Seminar

THE HISTORY OF ALCHEMY

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Since the 19th century, alchemy has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented by scholars, often dismissed as a rigid, quasi-scientific medieval tradition steeped in mysticism and the occult.

This oversimplified view has reduced alchemy to a mere attempt to transmute base metals into gold, obscuring its true complexity and the diversity of its practices across different cultures and historical periods.

However, contemporary scholarship challenges these misconceptions, revealing alchemy as a rich, multidimensional system of thought that has intersected with religion, philosophy, science, and esotericism through history. This seminar invited the participants to explore alchemy not as a singular or static pursuit but as a multifaceted global phenomenon.

Alchemy in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Andreas Winkler

Assistant Professor of Egyptology, University of Toronto

Salam Rassi

Faculty of History, University of Oxford

Peter J. Forshaw

Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy, University of Amsterdam

Esoteric Currents and Cross-Cultural Transformations

Dagmar Wujastyk

Associate Professor of History and Classics, University of Alberta

John MacMurphy

PhD Candidate, Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy, University of Amsterdam

Christopher McIntosh

Independent Scholar

Alchemy in Science, Literature, and Art

Hjalmar Fors

PhD, Associate Professor, Head of Unit at Hagströmerbiblioteket, Karolinska Institutet

Mattias Fyhr

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Örebro University

Per Faxneld

Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm