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Home , Alchemy, Atalanta Fugiens, Basil Valentine, Elixir of life, Multiplication (alchemy)

and Alchemists John Read, FRC Professor of in the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. (Reprinted from , Vol. 168, P. 759, November 3, 1951). This was originally from a discourse delivered on August 10th, 1951 to the British Association of the Advancement of meeting at Edinburgh.

ost people who think about Sketched in broad outline, the alchemy in the present age (and fundamental ideas of alchemy were: first, Mthere are not many who do) that all forms of matter are one in origin; regard it as the pretended art of transmuting second, that these forms are produced base , such as , into the noble by evolutionary processes; third, that ones, and . Liebig held the view matter has a common which alone is that alchemy was never anything else but permanent. The body, our outward form, chemistry; from this point of view one being merely a mode of manifestation may look upon alchemy as the chemistry of the soul, is transitory and may be of the . In its widest and transmuted. Here are views which in their truest significance, however, alchemy was a essentials bear a remarkable resemblance grandiose philosophical system which aimed to those of modern physical science. at penetrating the mysteries of creation and Indeed, in this twentieth century “modern of life; it sought to place the microcosm of alchemy,” as Lord Rutherford called it, has humanity in adjustment with the macrocosm shown the possibility of bringing about of the universe; the transmutation of one many transmutations of elements. form of inanimate matter into another was Alchemical reasoning was mainly merely an incidental alchemical goal. deductive and based on two a priori The more one studies alchemy, the assumptions: first, the unity of matter; more complex it appears. It was, indeed, second, the existence of a potent a vast network of rudimentary chemistry, transmuting agent, known as the interwoven with , , ’s Stone. From the postulate , theosophy, , and many of the unity of matter it followed that other strands. The associations of alchemy this medicine of the metals became also with and with psychology still the medicine of humans. In this guise offer wide fields of study; in recent years the Philosopher’s Stone was known as the C. G. Jung, in particular, has expressed the Elixir Vitae, or . opinion that alchemy is no less important to psychology than to chemistry. From this summary it should be clear that alchemy was much more than an Alchemy endured for more than a experimental science. It was a philosophical millennium, that is to say, from at least system. In their true significance, the early Christian times until the end of the efforts made by the adepts to transmute seventeenth century. But alchemy has metals were attempts to prove the truth of long been outmoded, and so there is little the broad philosophical system of alchemy Rosicrucian realization at the present day of the extent Digest by means of material experiments. No. 1 to which alchemical conceptions and 2013 - imagery permeated the thought and art of Supplement the Middle Ages. Page 2 Origin of Alchemy The ultimate origin of alchemy is thus a vexed question. There is little doubt, The universal patron adopted by the however, that alchemical knowledge and alchemists from early times and throughout ideas were gathered from the ancient the Middle Ages was Trismegistus, civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, India, or Hermes the Thrice-Great. In this Greek and , and brought to a focus in equivalent of the Egyptian , the Greece. From Greece this corpus of deified intellect, the alchemical fraternity alchemy was transmitted to , mainly recognized the father of the Hermetic Art through Syria and Persia. Eventually the and the author of the Emerald Table. The accumulated knowledge of the Muslim thirteen precepts of this Table formed alchemists, drawn from these various the articles of association of the so-called sources and augmented in its passage “Sons of Hermes”: it laid down in cryptic through Islam, was brought into Western language the guiding principles of their Europe, chiefly through Spain. creed. Thoth, as depicted in ancient Egyptian Alchemical , was sometimes shown with the crux ansata (the symbol of life) in the Alchemy, like modern science, had right hand, and a staff in the left. Linked its guiding theoretical principles. The with the staff were a , a scorpion, fundamental theory of alchemy was that a hawks’s head, a circle, and an asp. Each of the Four Qualities and Four Elements, of these representations had its particular often represented in the diagram formed symbolical meaning. Such symbolism of an outer and an inner square. was later characteristic of alchemy; and The corners of the outer square carry even modern chemistry, the daughter of the names of the four elements: , earth, alchemy, is to a large extent