CyberSavant schrieb:
> Hello. Sorry for the crosspost. I am looking for metal correspondences.
> For example: as LEAD is to GOLD
> Silver is to __
> Copper is to __
> Bronze is to __
> Platinum is to __
> Iron is to ___
> etc. etc, etc
>
> Does anyone have any ideas they'd like to share? Resources?
Well, metaphysically it doesn't work that way. Alchemy bases its assumptions
on metal transmutation on a hierarchy of metals (in itself part of the 'Great
Chain of Existence'). In this, gold is the highest and purest of metals, an
assumption based on it being found in naturally pure form, it being very
valuable, mythologically connected with nobility, power and the sun, which
is, in turn, the highest in the order of planets (I know it isn't a planet,
but goes into that order in many alchemical texts) and the symbol of the
highest deity in Neoplatonic cosmology), and being beautiful and, well,
golden. It's a bit of a case of circular reasoning - noble things are
connected with gold, so gold is noble - but then, it's a prescientific
theory. Lead, in its turn, is the basest of metals. It's dull, dirt cheap,
common, and used to be used for all kinds of very ignoble purposes (like
cheap kitchenware, water pipes and roofing). Therefore, the ability to
transform lead into gold is the most obvious application of the power to
transform the base into the noble, which was the metaphysical goal of
alchemy. To serious alchemists, changing lead into gold was no more than a
kind of litmus test - if you can do that you've got the right stuff (in this
case, the philosopher's stone). It was only popular superstition (and greed)
that saw this transformation as the actual goal of alchemy, and criminal
energy on the part of the alchemists to represent it as that (Early Modern
monarchs were not known to suplpy research funding for disinterested
reasons).
However, if you're running a freer system with a game flavor different from
the hermetic - neoplatonic - astrological - aristotelian mismash that
constitutes real 'high alchemy' yu can put in as much or little of real-world
connections into your metal correspondences. Just go with what's intuitive.
Frex:
> For example: as LEAD is to GOLD
> Bronze is to __
(bronze shouldn't count since it's an alloy. But if you insist you could have
it correspond to Electrum
> Platinum is to __
Platinum isn't one of the 'traditional' metals, so you could just leave it
out. If you want to use it you may have to go fairly far-fetched (or you
could just put Tin-Silver-Platinum into the three-tiered hierarchy)
> Iron is to ___Copper
(here I'd go with the color red as an intuitive connection.)
So in short I'd postulate connections based on a hierarchical major-minor
relationship. This exists, say, between Lead and Gold, Tin and Silver, Iron
and Copper, Zinc and Mercury, Arsenic and Antimony...
It has a nice mystical flavor (you could assign planets and/or zodiacal
signs), and nobody can disprove it since it's all intuitive and therefore
'self-evident' to the 'right-thinking' or 'enlightened'.
Volker
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