(no subject)
((OOC: This is a rough draft of Ed's preliminary report, which I am counting as meta. I am only pointing this out bc Ed would not have thought to label this as meta. Though it clearly is.))
Alchemy as religion, opposed to alchemy as science.
Amestran alchemy is composed of three principles: Knowledge, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction. If you do not understand the characteristics and qualities of the elements with which you are working, there is very little opportunity for success. Likewise, if you mistake one or more of the elements you are working with for something else, your transmutations will meet with limited success, or fail outright.
Amestran alchemy also operates under the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Put very simply, this law can be seen as a parallel for the Law of Conservation of Mass, but it goes so much deeper than that. It refers to materials, certainly, but also time and effort, sheer energy involved. This law is also, for example, the reason there is a taboo against the transmutation of gold. It's actually a very simple transmutation, which is the majority of the problem. Gold has monetary value in our society, and the effort and materials involved to create gold does not reflect its worth to us. But I digress.
Because of our history, a large part of our alchemy focuses on destruction. Not necessarily the phase of alchemy, but the outcome of it. This is due, in a large part, to the use of State Alchemists as a military force. It has been one of our greatest strengths as a nation, but our beliefs of superiority are certainly a weakness.
Human alchemy is illegal, and one of our greatest taboos. I believe that tampering with the life of any animal should be equally taboo, but that is not my place to say. I think that it was forays of these sorts that led to Ishval's total outlaw of alchemy. There is very little that I could find about biological alchemy; there seemed to be a general undercurrent of distaste for it throughout the alchemical texts from the region that i was able to salvage. After all, alchemy with its basis in religion is far more fragile, its rules more rigid than alchemy based in science.
Thus, if one believes that every animal, plant, organism, is "God's Creation" it would be considered an extreme act of egoism to presume to change them. Not to mention, when one's immortal soul hangs in the balance, one is far more loathe to act in opposition to the wishes of one's god. Ishvalan alchemy, therefore, concerned itself very little with any aspect of organic alchemy. They were beginning to make some breakthroughs in plant alchemy (since plants are not sentient like animals, this seemed to be more acceptable) when all records of Ishvalan alchemy cease, replaced with the religious outlaw of the practice.
We may consider their practice of alchemy archaic and overly traditional, but because of the religion-based restrictions of their alchemy, they were forced to spread in different directions than Amestran or even Xingian alchemy. For the time period and technological restrictions, Ishval had a truly impressive knowledge of the way weather works. Being a desert people, they were very dependent upon the whims of the weather, and some of their first forays into alchemy were in an attempt to learn more about the weather and ways of controlling it. There are records of group alchemy, something very rarely done here, of 10 to 15 Ishvalans minimum, working together to bring rain to drought-starved crops. With success. It involved the use of huge transmutation circles.
References to these circles are vague, and I have yet to discover any diagrams of a full one. This is extremely disappointing, because the notation of some of the sigils employed is really interesting. They used some extremely archaic symbols for earth, air, water, and the sun (fire),the components of weather and the so-called "four elements". However, these circles were highly complex and incorporated a number of interior circles. Along these circles, the sigils for the four elements were combined.
This shows a higher level of understanding of the alchemy they were dealing with. The sigils were actually blended to help create the desired weather. For example, I believe that a particular sigil combining a representation of air and sun (fire) was intended to create a certain type of air front or air current (the direct translation was something like "river of air") that would bring rain or thunderstorms. A sigil combining earth and water and a negation was used to ward off flooding of parched land (I think it was to help the ground absorb the rain faster). There was another, more complicated symbol blending air, water, and earth, which seemed to represent the water-filled clouds they were creating.
At the center of every transmutation circle that successfully harnessed the weather was one of the most complex sigils I have ever seen, at least for this type of alchemy, which incorporates no living components. It contains truly ancient symbols for the four elements; so old, I have yet to be able to decipher it into its respective pieces.
Every sigil alchemists use for their transmutation circles can be broken down to the point where a single symbol (usually fairly simplistic) represents a single idea. However, the sigil that has been repeated over and over throughout all of these Ishvalan texts may be so old and archaic, with no references to its true source left that it is as close to a true amalgam as alchemy can provide. The union between the four elements that it represents cannot be broken down without destroying the meaning of at least one of the four. Or, at least, with the current understanding we have of the elements. In spite of that, I am certain that it once was composed of simpler sigils; we have simply misplaced the techniques with which to separate them into their bases.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Looking back at where I started, apparently I've gone very off topic.
I was, admittedly, very surprised when I discovered the extent of what Ishvalan alchemists had done. (Not that I think I've seen the true extent of their accomplishments, but with only crumbling texts to work with, and all of them encoded in a foreign language, I think that my understanding will always be somewhat limited.) Though Ishvalan alchemists were limited by the precepts of their religion as to what aspects of alchemy they could study, clearly they excelled at those subjects to which they dedicated themselves. From the fragmented descriptions I've been piecing together from these texts, I have begun attempting to reconstruct one of their arrays. Obviously not at its true size, but even scaling it has proven difficult. I'm going to have to requisition controlled space with which to test at every stage, because I have nothing to compare to, in order to gauge my success, so trial and error is the only viable path.