a science of water, and . The corners of the inner symbols. square, situated at the mid-points of the The origin of alchemy has often been sides of the outer square, are allocated ascribed to Egypt, otherwise known to the four fundamental qualities: the as Khem, the Biblical Land of Ham. hot, the dry, the cold, and the wet. The Sometimes it has been supposed that diagram shows that fire is hot and dry; alchemy arose farther to the east, in earth, dry and cold; water, cold and wet; Chaldea, or even in China. The Chaldeans, air, wet and hot. These four elements may as exponents of astrology, associated the also be looked upon as representing Sun, moon and planets with specific (fire) and the solid, liquid, and gaseous metals and also with human organs and states of the aggregation of matter (earth, destinies. Still farther east, in ancient water, air). China, alchemical ideas may be traced The four qualities and the four elements. as early as the fifth century BCE in the FIRE comprehensive religious and philosophical system known as Daoism. Much later, in the second century CE, Wei Po-Yang, “the father of Chinese alchemy,” wrote the first AIR EARTH treatise in Chinese dealing with alchemy, in which he described the preparation of the “pill of ,” otherwise the Elixir Vitae. WATER Page 3 This theory, usually ascribed to they could give rise to something so much , may be traced in Egypt and India purer than ordinary gold that a small as far back as 1500 BCE. It is the oldest amount of this product (the Philosopher’s theory of physical science, and it was very Stone) would be able to transmute a very widely held, in one form or another, over large quantity of a base into gold of a long period. It bears out the statement ordinary purity. that “there is a great oneness in the human The chief experimental task of the mind in the matter of broad principle in alchemical adept was to imitate, and even crude cosmical ideas.” surpass, Nature in accomplishing such According to the theory, water—one of changes. the four elements of the material world—is In the cryptic expression and symbolic an embodiment of cold and wet qualities. representation of alchemy, sophic sulphur When the cold quality is replaced by the and sophic (as the two principles hot one, the element water is changed into were often called) assumed many forms. the element air, embodying the wet and For example, they were known as hot qualities. The idea of transmutation and , Sun and moon, Sol and Luna, is thus implicit in the theory. Nowadays, brother and sister, masculine and feminine, of course, this process is viewed simply as a active and passive, giver and receiver, fixed change of liquid water through the agency and volatile, wingless lion and winged of heat into the gaseous form of the same lioness, and so forth. substance, and there is no question of transmutation. It was supposed by the esoteric In essence, this ancient theory is alchemists, or adepts, that the pure “seeds” based upon a primitive mode of thinking of gold and silver (or quick-silver) could sometimes known as the Doctrine of the be extracted from these metals in the form Two Contraries. This is dependent upon of sophic sulphur and sophic mercury. the recognition of a distinction between These “seeds” cold then be combined, opposites, such as cold and hot, dry often in a liquid menstruum, to yield and wet. An apposition of outstanding the Philosopher’s Stone. The succession importance in alchemy was that of the two of the processes here concerned was opposed, or contrary, elements—fire and known as the Great Work, leading to the water. These two opposites came to light in preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone, or a new guise in the sulphur-mercury theory Grand Magisterium. The Stone, resulting of the metals, which seems to have been from the union of masculine and feminine propounded by the Muslim alchemists in principles, was often symbolized as an the ninth century CE. infant. The principle here known as “” According to these views, in order to was essentially an embodiment of com- prepare the Philosopher’s Stone an initial bustibility, and “mercury” denoted the quantity of gold was necessary. The Stone mineral spirit of metals and also liquidity (often described as a red powder) could or fusibility. It was held that when these then be used to convert base metals into two natural principles, engendered in the more gold, so that the original gold was bowels of the earth, came together in a “multiplied,” as the alchemists used to state of purity the result was gold; if they say. One of their favorite metals for Rosicrucian were slightly impure they gave silver; if “” was mercury and this Digest No. 1 they were markedly impure they furnished choice has been curiously vindicated 2013 - only the baser metals. Beyond this, it was by modern that gold can Supplement supposed that in states of superfine purity indeed be produced by transmutation Page 4 The Alchemist. H. Spencer Lewis, FRC.

