Alchemist

An Alchemist is a person who is, or was, involved in the practice of Alchemy.  Alchemy is not only what we have been taught in our formal education.  It seems to have been much more than we have been taught.

Alchemists were considered to always be in search of the Philosophers Stone so that they could turn Lead into Gold.  More likely they were really on a mission to learn about morality and intelligence, and to teach their morality and intelligence to others. Sometimes I wonder if either goal of Alchemy has ever been achieved.  Both morality and Gold are still rare in the world today.  I have seen references that support the idea than Lead has been turned into Gold.  Also modern science seems to be able to do this but at great cost.

Many early Masons were alchemists.  Many probably still are, perhaps in more ways than one.

The Freemasons can still be considered to be alchemists to this day, even though the Masons that I know do not sit around in the Lodge and attempt to turn lead into Gold. (At least I have not observed this in our Lodge.  Perhaps I missed that meeting. That is Ok since I also also seem to have missed all of the meetings where the Wild Sex Parties are said to have taken place.)  Maybe we should work harder on this goal of making Gold as we have some repairs to make on our Masonic Hall and could use the Gold to pay for the repairs.  A roof of Gold shingles would look rather nice.  Come on guys, lets get to work on creating Gold.  It would beat selling raffle tickets or doing fundraising dinners.)

Much of the science we now know know developed from the work done by the original alchemists.

Lead can be thought of as the Base Metal and Gold the pure metal.  The Gold of the Alchemists is sometimes considered to be the Perfect Ashlar of Freemasonry, just like the Base Metal is said to be the same as the Rough Ashlar of Freemasonry.

Freemasonry, and the Alchemists, both attempt to make things better for mankind by teaching men to be better human beings.