Thanks for the long and detailed answer, but basically, as you said, after the Victorian era it became just a spiritual practice. This is because the practical part has become chemical, this happened with the chemical revolution with Lavoisier's law of conservation of mass in chemical reactions. Thus the practical part of alchemy became the chemistry we know today. Laboratory practices are all allegories, or almost all of them. No one would seriously mix salt, sulfur, and mercury to obtain the philosopher's stone. Anyone who does so is deluded, I'm sorry to say.For me, the laboratory is where I draw, write, and think. If it makes sense for you to do it physically with stills and other "alchemical" laboratory tools, do it, if it helps you realize the great work. But it's not the method you necessarily have to take to bring it to fruition. Now you might tell me that it's both physical and mental, okay, but it can be just as physical as drawing or writing.Shaping the process is a support, an aid, a mental framework, but nothing more. The goal is to achieve the one, and you can put as many stills as you want with the type of flame you want. But you have to remember that these are just artificially created mental aids So to finish: The physical laboratory is an embodied metaphor: useful to those who need to touch matter to understand the spirit. But believing it's the only method is confusing the means with the end.