Random question. Historically, why have Lead and Gold been so closely linked? Why did alchemist focus on turning lead into gold (and not start with iron, or a rock like quartz)? Is it just because they're two heavy soft metals?
hehe. Seriously though, why weren't people trying to turn iron or copper into gold? Why lead?
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8810/is-biting-...
They found a paper which apparently (I didn’t dig into their sources) says:
> concludes that the coin biting is most probably a cliche in literature and movies.
> The manuscript points out that there are many references to coin biting form early 20th century but not from older (contemporary to the setting) sources e.g. […] They put a possible origin to the cliche to 19th century gold prospectors distinguishing pyrite from gold nuggets by biting.
So, it may have been 19’th century authors speculating about to-them long past history, based on current events.
The relative softness of different widely circulated alloys bounces around quite a bit over the ages, but the author only has to come up with something that is plausible to their audience, after all. Biting a coin is sort of trope of an expert at adventure, right? In some sense it is plausible enough that there’s some difference the property of widely circulated alloys, so whatever that difference is, the expert knows how it feels. Maybe the common fakes of the era are softer lead, maybe they are some harder silver alloy, but the expert pirate knows.
Apparently alchemists thought of gold to be a noble pure metal while lead was thought to be an immature version of gold that could be purified into the noble version of gold.
> This long-standing quest, known as chrysopoeia, may have been motivated by the observation that dull grey, relatively abundant lead is of a similar density to gold, which has long been coveted for its beautiful colour and rarity.
And I am sure they tried to change silver to gold as well. It's even closer in weight so an even a smaller changer is needed.
But as the sibling poster states, no, they didn't know.
Photons=Wind
Neutrons=Earth
Protons=Fire
Clearly gold is just lead with a little bit of extra elemental fire, I mean, look at the colors.
The transmutation of metals in alchemy is a metaphor for the transmutation of the soul, from its base and sinful nature ("lead") to divinity ("gold".) The means of purifying one was the means of purifying the other, and the "philosopher's stone" alchemists often sought to achieve this was credited for doing both.
Also... it was often an easy grift to get room and board (and money) from wealthy patrons.
Here is a good /r/AskHistorians thread about this[0].
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/114vo4m/alch...
Broadly speaking, alchemical writings are not just concerned with the
manipulation of physical matter; rather, alchemy can be viewed as a
philosophy that synthesizes chemistry and spirituality. A common overarching
idea is that transmuting materials is directly analogous to the purification
of the soul - alchemists were, in general, trying to advance *spiritual*
enlightenment as well as *intellectual* enlightenment. It's important to
understand this mindset in order to grasp what they were trying to achieve
with metallurgy.So Lead, gold, and quicksilver were not the substances their names suggest. They were codenames. The real processes have never been revealed.
But that’s just 1 vote. ;)
Alchemists probably weren't thinking about the gold economy, in that if they figured out how to turn something common like lead into something more rare like gold, that gold would no longer be rare, and they wouldn't be rich for very long.