Gold

Alchemy

• Gold is used in Alchemy.

  Alchemy’s famous goal is gold. The metal is the craft’s boast, not every culture’s sun.

  from Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet), medieval Latin tradition (Arabic antecedents)

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• Gold is connected to Silver.

  Sun-and-moon metal-speech in later alchemy pairs gold and silver. The pairing is a laboratory idiom.

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• Sun is associated with Gold.

  Latin alchemy often marks gold with the sun. The metal and the star are made to stand for each other in a laboratory idiom, not in every gold-using culture.

  from Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet), medieval Latin tradition (Arabic antecedents)

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• Fire is associated with Gold.

  Alchemical fire is the means by which, in the craft’s own claim, base stuff is worked toward gold. The claim is the tradition’s, not a chemical proof.

  from Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet), medieval Latin tradition (Arabic antecedents)

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• Gold is associated with Circle.

  Coins and solar disks are round and often yellow. The likeness is cheap; keep it interpretive.

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• Gold is opposed to Iron.

  Gold does not rust; iron does. Later metal-lore made that contrast a moral; the chemistry is older than the sermon.

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• Gold is used in Medicine.

  Pliny’s Natural History Book 33 chapter 25 lists eight remedies derived from gold: applied to the wounded and to infants against sorcery, and used in compounded ash preparations for facial lichens and related afflictions. A Roman-era pharmacological use of the metal, not Ge Hong’s elixir ranking and not alchemical gold-as-goal.

  from Pliny the Elder · Natural History, c. 77 CE

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• Ring is associated with Gold.

  Many rings are gold. The metal’s price and the token’s job are different.

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Chinese tradition

• Gold is used in Alchemy.

  Ware’s Nei P’ien instructs compounding Potable Gold with one pound of gold by the old scale: metallic gold is a working material in Ge Hong’s elixir craft. That is Ge Hong’s China, not the Emerald Tablet’s gold-as-goal.

  from Ge Hong; James R. Ware (translation) · The Nei P’ien of Ko Hung, 1966 (this translation); Ge Hong 4th century CE

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European folklore

• Luck is associated with Gold.

  Folk speech treats gold as a lucky find. The metal’s price and the luck-charm are different jobs.

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Nahua tradition

• Offerings is associated with Gold.

  Precious materials, including gold, appear among gifts in Sahagún’s record. Gold here is a costly gift, not the alchemical sun-metal.

  from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

  associated with · partially sourced · culturally specific