So if alchemists are not to be taken literally

Then the alkahest is the stone itself? And if everything is stone, then we can take any ingredient, subject it to the proper processing, and it will turn into a stone of some sort without the need to add a metal.

that idear has come to me before. maybe the alkahest is somekind of neutral stone that can be orientated to a certain way with the metal

the cool thing about the stone is... it is technically 1 thing that does all of the wonderful effects

the whole art revolves round 1 thing and the principles of mercury, sulfur and salt

which while everyone will tell you this is an allegory.... its actually very correct no matter what angle you look at it

"physically, mentally, emotionally, etc."

and this is why the art is confusing its based on "universal principles" therefore you can see it everywhere and that is what makes it so much harder because you need to have a specific goal for what you want and search it out

for if you try to just learn all the knowledge especially without practice you will struggle an unnecessary struggle

all you must understand are the universal principles and then make your goal...... like say you want to make an elixir out of an orange

use the principles to study the orange and make an elixir out of an orange

Take the juice, remove it save it for later (watery part mercury)

steam distill the oil out or extract with alcohol (sulfur)

burn the body to an ash white as snow (salt)

then what you do is mix the sulfur and the salt... to make another salt (this will take time its like Saponification)

then you dissolve this new salt in the orange juice and either circulate with the orange juice and drink it as is

the fact your getting all the minerals out of peel... and still getting the oil and juice with out damaging it ... make it much better than eating just an orange and plus you waste nothing

the alkhahest is actually pretty awesome.... it dissolves unlike anything ive ever seen and it makes the metals readily fusible for any path which if you read the books they spend a great deal of time and effort dissolving metals.. and with the alkahest it is done with ease

Alchemy basically is the fact that there second law of nature that rules all things yet in nature its action is spread out so thin that we do not notice it.

It is just like the two sets of modern laws of physics. We know how our every day stuff works but when you get down to the quantum size scale particles can disappear and reaper and time travel. We don't see this stuff on our normal size scale but that does not mean its not possible. It just means that many trillions of these events would have to happen all at the same time, which just does not happen naturally, but I am sure there is a way to induce it.

Same thing with alchemy, there is another law of nature that remains hidden because naturally it is spread so thin. This other law involves strange new concepts like metals growing from one metal to the next until they reach the perfection of silver or gold.

I think the alchemist can be taken literally and there is this strange other law that rules. Its principles just need to be used to collect enough of it in one place, concentrate it, so we can see and use it rather than it just working away unseen is small little corners of matter.