What is Alchemy?
By Arthur E. Waite The Introductory Notes are taken from “Hermetic Papers of A.E. Waite”, edited by R.A Gilbert (Aquarian Press,1987). The text of “What is Alchemy?” reproduced here is scanned from the periodical “The Unknown World”, and formatted and corrected by hand. [Adepti.com] Introductory Notes: [First printed in the monthly journal The Unknown World from August to December 1894 and in April, 1895. It was reprinted in The Alchemical Papers of Arthur Edward Waite, ed. J. Ray Shute, Monroe, N.C., 1939, a privately printed collection limited to seventy copies.] In his earlier writings on alchemy Waite maintained that the spiritual interpretation of alchemy was first systematically presented by Mrs. Atwood in her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery -a point of view that he was later to reject completely, to the extent of saying that the book ‘is not, however, final or satisfactory as a critical study, indeed, in some respects it is a morass rather than a pathway’ (The Secre
