QUOTE
Does anyone know what the words around the array for the Human transmutation circle are? There's an attached picture I got off the Japanese movie site (Print screen? Oh yeah). I was just curious if anyone knew what it said.
the inner most circle says:
Pale white and black with false citrine, imprefect white and red, The peacock's feathers in bright colours, the rainbow
the next circle says:
Pale white and black with false citrine, imprefect white and red, The peacock's feathers in bright colours, the rainbow in the sky above, The spotted panther, the green lion, the crow's beak blue as lead, These shall appear
the upper left semicircle:
after the perfect white follows the grey and
the upper right semicircle:
Pale white and black with false citrine imp (word cuts off)
bottom semircircle:
And afterthe there shall appear the substance
outer circle:
Pale white and black with false citrine, imprefect white and red, The peacock's feathers in bright colours, the rainbow in the sky above, The spotted panther, the green lion, the crow's beak blue as lead, These shall appear before you in perfect white.
and a breakdown of the symbols in the circle:
the upper left is a symbol for Copper and the planet Venus
the bottom left is a symbol for Iron and the planet Mars
the bottom right is ALMOST the symbol for lead but it could be just an ornate representation; it also looks like the symbol for Saturn
and that's the best I can make of it.
and for those of you concerned with real alchemy, this is about all I know on the subject:
Alchemy's main goal, was transforming base metals (copper, tin, iron, etc) into gold, the purest of all metals; Egyptians came up with it, but were conquered by Greece and then later the Arabs, Christians came down to evangelize and took the knowledge of alchemy back up there with them, and viola, there it is.
They dabbled in
transmutation by first, distilling plants or urine to get concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids and then dissolving metals to get other things; I don't remember much of chem class, but I do remember that if you mix copper and nitric acid you get something else; sounds like a transmutation to me.
Things get interesting when you include stuff like The Philosopher's stone and Transmutation circles; the symbols were used for various formulae (formulas) and were modeled after astronomic symbols that the greeks invented (the symbol for male is the symbol for Mars, the symbol for female is the symbol for Venus; this stuff's been around forever!). Geometric patterns establish a tangible feeling for an abstract idea; 7 for the planets, 12 for the different types of reactions, 4 for the basic elements (earth, wind, water fire), and 3 (triangles are a common element of mysticism)
When it comes down to it, alchemists in the past weren't magical and they weren't sorcerers, but they were a little bit mystic and a bit more down to earth (puuuuun) then most; just curious/bored scientists blindly groaping about a field of science that, for them, was not scientific at all.
So to recap: Alchemy is "I'll mix this with that and I hope I get gold" chemestry and the circles look cool
as for the symbols inside, if you go to 
;;)
