Alchemy

A notation of correspondences — Sun = gold, Moon = silver, Mars = iron — binding planet to metal to process. The four elements ride on a single triangle, pointed up or down, barred or clear. It is also, against every expectation, still being added to.

Grammar: Correspondence rather than composition: a single mark carries planet, metal and weekday at once — ☉ Sun and gold, ☽ Moon and silver, ♂ Mars and iron. The four elements are one triangle rotated and barred, so four meanings issue from a single shape.
Governance: Deliberately none for as long as it was practised. Secrecy was the working method: practitioners kept private glyph sets and wrote in Decknamen, cover names, so the same mark can differ between two manuscripts of the same decade. Then, four centuries too late, the system acquired the authority it had spent its working life avoiding. Unicode is now its registrar — and unlike the alchemists it publishes, dates and versions every addition.
Members: ☉ ☽ ☿ ♀ ♂ ♃ ♄ the seven metals; and the Alchemical Symbols block U+1F700–U+1F77F, 128 characters — of which twelve arrived after 2010, for bodies discovered centuries after the practice ended (→ Collections).

§Its members

The seven metals, each carrying planet, metal and weekday at once.

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All 128 alchemical characters →

Sources · 3

documented Lyndy Abraham, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998.
documented The Unicode Standard, Alchemical Symbols: 116 characters admitted together in Unicode 6.0 (2010), with further additions in 15.0 (2022) and 17.0 (2025).
documented DerivedAge-17.0.0 — the later additions are Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar and Orcus, plus second forms for Vesta, Astraea, Hygiea and Parthenope: dwarf planets and asteroids found long after alchemy ended, given signs in the old manner. A notation with no authority, no practitioners and no purpose is still growing, because astronomers keep finding things that need a mark.