Plants and Alchemy

Hey dear community, at the beginning I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you have a weekend that is full of positive experiences! In this post, I would like to talk a little about alchemy and hope you are able to expand your knowledge.

Recently I took these pictures of different types of plants and I would like to use them to get a little closer to the meaning of plants in alchemy. Anyone who has already dealt more closely with alchemy knows that it is closely associated with spirituality and as a branch of natural philosophy, the old alchemists already asked themselves questions about creation or other connections as well as reactions of things and the plant itself was often the focus of mystical views. In alchemy, it was much about finding remedies and the understanding and mode of action of plants on the human body were of great importance for the creation of tinctures or other herbal medicines. It can be said that alchemy is the origin of today's pharmacy and through the understanding of the effect of plants through research, the principle of developing remedies from nature developed. This path of research and preparation was always closely associated with mystical contexts as well as ritual practices or the belief of supernatural powers of some plants and those who wanted to go the path of enlightenment also needed the understanding of growth. The preparation of herbal medicine through extraction processes is already much older, but the Swiss alchemist and doctor Paracelsus brought this whole topic to a new level and developed the Spagyric and in this alternative healing method the plants and their effect on the self-regulation of the body were in the foreground. Paracelsus was generally one of the figures who managed to find knowledge about the use of plants and his experience of certain chemical processes led to a fundamental change when it comes to creating healing methods. The production of pigments from plants is also closely linked to alchemy and in order to be able to carry out these steps, people also needed the knowledge about production processes and from numerous old writings the importance of plants in alchemy emerges and also from a symbolic point of view, plants are an important part of alchemy.

Thanks a lot for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.