The best introduction
to date about the origins of Alchemy, no doubt is William R. Newman “Promethean
Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature.” University of Chicago, 2004. Here one
finds a full explanation of Alchemy as sourced in the ancient Greek meaning of Mimesisis as a form of mystical “art”. Or as Erwin Panofsky
explained, it was now possible to combine this notion with the Neoplatonic
belief that immaterial forms exist apart from matter, which in turn receives
its qualitative characteristics from them.[1]
According to Plotinus
and his followers, the immaterial, transcendent world of forms was immeasurably
superior to the material universe. The artist, when he formed matter into a
particular shape or image, was performing a task - parallel to that of the
demiurge, when he shaped the material world into its present configuration. The
idea in the artist's mind, moreover, found its origin in the world of forms,
and its imposition on the matter could be seen as a process of perfecting or at
least improving, the latter.
Around the end of the
3rd century century the first Christian alchemist
Zosimus of Panopolis (ca. 350- ca. 420) quoted Hermetica in his works, which survive in Greek and in
Syriac. It is interesting that the same Zosimus is first quoted as having
proposed the idea of alchemy by misunderstanding the so called AE Leiden and
Stockholm papyri. Terms for gold making (poiesis chrysou) and silver making (poiesis
argyrou) indeed appeared in the Leiden and Stockholm
papyri, where in one case of gold making, the recipe is actually called
"Fraud of Gold" (chrysou dolor). The recipe
works by "doubling" the gold, that is, by alloying genuine gold with
iron, thus increasing its weight 46 Another similar recipe in the Leiden
papyrus begins with the phrase "Gold is counterfeited" (Doloutai chrysos), and then gives
the recipe for the fraud. The ambiguous status of the precious stones and
metals fabricated by the methods of the Leiden and Stockholm papyri however is
what in the course of time transformed to the legend that an alchemist, not
true of course, would be able to convert base metals into genuine gold and
silver.[2]
Zoismuss (starting the 'alchemical art' tradition based on the
idea imported from interpreted the term "doubling" in the Leiden and
Stockholm papyri as meaning Mimezis
"mirroring" in the sense of act of creation like 'art'. Aristotle
however expressed a distrust of the mimetic arts and the same critical attitude
by that time existed also with regard to the technai
more broadly. Although they might be clever simulacra of nature, they could not
themselves be natural. A clear formulation of this distinction between the
products of nature and the products of artifice appears in Aristotle's Physics,
where he states
that art can function in two different ways-"the arts either, on the basis
of Nature, carry things further (epitelei) than
Nature can, or they imitate (mimeitai) Nature.[3]
This dichotomy allowed
the possibility of having two distinct types of art, one that perfects natural
processes and brings them to a state of completion not found in nature itself
and another that merely imitates nature without fundamentally altering it.
Though it is not
possible to demonstrate that this was transmitted directly to Arabic authors,
one of the most widely-cited Hermetic books of antiquity, The Perfect
Discourse, better known today in its Latin version as Asclepius, in fact
already mentions an "ancestor' Hermes. Originally written in Greek, The
Perfect Discourse was used by early Christians (e.g., it was known in some form
by Lactantius ca. AD 310, and was translated into
Latin and Coptic. The Greek text survives only in citations by other authors,
whereas the Coptic survives only in a partial translation.
We already described
the environment where and how this “Constructing Tradition” first took place.
On
thing that is for certain is that Zosimus refers to the Egyptians and the Jews
as the two great traditions of metallurgy and attempts to show that their
techniques and their religious ideas are in agreement. This implies that he was
either engaged in or interested in forging alliances with Jewish metallurgists.