Alchemy as religion, opposed to alchemy as science.
Amestran alchemy is composed of three principles: Knowledge, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction. If you do not understand the characteristics and qualities of the elements with which you are working, there is very little opportunity for success. Likewise, if you mistake one or more of the elements you are working with for something else, your transmutations will meet with limited success, or fail outright.
Amestran alchemy also operates under the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Put very simply, this law can be seen as a parallel for the Law of Conservation of Mass, but it goes so much deeper than that. It refers to materials, certainly, but also time and effort, sheer energy involved. This law is also, for example, the reason there is a taboo against the transmutation of gold. It's actually a very simple transmutation, which is the majority of the problem. Gold has monetary value in our society, and the effort and materials involved to create gold does not reflect its worth to us. But I digress.
Because of our history, a large part of our alchemy focuses on destruction. Not necessarily the phase of alchemy, but the outcome of it. This is due, in a large part, to the use of State Alchemists as a military force. It has been one of our greatest strengths as a nation, but our beliefs of superiority are certainly a weakness.
Human alchemy is illegal, and one of our greatest taboos. I believe that tampering with the life of any animal should be equally taboo, but that is not my place to say. I think that it was forays of these sorts that led to Ishval's total outlaw of alchemy. There is very little that I could find about biological alchemy; there seemed to be a general undercurrent of distaste for it throughout the alchemical texts from the region that i was able to salvage. After all, alchemy with its basis in religion is far more fragile, its rules more rigid than alchemy based in science.
Thus, if one believes that every animal, plant, organism, is "God's Creation" it would be considered an extreme act of egoism to presume to change them. Not to mention, when one's immortal soul hangs in the balance, one is far more loathe to act in opposition to the wishes of one's god. Ishvalan alchemy, therefore, concerned itself very little with any aspect of organic alchemy. They were beginning to make some breakthroughs in plant alchemy (since plants are not sentient like animals, this seemed to be more acceptable) when all records of Ishvalan alchemy cease, replaced with the religious outlaw of the practice.
We may consider their practice of alchemy archaic and overly traditional, but because of the religion-based restrictions of their alchemy, they were forced to spread in different directions than Amestran or even Xingian alchemy. For the time period and technological restrictions, Ishval had a truly impressive knowledge of the way weather works. Being a desert people, they were very dependent upon the whims of the weather, and some of their first forays into alchemy were in an attempt to learn more about the weather and ways of controlling it. There are records of group alchemy, something very rarely done here, of 10 to 15 Ishvalans minimum, working together to bring rain to drought-starved crops. With success. It involved the use of huge transmutation circles.
References to these circles are vague, and I have yet to discover any diagrams of a full one. This is extremely disappointing, because the notation of some of the sigils employed is really interesting. They used some extremely archaic symbols for earth, air, water, and the sun (fire),the components of weather and the so-called "four elements". However, these circles were highly complex and incorporated a number of interior circles. Along these circles, the sigils for the four elements were combined.
This shows a higher level of understanding of the alchemy they were dealing with. The sigils were actually blended to help create the desired weather. For example, I believe that a particular sigil combining a representation of air and sun (fire) was intended to create a certain type of air front or air current (the direct translation was something like "river of air") that would bring rain or thunderstorms. A sigil combining earth and water and a negation was used to ward off flooding of parched land (I think it was to help the ground absorb the rain faster). There was another, more complicated symbol blending air, water, and earth, which seemed to represent the water-filled clouds they were creating.
At the center of every transmutation circle that successfully harnessed the weather was one of the most complex sigils I have ever seen, at least for this type of alchemy, which incorporates no living components. It contains truly ancient symbols for the four elements; so old, I have yet to be able to decipher it into its respective pieces.
Every sigil alchemists use for their transmutation circles can be broken down to the point where a single symbol (usually fairly simplistic) represents a single idea. However, the sigil that has been repeated over and over throughout all of these Ishvalan texts may be so old and archaic, with no references to its true source left that it is as close to a true amalgam as alchemy can provide. The union between the four elements that it represents cannot be broken down without destroying the meaning of at least one of the four. Or, at least, with the current understanding we have of the elements. In spite of that, I am certain that it once was composed of simpler sigils; we have simply misplaced the techniques with which to separate them into their bases.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Looking back at where I started, apparently I've gone very off topic.
I was, admittedly, very surprised when I discovered the extent of what Ishvalan alchemists had done. (Not that I think I've seen the true extent of their accomplishments, but with only crumbling texts to work with, and all of them encoded in a foreign language, I think that my understanding will always be somewhat limited.) Though Ishvalan alchemists were limited by the precepts of their religion as to what aspects of alchemy they could study, clearly they excelled at those subjects to which they dedicated themselves. From the fragmented descriptions I've been piecing together from these texts, I have begun attempting to reconstruct one of their arrays. Obviously not at its true size, but even scaling it has proven difficult. I'm going to have to requisition controlled space with which to test at every stage, because I have nothing to compare to, in order to gauge my success, so trial and error is the only viable path.