The Recipe for Success?

After reading the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, the importance of alchemy has been on my mind. In doing additional research, there are many angles concerning Alchemy which I hadn’t considered.  Alchemy is a proto-chemistry, which involved mixing elements to create new things. The ultimate goal, as we’ve discussed, was to create a philosopher’s stone, something which has been said to turn any base metal into gold, (in some cases) to heal any disease and/or to offer immortality to anyone who ingested a potion which incorporated it.

Now, while we scoff a bit in our modern age, especially at the story of the Canon’s Yeoman’s where an alchemist specifically chooses to dupe the priest into believing he is actually performing alchemy, there are elements to alchemy as a science which I had not considered. Namely, we discussed the possibility that alchemy could be considered evil because it creates something from nothing, but this is not actually the case. Like a recipe, alchemy utilizes many different ingredients to make a final product. To use a borrowed phrase about alchemy, it’s the law of equivalent exchange—where you put in the things which make up the final thing you hope to create.  While the end result of the philosopher’s stone would be making gold in an almost magical way, it’s not creating something from nothing.

In reading an article from Peggy Knapp entitled “The Work of Alchemy,” she raised an interesting point to me about why clergy would’ve allowed alchemy and not magic. According to Knapp, “Alchemical treatises share a few basic ideas: that alchemy speeds up processes already at work in Nature, that gold represents the perfect balance between the elements of earth, water, air and fire toward which Nature is heading, and that alchemy could hurry the lower metals toward gold through “projections” involving mercury, sulfur and furnaces” (Knapp, 575).  This means that alchemy itself wasn’t reaching beyond the bounds of humanity, instead it was simply hurrying along a process which God already set in motion. Therefore, the philosopher’s stone was something which not only encouraged the natural order of things, but also embodied and kept the secrets of creation, and therefore, of God as well.

Part of the rules of alchemy, as mentioned, were of equivalent exchange. In most alchemic texts there were directions to create a chemical wedding, where all the elements needed to create the philosopher’s stone were actually to be “married” or unified together. The most important point though for this chemical union was actually for there to be balance—between the elements of gold and silver, of the sun and the moon, of fire and water.  In creating anything alchemical, there must be balance for the union to occur—too much or too little of anything would cause disastrous results.  There is also a balance needed between the knowledge behind the science of alchemy and the physical work and timing which goes into each alchemical reaction.  A perfectly balanced person is the start of a perfectly balanced equation for alchemy.

This then made me reconsider the problems with the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale.  The deceit of the alchemist towards the priest is not just buffoonery to be ridiculous or to show that you shouldn’t put your faith in things which are unholy, but to show that charlatans exist partly because part of themselves is unbalanced, much like this alchemist’s “alchemy.”  Without balance, one could not achieve happiness, for one would not be able to find a balance between work and home, or earth and heaven.  The proper balance of common sense and intelligence is needed for a professions such as an alchemist’s, but also for a priest, who should’ve been somewhat educated, to know that this alchemist was not what he seemed.  This imbalance of knowledge is even more apparent in the alchemist, because he cannot be someone who had actually studied alchemic texts, because he relies entirely on parlor tricks to get his victims to believe that he is truly noteworthy and someone who understands the secrets of creation.  And yet, at the same time, it occurs to me that only others who are similarly imbalanced would trust a con artist. 

While many may think that Chaucer was simply angry towards someone who cheated him and claimed to be an alchemist, and that interpretation makes complete sense, I feel differently.  In this case, the message might be for us to be wary of things which seem too good to be true, but additionally to find a true unity with our creator in order for the true transformation to begin.  In this way, perhaps we can work towards finding a balance in our own lives to begin the journey of recreation!