Science and Ecology in the Contemporary Practice of Alchemy

Abstract

Although works on the history of European esotericism have clearly shown the ambiguous position that esotericism has had with science making, fewer attempts have been made to investigate current overlaps between science and esoteric practices. Based on an ethnographic investigation of contemporary alchemy in France and Italy, this article suggests that science as an element of discourse and as a methodology for experimentation is entangled with ecological practices and narratives. Analytical perspectives on this start by describing the ecological grounds of alchemical cosmology. Turning to a description of laboratory experiments, I show that they evidence an imbrication of science and ecology at the practical level through three features: 1) the intervention of astronomical and meteorological influences in the context of experiments, 2) the reliance on norms of reproducibility during experiments, and 3) the exposition of alchemy as empirical work in search of gnosis. Through the functional importance of alchemical materials’ forms, alchemy brings forward an ontology of participation, where practitioners participate in divine nature by producing life processes inherent to it in their laboratory. This article argues that science, as an element of discourse and practice, can play a role in the construction of contemporary esoteric eco-spiritual practices.