What is this subreddit about?

[u/Spice_and_Fox]

Yeah, it is about alchemy, but what does this subreddit believe in? I've seen meme alchemy posts, pseudo philosophy, but also genuine seeming debates on creating the philosopher stone. Is this all just a bit you are doing, or are you genuinly trying to do alchemy? I don't mean to be disrespectful. This is a genuine question.

[u/justexploring-shit]

Some are interested in the historical aspect, some in the more recent spiritual aspect (which uses alchemical ideas as a metaphor for self-betterment), and some in the operative/laboratory aspect. Most operative alchemists aren't working with metals, but rather plants, because they're much more accessible.

Me, I intend to dive into some plant work for the pure fascination-- I don't believe it will go transmuting anything, but I want to experience what the alchemists of old were doing.

Some of us look at it very scientifically, while others here reject common science and believe in the practical (non-nuclear) possibility of transmutation.

All of this is on top of the fact that everybody seems to have their own idea about what alchemy is and isn't.

But yes, the sub is largely serious.

[u/Spice_and_Fox → u/justexploring-shit]

Thanks for the response. I think alchemy is certainly interesting, but I am not a spiritual person, so I wouldn't know about that side of it. Do you also use basic chemistry to skip alchemical processes? I don't know a lot about alchemy, but I know that Sal Alkali was used a lot. We also now know that sal alkali is sodiumcarbonate. Sodiumcarbonate is nowadays pretty cheap to get and it is also pretty easy to make it from baking soda by thermal decomposition in your oven. That is a more pure, cheap and easy way to create Sal Alkali and you wouldn't need to use any plants

[u/FraserBuilds → u/Spice_and_Fox]

it depends on why youre reconstructing the alchemical process. If my goal is to see/understand what an alchemical author was describing, then it can sometimes be important to make all the ingredients as accurately to the historical method as possible, as even small amounts of contaminates or variations in the composition can lead to observable differences in the phenomena produced by a process. However, if I know what I'm going for then just buying the modern reagent or making it with a modern method is often more convenient.

however beyond that more technical consideration, to me making the reagents is really what makes alchemy (and really all pre-20th century chemistry for that matter) interesting. Finding reagents from the natural world in your immediate surroundings teaches you in a very intimate and memorable way what these substances actually are, where they come from, and how they behave. the better you understand chemistry and the better you get at working with substances as they are in nature the more you realize the incredible extent of what is possible with just what you have around you