alchemy

noun

1. (uncountable)The premodern and early modern study of physical changes, particularly in Europe, Arabia, and China; and chiefly in pursuit of an elixir of immortality, a universal panacea, and/or a philosopher's stone able to transmute base metals into gold, eventually developing into chemistry.

   “There were also letters to scientists and other scholars, pages of derivations of mathematics and physics formulae, and copious writings on alchemy and religion. […] The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.”

   “The purpose of physical alchemy—as opposed to its various spiritual pursuits—was to treat the supposed leprosity of base metals such as lead, refining and purifying them into gold.”

2. (countable)The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.

   “O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts: And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness.”

   “1640, George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., in The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert, London: Pickering, 1841, p. 143, No alchymy to saving.”

   “Then of their session ended they bid cry With trumpet’s regal sound the great result: Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy, By herald’s voice explained; the hollow Abyss Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim.”

   “[Poetry] transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.”

   “There is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I have said that have been, one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued, that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned.”

3. (countable, slang)Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.