Page 5 from mercury, although only in excessively Alchemical Symbolism minute amounts and at great cost. Pictorial symbolism is an ingredient In modern parlance it would be correct of the first importance in alchemy. Many to call the Philosopher’s Stone a catalyst. of the designs were characterized by color Here again the alchemists are vindicated; schemes suggestive of heraldry. Among for what more potent catalyst could be medieval examples, the so-called “figures imagined than the neutrons which start of Abraham the Jew,” dating from the early and maintain the explosive disintegration years of the fifteenth century, were held in of uranium-235 into other elements? great reverence by alchemists of succeeding “Everything possible to be believ’d,” wrote ages. These figures were ascribed to the English poet and mystic, William , a Parisian alchemist of Blake, “is an image of truth… What is great repute; they took the form of a now proved was once only imagin’d.” series of elaborate frescoes, decorating the Alchemical literature abounds in cryp- arcade of the churchyard of the Innocents tic descriptions and pictorial representa- in Paris. The designs, executed in color, tions of the blending of sophic sulphur were capable of a dual alchemical and and sophic mercury in the synthesis of the religious interpretation. The Biblical story Stone. For example, a wingless lion and of the massacre of the innocents by King winged lioness are shown in playful con- Herod formed a central feature of the flict, with a watery background (represent- series. Herod was pictured as “a King with ing the liquid menstruum, or Hermetic a great Fauchion.” Mothers were shown in Stream); an alchemist is depicted in the act the act of weeping “at the feet of the un- of balancing equal weights of fire and wa- pitiful Soldiers; the blood of which Infants ter; the Hermetic Androgyne—half man, was put in a great vessel, wherein the Sun half woman—stands above a , sig- and Moon came to bathe themselves.” In nifying the menstruum. other words, infants’ blood was merely Incidents from the Bible and from a cryptic representation of the liquid classical mythology were also freely adapted menstruum which was supposed to aid to alchemical ends. Thus, in an illustrated in the conjunction of sophic sulphur and manuscript in the St. Andrews collection, sophic mercury. the birth of Eve from Adam’s rib, with As another example, an illustration the Serpent as onlooker, is depicted to entitled the First Key of (ca. symbolize the same fundamental idea as 1600) shows a king and queen as the central the Hermetic Androgyne. As an example feature. Below the king a wolf leaps over of another kind, taken from a different a heated crucible, and near the queen an source, Apollo and Artemis, with the old man with a wooden leg manipulates a terrorizing serpent of Juno, are selected scythe around a cupel. An accompanying from classical mythology in order to “explanation” directs the operator: “Take furnish a further pictorial illustration of a fierce grey Wolf. Cast to him the body the same conception. Some alchemists of the King, and when he has devoured it, went so far as to insist that the whole burn him entirely to ashes in a great fire. corpus of classical mythology was nothing By this process the King will be liberated; more than a complex medium designed and when it has been performed thrice the expressly to record alchemical truths in Lion has overcome the Wolf, who will find Rosicrucian concealed allegories and “abstract riddles nothing more to devour in him. Thus our Digest No. 1 of our Stone,” as Ben Jonson phrased it in body has been made fit for the first state of 2013 - his play, The Alchemist (1612). our Work.” Supplement Page 6 The alchemical wolf, lupus metallorum, by different systems of shading; human was “” (stibnite, or native figures are drawn forcefully and correctly; antimony sulphide), used in the heated the compositions have an effect of brilliance crucible as an agent for purifying gold, and solidity, enhanced by strong modeling since it “devoured” traces of metallic and shadows. impurities. The wooden-legged ancient Apart from such ad hoc pictorial repre- signified Saturn, that is to say, either the sentations of alchemical tenets, a strong al- slow-moving planet of that name or the