What Is Alchemy?

An early essay on the nature of alchemy. Scanned from the periodical "The Unknown World", No. 3, Vol. 2; April 15, 1895. 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. For this he was taken to task, in the pages of the Occult Review, by Isabelle de Steiger; but he justified himself by stating that 'What I said of the Suggestive Enquiry in 1888 and 1893 was in the light of my knowledge at those dates; that which I have recorded since has been under a fuller and clearer light'. Nonetheless, his early essays on alchemy retain their value for the obscure information they contain and for their critical comments on Madame Blavatsky's dubious manipulation of her source material on alchemy.