The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy in Survive the Jive Reading List

Sep 19, 2017 Frederik Vandelannoote rated it really liked it

Shelves: traditionalism, religion

Like all books of Eliade, this is again rich in content. The book is an ideal introduction to the studie of the backgrounds of alchemie, its evolution and historie.

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Jun 03, 2021 Paithan rated it really liked it

Shelves: peterson-book-list

An interesting book. For the first half I really didn't understand what the point was. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't understand why Eliade wrote this until I got to the last chapter.
But by that time, I understood what he was saying.

Before the agricultural revolution, humanity organized itself in pastoralist tribes, and had beliefs that reflected that lifestyle. One of those beliefs, Eliade points out, was that smiths and metals were not venerated. That changed with the agricultural revolut An interesting book. For the first half I really didn't understand what the point was. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't understand why Eliade wrote this until I got to the last chapter.
But by that time, I understood what he was saying.

Before the agricultural revolution, humanity organized itself in pastoralist tribes, and had beliefs that reflected that lifestyle. One of those beliefs, Eliade points out, was that smiths and metals were not venerated. That changed with the agricultural revolution. The entire spiritual landscape of humanity was transformed. All of a sudden iron and metal had a sacred quality, and the men who could transform it into various shapes became something akin to sorcerers. In some cultures they were considered more powerful than shamans. The smith made the iron shirt, after all, that protected the shaman from evil spirits. Smiths are commonly linked with royalty. There are some sources that claim Genghis Khan was a smith, because his rise to power.

Ancients also saw male and female types of ores and rationalized the smelting process as a marriage between two types of ores in order to make something stronger, which is essentially what marriage does for human beings.

About halfway through this text I figured out what Eliade was trying to say. He starts off with the mystical importance of iron, but then he moved on to Alchemy, and how it was never a scientific process. It was a spiritual process. Jung writes about this in more detail.

The point is that creating things is divine. Changing nature is the realm of the gods. By changing ore into metal, or children into adults, you are doing the work of the gods. It makes you divine.
Towards the end of the text, Eliade makes a very interesting point. Just as the agricultural revolution wiped out the spiritual beliefs of the nomads, the industrial revolution wiped out the spiritual beliefs of our near ancestors. We have not yet seen the results of this revolution as it will take hundreds of years to fully come about, but it is happening all around us.

It gives you hope. In some way, the Christian message will be rebuilt. It will probably not have the same images or messages, but it will be there and it will help human beings to become happy and create order long into the future. We are simply living in a great transition period, so large we don鈥檛 even know we are standing in it.
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