I want to understand it but everything I read about it oscillates impossibly between vulgar metals -> gold and some kind of spiritual transformation metaphysical stuff
What is it and what can be legit gleaned from it in an empirical or useful sense?
Does it have utility outside of use as a metaphor or allegory or whatever?
A man enters a room and leaves with a box. In the process of picking up the box, he became a man carrying a box. This is not transmutation.
I put some beans on my toast. In the process, it becomes beans on toast. This is not transmutation.
Two things became one combination of two things. Neither thing has fundamentally changed.
A man is asked to deliver supplies to an office. He walks through the whole building, entering through the front door, through the office, and out the backdoor. What was the point?
If there is absolutely no changing going on, this would be an analogy for what oxygen does in the blood, no?
…You just answered your own question. He was delivering supplies. That’s the point.
Although, in the case of oxygen, he was picking up trash (carbon) to take out with him. And he went through the whole place to make sure he got it all.
You say I answered my own question as if the question didn’t remain.