Alchemy | part 3

 Bure dedicated one of his treatises to Queen Christina of Sweden. She was also fond of alchemy and other occult sciences: with the help of the philosopher's stone, the queen even allegedly planned to “transmute” her gender in order to become a man.

 Another powerful Swedish courtier, Privy Councilor Gustaf Bonde (1655-1712), followed the mystical teachings of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who believed that he saw the world of spirits, and the German alchemist Konrad Dippel (1673-1734), who tried to create artificial life ... Bond also actively practiced alchemy.

 In one of the treatises, he described the alchemist's body as a furnace, and the gastrointestinal tract was understood by him as a "secret fire." By passing small pieces of gold through the digestive system, the experimenter, in his opinion, could create an alchemical elixir inside his body for many years. Bond claimed that he almost achieved what he wanted twice, but each time the process had to be postponed due to politics.

 The recipes left behind by the Privy Councilor are striking in the variety of ingredients: among them you can even find the blood of a boy.

 MORE ARTICLES BY SERGEY ZOTOV

 Bony with a saw against Jesus with a bell. How Death was depicted on Orthodox icons

 From the ring of a doctor to the crypt of the Satanists. The entertaining story of the pentagram and the inverted cross

 However, not all Swedes had alchemical experiments that ended in complete failure. In 1707, the Livonian aristocrat Otto Arnold von Paikul was sentenced to death in Stockholm: in order to save himself, he was believed to have successfully transmuted lead into gold right in captivity and offered the king an alchemical income of one hundred thousand Riksdaler annually.

 The king refused, and Paikul's head rolled off the block, but 147 coins were smelted from the gold he had already made by alchemical means.

 Alchemy came to Finland later than to the more developed Sweden and Denmark - only in the 18th century. <…>

 One of the last Finnish alchemists, Jacob Wallenberg (1756-1800), who lived in Finnish Ostrobothnia, considered himself a prophet, who, among other things, was given the gift of turning granite into gold: for this he once tried to melt it, and on the other he forced his followers to transfer the coffin stuffed with stones to the neighboring city, where they supposedly had to transform.

 Wallenberg planned to use gold to buy food and treasures, but all attempts at transmutation were unsuccessful: when the angry people carrying the coffin reported failure, Wallenberg announced that while they were walking, he had a vision in which he saw the vanity of wealth before the imminent end of the world ...

 Il. 4. Images taken from the book "History of Alchemy" by Sergei Zotov. Moscow, AST. 2020

 Germany: the golden gallows

 Court alchemy was almost ubiquitous in Germany, where several large centers of gold-making arose. One of them was located in the Lower Saxon town of Wolfenbüttel near Hanover, another in the Thuringian city of Gotha, the third in the west of Germany, in Kassel, the fourth in the center of the Reformation, Wittenberg, and the fifth in the Prussian capital, Berlin.

 <…>

 In Wittenberg, the center of the Reformation, the Elector Augustus and his wife Anna were engaged in alchemy. It was in Wittenberg that archaeologists recently found a real alchemical laboratory. German artists Cranachi lived there for a long time, who did not shy away from alchemical metaphors in their painting. Even the German reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) himself in 1533 speaks approvingly of alchemy in his "Table Talks": I like it [alchemy] not only for its numerous possibilities of application <...>, but also for the allegory and its secret, very tempting meaning, concerning the resurrection of the dead on the day of the Last Judgment. For just as fire in a furnace draws out and separates other parts from one substance and extracts spirit, life, health, strength, while impure substances, sediment, remain at the bottom, like a dead body that has no value, exactly the same On the day of the Last Judgment, God will divide everything by fire, separate the righteous from the unrighteous.

 Translated by Nikolai Mikhailov and Tatiana Tsivyan.

 <…>

 At the court of King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia (1688–1740) in Berlin, the alchemical tradition flourishes through an unprecedented investment in experimentation. At the same time, the monarch himself had a negative attitude to the idea of ​​transmutation and alchemy in general: it is not surprising if you count the number of times the goldsmiths deceived him.

 Johannes Böttger (1682–1719), a famous Berlin alchemist, made a splash at the Prussian court by turning lead into gold. However, later it turned out that she was fake, after which the unfortunate alchemist was arrested.

 His life and position in society was saved only by the fact that - again, thanks to alchemy - he accidentally realized how to forge Chinese porcelain.

 His place at the court was taken by Don Domenico Cayetano - a famous alchemist-swindler. He did not long engage in alchemical experiments - soon the king ordered his execution.

 These events were closely followed by the German goldsmith Georg Stahl (1659–1734), who, after writing many alchemical treatises and studying at the University of Jena, where there were also many alchemists, came to the Prussian court to take up the vacant post of royal doctor.

 Soon after, he abruptly changes his position on alchemy - now he brands this science as dangerous to the royal person, because even the most prudent monarch can spend all his time and money on useless experiments. <…> Based on the ideas of the Austrian alchemist Becher, Stahl comes up with the theory of phlogiston - a special substance that provides the combustion of almost any substance and replaces Paracelsus' Mercury in its meaning.

 This theory is considered one of the earliest evidence of the transition from alchemy to modern chemistry.

 In the XVIII century. They tried to use alchemy to feed the growing armies during the European wars: for example, the Swedish scientist Johan Vallerius (1709-1785) improved farming methods with the help of alchemical theory, isolating a substance responsible for soil fertility.

 At the same time, famous adventurers continued to deceive gullible aristocrats with the help of pseudo-alchemical tricks: Count Saint-Germain (1710-1784), Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798), and Count Alessandro Cagliostro (1743-1795). All of these people were professional charlatans who mastered several spectacular tricks in order to amaze the public, and claimed to be in possession of the witchcraft secrets of the Masons.