Introduction

Alchemy was at once a laboratory craft, a natural philosophy and, for many of its practitioners, a spiritual discipline. This section follows it from Greco-Egyptian Alexandria through the Arabic Jabirian corpus and the Latin West to the chymistry of Boyle and Newton, and then into the psychological readings of C. G. Jung. Articles explain the Philosopher's Stone, the tria prima of salt, sulphur and mercury, the colour stages of the Work, alchemical emblems, and Chinese external and internal alchemy.