The aims and means of alchemy, some important issues in its history, and its far from clear-cut relations with Daoism and with science are discussed below. Some Daoist movements took up its practice after about 500 ce it influenced both Buddhist and Daoist symbolism and liturgy. It was considered one of several disciplines that could lead to individual spiritual perfection and immortality. These peculiarities depended on public structures of meaning as well as on the private discourse of the groups that took up alchemy.Īlchemy began in close alignment with popular religion, especially among educated groups in the Yangze region. The alchemy of each of the great civilizations was distinct in the knowledge on which it drew, in the symbols it created, and in the purposes for which it was used. Adding the specification that the alchemical art uses chemical change to symbolize the processes by which perfection is attained, one can recognize a pattern common to Hellenistic Alexandria, China, Islam, India, and early modern Europe. In China, for instance, cinnabar was the prototype of elixir substances. The evolution of other substances from base materials may be more important than that of gold. Longevity and material immortality may or may not accompany salvation in a given time and place. Sheppard: "Alchemy is the art of liberating parts of the Cosmos from temporal existence and achieving perfection which for metals is gold, and, for man, longevity, then immortality, and finally, redemption." This definition might be slightly qualified. The sole exception is the definition of H. Definitions of alchemy have generally been based on the experience of a single civilization -usually but not always Europe -and tend to imply that traditions that do not follow the chosen pattern are not the real thing.
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