Alchemy: Chemistry's predecessor pt. 2

For this installment of my alchemy series, I'll be focusing on Transmutation. The intro part is here

In the anime I was watching, transmutation governed the idea of equivalent trade (you must lose something to gain something) although it still holds true because of the chemical law of conservation of mass. Alchemists in that anime believed that an item of equivalent value must always be given in exchange. But in reality, transmutation was a series of steps wherein the first step was called melonosis (the absence of color) because all he materials they used were black in color. These black materials were some of the earliest materials used as alloys like tin, lead, copper, sulfur etc.

In the earliest accounts of their attempts at transmuting elements, they often used darkly colored materials like lead, in hopes of making gold (thus why it was first called black magic. The materials were black but it did not perform the black magic that the Christian community knows. That came when religion came to intervene with alchemy). I do think the earliest accounts of metallurgy and metal plating came from the early alchemists who refined their techniques with turning lead to gold, of course this never did happen but their study did contribute to the field.

The second step was Leukosis (Leuko means white) or whitening, this was the bleaching of metal alloys by dipping them in dyes and/or other metals like silver mixed with antimony, mercury, arsenic (the kind of metal mixtures that gave a shiny metallic silver color). After bleaching, Xanthosis (Xantho means yellow) was done by dying the materials in a yellow dye or coating them in sulfur. Sometimes gold was added but it depended on who they were giving the material to.

Later on a fourth step was added to this transmutation process. It was called Iosis (Io relates to purple/violet), which was basically the process of turning gold into a violet or purple color (purple items were called super-gold back then because only royalty were given items dyed in purple colors).

So the original sequence of color in transmutation was black -> white -> yellow -> violet

Then as the Arabic came to adapt the discipline, the color sequence became black -> white -> rainbow color for some reason -> yellow -> orange -> red

On adaptation by the Chinese, this sequence of color came to be known as elixir and items formed from this process was believed to be the Elixir of life, a magical drug that could produce immortality. The philosopher’s stone. But its other names were drinkable gold or potable gold.

Next on the series:

Alchemy in China: The Elixir of life

From Greaco- Roman to Greaco-Egyptian

Islamic Alchemy

When Alchemy was mistaken for witchcraft

When Alchemy died out.