He apparently thinks highly of Jewish distillation, as well as Jewish mystical
ideas which he incorporates by referring to their texts and tradition.This implies that he was either engaged in or
interested in forging alliances with Jewish metallurgists. Zosimus also
provides evidence that Egyptian metallurgists in Alexandria at the time had
incorporated themes from Jewish apocryphal literature into their alchemical
writings. Zosimus uses these Jewish (and Christian) themes, Solomon’s
exorcisms, the Enochian myth of the fallen angels, and teachings of the
Anthropos, to illustrate the differences between natural and unnatural
approaches to alchemy. His polemics are directed, in part, at astrological
methods, but his criticisms of “unnatural” methods are not limited to astrology,
but reveal broader cultural debates over daemonic and divine forms of
revelation, and different theories of nature and cosmic sympathy, Fate, and
divine power.
As the first known
alchemist to frame his work as a soteriological practice, Zosimus of Panopolis thus is a pivotal figure in the history of
ancient chemistry and religion, though surprisingly little has been written
about him. Zosimus’s concepts of “nature” and what is “natural” are however
crucial for understanding the delineations of magic, science, and religion, and
that this has broader implications for studying deployments of these
categories. Zosimus’s frames the “unnatural” (aph?sika)
methods of his rivals versus his own as opposing methods for the
preparation of “timely tinctures.” And it appears that Zosimus’s so called
natural methods involved preparing substances in accordance with celestial,
seasonal, and diurnal cycles, in keeping with ancient craft traditions. For
example Mesopotamian glass-making recipes dating from 1300-1100 BCE contain
instructions for the astrological timing of various procedures.
The thrust of
Zosimus’s argument is that the daemons preside over very precise locations
of the cosmos and therefore have only a partial understanding of nature; one
should rather appeal to the divine creator, who can reveal knowledge of nature
as a whole. This dichotomy between natural and unnatural methods, then, is
between differing views of how to harmonize one’s work with the larger cosmic
force at play, and how knowledge of nature is best attained.
Thus it is clear that
in late antiquity, spiritual and scientific wisdom were as in the case of the
Zosimus tradition, where intimately related. And Zosimus and his students
(or/and readers) believed that knowledge of nature was acquired through divine
revelation. Behind the visible order of nature lies an invisible order
comprised of divine beings that form a hierarchical chain of power linking the
heavens and the earth. Scientific knowledge was construed as having penetrated
the divine mysteries of nature. This was also a religious ideal, embodied in at
the time, presumed sages like Hermes, Pythagoras,
Democritus, and the pseudo-King Solomon, who were popular in Zosimus’s
era and credited with the authorship of a variety of scientific-religious
texts. This cultural emphasis on acquiring scientific and spiritual wisdom is
the context in which now Zosimus, articulates his views of alchemy as a
spiritual practice.
Zosimus here,
recommends several methods for merging the “corporeal” and “spiritual” aspects
of alchemy. Some apparently to be practiced in an alchemical workshop,
such as contemplating how the metals reveal the divine presence within nature.
Other types of meditation, such as quietly examining the soul and quelling the
passions, were probably intended as practiced separatly.
Though Zosimus insists that this type of self-examination in the sence of ‚meditations on cosmic sympathy‘ augments one’s
work as an alchemist. These, according to Zosimus as we shall see, are designed
to lead the practitioner from the mundane usages and symbolism of a particular
metal or natural object into progressively deeper cosmological and spiritual
associations, culminating in an encounter with the Demiurge.
As P.2 of this study
will show, views of cosmology and cosmic sympathy were thought to reveal
something about a person’s knowledge, piety, and way of being and acting in the
world. Zosimus and his contemporaries shared a basic cosmological framework,
the Ptolemaic view that the earth is surrounded by concentric planetary
spheres, which are bounded by the realm of the fixed stars, but they widely
varied in their views of the invisible, divine order that underlies the visible
order of nature. This is particularly evident in regards to the various
theories of cosmic sympathy circulating in that era, all of which postulate
that hidden forces (angels and daemons, in many cases) link the microcosm to
the macrocosm and unite all parts of nature, but imagine the relationships of
these forces in different ways. These cosmic forces were actively used. Zosimus
and Iamblichus, for example, used the natural order of the cosmos as a model
for the proper ordering of the soul. They also activated the invisible lines of
cosmic sympathy as a means of ascending from the particulars of nature to the
realm of divine universal truths that lie beyond the fixed stars. Zosimus’s
rivals, on the other hand, were accused of manipulating cosmic energies
(daemons) and trying to bend them to their will. Such attempts to “force”
nature were often associated with magic.
