Greetings, Cliff.
Ah, I see. Well, we'll just have to disagree about Wilmshurst. Of course he was entitled to his opinions, and you and the other Living Stones are entitled to agree with him, but to the vast majority of Masons his views were and remain distinctly oddball.
You appear to be assuming that I have no familiarity with his work - need I say that this assumption smacks somewhat of the arrogance of which you falsely accuse me? I don't pretend to have read all of his work, but I've read some of it. He was deeply mystical, an occultist, a student of ceremonial magic, and held very particular and distinctive views about the meaning and purposes of freemasonry. Actually I agree with some parts of what he said (as no doubt many others would), but taking his positions as a whole I don't see how you can claim that he was other than an oddball. You might well choose to agree with everything he said, but in that case I reckon you're pretty oddball too.
For example, he maintained that freemasonry is "beyond the mental horizon of the average Brother" who therefore "remains an initiate in name only, not in fact" (Wilmshurst, W. L., 1925, The Fundamental Philosophic Secrets within Masonry, Masonic Study Society). Now even if Wilmshurst is right about that, most Brethren are going to find his opinion pretty insulting, and will agree with me that it's a pretty oddball opinion that most Brethren are not actually Brethren. For another example, Wilmshurst was a pretty hardcore mystic, banging on about his conception of "cosmic consciousness", people having visions and so forth - "... without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, he knew that the light was within himself" (Wilmshurst, W. L., 1924, Concerning Cosmic Consciousness, Occult Review). Again, I say this is pretty oddball stuff to most of us.
Note, please, that I'm not saying that oddball is necessarily wrong. There's certainly a place for highly-mystical interpretations of freemasonry, as personal opinions of individuals. But I'll stick to my original assertion that Wilmshurst's views definitely qualify as oddball.
However, blasphemy is the dis-respecting of a religion, and in particular the dis-respecting of one's own religion (whichever it may be). Believing in tolerance for one another's religions, and therefore in treating one another's religion respectfully even though we may each privately believe that a different faith is sadly misguided, freemasonry can and does have a collective view about blasphemy: it is unmasonic conduct to express blasphemy.
If there were a serious intent to incorporate alchemical symbolism into freemasonry with a specifically alchemical purpose, then surely one would expect some of the key symbolism to be borrowed more systematically. Ashmole (for example) was a particular fan of John Dee's alchemical work, so you'd certainly expect Dee's key symbol of the monas to appear if there were an alchemical intent ... yet it doesn't appear in masonic symbolism at all. So I doubt there was ever such an intent by most of our originators, even if a few of them may have had some leanings in that direction.
T & F,
Huw