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Alchemy - 1/mar/2024
🕑 Added 2024-03-01 17:44:53 +0000 UTCTHE FOUNDATIONS OF ALCHEMY
What would it mean to un-bake a cake?
These days, that would mean something atomic. It would mean throwing baked goods into the beam of a particle accelerator, or leaving a tin of pastries in an unshielded atomic reactor. Theoretically, it could be done, but peeling a cake apart, proton-by-proton, would be a painstaking and ludicrously expensive process.
In the second century, it would mean something alchemical. It would mean distilling the cake down to its elemental essences, purging its impurities, and then slowly reintroducing new materials until it transmutes into what you want. However, you aren’t even sure if such a thing is possible.
The eternal question with alchemy is how. How did we get from essences and alembics run by mercury-poisoned scholars, to particle accelerators and nuclear reactors run by radiation-poisoned scholars? The simple answer is practice, and a whole lot of writing things down. The slightly less simple answer is that modern science is built on the work of alchemists theorizing about the nature of the world, and finding ways to practically test those theories. The difference between alchemy and chemistry is theory. Once people learned they were working with atoms, not essences, chemistry became the dominant paradigm. But, that transition to modern experimental science was fueled by millenia of alchemical knowledge. Alchemy is one of the many great rivers that feed the lake of modern science. We, dear reader, are the horny salmon making our way upstream. This is easier said than done.
To understand alchemy, we have to see the world like the alchemists did. Chemistry is complex enough, and we are going to spend the next few thousand words doing it wrong on purpose. For example: Alchemists did not think the world was made of atoms. The fundamental particle of alchemy is called the “corpuscle.” They are like atoms, but where atoms are all the same size, and cannot be divided, corpuscles can be any size, and they are infinitely divisible. Where nowadays we understand atoms to be clouds of particles, corpuscles are like infinitely small wads of clay. Modern atomic science hinges on standardized weights and measurements, but alchemical particles can be different sizes, weights, and masses. They can nested inside of each other, or marbled together in many different textures and forms like the nuts and marshmallows in a scoop of rocky road.
Why did they think the world worked that way? Try to put yourself in some 2nd century alchemical shoes. If you knew nothing about the universe, what seems more likely: “Iron is just a big lump of metal.” or “Iron is made of a pattern of trillions of little orbs that are uniform and identical in every way.” And let us say you want to argue with another alchemist about this. How would you go about proving your theory? It’s going to be a while before you can get your hands on an electron microscope. You can only use what materials you can get your hands on. How long do you think it would take to invent the particle accelerator?
ALCHEMY: A PRIMER
Alchemy is difficult to study. Many of these texts are written in coded language, and properly deciphering them requires knowledge of historical chemistry, theology, and languages. Sure, you can read classical Arabic, but do you know enough about 4th century metallurgy, and Alexandrian Judaism, to decipher what chemical process is happening?
The last century or so has been disastrous for alchemical scholarship. The sheer difficulty of these texts has led to a rash of scholars who reject the idea that they are even about proto-chemistry at all, claiming that alchemical literature is simply coded psychological allegory. This idea is nonsense, and there is no basis for it. But if I want to claim that alchemy “isn’t really about the chemicals” what are you going to do? Learn classical Greek just to prove me wrong? The result of this is a vicious cycle of bad citations that is only now being untangled. Even good scholars routinely get lost among the twisting popular misconceptions of alchemical history. So let us take a moment to debunk some misconceptions:
One: Alchemy is not a monolithic tradition. There is no “one alchemy” handed down from master to student. It is not a single tradition that “goes back to the Egyptian god Thoth.” Physics works the same wherever you are. Two people on opposite sides of the world can independently figure out how to mix flour and water together to make bread. Theories of alchemy are complex as cultures, and as diverse as cuisines.
Two: Alchemy is not primarily concerned with the psychic, the spiritual, or the self-transformative. Alchemy is about physical materials, not what the physical materials may represent spiritually. Some alchemists were indeed mystics and magicians, and pondering the nature of nature is a natural fit for religious thinkers, but alchemy is always primarily about ordinary metallurgy.
Three: Alchemy was not “opposed to science.” Alchemy, like mathematics, was one of the practices that became modern science. See our earlier metaphor about horny salmon.
Four: Up until around 1800, alchemy and chemistry were the same thing. Similar to the early days of astrology/astronomy. They were not meaningfully distinct in any way. The only exception to this is the label “Chymistry” used to describe the transitional period between alchemy and chemistry in the late 1700s.
Five: I am not afraid to name names. Carl Jung is not a reliable source on alchemical history. His theory that alchemical literature is some form of coded psychological self-help literature is unsupported and ahistorical. The idea that alchemy was “never really about the metals” has been actively harmful to the field. For the last century or so, even credible historians have seen alchemy as a bunch of psychological mumbo-jumbo, and thus denied it a place in proper scholarship, or worse, described it as backwards superstition in opposition to the logic and reason of the enlightenment.
THE GREAT WORK
Alchemy attempts to produce precious metals, stones, and medicines through the manipulation of elemental essences. There are several theories as to how this might be done. One camp theorizes that substances can be changed via altering the ratios of their platonic elemental essences. Another camp theorizes that all materials can be reduced to a primal form the Prima Materia. Once this is achieved, a substance called the philosopher's stone can be added to the vessel like yeast in bread, causing the desired substance to form. This process is known as the “Opus Magnum'' or Great Work.
The Great Work comes in several basic stages. These stages are named according to the colors that appear in the vessel. They are: blackening (nigredo), whitening (albedo), yellowing (citrinas), and reddening (rubedo). These colors are the result of heating a copper-mercury amalgam. As the mercury evaporates, the substance will change color. This process has been described by alchemists as cauda pavonis, “peacock’s tail.”
These stages can additionally be broken down into several steps. The number of these steps will vary from alchemist to alchemist, but the most common form of the process involves ten steps. They are:
- Calcination. Meaning oxidation by heating. Whenever you see an alchemist describe something as a “calcinate” that means its oxidized. Rusty iron is “iron calcinate” old green copper is “Copper Calcinate”
- Solution. Meaning ”dissolution in “sharp” (or mercurial) liquids.” This means breaking a substance down by bathing it in acids.
- Putrefaction. Decomposition. Now that you’ve broken your substance down with acids, you’ve got to boil it in warm compost to induce fermentation. At this stage the substance turns a nasty black color, and is often described by alchemists as the “Black Raven'' which is soon resurrected as the “white dove,” thus marking the end of nigredo, and the beginning of albedo.
- Reduction, The recovery of the fugitive “spirits” (“spirit” in this context means a volatile substance) during the calcination process by means of a fluid (“philosophical milk”), whereupon a yellow coloration (citrinitas) appears. Basically, you’re adding back what you boiled off earlier. You know you’re doing it right when it turns yellow.
- Sublimation. Adding the volatile, “spiritual” matter back to the vessel causes a violent reaction, and a red coloration. Alchemists often describe this as the raging of the “red dragon.” This is where rubedo occurs.
- Coagulation or Fixation. The reaction dies down, and the substance begins to solidify. This is the coagula part of solve et coagula. Congratulations, you have yourself some stable Prima Materia.
- Fermentation. This is a rare step. Some alchemists like to add a little bit of gold at this stage to act as a sort of “Yeast of Gold” to speed up the process.
- Lapis philosophorum. The Philosopher’s Stone. Now your prima materia can grow into ultima materia, (supreme matter). This bit is usually described as a heavy, dark red, mildly shiny, powder or stone. When you heat it up, it turns kinda waxy, but solidifies again when it cools. (What the alchemist has probably done at this point is produce mercury(II) sulfide, better known as Cinnabar.)
- Multiplication. Now that you have your philosopher's stone, you can shave off bits of residue, and use that to make more. This is similar to how you can cut a mushroom in half, plant both halves, and get two mushrooms.
- Projection. Now that you've got your philosopher's stone, it’s time to make some gold. All you’ve got to do is get some dust from the philosopher's stone, and mix it into your base metal. If you’ve done your alchemy right, it should make the base metal change color until it looks like gold. In later, medical applications of alchemy, this is the point where you apply your panacea (universal medicine that cures all ills.)
Keep in mind that there are many different ways to bake a cake. These ten steps and four stages are only the most common recipe. Every alchemist will have their own version of the Magnum Opus. There are versions with as few as seven steps, and others with more than 24. Some versions only have three stages, going from black, to white, directly to red. Part of what makes alchemy so difficult to study is the sheer diversity between thinkers. It helps to tackle the subject chronologically.
ALEXANDRIA, CRADLE OF ALCHEMY
What we would recognize today as alchemy started in the Ptolmeic era. For those that don’t know, that was the period of Egyptian history when Alexander the Great conquered his way through Egypt and died, leaving a buddy of his in charge. That buddy was a guy named Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic dynasty would last from around 305 BCE until around 30 BCE, when an Alexander the Great fan club called the Roman Empire would try their hand at slaughtering and conquering their way through Egypt.
One thing that both Romans and Greeks understood was that while tactics and logistics could win you your empire, culture was a big part of what preserved it. If Ptolemy could take the capital of his Empire, Alexandria, and make it the beating heart of Greek literature, philosophy, and science, it would go a long way towards elevating the prestige and legitimacy of his regime at home and abroad. Such was the impetus behind the creation of one of the most storied institutions in Hellenic history: the Library of Alexandria.
Supplying the library was the kind of task that only people as wealthy and powerful as the Ptolemies could orchestrate. According to Galen, the Ptolemies set down a rule: Any book that entered Alexandria’s big fancy port would be taken to the Library and copied, and you would get your book back when the Librarians were done with it. This made Alexandria an excellent place to be if you liked to learn things, or if you were a librarian who enjoyed bullying merchants.
Alexandria was a crossroads for Greek natural philosophy, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, as well as mythologies from Greece, Egypt, and Judea. When diverse knowledge is brought together in one accessible space, it creates an explosion of innovation. What you have here is a recipe for a Unique Moment in History. In this case, that moment was the birth of Alchemy.
We do not know who wrote the first complete alchemical texts in history. Physika kai Mystika (“Natural and Secret Questions”) and Peri Asēmou Poiēseōs (“On the Making of Silver”) are both attributed to the Greek philosopher Democritus, but in all likelihood they were likely authored by a 3rd century Egyptian Neopythagorean named Bolos of Mendes.
The books themselves are unseasoned chicken compared to the spicy buffalo hot wings that Alchemy would become. They contain a primordial version of alchemy, all theory, no style, without a trace of magic or mysticism. On one hand, this is where we see the first recipes for gold-production, (chrysopoeia), but on the other hand, the primary concern of these texts seems to be the counterfeiting of precious metals and stones. Alchemical practice is not rooted in grand mystical or psychological aspirations: it is grounded in the same ordinary, material desires that make a merchant overcharge for sub-par copper.
MIRRIAM OF ALEXANDRIA
There are plenty of philosophers who could claim the title of “The First Alchemist”. Philosophers love philosophizing about what the world is made of. Empedocles came up with the doctrine of the elements, Plato had a concept called the “primal clay”, Anaximander had his own musings on the nature of substance. To a certain degree, picking The First Alchemist is a matter of opinion. For the purposes of this text, I wanted to start with someone who contributed to both the theory, and the practice, of ancient alchemy. So meet Mirriam of Alexandria, aka Mary the Copt, Maria Hebrea, Maria Prophetessa, The First Alchemist.
In the 1st century, most alchemical practice in Egypt was tied to the House of Life, the state temple system. Most of what Egyptian temple alchemists did was build statues of the Gods, and when one was making statues of the Gods, it was essential to get the details right. Color especially was essential to Egyptian religion. When one was building a statue of the gods, its coloration was of utmost spiritual importance. Each of the big gods got their own color association: white for Horus, black for Anubis, green for Osiris, and so on. While Egyptian alchemists were primarily concerned with transforming the color of metals, they didn’t seem to care much about making metals from scratch, or using alchemy for anything other than what the temple prescribed.
But the state-funded House of Life had private competitors. Running an alchemy lab is expensive: it takes expert labor and all sorts of expensive and exotic ingredients, not to mention the cost of fuel for the most basic of alchemical operations. That’s why some of the only institutions that could afford to compete with the House of Life were Alexandria’s synagogues.
Where the House of Life alchemists enjoyed government funding, they also did not have much professional freedom. If the government wanted 500 statues of Osiris, you had to fill the order precisely and with no exceptions, and there wasn’t much room for independent experimentation outside of that. Alchemists weren’t just making religious idols, either. All sorts of metal goods needed production. Someone had to make door hinges, hand mirrors, jewelry boxes, and likely blown glass. So whereas the Houses of Life benefitted from lucrative state contracts, Jewish alchemists had to compete by learning and innovating as fast as possible. As a result, Alexandria’s Jewish quarter was a wellspring of cutting-edge alchemical theories, techniques, and technology.
Mirriam of Alexandria was one such innovator. In her work, we see the first evidence of alchemical theory and practice as we might recognize them today. Mirriam did not simply create recipes for gold: she theorized about its nature, and explored different methods for how those theories could be tested. It is difficult to summarize the sheer magnitude of her contributions to alchemical and scientific history without getting lost in an ocean of technical details she herself pioneered or perfected. She is credited with the invention of dozens of materials, techniques, theories, and devices that would shape alchemy for centuries. Among her myriad contributions is the Bain-Marie, literally “Mary’s bath.” While she likely did not invent the technique, whenever chefs today make a double-boiler to melt chocolate, they are performing a technique popularized nearly two thousand years ago by an Alexandrian alchemist.
Miriam’s work represents a snapshot of alchemical history. Think of it like a cookbook from the 2nd-ish century. She may not have invented every tool and technique at her disposal, but she was certainly using everything she could get her hands on. Her work is a catalog of cutting-edge alchemical technology, and this book would be remiss without a peek at some of her innovations.
The Tribikos: A type of alembic with three “arms”, long tubes with vessels at the ends, used to distill substances and collect their vapors.
The Kerotakis: When used properly, this device creates an airtight seal in which substances are continually distilled, congealed, and distilled again. This “circulation” process of purification is often depicted as an ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, which itself became a central image of alchemy. If you are familiar with chemistry, the kerotakis is essentially a Soxhlet extractor.
Miriam Original Alchemical Theories:
The Inversion of Nature: To volatilize the fixed, and fix the volatile. In other words; to make the solid into fluid, and to make the fluid into solids. We all know an alchemist needs to break substances apart into their constituent parts, but Miriam proposes that the best way to do this is by inverting their natures.
The Union of Opposites: At some point, an alchemist has to try and make a new substance. Mirriam proposes that the way to do this is by combining things with opposite natures. If something is hot, mix it with something cold. If something is fluid, mix it with something solid.
The Axiom of Maria: These previous two ideas can be summarized in Miriam's most famous quote; “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” This describes the process of splitting a substance into its constituent parts so that it may be recombined into a new form. The concept is powerful in its simplicity: Take it apart, put it back together differently. As such, it has become a foundational concept for alchemy, and western esotericism at large.
(These are gonna be fodder for some good illustrations)
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS AND ALCHEMY
If you’ve tried to study alchemy, you’ve probably come across the name “Hermes Trismegistus.” Hermes the Thrice-Great is often referred to as the mythical sage who invented everything from alchemy to mathematics to Judaism. (As in, his followers would claim Trismegistus was the teacher of Moses) There is no evidence he ever existed, but the legend of HermesTrismegistus is the mortar holding together the bricks of western alchemy.
First, it gave us a legendary sage that supposedly all knowledge came from. A common problem with religions is that they disagree. Hermeticism says that if two theologies have a similar idea, that’s because they both came from Trismegistus. Additionally, the history of alchemy and magic is a complicated, contradictory mess of different methodologies and traditions. By saying “it all comes from Trismegistus” you can harmonize things that are otherwise at odds with each other. Because of this, Hermeticism serves as a scaffolding for the otherwise chaotic history of alchemy.
Second, where the Gnostics saw the world as an impure thing made by a malicious God, the Hermetics think God did a pretty good job with the world, and aim to learn about God by studying the world. Where the Gnostics turned their back on the created-ness of the universe, the Hermetics took a far more rationalist approach. They weren’t exactly fond of the material world, but they figured it was worth studying. This made Hermeticism natural allies with things like natural philosophy, and eventually science.
If we are going to talk about Hermes Trismegistus, we have to talk about authorial ethos, which is a fancy way of saying “How intellectual clout works.” Remember that in ancient times, capital-T Truth came from three places: tradition, divine revelation, and legendary sages. The idea that people could somehow find new Truth lying around using ordinary human faculties was seen as ridiculous, and a bit arrogant. “What, you say you have new Truth? You think you’re smarter than Aristotle? You think you’re better than the way we’ve been doing it for a thousand years? Yeah right, buddy.” if you wanted people to care about your religion or philosophy, it needed to be ancient, or you needed a legendary sage. The figure of Hermes Trismegistus solved both these problems. Trismegistus was the ancient-est, legendary-est sage, which made Hermeticism the ancient-est most traditional-est tradition. It follows logically that this ancient ur-wisdom would touch on damn near everything from God to magic to math.
Hermetica comes in two types: The “technical” Hermetica, which deals with things like astrology, mathematics, magic, and alchemy, and the “philosophical” Hermetica, which deals with proto-anthropology, cosmology, and theology. As for the alchemical Hermetica, not much of it still exists. What fragments we have are preserved in the writings of later alchemists, who were familiar with Hermetic ideas.
Hermeticism has one foot in religious philosophy, and the other in natural philosophy. If you have some great ideas about God and some great ideas about how to test the purity of copper, but you just can’t figure out how to combine the two bricks, Hermeticism serves as an excellent conceptual mortar.
(maybe talk about the emerald tablet here?)
ZOISMOS OF PANOPOLIS
If you want to divide alchemy into eras, the first era ends with Zosimos of Panopolis. Before Zosimos, Alchemy had a theory and a practice. After Zosimos, alchemy had a theory, a practice, and a full-fledged theosophical system underlying it. He was a practical innovator, experimenting with new techniques for gilding and dying, but he was also a mystic who tried to talk directly to God.
Very little is known about Zosimos’s life, but his writing carries clear influences from Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism, as well as broader Greek and Egyptian traditions and philosophy. The man wrote like a machine. It is likely that he wrote far, far more texts than have survived today, on a wide variety of topics. For instance, one of his works is titled “On the sacred letter òmega”, a magical, symbolic exploration of the Greek letter. He likely wrote a treatise like this for every letter of the Greek alphabet.
Zosimos’s work comes in two types. The vast majority are practical, full of things like descriptions of alchemical vessels, catalogs of materials, and commentaries on ideal conditions for alchemy. These are catnip for scholars of alchemical history like myself, but it’s the second type that’s gotten all the attention from esotericists. These theo-philosophical texts have titles like Authentic Commentaries or “Authentic Memorials” (gnèsia hypomnèmata), and it is here that we see the birth of the idea of “spiritual alchemy.”
The thing about terms like “spiritual alchemy” is that “spiritual” in 1970 means something very different from “spiritual” in the 3rd century. If we want to approach Zosimos properly, we have to understand what he sees as the spiritual elements of alchemy.
For example: 3rd century alchemical theory had a significant astrological element. Even Miss Hebrea referenced the belief that transmutation could only be properly done in a specific month. Zosimos, however, thought this was nonsense. He believed that alchemy needed exactly two things: for the alchemist to meet the right material conditions, and for the alchemist to undergo a significant ritual purification beforehand.
This spiritual purification occasionally had a moral element to it. There are myriad references to the idea that transmutation simply would not work unless your intentions were pure or holy. Most of these alchemists believed wholeheartedly in some sort of God, and turning stuff into other stuff is his job, isn’t it? For many non-alchemists at this time, alchemy meant something blasphemous. It meant you might be trying to do God’s job. This was a topic of debate in alchemy that was never fully resolved; how far could you go without being sacrilegious?
For Zosimos, really truly learning about the world meant something Gnostic. It meant gaining the knowledge necessary to achieve a union with god. As in, he was trying to march his soul right up to the front porch of the almighty. Easier said than done. It meant dodging the influence of malicious spirits who sought to obscure the divine truth.
In Zosimos’s version of the Garden of Eden, man is seduced twice. First he is first born as pure spirit, only to be seduced by fate into a body. Then he is seduced again by the creation of a woman, which only binds him further to material reality. It is knowledge of that spiritual, inner, self that Zosimos considers essential for alchemy. The stars and planets? Those are the augurs of seductive fate. They are “watchers” or the “pretenders,” divine planetary beings whose purpose is to distract man from knowledge of their inner self. * [footnote: With the humorous implication of it being important to eventually destroy the moon.]
Zosimos was equally influenced by Hermetic literature. His most famous text is Visions, a bizarre, dreamlike work which seems to describe an intricate purification ritual. The images of steps to an altar, sacred mixing bowls, and white-garbed priests are clearly evocative of Hermetic ritual. There are two main competing views of the text. One holds that the ritual language is a metaphorical description of the preparation of alchemical reagents. The other view, infamously pioneered by C.G. Jung, claims that the text is representative of some inner, psychological experience that has nothing to do with metallurgy. This is nonsense, but like most proper nonsense, it has some kernels of truth.
Zosimos was notably more mystical than other alchemists. One cannot ignore the ritualistic elements of his theory. It would be just as incorrect to ignore the practical elements. An alchemist can be as mystical as they like, but no metals? No alchemy. Yes, ancient alchemists were often spiritual, but the nature of that spirituality is often poorly represented. The mistake is in thinking that proto-chemistry and spirituality cannot co-exist. God made the world, didn’t he? To the ancient alchemist, what is more spiritual than lending a hand?
ARAB ALCHEMY (one page)
Around the 6th century, alchemy moves east. The Roman Empire isn’t as cool with alchemy as it used to be. The empire is being run by some peasant named Justin who converted to Christianity, and anything with the faintest whiff of heresy is coming under scrutiny. The Christians are the top dogs now, and they need to consolidate power. Writing about metallurgy is not explicitly condemned in scripture, but Zosimos and Trismegistus talked quite a bit about the nature of God, and their theories didn’t exactly gel with the early church. These alchemist-mystics were looking real heretical. Alchemy needed to flourish elsewhere.
If you wanted to learn stuff in the 6th-8th centuries, the Sassanid Empire was the place to be. While the Romans were working overtime trying to keep the empire together, the Muslims were expanding all the way to Andalusia, and boy did they love translating Greek and Latin texts. Plato, Aristotle, Zosimos, Trismegistus, guys pretending to be Plato and Aristotle, you name it, it was all getting translated, organized, and compiled into big dense convenient compendiums.
Western alchemical texts often resembled mystical riddles. Now, we all love some mystical books of alchemical riddles, it’s half the fun of early alchemy, but Arabic alchemical works are written more like teaching materials. This is because they were often used as teaching materials. Where earlier alchemists needed to encode their works as a form of proto-copyright, Islamic alchemists were trying to efficiently collect and distribute information. Though be warned, “easier to read” by the standards of medieval alchemists is still pretty dense. Hope you like neoplatonism, because in terms of density, Islamic alchemy is a neoplatonic pound cake, with nuts. (The nuts are hermeticism in this metaphor.)
“But who cares?” I hear you ask “Isn’t this supposed to be a book about magic? Why are we talking about these dead Arab philosophers?” Remember, dear reader, that some of the first esotericists in western history were Plato and Aristotle, but their ideas didn’t mesh all that well.
Many a wizard-philosopher tried and failed to glue them together. Most failed. Some resorted to pretending to be Aristotle, publishing books under his name. For the Byzantines, the idea of reconciling Plato and Aristotle was almost laughable. The neoplatonists said they could do it, but few took them seriously. By the time the Baghdad House of Wisdom, neoplatonism had time to mature. For the Muslims, it was damn near philosophy 101. The idea that Plato and Aristotle conflicted at all was laughable to them. “What do you mean Plato and Aristotle don’t fit together? Everyone knows they fit together.” And thus, one of the greatest roadblocks to early magic was smoothed over. The twin cities of early magic were separated by a river, the neoplatonists would cross it, and the Baghdad House of Wisdom would build a bridge.
(ASIDE: PLATONIC ALCHEMY VS ARISTOTELIAN ALCHEMY)
The eastern Byzantine alchemists spent a lot of parchment on arguing which was the superior interpretation of alchemy. Was it Platonic or Aristotelian? By combining the theories, the Arabs were free to explore beyond Plato and Aristotle. The Arabs could simply strip both theories for parts, make something of their own design, and then spend a few hundred years iterating.
THE JABIRIAN CORPUS (2-3 pages)
The Baghdad House of wisdom was a crowning achievement of human history. The Great Library was the stuff of dreams, the beating heart of a five hundred year golden age.
The Grand Library of Baghdad was a titan of the scholarly arts, an unparalleled intellectual machine powered by coffee and one of the wealthiest empires in human history. Scholars could spend their entire lives translating text after text into Arabic. By a century into what we now call the Islamic Golden Age, generations of scholars had dedicated their lives to collecting and translating texts into comprehensive volumes. It was here that Arab alchemy was codified. This is the milieu where we get Jabir ibn-Hayyan. (Put the juicy details HERE in this paragraph)
Scholars debate whether or not he was a real person. The name “Jabir ibn-Hayyan” was probably several authors writing under a single, semi-legendary name. It is possible that there was an original Ibn-Hayyan, and his students simply continued writing under his name after his death, but there is no concrete evidence for either theory. I’ve found it convenient to approach Ibn-Hayyan like a Trismegistus; as many authors contributing to a more nebulous group of ideas. For this reason, scholars refer to his writings as “The Jabirian Corpus” meaning “The group of texts attributed to Jabir ibn-Hayyan.” And by “group” I mean “more than three thousand titles that cover damn near every corner of natural science.”
Jabir is important because he’s what makes Arab alchemy different from Byzantine alchemy. We cannot cover all of his work, so we will run through the most important developments.
[ADDITION: The Substance Trad]
In The Open Letter of Ja’far as-Sadiq regarding the Science of the Art and of the Noble Stone, Hayyan is the first alchemist to divide all substances into three parts: Body, Mind, and Spirit.
[ADDITION: Organic Materials]
The One-Hundred and Twelve Books (of which only thirty survive) are a series of short, vaguely-related treatises on alchemy. A notable innovation here is the introduction of organic materials like plant and animal products. Previously, the closest alchemists would get to living tissue was old eggshells. Now, alchemists were theorizing about the alchemical effects of all sorts of plants and fluids. This was a significant paradigm shift for alchemy. Now semen could be involved.
[ADDITION: Sulfur-Mercury Theory]
The Seventy Books. If you wanna start with the Jabirian Corpus, do it here. This text is a general overview, a summary of all the big ideas that would eventually define the Jabirian Corpus. This is where we get the Sulphur-Mercury theory of alchemy “ which Jabir probably derived from Balinas (Pseudo-Apollonios of Tyana).” [Hanegraff 27] (Honestly we should do a whole page on S-M theory)
Jabir introduces two new important concepts: Sophic Mercury, and Sophic Sulfur. (Sophic means “of the philosophers.”) Every physical thing has a Sophic Mercury and a Sophic Sulfur that can be extracted from it. You get sophic mercury by fermenting something. You get sophic sulfur by distilling something down to its essential oil.“
Let us play alchemist for a moment. Let’s say you have a rose, and you want to extract its sophic mercury. You would seal it in a vessel to ferment down to a spirit. (As in an alcoholic spirit.) The fluid left over would be some form of ethyl alcohol, but the alchemists would call it something like “spirit of rose” or “sophic mercury.” If you want to extract some sophic sulfur of rose, you would put the flower in an oil still, and distill it down to rose essential oil.
But hey, that sophic mercury seems real similar to other plant sophic mercuries. If you reduce down any flower, you’re probably gonna end up with some sort of ethyl alcohol. Arab alchemists noticed this, and thought “well then, this spirit must be a shared, common essence to all plants. What we have here is a jar of plant-ness.” The same thing happened for essential oils. Arab alchemists noticed “well hey, this rose juice still smells quite strongly of rose. This essence must be a distilled form of rose-ness.”
To Arab alchemists, sophic mercury was what made substances similar, and sophic sulfur was what made substances unique. Theoretically, you could mix-and-match mercuries and sulfurs to “breed” new substances. (Mercury is often referred to as feminine, and sulfur as masculine.)
(Learned readers may be expecting a discussion of sophic salt here, but that doesn’t show up until Paracelsus. Give it a few centuries.)
(The Ten Books of Rectification is, in my opinion, the funniest Abbasid-era alchemical manuscript. The text is a compendium of “corrections” to the alchemical theories of the time. The text cites passages from the likes of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc, but damn near every citation is made up. Does this make it a useless text? By no means! It contains important and influential alchemical theories. It is also a reminder to double-check everything a wizard tells you.) CUT
[ADDITION: Balance, aka Alchemical Equilibrium]
The Book of Balances was actually one hundred and forty-four books, but we only have forty left. This text deals with a wide array of subjects, from medicine to astrology to botany, all in service of Jabir’s specific idea of “balance.” [we need to find a better source that goes more into this, because this is important]
(The Book of Seven Metals develops this theory of Jabirianic balance, specifically in an alchemical context. ) combine with above paragraph
The Development of the Potential into the Actual is tough to describe, even by the standards of an alchemical text. It deals with the idea of a single theory underlying all natural sciences.
The Great Book of Properties has 71 chapters and they are mostly out of order. The most notable thing about the text is the innovation of iatrochemistry, meaning the idea of using alchemy to prepare medicines. An important development that will be foundational for History’s Angriest Alchemist, Paracelsus.
(basically for this section we need to combine the description of every idea with a text, why its important, and what it changed from byzantine alchemy )
ARAB ALCHEMY: THE BOOKS (move this section)
If you’re looking to dive into Islamic esoterica, start with the Kitab al-Fihrist. Its title literally means “The Book Catalog.” Compiled in the 10th century by Ibn al-Nadim, it is a directory to damn near every important Arabic text published in the preceding 200 years.
Alchemy loves a legendary founder. In the Fihrist, ibn-Nadim introduces us to the legend of Abū Hāshim Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, known in the west as Khalid ibn Yazid, or simply “Prince Khalid.” According to legend, his father snubbed him for the throne, and so he dedicated the rest of his life to intellectual pursuits like math, astronomy, and alchemy. He was the model for all Islamic alchemists to come.
The point here is that alchemy was royal now. Where Alexandrian alchemists were professional craftsmen and oddball mystics, Arab alchemists were typically nobles. Noble second-sons tend to be big on cash, free time, and land, but short on respect, and alchemy was a good way to transmute one into the other. This is a model we will see for the rest of history. The European alchemical renaissance is flush with bored nobles picking up alchemy on the side. In fact, when alchemy was reintroduced to Europe in 1144, the first book translated from Arabic into Latin was Liber de compositione alchemiae, credited to who else but Prince Khalid.
- Legend of Umayyad prince Khalid (Halid b. Yazid b. Mu’awiya) at the turn of the 7th to the 8th century as the first Arab alchemist. Ibn an-Nadim introduces.
- The Dialogue of Khalid with his alchemy teacher Morenius Romanus, is the framing device for the Liber De Compositione, which was explosively popular in the west come 1144
- Khalid is credited with several works, among them “The paradise of wisdom” Which is extensively quoted
- All the texts flooding in to the arab world. Booming translation industry by the 8th century.
- The most important historical source is the “Fihrist” (kitab-al-Fihrist) of Ibn [-Abi-Yakub]-an-Nadim (second half 10th century)
As Kraus points out, the idea of the Kitab al-Tfl!rif (Book of
Morphology, Kr 404) to hypostasize the elementary qualities beyond
their corporeal existence is not certified in the Neoplatonic tradition. On
the contrary, the Hellenistic philosophers had read in the Timaeus that
the Heaven was made of the four elements, and, in the world of Ideas,
there existed some "absolute Fire, prototype of the material fire."82 Thus,
essentially deriving from this doctrine, it was the four Empedoclean
elements which the predecessors of Jabir had hypostasized, placing them
in the intelligible world. Jabir accords this position to the qualities. And
this means that the qualities, not the Empedoclean primary bodies, were
the true elements of the natural world. In the intelligible world existed
not some" absolute Fire," but the incorporeal hot.
- Haq 58
- 62
- 8-10th century
- Another who knows if this dude existed
- “The Open Letter of Ja’far as-Sadiq regarding the Science of the Art and of the Noble Stone” HAS THE FIRST TRIAD DIVISION OF THINGS INTO THE BODY, MIND, SPIRIT
- The Jabirian Corpus is MASSIVE, over THREE THOUSAND titles are known, covering damn near all of the natural sciences
- “The Compassion”, also known as “The Foundation”, appears to be the oldest work in view of its archaic terminology. Ja’far is not named in this work.
- “The Hundred and Twelve Books” (Of which only 30 survive), a commentary on The Compassion which introduces organic materials to the construction of the Philosophers Stone, a significant leap forward for alchemy.
- “The Seventy Books” The most uniform and systemic look at Jabirian alchemy. Greek alchemists are frequently quoted. This is also where you get the Sulphur-Mercury theory (which he probably got from Balinas (Pseudo-Apolloniosof Tyana)). Big chunks of this were translated and popular in the Christian West as the Liber de Septuaginta. 70 BOOKS IS WHERE CUM GETS INTRODUCED TO ALCHEMY
- “The Ten Books of Rectifications” which contain improvements to alchemy. Each book is written as a different greek philosopher like Pythagoras, Plato, etc
- “The Books of the Balances” of which only 44/144 survive. Not only deals with alchemy, but astrology, medicine, music, arithmatic, etc, all in favor of a greater theory of “Balance”
- “The Seven Metals”, whose contents continue the discussion of the theory of “balance”
- “The Development of the Potential into the Actual” tough to describe. Basically a book about the underlying theory behind natural sciences
- “The Great Book of Properties” introduces iatrochemistry, that is the alchemical preparation of medicines. Obviously very important for Paracelsus.
- Jabir’s alchemical theory may be sketched as follows:
- The foundation of all knowledge is experimentation
- Aristotelian physics, with Galen’s doctrine of qualities (i.e. Matter, Void, Qualities)
- The Alchemist seeks a state of equilibrium
- Chrysopoeia can be achieved by replicateing the same elementary qualities in gold.
- This can be achieved through the application of elixirs
- This is accomplished by breaking raw material down into its elemental essences, which can then be applied to the elixir like a man repairing a house.
- Jabir considers it in the language of “healing” a “sick” metal, gold being “healthy” metal
- The elementary qualities are carried by the two philosophical principles Mercury and Sulphur, from which the metals arise under the influence of the planets.
(This mercury-sulphur theory of matter gets printed and spread in “The Book of the Secret of Creation”)
- Natural events are ordered according to measure and purpose. Therefore: The alchemist can perform the work of the Demiurge. Even the creation of life, the Homunculus, is within the Alchemist’s power.
- Jabir also claimed he created a panacea, and cured over 1000 patients in one day
- The Corpus Jabirianum is based on empirical results, but it does not achieve the level of Rhazes. It divides Minerals into several Classes:
- Spirits: Volatile substances like arsenic, sulphur, mercury, camphor, salmiac
- Metals: gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, iron and “khar sini” (“Chinese iron”, still unidentified)
- The empirical aspect of the Corpus Jabirianum also demonstrates highly practical techniques, e.g. the production of steel and refinement, dyeing, protection from corrosion, and the making of “gold” ink from marcasite for the illumination of manuscripts.
- Apart from the corpuscular theory, Jabirian alchemy contains the principal ideas of all ensuing alchemy. The Corpus Jabirianum knows of the esoteric, metaphorical, occult as well as the exoteric aspect of alchemy. It offers both theory and empirical practice.
- But, argues Jabir, even if all the drugs allegedly of the same group did show comparable effects, the quantity of the quality in each of them was different. For example, among the drugs classified under the third degree of hot, "we definitively know that the hot in sugar (al-sukkar) is not the same as the hot in aniseed (al-anisun). Nor is it the same as the hot which is in colocynth (shal?mal-I?an~a/), nor the same as the hot in euphorbia (forbiyun).» 1SO To translate Jabir in modern terms, a number of bodies may have the same extensive etffoct(temperature), but they do not necessarily possess the same quantity of intensity (heat) producing that effect.
- Just as the words of language, he says, are composed of letters, so denominated things are composed of natures. This was not a simple analogy; rather, it implied an effective and real coordination between the letters of a word which names an object, and the physical structure of the object itself; between the science of morphology which studies the structure of words, and the science of physics which studies the structure of things. "Look!" he writes in the Kitiib al-Tfl!rif(Book of Morphology), how letters are copied upon the natures (wur!i<at <alii al-!<Jbii'i<) and how the natures are copied upon letters, and how the letters and natures interchange (tunqalu)ll
- A single isolated letter (!Jarf) cannot be pronounced. 13 It is clear that we cannot speak by means of an isolated letter [!Jarfhere meaning phoneme] unless we attach to it another letter [= phoneme]. Similarly, it is not possible for us to know the weight of a nature [sc. to know that it exists in relation to us], unless it unites with another nature and thus becomes intelligible-so know this principle!14
- An individual thing cannot exist with less than two elements [sc. natures) ... it may have three elements, but it cannot exist with a single element-this is impossible.! Correspondingly, words-for example "Mul).ammad" or "Ja'far"-exist only in virtue of a combination ofletters. A word may have two letters; it may have three letters, or less than three. But it cannot exist with a single isolated letter-this is equally impossible. A word cannot bewith less than two letters: a letter of articulation (har[al-nutq) and a letter of rest (&arf a/-istirii&a), and this is required for vocal emission. F6 So consequently, the combination of letters corresponds to the combination of the natures in all natural objects. (Names Natures and Things, (82)
- It seems, then, that there are not two but three distinct senses in which the term "&arf" is employed by Jabir: (i) letter of the alphabet, (ii) primary element of speech (phoneme), and (iii) ideal representation of the primary elements of speech. (84)
- Oh my god treating platonic/aristotelian Natures and Qualities as letters that make up phonemes is fucking genius. Quality is a letter. They only combine to form “Balanced” things if they can be pronounced.
- Among the members of this genus were the "wonders" ('ajii'ib) of the motions of celestial bodies-these motions followed a numerical system (al-ni~m al-ta'lifi): "and by this I mean a musical system."50 But more than that, the individual soul too was a harmony of numbers. In the al-Sirr al-Maknun Jabir defines the soul: Harmony of numbers is not the name of the soul, rather it is the definition of the soul. Definition is a predicate of a given subject. 51 And on the same subject he invokes the authority of Plato: Plato believed that the soul is rational substance (jawhar Caqli) whose essential motion is governed by the harmony of numbers. (88)
- Jabir didn’t really add anything, but he syncretized a ton of shit.
- Agues that language is not the result of random chance, but some law of the universe
- He says that language is the fundamental form of what is represented in the intellect. I.e. you distill something down beyond its corporeality, you get language.
- Basically. Man alone has speech, man alone has a soul, therefore, speech is a faculty of the soul.
- All acts of the soul are substantial, and speech is an act of the soul, therefore, speech is substantial.
- Being has substance, essence, and reality.
- Below that, being is represented in the intellect. It is judged based on comprehension.
- Enunciation, in which that understanding is expressed.
- Written word, to represent an object by way of symbols and lines
- Being > Intellectual representation > Material Written representation
- Gold is no more in equilibrium than any other metal and it is distinguished only by its utility."76 This is a daring statement on the part of an alchemist. 96
- Every metal has manifest and latent forms. “Lead is cold and dry externally ... but hot and moist internally ... And as for gold, it is hot and moist externally, but internally it is cold and dry”
- The task of the alchemist is to manifest what is latent
- But here we likewise say: The fruit of a tree is no more in
- equilibrium than its leaves even though the fruit yields more ben-
- efit than the leaves. Nay, one ought to give all things their due
- weight, for they interchange, 1 God willing! 182
RHAZES (865-925) (1 PAGE)
- Rhazes is basically the sober, practical, normal alchemist
- Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi, that is “the man of Ray”
- Based on Jabir, but without the theory of Balance
- Collected works is called Pinax lol
- Published the Book of Secrets and the Secret of Secrets
- A collection of twelve further books belongs to the alchemical corpus of Rhazes, including “The Book of Propaedeutic Introduction” (written c. 900-910), which presents contemporary alchemy in a clear and systematic fashion like a modern introduction to chemistry. (29)
- Aristotelian doctrine, Mercury-Sulphur theory
- Also talks about adding salt to the mercury sulphur theory but it seems like hes mainly MS
A corpuscular theory is manifest in Rhazes’ “Book of Secrets”, more sharply defined than its vague beginnings in the Corpus Jabirianum: bodies consist of the smallest indivisible parts, that is atoms. These are eternal and have a definite size. The qualities of the perceived elements, lightness, heaviness, colour, softness, hardness, depend on the density of the atoms, that is on the amount of the empty space between them. (29)
- Influenced the latin Geber
- Outlines his Magnum Opus thus: distillation, calcination, solution, evaporation, crystallisation, sublimation, filtration, amalgamation, ceration,
- Materials are purified by distillation and calcination, then they are amalgamated
- Prepared in a waxen state, no fumes
- Then comes the “sharp waters” not acids but alkaline substances
- Finally, a coagulation and solidification to produce the “healing elixr”
AVICENNA 980-1037 (1 PAGE)
- Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina
- The Doctor among islamic intellectuals
- Wasn’t an alchemist, but many alchemical works were written under his name
- Was of the opinion that Art can never measure up to Nature
- He thinks transmutation is impossible, BUT he thinks alchemical techniques could have medical applications
TURBA PHILOSOPHORUM (1 PAGE)
- Literally “convention of the philosophers”
- Extremely popular, even today.
- Showed up around the 12 century in other manuscuipts
- Latin edition first printed in 1572
- German edition printed later in 1597
- Basically its framed as a bunch of alchemists getting together to talk about shit. It does not mention any of the arab alchemists, or the mercury-sulphur theory. Its definitely just an arabic translation of a greek original.
- “The Latin edition presents the Turba in a fictional narrative framework as the report of Archelaos, called “Arisleus”, on the “Third Pythagorean Synod”, to which Pythagoras allegedly invited his pupils across the world.” (30)
- Anaximandros, Anaximenes, Anaxogoras, Empedocles, Archelaos, Leukippos, Ekphantos, Pythagoras and Xenophanes, besides Socrates and Plato all appear but with hilariously distorted names
- Theres actually fairly little alchemy in the Turba. Its fairly basic “you gotta mix the elements together right”
- “The author of the Turba has clearly not practised alchemy himself, as indicated by his recommendation of alchemical literature instead of experiment – a statement he puts in the mouth of Parmenides in the eleventh chapter. There is a wide gap here with the thought of Jabir and Rhazes, and the scholars of Salerno and Chartres in the 11th and 12th centuries.” (30)
IBN UMAIL (1 PAGE)
- Abu ≠Abdullah Muhammad ibn Umail at-Tamimi (c. 900-c. 960
- Most prominent example of the alegorical alchemy
- The Book of Silvery Water and Starry Earth, while its Latin translation is known as Tabula chemica or Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus.
- Book is about a vision he received while at the temple in Sidr Busir
- Writes a lot about pre-islamic alchemists, only really mentions Jabir, and has several polemics against him. Loves the hermetics.
- Doesn’t mention Rhazes, probably because he just doesn’t want to acknowledge him as an authority
- Epistle of the Sun to the Crescent Moon”, in which he gives poetic expression to his alchemical insights at the temple in Sidr Busir.
- “Its contents revolve around the relationship dictated by nature between Sol and Luna, seen in sexual terms as the love-play of cock and hen.” (30)
- From the 12th century onwards, Arab alchemy produces only commentators and compilers.
