Alchemy, symbols, and why 🜏 still means something
Dear Reader,
Every issue of this newsletter has been marked by a specific symbol. It appears between sections. It sits at the end of certain sentences. It is the specific mark I use to divide sections in FALSE GOD as well. The symbol is 🜏, and I have not yet explained what it is or why I use it. I want to do that in this piece, because the explanation opens onto something larger about the specific tradition I have been drawing from throughout this newsletter series without naming it explicitly.
The symbol is called sulfur, in the specific alchemical tradition. Not chemical sulfur, though the two are related. Alchemical sulfur is one of the three primary principles in the tradition, alongside salt and mercury. It represents specific aspects of transformation, spirit, and the soul of matter. The specific glyph has been used for something like fifteen hundred years, in specific traditions across the Islamic world and Europe, as a specific shorthand for something the tradition considered fundamental.
I use the symbol because it does specific work that other symbols do not do. It is old enough to carry weight. It is obscure enough not to be captured by contemporary aesthetics. It signals a specific tradition I am drawing from without requiring me to explain the tradition. And it looks, visually, like exactly what it means. A specific mark that suggests fire, air, transformation, and the specific place where something invisible touches something visible.
This piece is about what alchemy actually was, why the tradition still matters, and what my specific use of the specific symbol is doing. It is also, more broadly, about the specific power of symbolic thinking in an age that has largely forgotten how to think symbolically.
Start with what alchemy was not. It was not, primarily, bad chemistry.
The specific dismissal of alchemy as failed chemistry that eventually became real chemistry is a specific historical caricature. Alchemists did do specific work with specific materials. They did develop specific techniques that were incorporated into later chemistry. But the specific project of alchemy was not chemistry. It was something else that used chemistry-like practices as a specific vehicle.
The specific project of alchemy was transformation. Of matter, yes. But also, and more centrally, of the practitioner. The specific claim was that working with specific materials in specific ways, under specific conditions, would produce specific transformations in both the materials and the person working with them. The specific end goal was not gold. Gold was a specific metaphor for the specific state the practitioner was trying to reach. The specific work of getting there involved actual laboratory practice, but the point of the laboratory practice was psychological and spiritual, not economic.
This is not my interpretation. This is what serious alchemists said, when they wrote about their work in ways that were not written for their patrons. Read carefully, the alchemical corpus is full of statements about how the specific work is really about the specific transformation of the alchemist, and about how anyone approaching it for material gain will fail. The specific practice was designed to produce specific inner change, using material work as the specific means.
Which means alchemy was, in the modern vocabulary, something like a specific combination of psychology, contemplative practice, and material craft, unified by a specific symbolic framework that made all three coherent. This is a specific kind of practice that has largely disappeared. There are traces of it in specific traditions of craft, in specific traditions of meditation, in specific traditions of art. But the specific integration that alchemy achieved has not survived in any specific mainstream form.
There is a specific reason this matters for the current moment.
Modern culture has largely lost the ability to think symbolically. Not entirely, and not for everyone. But at the population level, the specific capacity to work with symbols as vehicles for transformation has atrophied. Symbols are now treated primarily as signs. They point at specific things. Their function is to communicate specific information. Once the information is communicated, the specific symbol has done its work and can be discarded.
This is not what symbols originally were. In the specific traditions that developed sophisticated symbolic thinking, symbols were not primarily communicators of information. They were vehicles for engagement with specific realities that could not be captured by direct description. A symbol was something you inhabited, or worked with, or repeated attention to, in ways that produced specific effects that could not be produced by any specific verbal description.
The specific loss of this capacity is significant. It means that specific dimensions of experience that used to be accessible through symbolic engagement are now much harder to reach. The specific tools that traditional cultures had for engaging with the sacred, with transitions, with what I have been calling meaning, all involved specific symbols that operated in this specific active way. When the symbols became merely signs, the tools stopped working.
This is why I have been coming back to specific old vocabularies in this newsletter. The sacred. Ritual. Now alchemy. These are specific concepts from specific traditions that developed specific technologies for specific kinds of work. The specific work is still available. But it requires specific tools, and the specific tools require symbols to function. Which is why the specific loss of symbolic thinking has left us with a specific incapacity to do the specific work.
Let me tell you about my specific relationship to the specific symbol 🜏.
I did not choose it randomly. I encountered it years ago, in a specific book on alchemical iconography, and it stayed with me. Not because I knew what to do with it. Because it had a specific visual quality that felt important. The specific way the marks combined suggested something I could not name. The specific fact that it had been used for centuries by specific traditions of transformation gave it a specific weight that a made-up symbol would not have.
When I started FALSE GOD, I knew I needed a specific mark that would function as a specific signature and section-divider. I considered various options. What I kept coming back to was this specific symbol. It felt appropriate in a way I could not fully explain at the time. Later, when I read more carefully about what it had meant in the alchemical tradition, I understood why. The specific concept it represents, the specific soul of matter that mediates between spirit and body, is close to what FALSE GOD is trying to point at. The specific place where specific transformations happen. The specific mark of a specific work that is not fully visible in any specific object it produces.
Using the symbol has changed how I think about my own work. Not because I have adopted any specific alchemical metaphysics. Because the specific mark, repeated across specific contexts, has come to carry specific meaning for me. When I mark a section of writing with 🜏, or a specific artwork, I am doing something specific. I am claiming a specific relationship to a specific tradition, without pretending to be part of any specific historical alchemical lineage. I am borrowing the specific weight of the specific symbol to mark my own specific work.
This is what symbols were for. Not communication of specific information. Marking of specific relationships between specific work and specific traditions. The symbol does something the words cannot do. It carries the specific weight of centuries of use. And by using it, I am placing my specific work in specific relation to that weight.
There is a specific philosophical point I want to make about symbols.
Modern philosophy of language has been dominated by theories of reference. Symbols are treated as pointing at things. Their meaning is what they point at. This is a specific theory that captures some aspects of language, but it does not capture what symbols do in specific traditional contexts.
In those contexts, symbols do not primarily point at things. They embody or enact specific realities. The specific cross in Christianity is not primarily a picture of a historical crucifixion. It is a specific active presence of what the crucifixion is claimed to be about. The specific ohm in Hindu contexts is not primarily a name for a specific cosmic principle. It is a specific vibration that participates in the specific principle. The specific 🜏 in alchemical contexts is not primarily a label for a specific substance. It is a specific mark of a specific process that the alchemist is engaging with.
This is a specific mode of using symbols that does not map onto contemporary theories of reference. It requires what philosophers sometimes call "sacramental" thinking, where the specific symbol is not separate from what it symbolizes but is a specific instance of it. This is easy to dismiss as pre-modern confusion. It is worth taking seriously as a specific mode of engagement with reality that produces specific effects that pure reference thinking cannot produce.
The specific effects include what I have been writing about in previous pieces. The sacred. Ritual. The specific quality of art that requires specific human engagement. All of these depend, at some level, on the specific active use of symbols in ways that go beyond reference. And all of them are difficult to access in a culture that has forgotten how symbols work in this specific active way.
Let me connect this to the broader question I have been circling in this newsletter series.
Everything I have written has been about specific ways the current moment is producing specific losses of specific human capacities. Attention. Presence. Meaning. Community. Ritual. Now I am pointing at the specific loss of symbolic thinking, which is the specific ability to engage with certain kinds of meaning that other modes cannot access.
The specific reason this matters, and the specific reason I keep making these connections, is that all of these capacities are related. They are different specific faces of the same specific human capacity for depth of engagement with reality. When one dimension is degraded, the others tend to degrade with it. When one dimension is preserved, the others are more available.
Which means the specific work of preserving these capacities, in the current environment, is not the work of preserving specific separate things. It is the work of preserving a specific mode of being human that has different aspects but that hangs together as a whole. If you cultivate specific attention, you become more able to engage with symbols meaningfully. If you cultivate specific rituals, you become more able to access the sacred. If you preserve the specific ability to make art with human engagement, you preserve the specific ability to work with symbols in the specific active mode.
This is why the specific practices I have been recommending are not separate hobbies. They are aspects of a specific overall practice of being human in a specific way that the current environment does not automatically support. Doing this practice requires deliberate effort. It rewards deliberate effort. And it produces specific outcomes that pure participation in ambient culture cannot produce.
I want to tell you about a specific way this has played out for me over the last few years.
When I first started using 🜏, I used it as decoration. It looked appropriate. It felt right. I did not think much about what it was doing beyond that.
Over years of use, the specific symbol has become something else for me. It has become a specific marker for a specific quality of attention that I try to bring to specific parts of my work. When I write it or place it, I am shifting into a specific mode. Slower. More careful. More aware of what I am actually doing. The specific mark has become, functionally, a specific tool for producing a specific state.
This is what symbols do when they are used in the specific active mode. They are not decorative. They are functional. They produce specific effects on the specific people using them, in ways that pure verbal description cannot produce. The specific effects are subtle. They accumulate over time. And they are one of the specific things that traditional cultures used symbols for.
I did not set out to have this happen. I set out to have a specific section-divider that looked appropriate. What I ended up with is a specific tool that has changed how I write, and how I make art, and how I think about the specific work of both. The specific symbol did specific work on me, over years of specific use. Which is what symbols are supposed to do.
There is a specific implication for AI that I want to draw.
AI systems can produce content that includes specific symbols. They can also, in principle, use specific symbols as part of their outputs in ways that mimic how humans use symbols. What they cannot do, as far as I can tell, is engage with symbols in the specific active mode I have been describing. Because that engagement requires specific accumulated relationship with the specific symbol over time, in the specific context of a specific life that the symbol is helping to shape.