chemical influence pervaded much of the dull, heavy metal, lead. The scythe, like art of the Middle Ages. It found expres- other sharp implements, symbolized sion repeatedly in the painting, decorative fire. This part of the design therefore architecture, sculpture, and colored glass represents the of argentiferous of this era. Alchemical ideas and symbol- lead, furnishing pure silver. In brief, the ism may be traced in detail, for example, First Key of Basilius shows how to begin in the work of such artists as Durer, Cra- the preparation of sophic sulphur and nach, Giorgione, and Campagnola. It sophic mercury, in readiness for the next may even be claimed that every detail in operation of the Great Work. Durer’s masterpiece of engraving, Melen- Probably the finest artistic examples of colia (1514), is capable of an alchemical the avowed symbolism of alchemy are the interpretation: the doctrine of melancholy beautiful -engravings of Johannes is inseparably bound up with the Saturn Theodorus de Bry and his associates; mysticism which permeates alchemy.1 these occur notably in various alchemical Decline of Alchemy works of Count , such as Fugiens and Symbola Aureae The outstanding practical aim of Mensae, published at Oppenheim and alchemy until the sixteenth century was Frankfurt during 1617-18. These plates the transmutation of base metals into gold, are boldly engraved; textures are conveyed whether from purely philosophical or Page 7 Rosicrucian Digest No. 1 2013 - Supplement Page 8 mercenary motives. Early in the sixteenth than another century. During this Indian century endeavored to give a new summer of alchemy the stage was held direction to operative alchemy by insisting by the Theory of Phlogiston, while the that its main goal should be the healing four elements and the three hypostatical of disease rather than the making of gold. principles hovered behind the scenes like He envisaged alchemy as a handmaid of ghosts reluctant to be laid…Phlogiston medicine, to be applied in the preparation melted finally “into air, into thin air” of chemical remedies of mineral origin. with the discovery, in the second half of He sought to liberate medicine from the the eighteenth century, of the chemical obsession of the ancient Galenic order, composition of the ancient “elements” and in this sense he takes rank beside such air and water and of the true nature of contemporaries as Luther, Copernicus, combustion. These discoveries ushered in and Columbus as an emancipator of the era of modern chemistry.2 humanity from the trammels of authority. The ensuing period of iatro-chemistry Types of Alchemists or medico-chemistry, lasting until the eighteenth century, witnessed a slow The term alchemist has been used decline of the old alchemy. throughout the ages to denote many Paracelsus was essentially a reformer kinds of people, with a real or professed and propagandist of the . His knowledge of alchemy. These ranged from chief contribution to alchemy was his impostors and having no claim modification of the sulphur-mercury theory to the title, through puffers (souffleurs), by the introduction of a third principle goldmakers, skilled practicants, and which he named salt. In his system of the scholastic , to adepts and tria prima, or three hypostatical principles, religious mystics… sulphur, mercury, and salt stood materially Scotland figures a good deal in the for inflammability, metallicity, andhistory of alchemy. Also in Scotland uninflammability (fixidity) and mystically there are some outstanding collections for the soul, spirit, and body of human of alchemical literature, particularly the beings. The second half of the seventeenth Ferguson and James Young Collections century found both the old alchemy and in Glasgow, and others in St. Andrews, iatro-chemistry on the wane. Despite Edinburgh, and Aberdeen. A century their excesses, both the alchemists and after Damian’s exploit, Scotland produced the iatro- had done a great deal a mysterious itinerant goldmaker in the to accumulate chemical knowledge and to person of Alexander Seton, otherwise prepare the way for the incipient science of known as “The Cosmopolite.” He has also chemistry which was to arise in the second been called “the chief martyr of alchemy”; half of the eighteenth century. for his dramatic