Alchemy in the time of coronavirus

Has the coronavirus given a literal shot in the arm to the ancient proto-science cum transformational philosophy called alchemy?

 

September 22, 2020, 4 Jug Suraiya in Juggle-Bandhi | Science, World | TOI

In medieval Europe, alchemy was an occult science whose practitioners sought to transmute base metals, such as lead, into ‘noble’ metals like gold, through a process called chrysopoeia. While this was deemed to be the ‘esoteric’, or practical, goal of alchemy, its ‘estonic’, or secret, aspect was an inner transformation of the human spirit by which ignorance was transmuted into gnosis or transcendental knowledge.

The word alchemy is said to be derived from the Arabic al-Kimiya, but the roots of this ancient crypts-science have been traced back to the China of the 7th century BC, from where it went to Europe, via Greece, and to what later was to become the Islamic world.

As it spread like a great banyan tree, alchemy sprouted numerous offshoots, including the so-called ‘philosopher’s stone’ and the ‘elixir of life’ which gave immortality to its recipient.

In Christendom, alchemy was deemed to be a form of witchcraft, a heresy which could invoke the penalty of the ‘auto defe’, the inquisitional execution of being burned alive at the stake.

Alchemists formed an underground cult, cloaking their rites and rituals in symbols and arcane signs, some which are extant today in societies such as that of the Free Masons.

As a beacon of humankind’s never-ending quest for knowledge, alchemy found an eloquent platform in literature, as exemplified by Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus who traded his soul to the Devil for the power of boundless knowledge. In Rabindra Sangeet, we have mention of the ‘poroshmoni’, or philosopher’s stone which the poet’s soul yearns for.

Its philosophical subtext apart, alchemy is seen by several science historians as being the precursor of modern chemistry, the alchemist’s crucible morphing into the test-tube and petri dish of the laboratory.

Never has this connect between alchemy and contemporary science been more evident than it is today when the world is in the grip of a pandemic which might more aptly be called a panic-demic.

A vaccine that can prevent or cure Covid-19 has become the new ‘philosopher’s stone’, the latter-day ‘elixir of life’. There are reportedly over 140 formulations currently undergoing trials at various levels.

Governments and charitable foundations such as that of Bill and Melinda Gates have ploughed in billions to fund the search for a surefire ‘silver bullet’ which will put paid once and for all to the dread virus which has overturned the world’s economic, social and political applecart causing wreckage from which it will take countries years, if not decades, to recover.

But even as an overload of information – and an equal, perhaps greater, amount of misinformation – about the virus and its possible antidotes spreads even faster than the pathogen itself, many of the protocols regarding the development of the various vaccines and the progress of the human trials involving them are shrouded in secrecy as nations, and the pharmaceutical companies tasked with making and testing potential cures, vie with each other to try and take the lead in this race for redemption from the menacing spectre of the virus.

In recent times many skeletons have tumbled out of the clandestine cupboards of ‘Big Pharma’, such as the thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s. Reports that the Phase 3 trials of a frontrunner vaccine were temporarily suspended after a volunteer developed severe side effects, and the subsequent taciturnity regarding the issue by the company concerned, has raised widespread doubts about the safety of these medicinal miracles in the making.

With the Devil waiting in the wings to claim him, Faustus enjoined a resurrected Princess of Troy, “Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.” Today’s white-jacketed Faustus clone, hypodermic syringe in hand, might well say “Sweet vaccine, make us immune with a jab.” Is that a Satanic chuckle we hear in the background?