Robert Fludd
“Our gold is not vulgar gold, but living gold, the true gold of God... There is a spiritual chemistry which purifies with tears, sublimes with morality and virtues, adorns with sacred graces, makes even the putrid body and vile dust to receive life, and makes the soul worthy of the contemplation of heavenly things and the angelic world. This is the use of spiritual alchemy, by which, through the power of the resurrection of the Iesus Christus Dominus Noster, the end will be attained.” [Robert Fludd]
Franz Hartmann
"ALCHEMY is that science which results from a knowledge of God, Nature, and Man. A perfect knowledge of either of them cannot be obtained without the knowledge of the other two, for these three are one and inseparable. Alchemy is not merely an intellectual, but a spiritual science; because that which belongs to the spirit can only be spiritually known. Nevertheless, it is a science dealing with material things, for spirit and matter are only two opposite manifestations or "poles" of the eternal one."
"The nature of Alchemy is clearly explained by Johannes Tritheim, who says:—
"God is an essential and hidden fire in all things, and especially in man. That fire generates all things. It has generated them, and will generate them in the future, and that which is generated is the true divine light in all eternity. God is a fire; but no fire can burn, and no light appear within nature without the addition of air to cause the combustion, and likewise the Holy Spirit in you must act as a divine 'air' or breath, coming out of the divine fire and breathing upon the fire within the soul, so that the light will appear, for the light must be nourished by the fire, and this light is love and gladness and joy within the eternal deity."
"To express this in other words we may say—All things are made of thought, and exist in the universal mind (the astral light), and within each is latent the will, by whose action they may become developed and their powers unfolded. This takes place under favourable circumstances by the slow and unconscious action of the universal will acting in nature, and may be accomplished in a very short time by the aid of the conscious will of the alchemist; but before the will of a person can accomplish such wonders in external substances, his will must first become self-conscious within itself; the light that shines from the centre of his own heart, must become living and bright before it can act upon those substances with which the Alchemist deals."
"There is a visible substance and an invisible one; a tangible water and one that is beyond the reach of perception by the physical senses; a visible fire and an invisible magic fire; neither can either of these accomplish anything without the other, for in the practice of Alchemy, as in the regeneration of man, that which is above must be made to penetrate that which is below, so that the lower may enterinto a higher state of existence." [In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom, by Franz Hartmann, c. 1890]
See Also