The whole Earth, Air, Water and Fire concept was lifted from Hermetic Magic IIRC. Alchemists sought to combine all those things together to achieve their desired results - taking all solids to be "Earth", all gasses "Air", all liquids "Water" - and using heat "Fire". Came up with some interesting results purely by accident - Phosphorus, for example.
Speaking of these type of symbols, this very interesting Renaissance alchemist / physician
Paracelsus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
had a very interesting theory about something he called the "Alphabet of the Magi" which screams plot hook as does the very life of this very colorful character.
Alphabet of the Magi
Interestingly, he is a good example of the "rational" scientist of his age. He was considered an almost miraculously successful surgeon and physician who rejected magic in a famous treatise called
Archidoxes of Magic, was credited for naming if not discovering zinc, (a very important metal for the creation of Brass), invented laudanum one of the first anesthetics, and is considered a father of the modern sciences of botany and toxicology.
But on the other hand he also wrote magic talismans, used astrology in his science and his healing, and engraved angelic names as runes to effect healing. Some people also link him to the original Rosicrucians.
The life of this charming and eccentric character kind of highlights something I'd like to point out about alchemy itself.
Their methods often seemed magical or irrational, but I think it's a mistake to simplify it to that level, because their results (both intended and achieved) were frequently very practical. I think it's far less interesting to look at the symbolism of the Philsophers stone and make that into a magical item, than to plunge a bit deeper into the reality of these people and their methods.
This issue of the universal solvent for example, had very practical real life ramifications. The Arab alchemist Al-Kindi invented Aqua Fortis for a very specific reason, the reason was to seperate gold from the baser metals such as silver, lead and copper. Until these acids had been discovered, gold found in nature was always a mixture of silver, copper, lead and other metals, which is why very old gold artifiacts had different colors, some reddish, some more silvery. Simply melting the gold would not separate out the metals.
Aqua regia, a combination of acids which dissolved gold, allowed the refining of gold to it's highest purity (99%)
Both Aqua Fortis and Aqua Regia are credited to an anonymous 13th Century European Alchemist called "Pseudo Geber" from whose name we have the term "Gibberish".
Another very interesting character:
Pseudo-Geber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pseudo Geber had named himself after the 9th Century Arab or Persian alchemist
Al Jabir whose works had been translated in Italy possibly as early as the 12th Century, as well as those of
Al Khindi,
Omar Kayham and other very interesting and knowlegable Alchemists of the so called Muslim Golden Age.
Pseudo Geber was essentially introducing the work of these men to European physicians, alchemists, clerics and magicians (the line between these professions being often blurred) and synthesising them into new ideas, all for very pragmatic purposes.
I'll post again a bit later on some of the specific skills I think you could borrow from these men for an RPG.
G.
