The Alchemist and His Ball

Alchemy plays an important part in Burmese Buddhism as one means, among several, of gaining access to salvation. The practice of alchemy figures centrally in a specific religious orientation, the path of the superman (weikza lan) that offers a way to reach nirvana through seeking near-immortality. Within this ideological frame, defined by the ultimate horizon of deliverance, alchemy makes it possible—by means of understandings, technical manipulations, and the forces with which it deals—for the practitioner to act upon his person through the intermediary of a material double, the ball which serves as the object of alchemical activity, allowing him in this way to become the master of his own being and gain some control over his fate. Alchemy appears to be a form, religiously defined and socially meaningful, of self-making.