Those who focused
strictly on the realm of nature, and/or on the divine beings that resided
within the cosmic boundaries (as opposed to aspiring to the noetic realms
beyond the cosmos), were considered by Zosimus and other philosophers to be
spiritually impoverished, enmeshed in worldly concerns, and lacking in their
understandings of nature as a whole. As Zosimus often said of his competitors,
they know only the things of the flesh, and nothing of the spirit. Whereas the
true philosopher, he argued, understands both body and soul, and is able to
perceive the divine unity within nature.
By focusing on the
ways in which truth claims regarding nature are foundational in distinctions
between science, magic, and religion, one can draw out the subtleties and
complexities of ancient perspectives, and identify modern biases that may
hinder our ability to understand these early occult scientists. A modern
version of such cosmic notions as first where formulate (written) about by
Zosimus and Plotine (Plotinus), see for example
„Occult Science“ (first published in 1909 but still in print today
2007) by the German occultist Rudolf Steiner.
The earliest
Greco-Egyptian alchemical texts were written in Greek and incorporate ideas
from Hellenistic philosophy and religion. Many of the texts were also
translated into Arabic and Syriac, and alchemy flourished among Arab scientists
and philosophers during the so-called Dark Ages of Europe. Europeans began to
take a serious interest in alchemy in the early twelfth century, shortly after
the Crusades, and it was practiced there until the modern age, when it
underwent a virtual demise. Religious language and imagery are hallmarks of
alchemical literature, and the demise of alchemy was of course due to new
understandings of chemistry that refuted alchemical notions of occult
transmutations. In an earlier article Laurence Principe and William Newman
claim that these characterizations are related to two basic approaches to the
historiography of alchemy, which have their roots in Enlightenment scientific
debates as well as in Romantic critiques of Newtonian science.[4]
Hereward Tilton who
graduated from the University of Queensland in Australia, turn is critical of
the Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman. Hence Tilton’s approach in
contrast centres on the use of ‘Decknamen’
which Newman claims are "the products of a skilled use of traditional
techniques of deception that extend back many centuries in the literature of
alchemy."[5] Hereward Tilton is particularly
critical of Principe and Newman ascribing the origins of Carl Jung's views to
the English occultist Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942); which Tilton in turn
claims is" insubstantial."[6] In fact in this case both Tilton and
Principe/Newman seem unfamiliar with the much more substantiated claim that
unlike Waite and Rudolf Steiner, C.G. Jung in fact quite closely followed Mary
Anne Atwood's sequence. Although Jung interpreted Atwood's opus from his own
perspective in analytic psychology, his philosophical commitment to phenomenologism permitted him to eschew theology while
refusing to question the validity of the apparently parapsychological
character of religious experiences. To account for the apparent phenomena,
Jung went so far as to refer to "projections" that belonged not to
personal psychology, but to a collective unconscious. Importantly, the
collective unconscious was not restricted to people's nervous systems, but
instead belonged to the cosmos.[7]
p. 188.) Hence Tilton
is also critical of the 2001 article by Principe and Newman, where they
ascribed the origins of Carl Jung's views to the English occultist Arthur
Edward Waite (1857-1942); which Tilton in turn claims is
"insubstantial."[8]
In fact in this case
both Tilton and Principe/Newman seem unfamiliar with the much more
substantiated claim that unlike Waite and Rudolf Steiner, C.G. Jung in fact
quite closely followed Mary Anne Atwood's sequence. Although Jung interpreted
Atwood's opus from his own perspective in analytic psychology, his
philosophical commitment to phenomenologism permitted
him to eschew theology while refusing to question the validity of the
apparently parapsychological character of religious experiences. To account for
the apparent phenomena, Jung went so far as to refer to
"projections" that belonged not to personal psychology, but to a
collective unconscious. Importantly, the collective unconscious was not
restricted to people's nervous systems, but instead belonged to the cosmos.[9]
But of course to
understand such subtleties is exactly why the title of the recent conference
referred to at the start, aptly was "Constructing Tradition".
