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One of the beautiful (and scary) things about the web is how many incredibly smart people you run into out there, and Seth Goldstein of Majestic Research is razor-sharp.

All weekend I was meeting with a colleague working on a new music project online and I kept talking about “internet alchemy”. Jonas just told me about your blog today and I see your headline title.

I wanted to share with you details on my first art project (sculpture) which was all about alchemy on the “Vas Hermeticum” (sacred vessel). I had a wood-burning stove, ground the metal and painted the interior with swirling metallic automotive paints that didn’t rust. I fashioned a circular hole at the bottom to match the top opening (which was the instructions on how to build a sacred vessel from the original Egyptian text on the Vas Hermeticum by the Egyptian God Thoth. Using forton, a material similar to plaster but impermeable to water, I cast several students hands in the class. First I would paint their hands with bee’s wax, wait for the wax to try and pure liquid forton into the mold. I asked each person to consider different hand gestures for principles in relationships: love, forgiveness, empathy, etc. The castings, with fingerprints and all were then cast into an organic branch with each hand being like a leaf which rose from the bottom of the inside of the stove. They all were left hands except a pair of child’s hands at the top which opened above to top circular opening. In the child’s hands was a triangular shaped stone – the philosopher’s stone. The bottom opening had a plexiglass plate over it which allowed for the piece to be filled with water. A small tube was inserted which bubbled the water around the hands and a halogen light shone in from the bottom. This art piece was created in 1996 and was displayed during Voltaire’s 300th year anniversary celebration at the French Cultural Centre in Canada. Viewers climbed a ladder to look into the piece to see the hands “gifting” them with the stone.

One of the most interesting things about the whole process was this phrase which I have tried to honor through my days in business: “The truly adept alchemist purges all desire to want to turn the lead into gold, to turn the lead into gold.” The other salient fact I learned through my research was that alchemy was less about the transmutation of metals, and more about the meaning given behind transformation. Alchemy was popular at the time of the black plague and thatch-roofed cottages which often burned down killing many according to Religion and the Decline of Magic. Thus, people were looking for deeper meaning, and a “magical” way of releasing them from their situation.

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James Riley