Iain Sinclair – Introduction: The Great Work – The alchemical operation consisted essentially in separating the prima materia, the so-called chaos, into the active principle, the soul, and the passive principle, the body, which were then reunited in personified form in the coniunnctio or ‘chemical wedding’. – C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies T he risk in exposing our sources of inspiration, where the primal spark comes from and how it is transmuted, is of tearing the wings from a butterfly to explain flight. The impulse to write, to put a shape on chaos, is the neurosis that defines us, that allows us to find credit in failure: poetry as a sickness vocation. But then, as the various contributors to the collection published as Alchemy discover, there is relief in that ­provocative metaphor. Alchemy, existing on the hinge of the medieval and pre-modern worlds, offers a certain dignity of process to initiates of language; the branded ones who are prepared to work and rework, in darkness, by instinct, to achieve the faintest sliver of golden light. It slips through their fingers like a mercury spill. The story. The innocent confession. The lie that persuades. The comforting illusion of achievement in the accidental arrangement of words on a page. vii