[HPforGrownups] Re: Elixir of life

[Danger Mouse]

No: HPFGUIDX 75092

Olaf, glad and big:
I am not sure that alchemy is magic. It does not seem to be on the 
curriculum at Hogwarts. 

Dan:
Actually, alchemy is magic. Quite. Here's a couple resources:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
http://www.ambix.org/

Alchemy is not so much akin to potions (which is like magical chemistry--brewing up magical liquids) as it is a cross between potions and transfiguration and charms if it does exist in the Potterverse... they try to turn iron to gold, make perpetual fires, etc. In our world, alchemists see it as more spiritual; that is, spiritual change reflected by real-world symbols. :

Levity.com:
In alchemy, each of its steps or phases, represents not only a interior awakening (initiation), but also a physical, practical technique performed in the laboratory. The physical, laboratory work becomes a means of verifying spiritual and psychic expansions in consciousness. 

"Alchemy is an initiatic system in which you have no delusions. It is the only initiatic path where there is an objective control in the laboratory. So if your experiment shows you've gone beyond the ordinary material laws of the universe, it shows that you're an alchemist that has had an interior awakening, and that corresponds to the rule which says, 'You will transmute nothing if you have not transmuted yourself first.' Says Jean Dubuis, founder and first president of the French alchemical organization, The Philosophers of Nature.

All for now,
Dan

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