were looking for the ruins of Atlantis?  I wasn’t watching the show as closely as I would have liked, but I never heard the narrator/host once question the veracity of the existence of Atlantis. 

He never suggested the Bimini Road was a natural formation, or that the “evidence” the expedition was finding might not be man-made.

The one that sticks out in my mind was an image of a “structure” that they were trying to prove was a wall.  I think they were saying the wall had been buried by sediment, and they had a ground penetrating radar image of what looked (according to them) like a wall.  They found this in an area of the Mediterranean that was known for earthquakes, and the image honestly looked more like a smooth break in the strata or even a fault line than a wall from what I saw of it.  There was of course no mention of any possible explanation other than it was a wall.

They also had a few technical glitches that the host later alluded were as if “somebody” didn’t want them to see what they were trying to see (never mind they already “knew” what they were trying to find.), I guess implying the technical glitches (a twisted co-axial cable attached to their submersible sonar buoy and later a computer crash) were the result of ancient Atlanteans, or maybe the Israel defense force who had earlier done a flyover of them.

Anyway, sorry about thread drift, but I think the Alchemy convention is just a symptom of the increasing credulity of the American public.  The fact that we have pseudo-documentaries on the History channel that don’t even bother to pretend to be objective surely doesn’t help anything, since channels like the History and Discovery channel have in recent years assumed a status of being reliable sources of knowledge among many folks. Carl Sagan is rolling in his grave.

During the process, the essences of the substance are exposed and reborn under planetary influences. The spagyric product is considered to be at a higher level of potency able to effect not only the physical body but also the underlying or spiritual cause of disease

We live on a planet, but that has no effect on chemistry, gravity is a weak force and is ignored, it certainly has no way of affecting mechanism. Some impurities can be dangerous to the body and cause side effects, but the desire for purity is only chemically justified, I can’t see how a chemical could have a spiritual effect

The alchemists tried not only to change base metals into gold

-Chemistry is the science of electron movement
-Physics is the science of the nucleus and subatomic particles
-The element type is defined by the number of protons in the nucleus
-Therefore one element can only be changed into another through neuclear reactions, which change the number of protons
-Chemical methods only shift electrons, and so have no way of changing the element type
-Every non-hydrogen element that exists was made by nuclear reactions (hydrogen was the first atom to exist, and other elements formed inside stars by fusion), and so the fact gold exists means there is a way of making it
-Iron56 is the most stable atom of all, nuclear reactions will work their way towards this isotope over time, given the energy. The stability comes from the interactions of spin between the protons and the neutrons, hence why some isotopes of an element are more stable than others. The stability of Iron56 is why it is such a common metal and why it is found in the core of stars. All the non-hydrogen elements we find on earth were formed by nuclear reactions in stars, possibly with subsequent decay to other elements, the material formed in stars is spread by a supernova explosion

and the goal is to inform and empower individuals with the ancient wisdom.

They would be better off with some modern wisdom, though modern chemistry did start off from observations in alchemy, it took a few hundred years to get to this point.

During the conference, formal instruction in basic and advanced techniques of spagyrics will be offered by by Robert Allen Bartlett, chief chemist at the Paracelsus Research Institute. The three-hour workshop will be held in two parts after lectures on Saturday and Sunday. $45.

WTF is spagyrics? As a 3rd yr chemistry student I’ve never so much as heard of it. Nobody studying chemistry would actually believe in alchemy over modern methods.

Ah…

Spagyrics (spa-gîr-iks) is a Greek word meaning to separate and recombine. Spagyrics was the basis of Paracelsus’ work, and he is often considered its father. The spagyric process is a three-fold process of separation, purification, and cohobation (reunion of the purified parts).

a.k.a. Purification. Distillation, chromatography, filtration, are all common methods, sometimes this is after chemical methods like reacting a chiral sample with another chiral molecule to make chemically different distereoisomers which can be separated. Chromatography separates components often by their ability to bind to something and concentrations are based on the binomial sequence (I can email notes on this), however you will notice the binomial thoerum shows you never get 100% clean separtion as some is always left behind in old theoretical plates, there is always some overlap between samples. Similarly distillation isn’t perfect because everything is in equilibrium with the vapour phase and some impurity will evaporate with your sample. Filtration is good for removing precipitates, macromolecules and aggregates but you tend to lose some yield, and some filtrate will remain with the solid.

but also rejuvenate their bodies, integrate their personalities, and perfect the very essence of their souls. Although they spoke of retorts, furnaces, and chemicals, they were really talking about synchronous changes taking place in their own bodies, minds, and souls

(Roll on floor laughing)
Chemicals are used as psychological drugs but worshipping them isn’t going to change what goes on in your body other than where charges build up in your brain to think such things. If there is a spirit that got into the body before birth, it would need to influence body chemistry to control the body in any way, that is inescapable and you can’t magically create molecules without violating the rules.

However wihout violating enthalpy you might be able to cheat+restrain the entropy side of thermodynamics by using the uncertainty principle to manipulate shape just before colision, thus controlling the angle they travel off after and hence the colision path of molecules and ions. Controlling where the charged ions go will control charge build up in the brain for instigating a nerve impulse. The uncertanty principle is the only area I can see that is open to possible manipulation by a possible spiritual infulence, maybe also probability of absorbing a light wave. This theory would require extreme micromanagement though, you do have to ask where nerve signals in the brain came from if we really did have free will, because a system that’s pre-decided doesn’t allow free will.

wonderful comment there distant claws, I applaud you.

Thankyou