In later centuries,
the evocative transformations of color and form within the ‘alchemical vessel’
served as a mirror of the alchemist’s desire and fantasy. The ideology of
Hermeticism itself is one, in in which the upper and lower worlds reflect one
another, and bonds of similitude and sympathy pervade a curiously interconnected
cosmos. It is for this reason, for example, that the symbols of the sun and the
moon speak not only of gold and silver, but also of sulphur
and mercury - that is to say, Philosophical Sulphur and the Mercury of the
Wise, which by virtue of their qualitative affinity with the ‘fixed’ and
‘volatile’ elements of the same name (and here the properties of cinnabar, or
mercuric sulfide, lent their suggestive role) were thought to form the
fundamental constituents of every metal. Likewise, the alchemical vessel is
akin to a human being or the cosmos; the Passion of Christ corresponds to the
black phase of the work, and the Resurrection to its perfection; and so forth.
During the course of
the seventeenth century this opaque and many-layered language, in which “the
same words are applied to different things and different words to the same
things,”[10] began to give way to a more translucent chemical terminology,
which tended to restrict the possible significations of words rather than to
multiply them in the manner of Hermetic discourse.
Giving the
religiosity at the time, it is not surprising that various readers of
Paracelsus wanted to reflect this onto indigenous German/Protestant
‘science,’ founded not upon the ‘papist’ Scholastic tradition but upon the
bedrock of Scripture, as pagan wisdom (Plato, Pythagoras, Hermes Trismegistus).
Thus for example Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651-1689), whose short life of visions and
chiliasm ended on the pyre, applauded the Paracelsian
Alchemist (and antiquarian), Athanasius Khunrath’s
censure of those “damned souls and teachers of folly” who seek wisdom in
Aristotle rather than in the Bible, in Nature and in the ‘mirror’ of their own
mind ;that is to say, in the divine signatures reflecting an archetypal cosmic
order.[11]
Khunrath tells us that he learnt the secrets of the Art by
experience and the grace of God; however, he also read prolifically, and
received instruction from a certain learned master of the Kabbalah, who was the
first to demonstrate to him the procedures we are about to discuss. The great
and the lesser stones. The lesser Stone, as Khunrath emphasizes,
is manufactured from metallic silver or gold; it is able to transmute metals
and heal diseases by imparting the special silver or golden virtues
(‘silverness’ or ‘goldenness’) which God has given these metals by means of
Nature. The greater Stone, on the other hand, is not derived from metals or
minerals, and is able to generate vast amounts of silver or gold through
projection of only a minute portion of the substance. This distinction between
universal and particular agents of transmutation is standard in the early
modern literature. However, Khunrath goes on to write
that both these Stones are created via the same spagyrical procedure - a
resolution of the Ausgangsmaterial (source material
or subject) into a prima materia, and its ‘artifical conjugation’ in more perfect proportion.
Spagyric, or the branch of alchemical technique dealing with the dissolution
and re-assembly of matter, is associated with a plethora of alchemical symbols.
