I don't believe in alchemistry either.
(I was studying as a chemist firstly, I don't remember Chemistry very well - when I was studying it, I was visiting a library and read Nietzsche, Aristotle, and other philosophers, and finally got changed my university from a chemical faculty to a philosophy. I only spend almost 2 years of the organic chemistry. That's why I don't know it so well.)
But anyway, I know that there are no magic, the elements are united and the complex compounds are made. It's just an ordinary puzzle. Unlike physicists chemists are not so lucky, their work may be totally computerized. It's possible to create a super-program to calculate all the Earth elements on the Earth, and make them being united into the most different proportions to get the mechanisms of their work. Yes, I know that it doesn't mean there are no mistakes, because Chemistry is an empirical science, but too many laws have been already discovered, so there's no need to be alarmed of the final results.
By the way, I got acquainted with philosophy via alchemistry! I remember I had to make a work about Iodine and it's most stable structures in a complex mixes. And when I was reading all those literature (it was so boring!) I encountered some Medieval tractatus in our library (by the way this library has been ruined by another Russian rocket... they still continue to destroy Kharkiv...). And when I was reading to those tractatus, there were... gosh... some weird stuff like: how to ressurect frogs, or to generate a life spontaneously! (the Spontaneous generation)... Those authors seriously tried to tell about making alive some Basilisks (βᾰσῐλίσκος ), or another weird reptiles... It was totally stupidity, but (!) - it was interesting to read. After that I went to library to read anything about philosophy more to understand what was that. So, that was an interesting time for me =)
Thank you for asking me. Take care!
Please don't get mad at me for what I'm about to say because I don't mean it in a bad way and I don't mean it in a put you down and make me superior kind of way by any means ok?
and what I say includes me as well I'm by no means exempt to any of this infact I only know of these things because I have gone through them so this is personal experience I'm not better then anyone and I never want anyone to think that I think that because I don't however I know what I know because I have liberated myself from them and when you are free from these things they become completely obvious to you and you can never go back to the old way of thinking .
So where to start?, So when you were reading about how to make things come back to life or make a half human half horse and things like that what you were reading was 100% locked hidden meaning code language meant to bring about the response that you had so that if a person not meant to read it came across a book by accident and started to read it they would think it's some kind of freak crazy story book and not give it the time of day
Kind of like we can encrypt an email before we send it so that only the intended person can know what it says, same principle.
Secondly science most definitely does magik but like I said the world is under several spells and cannot see the truth to this reality
And science uses words to demystify magik
Thirdly your opinion is not your own it was given to you this is why it mirrors the majority is because the majority was given their opinion
All the tools you have mentally for deductive reasoning, rationalizing things, making sense of the world, all of them have been given to you since birth till now without you asking for them and nothing is free in this world so then why were you and everyone else given these tools?
Easy it's so that even if you have a curiosity and think that there might be more to this world then what's on the surface you will conclude exactly what you have previously stated
Think about this, why do you hold the opinion that magic is this woo woo nonsensical kind of a joke thing and that if it can be scientifically explained and laid out logically that it is now no longer magic and that if it can be logically laid out scientifically judged and made sense of that it's true?
What made those parameters the correct parameters to use? Granted I know we all use them but that does not mean they're correct it just means that we all use them
Why can something be looked at as magical until science figures it out and explains it to everybody and then all of a sudden it loses its magical zest and it just becomes average logical scientific information?
This is never questioned
Hollywood has made magik into the magic that kids enjoy watching and adults roll their eyes at and don't take it seriously yet throughout history people took it seriously and there were many times that people were far more advanced then we are today so it wasn't out of ignorance
But the devil is in the details and if you add that Snake to words you get Swords because words are more effective then any other tool in existence
1 man can bring the entire world down if he can Spell the proper Spell by formulating the formula of his Spell that's why it's called Spelling
And Hollywood gets its name from the magicians wand which was made from wood from a holly tree which is why it's called Hollywood and what's one of their famous emblems there's many of them but one that should be fairly familiar to people is the wizard with the wand in Disney which was created by a 33rd degree Mason want to add
And 4th there are different types of levels to magic and the one we are talking about and the one that most people ever talk about it this one the lower level physical one there is a higher level but there's no point in talking about that one if the 1st one isn't excepted then the second one definitely won't be so I won't spin my wheels on that one for now.
Let's just think about 1 small logical mental exercise shall we?
So living things are different than not living things because living things move and generally create body heat with the exception of some things like reptiles and other old world creatures if there are any and living things consume other living things I order to live because that's the price of life is death either of you or something else doesn't matter something has to die for you to keep living
And dead things don't do any of these things as far as we can observe with are God given faculties
So simplistic checklist that doesn't require imagination
#1 moves by its own means.
#2 creates heat (metabolism)
#3 requires food source to consume for energy
3 things that only living things do
Now look at computers
They move on their own yes we program them to do so but you could argue that the soul wirelessly programs the body what to do be a mental connection that we haven't established yet scientifically but regardless the computer will be in a non-moving state and in a random given time all of a sudden start moving again under its own accord as part of its programming just like one could say we do the same thing
Secondly it creates heat doing this servers get really hot if you ever been inside a mega server room before you see all the antifreeze piping going everywhere and a huge fans to try to keep the place from melting down it creates so much heat and the more you ask it to do the more heat it creates just like the human body it's considerably hot when you go from sitting to running and lifting things AKA doing more
And 3rd would be these computers require lots of energy the more you ask it to do the more energy it needs yes it uses electricity which has yet to even be defined by science but let's just use the term that it has which is energy and that is no different than humans because we eat food our bodies break that down into glycogen and basic amino acids which are then absorbed into the muscle fiber where the mitochondria further convert it into ATP
and that ATP is raw energy which then the nucleus of the muscle fiber receives and upon receiving explodes the energy causing a contraction of the muscle fiber and this contraction is multiplied by hundreds of thousands of different fibers and then that muscle consequently contracts and you have body movement so it is in a since the same mechanism
And yet to us a computer is just a computer it's not alive because it doesn't look like us it doesn't act like us so naturally it can't be alive according to the standard opinion because for several generations it has been demystified through language and words science has made it unscary and normal and not only do we think it's normal we use it day anything out so we've been desensitized to it yet if you were to go to an island somewhere where technology has never been anywhere close to it I guarantee you the natives will think it is straight up magic and some weird entity of some form and fundamentally speaking who's right? .
I mean after all I'm using piece of alchemical technology it's a scrying mirror which uses precious metals certain crystals and a very time intensive extremely complex pattern to create and I'm instantaneously sending this information to you from the other side of the planet in a way that you can't see going through the air with your eyes or feel or touch and yet somehow it's getting sent to you faster than any plane or bird can fly ...
Perspective is everything.
who ever said that something has to be unexplainable inorder to be magical? and that if it can be explained then it's not magical?.