Most people miss the point about modern chemistry being distinct from traditional alchemy and sorcery. (Indeed Science seems to use deflection to cause people to miss the point. Misdirection.) The belief about the spirit in the chemicals is not the main way that modern science differs from traditional sorcery. The point is the knowledge of the humans studying the reacting chemicals. In alchemy, spirits would be invoked both to give insight into the chemistry and to aid that chemistry. The expert alchemist would seek better knowledge of the reactions than their competitors and better secret ability to aid the chemistry. This would be for gaining the upper hand over their competitor alchemists plus wealth, such as by finding a way to convert base metals into gold. In the natural sorcery the spirits were initially still considered to be there but instead of invoking them or invoking angels to help the chemistry and give knowledge of its secrets, the natural sorcery techniques (arts) relied on experimentation. Eventually this took precedence over using spirits. But the aim of finding secrets of the chemistry and gaining the upper hand over competitors and even of converting base metals into gold, remained. Much of the same purpose remains in natural sorcery, today called modern science. In the Book of Enoch there is lamentation about there being ‘an angel in the fire’ when metallurgy alchemy is used. There are many mentions of spirits, (elemental spirits, as the New Testament puts it), in forces and bodies of Nature. Yet the main thrust is to warn of the destructiveness that can happen when humans learn the secrets of Nature, taught them by angels against God’s will. The know-how can disrupt the social fabric of human society, requiring wrathful intervention by God as humans cry in anguish at the evils that result. Like mythology’s Pandoras Box. Yet scientists four hundred years ago started modern science as a way to open to themselves knowledge of the very same things for which the Book of Enoch gave its warnings: cosmetics, unnatural breeding, metallurgy, plant extracts for medicine, and so forth. These and other subjects the first modern scientists focussed on as so-called natural magic. Natural sorcery, so-to-speak.
