Sufi Mystics and
Early European Alchemy
While the modern world sees coffee as a substance or commodity, a capitalistic productivity booster that is, in many ways, the opposite of a spiritual guide, coffee has held deep spiritual significance in the Sufi Mystic and Early European Alchemist traditions for years.
Coffee Migrations​
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Despite the doubts and restrictions Islamic scholars placed on coffee consumption, the drink still spread around the Arab world, and to the European world almost as if it had a spirit of its own. To learn more about this spread of coffee, and the spread of ideas that came with it, check out our page on Penny Universities.
Coffee and Sufism
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First discovered in Ethiopia, coffee's second stop on the world map was in Yemen, where it quickly became popular with Sufi Monks, as they discovered that it would help them stay up through the night to partake in their days-long prayers.
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The Sufis saw coffee as a spiritual aid, enhancing both the length of time they could concentrate on the divine, and the intensity of their concentration.
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While the Sufi monks swore by this elixir, the rest of the Islamic world was conflicted on whether or not coffee was even allowed under Islamic law. The question of the era was: is the way in which coffee alters your mental state similar to alcohol? Is this addictive? Is this allowed?
Coffee and Medieval Alchemy​
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Coffee continued to hold high value as it migrated to Europe. At first, the same questions circled around it: is this the drink of the devil? To what extent does it alter your mental state? However, the first time that Pope Clement VIII tried coffee, he decreed that it was not the drink of the devil, but rather delicious - it should not be banned.
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Outside of the Catholic tradition, coffee continued to be highly regarded, most notably in the European alchemical tradition. It's one of the only items we can consume that passes through all four elements - land, when growing, air, when drying, fire, when roasting, and water, when drinking - and one of the only items of consumption that passes through all three of the most significant colors to European alchemists - red, as coffee cherries, white, as coffee seeds, and black, as roasted beans.
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As such, many in this tradition considered coffee to be bearing the life force itself; something synonymous to chi in the Taoist alchemical tradition, something that could impart consciousness, the fundamental force itself, in us.
Whether the modern world chooses to acknowledge it or not, there is something fundamentally sacred about coffee - its ability to bring us into an altered state, to make us more alert, more perceiving, more conscious, is undeniable. The Sufi and European Alchemical traditions are just two examples of this.