Alchemy Is Metaphor
Alchemy is the last honest science because it purports to seek things, and others purport to know things
Josh Dholani's recent thread on H.P.ovecraft did a thing to me. It nudged me to remember the ‘origin stories’ of some of our creative writers spanning different genres. I realised that we can classify the tales of their motivation for writing roughly into loneliness and pain. Orwell typifies the first. Lovecraft the other. However, loneliness and pain are common to all humanity and not writers alone. But while not everyone does great things with their loneliness and pain, these people—creatives—do great things with theirs. This is alchemy in action.
Alchemy may not have been good science (or even science at all). But it is a good metaphor. A good metaphor for describing the creative process. Isaac Newton and Albert Magnus may not have achieved anything useful in their experiments. But they hinted at something more useful to us now than the stone of knowledge.
The biggest ambitions of the alchemists included turning lead into gold—turning base metals into precious ones; finding the elixir of life and youth; and finding the philosopher’s stone. The alchemists believed that the different elements were but the same original substance in varying degrees of purity. Gold was the purest of all and silver followed closely.
Certainly, their experiments failed. Mostly. That's because alchemy works in a different sphere where truly, all is all, and where all the different elements are but the same original substance in varying degrees of purity. Alchemy works at the emotional and creative level where resentment is inverted love. Where loneliness is starved love. Where pain is perfection with bumps. And jealousy is ownership gone wrong.
Creators and creatives then, like alchemists, try to transmute these emotions—as raw materials and base elements—to produce the precious substance. An allegorist uses animals to portray human wisdom. A landscape artist captures the picture of nature but purifies it as something to elevate the viewer's appreciation of life. A bored schoolboy becomes an inventive educator, creating an alternative to the boring traditions that so choked him.
Take Orwell. His political writings are a stone of knowledge for those who wish to fortify themselves against the slithering nature of tyranny. Lovecraft's insights are an elixir of life for aristocratic and democratic societies— “the aristocracy pill,” Dholani calls it. They have both given us gold from lead.
There is Joan Didion and the hopes she offers writers like myself. But such hope does not exist—in fact, there is no Joan Didion—without the struggle with abstract thinking. She wrote in Why I Write: "Had I been blessed with even limited access to my mind there would have been no reason to write." Aye! Aye! We cheer and respond. That's how it feels. Out of her effort to find what she thinks, she has become a light for people to find what they think. Transmutation at its finest.
As Simon Sarris describes it, "Alchemy is the last honest science because it purports to seek things, and others purport to know things." But the way to seek is to do.
I imagine that it is true that converting one's misery to a service fits this "doing," and it is better than regular therapy. Just as it is true that building a business to solve a personal pain point is a good thing. And still in the same category, "I suffered this thing so that you don't have to" is itself a purification, transmutation, a knowledge stone, and an elixir of life for others.
I imagine, finally, that you probably desire to help others around you. But you cannot yet decide how. Start by solving a problem for yourself. With the solution you find, solve it for others too. As I know it, this is alchemy. Alchemy Is Metaphor.
And here your meme goes:
