6 x 9 | B&W | Illustrated | 900 pages
Auckland · Rubedo Press · 2025

NZD $88.00 (paperback)
NZD $113.00 (Hardback)

Price listed in New Zealand Dollars.
Approximate price in other currencies:
GBP £37.00 | EU: € 44.00 | USD $51.00 (paperback)
GBP £48.00 | EU: € 56.00 | USD $65.00 (hardback)

Alchemical Traditions

From Antiquity to the Avant-Garde

Revised and expanded edition

Edited by Aaron Cheak, PhD

SPANNING THE WORLD’S artistic, scientific, and religious traditions, alchemy has embraced and continues to embrace the complete spectrum of existence. From metallurgy to metaphysics, from gold-making to god-making, alchemy pervades the technical and the hieratic arts in order to provide a living phenomenology of the one, single, elusive process that acts through all things.

Despite this all-pervasive purview, alchemy continues to be conceived as either proto-chemistry or proto-psychology. The present volume seeks to redress this false dichotomy by exploring alchemy as a quintessentially integral phenomenon. Opening wide the full spectrum of alchemy—from east to west, in history and practice, from antiquity to the avant-garde—the present work seeks to penetrate as deeply as possible, within the bounds of a single volume, into the transfiguring spiritual intensity that underpins the perfection of life, not only from mineral to man, but from humanity to divinity

Meticulously curated by Dr. Aaron Cheak, the chapters in this 900-page volume examine the foundations and flowerings of alchemy in Egyptian, Chinese, Hellenic, Islamic, Indo-Tibetan, and European cultural contexts. Particular emphasis has been placed upon the relationship of alchemy to the esoteric currents of Taoism, Theurgy, Gnosticism, Shī‘ism, Sufism, Tantra, and Hermeticism. Through this, Alchemical Traditions seeks to liberate alchemy from its persistent materialist misconceptions within academia, and to show that transcendence and concretion, rather than being at variance, mutually inform a single wisdom.

Originally published in 2013, the new, revised edition of Alchemical Traditions is an expanded edition in every sense. Most notably, it features the addition of two substantial research chapters focusing on Islamic alchemy (integrating original translations from Henry Corbin’s work on ‘The Book of Seven Statues’) and Carl Jung (focusing on the deification experience at the root of his Red Book). The volume as a whole is richly illustrated with over sixty images from the alchemical canon, both ancient and modern.

C O N T E N T S 

Preface

Part I: Cornerstones 

Alchemy East and West

Introduction: 
Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium
—Aaron Cheak

1. The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

2. Telestic Transformation and Philosophical Rebirth: 
From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism
—Algis Uždavinys

3. Metallurgy and Demiurgy: 
The Roots of Greek Alchemy in the Mythology of Hephaistos
(Discussions)
—Rod Blackhirst

4. Taking from Water to Fill in Fire: 
The History and Dynamics of Taoist Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

5. Mercury and Immortality:
The Hindu Alchemical Tradition
—David Gordon White

6. Iatrochemistry, Metaphysiology, Gnōsis:
Tibetan Alchemy in the Kālacakra Tantra
—Kim Lai

7. The Secret of Creation:
Cosmogenesis and Heavenly Ascent in Islamicate Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

PART II: Interzones

European Alchemies 

8. The Alchemical Chiasmus:
Counter-Stretched Harmony and Divine Self-Perception
—Aaron Cheak & Sabrina Dalla Valle

9. Turris Philosophorum:
On the Alchemical Iconography of the Tower
—Christopher A. Plaisance

10. Altus’ Ominous Aphorism:
Reading as Alchemical Process
—Mirco A. Mannucci

11. Of Ether, Entheogens, and Colloidal Gold:
Heinrich Khunrath and the Making of a Philosophers’ Stone
—Hereward Tilton

12. Becoming an Angel:
The Mundus Imaginalis of Henry Corbin and the Platonic Path of Self-Knowledge
—Angela Voss

13. The Kiss of Death:
Amor, Corpus Resurrectionis, and the Alchemical Transfiguration of Eros
—Paul Scarpari

14. Agent of All Mutations:
Metallurgical, Biological, and Spiritual Evolution in the Alchemy of René Schwaller de Lubicz
—Aaron Cheak

15. Gnōsis of the Eternal Æon:
Jung and the Serpentine Path of the Soul
—Hereward Tilton

16. Take Two Emerald Tablets in the Morning:
Surrealism and the Alchemical Transubstantiation of the World
—Leon Marvell

17. Incredible Lunatic of the Future:
The Alchemical Horticulture of Alan Chadwick
—Rod Blackhirst

18. Alchemical Endgame:
‘Checkmate’ in Beckett and Eliot
—Dan Mellamphy

Illustration Credits
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index

About the editor

Dr. Cheak is a scholar of comparative religion, philosophy, and esotericism. Straddling the interstices between Hermetic and integral philosophy, he received his doctorate in 2011 for his thesis on René Schwaller de Lubicz, and served as president of the international Jean Gebser Society from 2013–2015. He has appeared in both academic and esoteric publications, including Light Broken through the Prism of Life (2011), Clavis (2014), Diaphany (2015), Octagon (2016), Lux in Tenebris (2017), The Leaf of Immortality (2017), and The Celestial Art (2018). As a translator of French, German, and Greek, he is also bringing a number of important projects to fruition through Rubedo Press. He currently lives in New Zealand, where he maintains an active interest in tea, wine, poetry, typography, and alchemy.