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Perhaps because of alchemy’s association with divine knowledge, Arabic alchemical treatises persistently appeal to secrecy: alchemists should avoid the transmission of recipes to greedy people whose main aim is to obtain riches rather than wisdom. As would their European followers several centuries later, Arabic alchemists used rhetorical tricks to conceal the secrets of the art from the uninitiated. In the introductory essay to his translation of the first 10 books of Jabir ibn Hayyan’s Kitab al-sab‘in (The Book of the Seventy), Pierre Lory underlines the author’s habit of “scattering knowledge” (tabdid al-‘ilm) by intentionally presenting alchemical procedures out of order so that only the initiated could understand how to read the text. Alchemical authors used a highly enigmatic language, marked by abundant metaphors and technical and allusive terminology, to describe their processes and ingredients. Like the Hellenistic alchemists before them, the Arabic alchemists referred to a metal by the name of the planet that was thought to exert influence over it, so that recipes included Moon for silver, Mercury for quicksilver, Venus for copper, Sun for gold, Mars for iron, Jupiter for tin, and Saturn for lead. Modern readers must bear in mind that even when the names of the alchemical ingredients appear identical to those used in modern chemistry, they rarely designate the same substance.
The Netherlands' Royal Fireworks lights up the sky for the 6th Philippine Int'l. Pyromusical Competition.
(This photo was passed as a requirement for my J123: Photojournalism class.)
After Kina was freed from her burden, we decided that the next people to use the clearing would appreciate a fresh scattering of daisies.