Thus Michael Maier (1568-1622), a younger contemporary of Khunrath,
once stated to his patron that “a straw house cannot become the marble stone
castle of a great prince” unless one first “tears down the straw house to its
foundations and thereafter builds the marble castle from the ground up.” One of
these symbols for spagyric this dismemberment by the sword, in fact is already
to be found in the famed visions of Zosimos:
I am Ion, the priest
of the sanctuary, and I have survived intolerable force. For one came headlong
in the morning, dismembering me with a sword, and tearing me asunder according
to the rigor of harmony. And flaying my head with the sword which he held fast,
he mingled my bones with my flesh and burned them in the fire of the treatment,
until I learnt by the transformation of the body to become a spirit.
The presumed author
of the (no doubt also Paracelsian) famous Rosicrucian
manifestos, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), in
contrast warned that the paradoxical language of Khunrath
and his ilk does not bring happiness to a man. But Khunrath
continued to be thought of as one of the great German adepts - i.e. possessors
of the Philosophers’ Stone - amongst Paracelsians,
and his ideas have undergone sporadic revivals within alchemical, Rosicrucian
and theosophical circles. The flurry of reprints of Khunrath’s
works which emerged in the late eighteenth century from the Rosicrucian
publisher Adam Friedrich Böhme testifies to the
popularity of his ideas amongst the Gold- und Rosenkreutz,
a Freemasonic grouping which sought to wind back the gains of the Aufklärung
with its medievalist nostalgia and alchemical cult. In fin-de-siècle France the
Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae was translated and disseminated widely in the
circles of prominent Hermeticists such as Eliphas Lévi and Gérard Encausse
(‘Papus’) one of the leading French writers
responsible for the so called “Occult Revival.”
Spagyric symbolism
readily lends itself to a psychological or religious interpretation, as the
Gnostic and cultic-initiatory overtones of Zosimos’
text demonstrate. According to Khunrath, both the
lesser and the great Stones are produced by employing this universal solvent,
which has the power to reduce all things to their own prima materia
by breaking the bonds uniting their three fundamental constituents - Mercury,
Salt and Sulphur (the Paracelsian tria
prima).
In comment of The Sunday
Times of this latest biography, telling little about the background/history of ideas
involved. Although Philip Ball thinks the apocalyptic visions of Paracelsus may
indicate mental illness, we have found and present here for the first time
ever, the written source/ Rupescissa, where it came
from. An investigation in the spiritual and naturalist intellectual traditions,
academic and non-academic that interacted in the
Middle Ages to produce new ways of viewing the world like Paracelsus did.
Historically,
metallurgists and glassmakers incorporated rituals into their crafts, such as
making offerings to the gods and to the spirits of deceased master craftsmen.
The Greco-Egyptian alchemical literature indicates that these craft rituals
were still practiced in the first centuries CE. However, Zosimus criticizes
such rites. He warns Theosebia not to be flattered by
the local gods (he calls them “daemons”) who are hungry for sacrifices as well
as for her soul, and he also ridicules alchemists who invoke their personal
daemons, or tutelary spirits, for success in their work. Zosimus’s approach to
alchemy is more philosophical. His alchemical teachings emphasize ethics,
investigations of nature, and contemplation of the divine, all of which are
reflected in late ancient views of a philosophical way of life. As Pierre Hadot explains:
Several testimonies
show that from the beginning of the second century A.D., philosophy was
conceived of as an ascending spiritual itinerary which corresponded to a
hierarchy of the parts of philosophy. Ethics ensured the soul’s initial
purification; physics revealed that the world has a transcendent cause and thus
encouraged philosophers to search for incorporeal realities; metaphysics, or
theology (also called “epoptics,” because, as in the
Mysteries, it is the endpoint of initiation), ultimately entails the
contemplation of God.
While Zosimus does
not appear to conceptualize these elements of philosophy in any sort of
ascending order, it is evident that he does view them as interrelated
components of alchemy, or the “Sacred Art” as it was called in his day.[12]
As we have
seen Pythagoras is largely a mythic figure constructed by later
generations who wrote in his name; where Pythagoras was regarded as something
of a wonderworker and shaman, he was not thought to have taught techniques in
astrology, magic, or divination.
