Punch Kids

PSF: I hadn’t thought about Virginal as related to alchemy, but the concept did come to mind when listening to Theater of Mineral NADEs, mainly because of the obvious connections to Middle Ages folk music.

EK: All 3 of the albums you mentioned are related with Al-Kemia (Arabic for chemistry); the cover art for example on theater of mineral is from a Dutch alchemical painting in the Amsterdam museum; The Story of Iceland has a woodblock from “prophecies of Paracelsus,” and Virginal has some emblems from an engraving in a book called Viridarium Chymicum. I saw it in a book called the “alchemical mandalas” by Adam McLean, who is a great scholar. It seems to me that the science of matter, and the science of sound vibrations are quite related, perhaps they are different dimensions. That comes across a great dualistic divide between matter and energy, or body and mind, or whatever you want to call it, but I just like the alchemical symbols and art; maybe if they represented it in paintings, why not do the same in a piece of music?

Link: Interview with Eyvind Kang

Here is a nice introduction to alchemy.

It is common today to think of alchemy as the mere precursor of chemistry or a primitive and not very accurate attempt to describe nature. This is entirely untrue. Alchemy, from its beginnings, was a means to transform the human soul from its base (lead) state to its Enlightened and eternal state (gold). Alchemy lies at the heart of the world’s three dominant modern religions.

Link: A Brief History of Alchemy