Thank you Anna for a well-written and nicely reasoned article. I quibble merely with two assertions you make. The first is that alchemists were "really" talking about mental rather than physical transmutation. When I studied the various historical documents many decades ago it seemed to me there was a very notable focus on actually performing alchemical transmutations. We tend, retrospectively, to rationalize irrational behaviors in order to make the external (and especially human-oriented) world seem less chaotic and threatening. Acknowledging human folly rarely leaves us at ease.

The second quibble is that you over-extend your assertions. The reductio ad absurdum is the case of someone subjected to torture. Attempting to turn that set of excruciating sensations into "anything we want it to be" is naive at best and delusional at worst.

Aside from these two quibbles, I greatly enjoyed your article and look forward to reading many more in the weeks ahead.