In May 1991 ethnobotanist and psychedelic researcher Terence McKenna recorded a two-day workshop at the Esalen Institute focused on the origins of European alchemy and its connections to religious and mystical practice.

Over the course of four hours, McKenna describes how alchemy originated in the Arab Empire before spreading to Western Europe, and explores the meaning of mythical objects such as the Philosopher Stone through the lens of esotericism and psychology.

McKenna draws on sources from Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Western Esotericism, and the Renaissance culture of Greek philosophy in order to tell a compelling history of ideas hidden from the mainstream tradition of Western Philosophy.

Some of the notable figures in the story include Renaissance philosophers and scientists such as Gemisthos Plethon, Marcilio Ficino, and Giordano Bruno. McKenna tells the stories of alchemists such as John Dee, Edward Kelly, Paracelsus, and Michael Maier.

The texts mentioned are as follows:

-The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates

-Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates

-Enneads by Plotinus

-The Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius

-The Hermetic Museum by A. E. Waite

-The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert

-The Solitudes by John Crowley

-Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung

-The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler