Alchemy in China

The Abbé Pernety, at the close of the eighteenth century, demonstrated to his own satisfaction that all classical mythology was but a vesture or veil of the Magnum Opus, ¹ and the fable of the Golden Fleece was regarded generally at that period—following some earlier alchemical memorials—as a vindication of the wisdom of Greece in the Great Art of Chrysopœia. Here is precisely one of those facile tricks of allegorical interpretation which—once admitted—might involve all mythologies and all the old literatures. Long before classical countries had been thought of in this connection, it was assumed more naturally that the traditional science of Hermes had its cradle in Ancient Egypt. As a matter of fact, neither in Egypt nor in Greece has any trace of Alchemy been discovered till after the Christian era. “Despite the universal tradition which assigns to Alchemy an Egyptian origin, no hieroglyphic document relative to the science of transmutation has yet been discovered. The Graeco-Egyptian alchemists are our sole source of illumination upon the science of Hermes, and that source is open to suspicion because subject to the tampering of mystical imaginations during several generations of dreamers and scholiasts. In Egypt notwithstanding Alchemy first originated.” ² But this was during and not anterior to the first Christian centuries.