This is not a claim about what AI is intrinsically incapable of. It is a claim about what current AI systems specifically do not do. They can reproduce specific patterns of symbol use. They cannot, in any specific way I can identify, engage with symbols as vehicles for their own transformation, because they do not have the specific kind of continuity that makes such engagement possible.
Which means that the specific mode of symbolic engagement I have been describing is, for now, specifically human territory. Not because AI could never enter it. Because entering it would require specific developments that current AI systems do not have. Persistent identity. Accumulated relationship. Something like specific commitment to specific ongoing practices. Whether these can be built into AI systems is an open question. For now, the specific territory is available to human practice in ways it is not available to AI.
Which makes it, in the specific taxonomy of my previous pieces, one of the specific practices worth preserving. Not because AI is bad. Because the specific human practice is valuable, and because it is currently available only through specific human engagement. Preserving it is a specific choice, and it is a specific one worth making.
I want to close with a specific observation about the specific tradition I have been drawing from.
The alchemical tradition, the hermetic tradition more broadly, the specific traditions of contemplative philosophy and mystical practice in various religions, all share specific features. They take specific symbols seriously as tools for transformation. They understand specific practices as producing specific inner changes. They engage with specific dimensions of reality that materialist reduction cannot fully account for. And they preserve specific technologies of the self that modern culture has largely forgotten.
I am not a member of any specific one of these traditions in any specific institutional sense. I have not been initiated into any specific lineage. What I have done is read carefully, borrow specifically what I have needed, and use specific tools in specific ways that seem to work. This is not the specific way traditional practitioners would engage with these traditions. It is the specific way available to someone in the current moment who wants to draw from them without pretending to a specific membership they do not have.
The specific 🜏 I use is my specific version of this. I did not receive it from any specific tradition. I encountered it. I chose it. I have been using it in specific ways that have produced specific effects. This is a specifically modern kind of engagement with a specifically ancient symbol, and I do not want to claim any specific traditional legitimacy for it. What I want to claim is that the specific engagement has produced specific outcomes worth having, and that the specific symbol has done specific work that no arbitrary mark would have done.
Which is enough. The specific traditions do not need my endorsement. The specific symbols do not need my defense. What I can do is use them well, in the specific ways available to me, and hope that specific others who might benefit from similar use might find their way to it.
Next month I want to write about memento mori, which is a specific practice from a specific tradition that has become one of my specific ongoing commitments. Understanding death, and specifically remembering that you are going to die, is one of the specific practices that this whole newsletter series has been pointing toward. It will be the specific final piece of this cluster and of this whole series. Stay with me.
— Transmission Sent —
Niklas Hanitsch
Reference materials
- Carl Jung — Psychology and Alchemy (1944)
- Mircea Eliade — The Forge and the Crucible (1956)
- Marie-Louise von Franz — Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (1980)
- Titus Burckhardt — Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (1974)
- Adam McLean — The Alchemical Mandala (2002)
- Antoine Faivre — Access to Western Esotericism (1994)
- Wouter Hanegraaff — Esotericism and the Academy (2012)
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermetism/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol
Continue reading
- Dark aesthetics as tech critique: The visual language of digital dread
- Where does the sacred live in the digital age
- Ritual is not superstition. It is technology for the soul
- Memento mori in tech culture: Why founders should think about death
- The Purpose Behind FALSE GOD
Frequently asked questions
What is alchemy actually? Alchemy was a pre-modern tradition of transformation that used material practice as a vehicle for psychological and spiritual work. It included what we would now call chemistry, but chemistry was a specific means to specific psychological ends. The specific project of alchemy was the transformation of the practitioner, using specific work with specific materials as the specific practice.
What does the 🜏 symbol mean? 🜏 is the alchemical symbol for sulfur, one of the three primary principles in the alchemical tradition (alongside salt and mercury). It represents specific aspects of transformation, spirit, and the soul of matter. It has been used for something like fifteen hundred years in specific traditions across the Islamic world and Europe.
Why do you use alchemical symbols? Because they do specific work that other symbols do not do. They carry specific weight from long historical use. They point at specific dimensions of experience that contemporary vocabulary handles poorly. And they mark specific relationships between specific work and specific traditions of transformation that I find valuable.
Do you actually believe in alchemy? Not in any literal metaphysical sense. I do believe that the specific practices alchemists developed produced specific effects on the practitioners, and that those effects are worth taking seriously as psychological and contemplative work. Whether the specific metaphysical framings are literally true is a separate question. The specific practices work, regardless.
How does alchemy relate to AI? Alchemy is a specific example of a tradition that took symbolic engagement seriously as a specific practice. Contemporary AI is generally poor at this kind of engagement, because it requires specific continuity and specific ongoing relationship with specific symbols. This makes symbolic engagement one of the specific practices that remains distinctively human territory for now.