Sorcerer's Stone: A Beginner's Guide to Alchemy

Great book, Great content. Several typos and repeating paragraphs but a great author and authority on alchemy.

I was assigned in my spiritual school to study alchemy and present my findings to the class. I did research on books and ordered about a dozen. As I flipped through them, this one felt like the place to start. I absolutely loved this book and it caused me to fall in love with alchemy. I found that alchemy encompasses pretty much all of the topics I’ve been studying for years, from astrology to Qigong. I just finished reading this book and now I’m super eager to continue my studies into alchemy. I would give this book 5 stars, except for the fact that it has many typos and errors. There are several times, particularly in the chapter on metals, that whole paragraphs are repeated. There are missing symbols that I drew in myself, and many misspelled words and missing punctuation. Despite all that, I throughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it as a good starting place. It was easy to follow and understand and has a ton of valuable information in it.

This is a great book by an excellent author. The content will make perfect sense if you are open to it and will produce years of meditative contemplation. Although this is more of a book for beginners, it is nonetheless very much interesting and helpful. It has diverse illustrations with alchemical drawings, and it thoroughly explains what alchemy entails in an interesting manner.It doesn’t dive into the deeper aspects of alchemy, but I guess that’s expected because it’s a beginner’s book. One negative part is that this book has some errors and typos that were slightly distracting, but overall, it was good.

I really do like this book. I'm taking my time reading it and really enjoying the experiments at the end of each section. I'm learning a lot and even reading some things I already knew but had no idea that these things were necessarily related to alchemy. There is so much to take in and I can see myself reading it again just to make sure I didn't miss anything.However, I am frustrated at some points with editing issues.For example on page 183 there is this sentence: "One property of colloid is that distinguishes it from other solutions is that colloidal particles scatter light." Yes, I typed that the way it's written in the book. And no, it doesn't make sense. I think it's supposed to say, "One property of colloid that distinguishes it from other solutions is that colloidal particles scatter light."In the same paragraph there's also this sentence: "When a beam of light passes through a normal (such as a solution of table salt), there is so little scattering of light that the path of light cannot be seen and only be detected by certain sensitive instruments." Back to the beginning of that sentence...through a normal what? Yes, it's probably 'solution.' But it's still an incomplete sentence.These are only a couple of examples. I've come across many editing issues very much like this. And when I come across them, I have to back up and reread and piece the sentence together.I understand this happens in writing, which is why proofreaders are good to utilize.I'd still recommend the book for a beginner despite these errors but just be prepared for this. I'm finding it rather frustrating.

Dennis William Hauck is an outstanding author, and one who is thoroughly knowledgeable in the area of alchemy. He has written several books in the field of alchemy, and each one is a classic. This book, obviously, is for beginners, and is easily accessible for the general reader. No prior knowledge is necessary to understand. This book is heavily illustrated with alchemical drawings from important publications over the past 400 years. There is even a handy section in the back listing books for further reading, alchemy websites worth visiting, etc. Also, be sure to do a search of "Dennis William Hauck" on YouTube for recorded presentations by him.

This book is a keeper. It goes through the history of alchemy, the symbolism, the medieval methods, and the underlying spiritual meanings. It has the full text of the Emerald Tablet. It has a glossary, a list of symbols, and nice pictures. It's a good general reference book on the subject without excess meandering. It's like a miniature textbook.

amazing clearly written book to give an outline of Alchemy and it symbolism and procedures

The book gave a pretty good introduction to the subject. I enjoyed it very much.There are many typographic mistakes however, like paragraphs repeated one after the other etc. But other than that it was very usefull and I feel I learned a lot from it and sparked my interest in "the field"

Love the book. Reading it a second time. Easy to understand.

I needed some reference information on the alchemical process and this is ideal.

Enjoyed the book.Good grounding

What a great introductory to spiritual alchemy. This is an excellent book and is very hands on. it is not so much concentrating on just laboratory alchemy, or spagyrics (however it is talked about and explained) but rather it also really emphasizes Alchemical theory and practice of inner or spiritual alchemy, which I thought was quite a breath of fresh air. The theory, metaphor and symbolism is decoded and made accessible so that one may understand what these symbols and metaphors correspond in the spiritual process. I have studied and practiced eastern systems of inner alchemy (kriya yoga, tantra yogas, jnana yoga, Raja Yoga, Daoist Qigong Nei gong/Nei Dan, etc) for many years and there are some striking similarities to these eastern systems. I can see that the western paths do appear to have the same goals and similar outcomes achieved in slightly different ways. So if you are interested in the western traditions of spiritual inner alchemy, this would be a good place to start as it gives a good overview and introduction and gives "experiments" or practices which gives the reader an experiential method to make it more real in their life and to get some degree of a feel for the process of western inner alchemy.

I bought this book because of the hype in philosopher stone, but i knew there is something that what is alchemy and what people have done it in all fields to help other...