Sublime

foreshadow a future filled with the seductively colonizing commodities of American modernity.

Alchemy was a slowly evolving, loosely knit, and not mutually exclusive group of Gnostic and Hermetic theories concerning human origins and the dichotomy of spirit and matter. Its roots reached back deep into time, to at least Dynastic Egypt and the slow accumulation of jealously guarded secrets of processes for dyeing fabric, gilding metals, and

"Transmutation" is a term usually employed to designate the ancient art of the transmutation of metals--particularly of the base metals into gold.

Considered from the wider perspective of the history of the human spirit, alchemy and its goal appeared not only as physical processes leading to chemistry, but also as a religious discipline whose goal was the transformation of earthly man into an illuminated philosopher.

The archetypal qualities of the Alchemist reveal her to be a mistress of transformation: she’s not afraid to burn things back to the bare bones to expose what lies beneath. She’s both a visionary and a catalyst for the irreversible changes she conjures into being; in effect, she reimagines, and so recreates, the world.

This was a sophisticated mercantile economy in which paper money was supplied by private enterprise and credit was based on the sale of contracts for the future supply of salt to the government – a commodity for which demand was exceptionally stable.