Alchemy

The real history of the art of transformation: what alchemists claimed, what they did at the furnace, and how their search for gold became chemistry and a language for inner change.

• Isaac Newton's Secret Life as an Alchemist A 1936 auction revealed that the author of the Principia wrote about a million words on alchemy. Here is what the manuscripts really show.
• What Is the Philosopher's Stone? It was a powder, a medicine, a symbol of Christ and a crime in England. What alchemists really claimed, and what historians now think they were doing.
• The Seven Stages of the Great Work Calcination to coagulation is a tidy modern list. The historical record offers four colors, twelve gates and no agreement at all.