Alchemy

Alchemy is ancient stuff which we call chemistry these days. Alchemy is basically combining substances in order to have them interact and produce new substances. The classic quest of the ancient Alchemist was to turn lead into gold. The only known Alchemist to even come close was Rumpelstiltskin who, apparently, spun straw into gold. Not quite alchemy. Or is it? Alchemy changes things

Alchemy is the art, or ancient science, of combining ingredients to make something new. By this definition, baking a cake is alchemy. Hey, I’m OK with that. Are you? Before we had formal chemistry we had Alchemists, people who could concoct a libation to heal an ailment. This is the origin from which the word cocktail evolved. The modern Alchemist is a chemist, one version of which works to make pharmaceutical products.

Alchemy is an act, not a thing that you can put in a bottle. It is the art of putting the right combination of things into the bottle that is the alchemy. But what about the alchemy between two people? We can all recall people about whom it might be said they had great chemistry (alchemy). So too, recall some people who had bad chemistry between them. Some folks seem to have bad or good, chemistry in them, all by themselves. Oh

A prism deconstructs white light into colours. It can also reconstitute the coloured light back into white. Now that is alchemy. The ideas in many ancient alchemy texts form the basis of modern chemistry and influenced some of the greats like Isaac Newton. Many just somehow figure that it was olde and silly, but hey, we needed to start somewhere. At one time we swore the earth was flat

Alchemy is often not reversible. Try getting the cream back out of the coffee. In relationships, it can feel almost as hard to take back a word or action. We have the concept of forgiveness for this very reason. Without it we could not get back to where we were, Alchemy too can fade, like puppy love, intense and eventually forgotten. I love the alchemy result of smelling a flower. Changes me in just the right way