human beings cannot become animal." (Haters gonna hate.) Wait, alchemy?What?
The ultimate goal of alchemy as a discipline was theological or cosmological--the shucking off of the baseness of the body and transmutation/transcendence of an individual human soul to a higher plane that corresponded (in the medieval sense of the term) to the physical transmutation from base metals into gold. There's a reason all that shit was written in code; they didn't want the church to find it and thought it was powerful, powerful stuff, dangerous in evil or untrained hands because it involved literal step-by-step instructions you could take to move any human soul from physicality to a higher plane of existence.
That's why there's so much astrology in alchemy, too; the stars' positions influence your life and how well you'll transmute, say, that month, when you're an Aquarius and you're working with fire (Mars) on a metal that is associated with Pluto (Lead) and it's September and that's a Libra month. (this is one of the reasons I was so impressed with the alchemy characters in Final Fantasy Tactics; it was a really well-thought-out and researched game design).
So, humans were literally and figuratively of a different substance than animals, and had different qualities from animals, in the exact same way that mercury is made of a qualitatively different substance than sulfur and doesn't react in the same way. If they are talking about transformation and alchemy and animals, I bet that's what they mean. Also, to an alchemist, there wouldn't have been much point in transforming into an animal, which was "baser" matter than man--that's the opposite of what the intent of alchemy was. (Note: Alchemy and the idea of a conspiracy theory surrounding it is why it was so easy to slip the Buddhist themes of "transformation," "transcendence," "animals-as-symbol and signifier," and "baseness" into Sacred Book of the Werewolf through the plot of a conspiracy theory surrounding the literal "refinement" of Russian oil into gold. The late Russian court welcomed in...sort of the last gasp of Europe's great charlatanry--the last alchemists, the last transformers--into a land where at the time 95% of the population was illiterate serfs practicing traditional shamanism. It's a testament to Pelevin's genius, and the translation, that he's able to imply all this shit about alchemy without actually coming right out and saying "dross! Gold! Spiritual transformation! Alchemy!" once in the text, and you can still get it if you already know it, and if you don't know it it's not going to impair your reading experience much.)
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regna
Some thoughts on Alchemy that may help
Date: 2010-09-29 02:21 am (UTC)The ultimate goal of alchemy as a discipline was theological or cosmological--the shucking off of the baseness of the body and transmutation/transcendence of an individual human soul to a higher plane that corresponded (in the medieval sense of the term) to the physical transmutation from base metals into gold. There's a reason all that shit was written in code; they didn't want the church to find it and thought it was powerful, powerful stuff, dangerous in evil or untrained hands because it involved literal step-by-step instructions you could take to move any human soul from physicality to a higher plane of existence.
That's why there's so much astrology in alchemy, too; the stars' positions influence your life and how well you'll transmute, say, that month, when you're an Aquarius and you're working with fire (Mars) on a metal that is associated with Pluto (Lead) and it's September and that's a Libra month. (this is one of the reasons I was so impressed with the alchemy characters in Final Fantasy Tactics; it was a really well-thought-out and researched game design).
So, humans were literally and figuratively of a different substance than animals, and had different qualities from animals, in the exact same way that mercury is made of a qualitatively different substance than sulfur and doesn't react in the same way. If they are talking about transformation and alchemy and animals, I bet that's what they mean. Also, to an alchemist, there wouldn't have been much point in transforming into an animal, which was "baser" matter than man--that's the opposite of what the intent of alchemy was. (Note: Alchemy and the idea of a conspiracy theory surrounding it is why it was so easy to slip the Buddhist themes of "transformation," "transcendence," "animals-as-symbol and signifier," and "baseness" into Sacred Book of the Werewolf through the plot of a conspiracy theory surrounding the literal "refinement" of Russian oil into gold. The late Russian court welcomed in...sort of the last gasp of Europe's great charlatanry--the last alchemists, the last transformers--into a land where at the time 95% of the population was illiterate serfs practicing traditional shamanism. It's a testament to Pelevin's genius, and the translation, that he's able to imply all this shit about alchemy without actually coming right out and saying "dross! Gold! Spiritual transformation! Alchemy!" once in the text, and you can still get it if you already know it, and if you don't know it it's not going to impair your reading experience much.)