career is said to have ended It is sometimes held that the in tragedy at Cracow in 1604, as a result of publication of The Sceptical Chymist, by his experiences in the torture chamber of 3 in 1661, heralded the end of the Elector of Saxony at Dresden. alchemy. It is true that Boyle dismissed to The numerous paintings of alchemists his own satisfaction in this famous book and alchemical interiors, notably by the systems of the four elements and the Brueghel, Stradanus, Teniers, Steen, Wijck, tria prima and put forward the modern and other artists of the Low Countries, are idea of an element; but the emergence of mainly concerned with alchemists of the modern chemistry had to wait for more kinds that have been mentioned.4 Such Page 9 genre representations of these painters and the final processes of the Great Work, of artists in Italy, Spain, , and carried out in the sealed Vessel of Hermes other countries, are of great interest and and directed by prayer as well as by chemical value to historical science. and astrological influences were sometimes Alchemists of a severely practical undertaken to the accompaniment of type, who were interested chiefly in musical chants or incantations. To the chemical phenomena and in the discovery religious mystics among the alchemists and application of new substances and these processes would partake of the processes, are typified by such men as nature of a religious ritual, and it would Brunschwick, Agricola, Libavius, and be natural for them to introduce music Glauber; the scholastic philosophers from one of these closely related activities by and ; to the other. It must be emphasized also and the religious mystics, who viewed that alchemical and ideas came alchemy as “the Divine Art,” by Ripley and largely from ancient Greece, and that the Khunrath. alchemists followed Pythagoras and in ascribing a particular importance to Alchemical Music number and harmony in the interpretation of Nature and the universe. Among the mystical alchemists, Count In 1935, some of these alchemical Michael Maier calls for special mention. canons5 were sung in public for the first He was physician, private secretary, and time by members of the St. Andrews alchemist to the Emperor Rudolph II (the University choir, at the Royal Institution so-called “German Hermes”) at Prague, in London. Fuga XVIII may be mentioned early in the seventeenth century. A man as typical: “Whatever active principle there of many accomplishments, Maier was also is in nature, it sends out its force in all a philosopher, mystic, classical scholar and directions and loves to multiply the same.” musician. He was a voluminous writer of It is of interest that some manuscript notes great credulity, and he carried to extremes of made by Sir Isaac the alchemical interpretation of Egyptian Newton, and now in the St. Andrews and classical mythology. This subject collection, bear a special mark of emphasis forms the chief theme of his Atalanta beside this particular epigram. Fugiens (1618), a quaint and fascinating work handsomely embellished with fifty copper-engravings by de Bry and his school. Each engraving is provided with a cryptic title and a epigram written in elegiac couplets. Each epigram is set to music, in the form of so-called fugues, which are in reality canons in two parts against a repeated canto fermo. In allusion to the classical legend, these three parts are termed, “Atalanta, or the fleeing voice,” “, or the pursuing voice,” and “The apple in the path, or the delaying Rosicrucian Digest voice.” No. 1 Presumably, in view of the alchemical 2013 - belief in the beneficent influence of music, Supplement Page 10 REFERENCES 1. For a detailed alchemical interpretation of Du- 1947). The same work also deals fully with rer’s Melencolia see The Alchemist in Life. Lit- James IV and Damian (pp. 16-36). erature and Art, 57-62 (London and Edinburgh, 4. Alchemical paintings by artists of the Low Coun- 1947). tries and others are reproduced in the work men- 2. Op. cit., pp. 8-9. tioned under (i) above. 3. A detailed account of Seton, and of his rescuer 5. Some of Maier’s alchemical music is reproduced and successor. Sendivogius is given in Humour in Prelude to Chemistry (London, 1936; 2nd edit., and Humanism in Chemistry, 37-65 (London 1939; and New York, 1937). Page 11