Gershom Scholem in his essay 'Alchemie und Kabbala', published in Eranos Jahrbuch (46) 1977, pp. 1-96, demonstrated that there was no genuine Hebrew alchemical-kabbalistic tradition in the Renaissance: before the seventeenth century, Jewish Kabbalists were hardly interested in the pursuit of alchemy (Hayyim Vital in Safed being one of the exceptions, and then only briefly); nor did the alchemical symbolism of gold as the purest metal find any correlative in kabbalistic symbolism. (Although there were Jewish alchemists; they are the subject of Raphael Patai's The Jewish alchemists. A history and source book. Princeton 1994; Patai also notes that 'kabbalistic alchemy' developed amongst Christian, not Jewish, alchemists as a result of the 'opening up of the hidden mysteries of the Kabbalah to the Christian scholarly world', p. 155).

Marked interest in the Kabbalah from an alchemical point of view is especially evident in mystical-alchemical (Rosicrucian) circles from the early seventeenth century onwards, whereby Kabbalah and magic came to be associated with the practice of alchemy, and even considered prerequisite for the Hermetic Art. This association was mainly brought about by Pico della Mirandola's interpretation of magic and Kabbalah; Agrippa in the sixteenth century would subsequently identify Kabbalah largely with the practice of magic. Some of the 17th–century works associating Kabbalah and alchemy as mentioned by Scholem now follow:

Heinrich Khunrath, De igne magorum. Strasbourg,
Lazarus Zetzner, 1608

Khunrath's understanding of the Kabbalah in this work and in his magnum opus, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, was largely derived from Pistorius' compendium Artis cabalisticae. Khunrath noted that 'Kabala, Magia und Alchymia sollen und müssen mit einander verbunden und angewendet werden': Kabbalah, magic and alchemy should and must be related to each other and applied together.