The Sacred Art of Alchemy
In this passage from The Chymical Wedding by Lindsay Clarke, the narrator is drawn into a layered and symbolic meditation on the nature of alchemy—not as crude proto-chemistry or superstition, but as a sacred art aimed at spiritual transformation. Through Edward’s intense dialogue, alchemy is defined as the healing of the split within human consciousness: between matter and spirit, male and female, light and dark. The passage critiques modern materialism, portraying it as fragmentary, disenchanted, and spiritually barren, in contrast to the wholeness sought by true alchemists.
THE CHYMICAL WEDDING
The thing about riddles is that the answer is always more mysterious than the puzzle. Sure, once you have it, the pieces click into place. It fits. But what are you holding? Like that ancient riddle to which the answer is ‘the wind’; or, better still, like the Sphinx’s riddle to which teh answer is ‘man’. Fine; you get teh point; all very clever. But what is the wind? What is man?
This was much the same. I had the answer and it answered nothing; and Edward clearly was none too happy about explaining. I thought I saw why. I mean — alchemy! ALCHIMIA! It had to be an elaborate piece of chicanery. I arranged my face accordingly; but when I looked across at him I had the impression of an old dragon coiled about its hoard, and fuming jealously.
Under question it quickly emerged that I knew precious little about alchemy — no more than the fragments I’d picked up from literature: Chaucer’s mockery of it, Jonson’s satirical play, the conceits of the Metaphysical poets. I saw it as an eccentric quirk of history, a dodo-hunt in which credulous men had tried to transmute base metal to gold. It was the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, wasn’t it? Or the Elixir of Life? I’d never been quite sure which, and did it matter? I knew — but did not say — that the whole thing smelled of fraud.
Edward girded up the weary swags beneath his eyes and — I hadn’t been prepared for this — agreed. ‘Yes, the men whom Chaucer and Jonson despised were quacks, con-artists, knaves. Lacking the patience to woo the Lady Alchimia they tried to rape her. They failed, of course, and their failure made the enterprise appear contemptible. But that is not the whole story. Regrettably the darker powers at work inside us know exactly how to muddy the waters so that a spiritual child goes down the drain with them unseen. Then meaning goes with it, and with meaning value . . . and we are left darkling.’
He observed my frown at the reference to dark powers, and said, ‘They are there, I assure you. You are not exempt.’ He brooded over the words, and the words brooded over me. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
‘True alchemy,’ he declared, ‘is one among the sacred arts . . . For we Europeans perhaps the most vital.’
Now in my world only one art was sacred and it wasn’t alchemy. I retreated into flippancy, said that this all sounded a bit mystical to me.
‘But do you know the meaning of that word?’ Edward returned. ‘At root it has to do with closing, with sealing . . . the closing of the eyelids, the sealing of the lips, the closing of a wound. It has to do with making whole or holy . . . with healing. Alchemy is the effort to heal the split in consciousness. And, yes, in that strict sense of the word, I agree, it is mystical. But it is an art which is also a science — one which acts on the understanding that all true science is also a matter of poetics.’
I saw his eyes shift at Laura’s impatient signals, but his frown silenced her. ‘We’ll get nowhere,’ he said, looking back at me, ‘unless you start to think as you dream — symbolically. Alchemy is best understood as a great dance of symbols. A delicate web of correspondences in which nothing is finally separable from everything else. It starts from the premise — from the experience — that the germ of life plays everywhere. It has long known what the physicists “discovered” yesterday — that the observer and the observed are members of a single interactive field. But it knows also what we have yet to learn — that the field is far from neutral. What we do to it is done also to ourselves. We are implicate. We create only in our own image, like God, and therefore self-knowledge is of critical importance. Without it the consequences are diabolic.’ He paused to let the full force of the word strike home, then added, ‘Hence the disaster of materialism. It’s like the polystyrene muck it makes — rot that won’t rot. There’s nothing regenerative in its relationship to the world. How could there be? — for rebirth is a science of the spirit.’
‘A science?’ His first use of the word had bothered me; this second was unacceptable.
…
He gave me no time to collect my thoughts. ‘Don’t you get it yet? Materialism leaves us trapped in a world that won’t hold together. It’s centrifugal. It splits at every turn into the Ten Thousand Things each neatly labelled with a Ph.D. thesis. In the meantime we become more and more obsessed with what we mistake for our real needs, hopes, fears — and more and more estranged from our birthright membership of a coherent universe. Hence this century’s endless harping on the theme of exile — typically misconceived in merely political terms, or as the dreary job-description of being human. If we were less arrogant we might see ourselves for what we are — children sent on an errand, who first forget our instructions and then realize we have forgotten the way home. How to find our way back? How to realize a whole vision of life? Not some self-sealing intellectual construct — no shabby, patchwork compromise, but a regenerative, transcendent change. One that reconciles matter with spirit, heart with mind, the female in us and the male, the darkness and the light. That was the problem which engaged the spiritual intellect of the true alchemist. That was the Elixir, the Stone, the Gold — aurum non vulgi — no common gold. They are all symbols for what cannot be said — only experienced. As is,’ he added pointedly, ‘the chymical wedding — the promise of which you saw celebrated in your dreams.’
