Of all the traditional sciences it is alchemy--based as it is in metallurgy--that is directly concerned with the coming of the industrial order. In alchemical terms modern man lives in the Ferric Age and his state is best analogized to the properties of the metal iron, hard, cold, unbending but quick to succumb to corrosion and rust. The great ancient wisdom traditions of the world all anticipated this present age for it was already implicit in the technological and other changes that brought on the dawn of history. These ancient traditions - dismissed as childish superstitions by the...