The Golden Chain of Homer: A Work of Alchemy

The Golden Chain of Homer, in its various forms and editions, is perhaps one of the most descriptive and least ambiguous manuscripts on alchemical lore and the early explanations given during the late Renaissance and early Enlightenment periods regarding chemical and earthly processes. Less concerned with celestial and angelic symbolism and more focused on outright experimentation, it covers the processes of fixation, putrefaction, and generation in far more depth than most works of the era. It seeks to prove the chemical processes it describes and admonishes the reader to try the same things themselves using fairly simplistic compounds and experiments to generate life from the lifeless and create materials which in the era seemed markedly different from the original things being transformed using heat, light, humidification, and distillation. Its philosophical content is dense but understandable and its chemical content mostly literal.