Iamblichus’s views of
number echo those found in Plato’s Timaeus, and both are influenced
by alleged, Pythagorean teachings, that describe how the Demiurge forms
the body and soul of the universe according to mathematical proportions and
harmonic intervals. The order of nature, which according to this making of
tradition is mathematically arranged and structured, provides a visible model
of perfect proportion and harmony that the soul can emulate and thereby attain
perfection. Iamblichus’s physical, ethical, and divine numbers are clearly
related to his notions of the divine hierarchy. The generative powers and
properties of change he associates with the physical numbers have creative
functions similar to those of the daemons; the ethical numbers, associated with
the measure of one’s character, function much like the celestial gods, who
impart virtues and vices to the soul and whose revolutions provide a perfect
model of order for the soul. And he specifically connects the divine numbers
with the noetic gods by referring to these gods as arithmoi.
The goal of all Pythagorean mathematics, however, is to uplift the soul to the
noetic realm. Iamblichus differentiates between technical mathematics
(practiced by “the many”), which has no spiritual goals, and Pythagorean
mathematics, which adapts “all its assertions to the beautiful and good,” and
uses those that “lead up to Being.” O’Meara demonstrates that Iamblichus’s
descriptions of physical number follow the themes of Aristotle’s Physics I-IV
to the tee, and he also shows how Iamblichus makes use of passages from
Aristotle’s Nichomachean and Eudemian
Ethics in his discussion of ethicalnumbers.[13]
Iamblichus and Zosimus
however are similar in this regard. Zosimus distinguishes between
“corporeal” alchemy, which deals only with the physical realm, and his own
“incorporeal” approach to alchemy, which focuses on the ways in which the
physical and spiritual dimensions of reality are integrated. Sometimes
Zosimus’s descriptions of alchemy are purely technical; other times he explains
the religious dimensions of his practice. Zosimus and Iamblichus may not have
always performed their sciences in a “theurgical” manner, though this remains
their scientific ideal.
But where we have
seen that the alleged ‘teachings of Pythagoras’ are part of an invented
tradition, Zosimus was not a fictional personality and his writings traceable,
thus the term in this case of ‘constructing tradition’ as he was the first well
known Hermetic ‘alchemist’.
Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and
Iamblichus P.2.
Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and
Iamblichus P.3.
Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and
Iamblichus P.4.
[1] See Panofsky,
Idea, New York, 1968), 15,49,58,157,165.
[2] See Robert Halleux,
Les alchimistes grecs, 1981, pp.88,104,170.
[3] at Physics 118
199a15-17.
[4] See Lawrence M.
Principe and William R. Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of
Alchemy,” in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe,
ed. W. Newman and A. Grafton (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 386.
[5] Newman, "Decknamen or Pseudochemical
Language?," p. 188.
[6] Hereward Tilton,
The Quest for the Phoenix, 2003, p.18.
[7] For a description
of Mary Anne Atwood's work see Dan Merkur, Gnosis: An
Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visons and Unions, 1999, p.55-58.
[8] Hereward Tilton,
The Quest for the Phoenix, 2003, p.18.
[9] For a description
of Mary Anne Atwood's work see Dan Merkur, Gnosis: An
Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visons and Unions, 1999, p.55-58.
[10] Michael Maier,
The Flying Atalanta, Or Philosophical Emblems of the
Secrets of Nature, British Library, MS Sloane 3645, 17th century, p. 63.
[11] Quirinus Kuhlmann, Der Neubegeisterte Böhme, ed. Jonathan Clark. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1995, pp.
111-112; c.f. Heinrich Khunrath,
Vom Hylealischen, das ist, Pri-materialischen
Catholischen oder Allgemeinen Natürlichen Chaos, der Naturgemässen Alchymiae und Alchymisten.
[12] Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, 2002),
153-154.
[13] See O’Meara,
Pythagoras Revived, 61-76.
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