Editing Alchemy (section)

=== Later modern period ===
[[File:The Shannon Portrait of the Hon Robert Boyle.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Robert Boyle]]]]
[[File:Alchemist.png|thumb|right|An alchemist, pictured in Charles Mackay's ''[[Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds]]'']]
The decline of European alchemy was brought about by the rise of modern science with its emphasis on rigorous quantitative experimentation and its disdain for "ancient wisdom". Although the seeds of these events were planted as early as the 17th century, alchemy still flourished for some two hundred years, and in fact may have reached its peak in the 18th century. As late as 1781 [[James Price (chemist)|James Price]] claimed to have produced a powder that could transmute mercury into silver or gold. Early modern European alchemy continued to exhibit a diversity of theories, practices, and purposes: "Scholastic and anti-Aristotelian, Paracelsian and anti-Paracelsian, Hermetic, Neoplatonic, mechanistic, vitalistic, and more—plus virtually every combination and compromise thereof."<ref name="Alchemy Restored">{{cite journal |last1=Principe |first1=Lawrence M |author-link1=Lawrence M. Principe |year=2011 |title=Alchemy Restored |journal=Isis |volume=102 |issue=2 |pages=305–12 |doi=10.1086/660139 |pmid=21874690 |s2cid=23581980}}</ref>

[[Robert Boyle]] (1627–1691) pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations. He assumed nothing in his experiments and compiled every piece of relevant data. Boyle would note the place in which the experiment was carried out, the wind characteristics, the position of the Sun and Moon, and the barometer reading, all just in case they proved to be relevant.<ref>{{cite book |author=Pilkington, Roger |title=Robert Boyle: Father of Chemistry |location=London |publisher=John Murray |year=1959 |page=11}}</ref> This approach eventually led to the founding of modern chemistry in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on revolutionary discoveries and ideas of [[Antoine Lavoisier|Lavoisier]] and [[John Dalton]].

Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn for the first time between "alchemy" and "chemistry".<ref name="NewmanPrincipe2002p37">{{Harvnb|Newman|Principe|2002|p=37}}</ref><ref name="PrincipeNewmanp386">{{Harvnb|Principe|Newman|2001|p=386}}</ref> By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud.<ref name="Alchemy Restored" /><ref name="PrincipeNewmanp386" /> In order to protect the developing science of modern chemistry from the negative censure to which alchemy was being subjected, academic writers during the 18th-century scientific Enlightenment attempted to divorce and separate the "new" chemistry from the "old" practices of alchemy. This move was mostly successful, and the consequences of this continued into the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.<ref name="PrincipeNewmanpp386–7">{{Harvnb|Principe|Newman|2001|pp=386–7}}</ref>

During the occult revival of the early 19th century, alchemy received new attention as an occult science.<ref name="PrincipeNewmanp387">{{Harvnb|Principe|Newman|2001|p=387}}</ref><ref name="KripalShuck2005p27">{{Harvnb|Kripal|Shuck|2005|p=27}}</ref> The esoteric or occultist school that arose during the 19th century held the view that the substances and operations mentioned in alchemical literature are to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, less than as a practical tradition or protoscience.<ref name="NewmanPrincipe2002p37" /><ref>{{Harvnb|Eliade|1994|p=49}}</ref><ref name="PrincipeNewmanp388">{{Harvnb|Principe|Newman|2001|p=388}}</ref> This interpretation claimed that the obscure language of the alchemical texts, which 19th century practitioners were not always able to decipher, were an allegorical guise for spiritual, moral or mystical processes.<ref name="PrincipeNewmanp388" />

Two seminal figures during this period were [[Mary Anne Atwood]] and [[Ethan A. Hitchcock (general)|Ethan Allen Hitchcock]], who independently published similar works regarding spiritual alchemy. Both rebuffed the growing successes of chemistry, developing a completely esoteric view of alchemy. Atwood wrote: "No modern art or chemistry, notwithstanding all its surreptitious claims, has any thing in common with Alchemy."<ref name="PrincipeNewmanp391">{{Harvnb|Principe|Newman|2001|p=391}}</ref><ref name="Rutkin2001p143">{{Harvnb|Rutkin|2001|p=143}}</ref> Atwood's work influenced subsequent authors of the occult revival including [[Eliphas Levi]], [[Arthur Edward Waite]], and [[Rudolf Steiner]]. Hitchcock, in his ''Remarks Upon Alchymists'' (1855) attempted to make a case for his spiritual interpretation with his claim that the alchemists wrote about a spiritual discipline under a materialistic guise in order to avoid accusations of blasphemy from the church and state. In 1845, Baron [[Carl Reichenbach]], published his studies on [[Odic force]], a concept with some similarities to alchemy, but his research did not enter the mainstream of scientific discussion.<ref>Daniel Merkur. ''Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions.'' SUNY Press. 1993 p.55</ref>

In 1946, [[Louis Cattiaux]] published the Message Retrouvé, a work that was at once philosophical, mystical and highly influenced by alchemy. In his lineage, many researchers, including Emmanuel and Charles d'Hooghvorst, are updating alchemical studies in France and Belgium.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Croire l'Incroyable. L'Ancien et le Nouveau dans l'étude des religions |last=Arola |first=Raimon |publisher=Beya |year=2006 |isbn=2-9600364-7-6 |location=Grez-Doiceau}}</ref>