Hey, first post here by the way...
I'm replying here because I can hopefully help you on your way without too much struggle should you decide to go down the practical path. One of the problems with the practical path is getting started and what to persue.
But first I'll answer your question on the difference between practical and ceremonial alchemy. There is no difference. The desired result is exactly the same, it is just the journey getting there that is different.
The body is a lab and what you do in your outer lab is simply a macrocosm of your bodies cellular process. Some things the body has difficulty in processing, this is where the lab comes in.
If you are looking for alchemical ceremonial magick, you have found it. It's basically the work of the mystical schools which you are studying right now. It is true that there are alchemical ceremonies more exlusive to practical alchemy, a bit like how Fr HHH described. There are also such practices as visualisating the operations, the philosophical egg meditations and the whole process of alchemy is infact a long ritual. However the types of magickal ceremony aren't nearly as advanced as say in the Golden Dawn (golden = gold, dawn = sun) or Aurum Solis (Aurum = Gold, Solic = Sun, it's all alchemical). It still is an interesting thing to look at and practice.
As for starting points which is the reason I made this reply because it could potentially save you a great deal of time and effort which could be spent on more practical things...
I recommend the course material from Jean Dubuis and Le Philosphers of Nature (LPN). He goes into practical and ceremonial alchemy in very great detail from the herbal kingdom to the metalic.
Now if you want to go down the practical route, I would recommend you getting some strong elixirs from the very beginning. The usual primers for herbal work I don't believe are alchemical in the sense that they are not alive. I tend to think of them as high nutrients because they are progressed from regular herbal medicines as far as purity and material goes but don't have the ability to transform. I think you should skip this stage because I don't believe this to be alchemy, perhaps spagyria but not alchemy.
My recommendation of route of attainment:
- The red herbal tincture
- The herbal stone
- The herbal Alkahest
- Move into the metalic realm
You can find the above I recommended by reading right to the very end of the herbal/metal/mineral course from the LPN and then doing the Red herbal/mineral tincture described almost at the very end. This is actually just as easy to do as the primer operations but the results are real and not perceived. This will enable you empower yourself each day while progressing onto the more complex operations. Then make the herbal stone. Then the herbal Alkahest which will enable you to multiply the alkahest and even though they say nothing of this, ingest that but in very tiny quantities (this is where I'm at). Then move onto the metalic realm and go striaght for the high tinctures.
Remember that understanding is very important and it's not a recipe book, you can learn how to make your own products and how to improve upon other operations, for instance, incorporation the mineral realm into the herbal alkahest.
It certainly is a very great path, even if you just want to make the intial red tincture I described and supplement your magickal practices with that. It is thoroughly worth it. It's just a frigging pain in the ass sorting out all the bs in all the hundreds of books either giving you too weak operations or too practically tough when really what you want is to get some decent tinctures up and running quickly while you tech up to even higher stuff.