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Wicked Angels and the Good Demon: the Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes

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Wicked Angels and the Good Demon: the Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 3 (2018) 3–33 brill.com/gnos Wicked Angels and the Good Demon: The Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes Christian H. Bull University of Oslo and Princeton University [email protected] Abstract The alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis, writing around 300 CE, is our only source for a series of treatises by Hermes called the Physica, which reportedly spoke about angels who had intercourse with women, as in 1 Enoch, and which credited the revelation of alchemy to an enigmatic figure called Chemeu. The present contribution aims to show that Zosimus has in fact harmonized the account of 1 Enoch with the Physica of Hermes, identifying the Watchers of the former treatise with wicked angels who perverted the authentic art of alchemy, originally revealed to Hermes by Chemeu, who should be identified with Agathodaimon. It is further argued that the Physica likely served as a source for the Hermetic treatises the Perfect Discourse (Ascl. = NHC VI,8) and Kore Kosmou (Stob. herm. 23). This indicates that the literary relationship be- tween the technical and theoretical Hermetica is tighter than hitherto assumed. Keywords hermetism – Zosimus of Panopolis – alchemy – perfect discourse – Kore Kosmou – letter of Isis The corpus of Hermetic literature is conventionally divided into two groups. By far the most well-known group is called the philosophical, or theoretical. This group consists of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Hermetic excerpts from Stobaeus, the Latin Asclepius, the three Coptic Nag Hammadi Hermetica (NHC VI,6–8), the Greek and Armenian Definitions of Hermes to Asclepius, as well as a number of fragments and excerpts. The second group, called popular or technical, is less well known, indeed little work has been done on this group © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/2451859X-12340046Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:10:53AM via free access 4 Bull since the appearance of the first volume of André-Jean Festugière’s monumen- tal La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste. The topic matter of this group would fall under the rubrics of astrology, alchemy, and magic, which Festugière referred to as the occult sciences. The relationship between the two groups is still unclear. Festugière was ready to admit that many of the “occult” texts stemmed from the Egyptian priesthood, while the philosophical treatises were ostensibly written by Greeks of mediocre culture.1 Despite the fact that the two corpora of texts share the same protagonists—Hermes, Agathodaimon, Asclepius, Isis, Horus, etc.—and project the same self-image of being secret Egyptian writings, taken from ste- lae hidden within the temples, quite different groups would be behind their production, according to Festugière.2 The question was raised again more recently by Garth Fowden, in his influ- ential The Egyptian Hermes.3 Fowden sees more of a continuity between the two corpora, but relegates the technical Hermetica—along with pagan cult practices—to the lower stages of the Way of Hermes, to be discarded when the disciple attains spiritual enlightenment.4 Yet, despite the lack of attention given in the theoretical Hermetica to the occult sciences and traditional cult, there is no evidence that such practices were thought to be superseded as the disciple advanced. Indeed, we should not ignore the fact that in the epilogue of the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (NHC VI,6), in which the summit of the Way of Hermes is reached through an ecstatic visionary ascent, Hermes instructs Tat to inscribe the treatise in hieroglyphic letters on a stela to be erected in the temple of Hermes in Diospolis. Although this is a literary fic- tion, it was likely written at a time when this temple, probably the one located in Qasr el-Agouz, was still active, and should be taken as an endorsement of traditional cultic activity.5 Furthermore, the stela was to be raised at a specific astrological juncture, which demonstrates that astrological computation was not considered to be superfluous by Hermetists who had completed their ini- tiation. Since the text contains mysteries only to be related to the initiated, the stela should also be protected with a curse against uninitiated readers, invok- ing the uncreated, self-created, and created god, as well as the seven essence- rulers and the elements. Such features recur in the technical Hermetica. It is the aim of the present contribution to demonstrate that a technical treatise 1 Festugière 1944–54, 1:85–86, 102, 115–18, 2:33. 2 Festugière 1944–54, 1:362. 3 Fowden 1986, 75–94, on the occult sciences. 4 Fowden 1986, 116–17. 5 Klotz 2012, 215–18. Gnosis: Journal of GnosticDownloaded Studies from Brill.com10/02/2021 3 (2018) 3–33 03:10:53AM via free access Wicked Angels and the Good Demon 5 (or series of interrelated treatises) called the Physica of Hermes, to which the alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis testifies, was likely used as a source in the Perfect Discourse (known as the Asclepius in its Latin translation) and the Kore Kosmou. This indicates that the distinction between the technical and theoretical Hermetica is not as clear-cut as previously supposed, and that there existed technical treatises strongly affiliated with the theoretical corpus. The Wicked Angels in the Perfect Discourse of Hermes Trismegistus In the famous apocalypse in the Perfect Discourse, Hermes describes how in the future, when the Egyptians no longer maintain the true religion, the gods will leave their temples in Egypt and only the “wicked angels” will remain. “Only the wicked angels,” Hermes says, “will remain behind with human- kind, mingling with them and brazenly leading them into evil deeds, and into godlessness, wars, and banditry, by teaching them what is contrary to nature (ⲡⲁ[ⲣ]ⲁⲫⲩⲥⲓⲥ/naturae contraria).”6 Marc Philonenko has proposed that this is an allusion to the myth of the Watchers in 1 Enoch, where the “sons of God” in Genesis are said to be wicked angels who took human women as wives, begot giants as offspring with them, and taught humankind illicit arts, like metal- lurgy, root cutting, and magic.7 If there is indeed an undeniable resemblance, it is nevertheless important to recognize the differences between the myth of Hermes and that of Enoch. Already before the flood, the rebel angels of 1 Enoch descended and were vanquished by the loyalist angels of God, who bound them in valleys and des- erts until the day of judgement, when they will be destroyed in the confla- gration.8 Only the evil spirits of their children, the giants, remain on earth to plague humans.9 In the prediction of Hermes, on the other hand, the wicked angels are here on earth in the narrative present, and when the gods leave earth in the future the angels will have free rein to lead humankind astray. The wicked angels in the Perfect Discourse are the counterparts of the benevolent 6 Perf. Disc. NHC VI,8 73.5–12 //Ascl. 25. Synoptic edition in Mahé 1978–1982, 2:88, 239. All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 7 1 En. 7–8. Cf. Philonenko 1975. For the Hermetic and alchemical use of the legend of the fallen Watchers and their secret revelations, see Scott 1924–1936, 4:149–50; Festugière 1944–1954, 1:254–60. 8 1 En. 15.8–11 9 1 En. 15.8–11. Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 3 (2018) 3–33 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:10:53AM via free access 6 Bull demons, who inhabit the statues in the Egyptian temples.10 In Hermetic de- monology, these two kinds of demons are not separated by an unbridgeable gulf, but they are in fact both “energies” or “effects” (ἐνέργεια) of the astral gods.11 Thus, they are the agents of fate, which can be either good or bad, de- pending on the astral conjunctions. The wise man, according to Asclepius in his discourse to king Ammon, is free from the effects of the demons who are responsible for everything else that happens in the sublunary world, for good or bad.12 In fact, the Perfect Discourse of Hermes and Asclepius’s discourse to king Ammon were conflated by Lactantius, who in his Divine Institutes wrote: “They each declare ‘Demons are enemies and tormentors of men’, which is why Trismegistus calls them ‘wicked angels’ (ἀγγέλους πονηρούς); he was well aware that they turned into earthly creatures upon corruption of their celestial nature.”13 Lactantius goes on to relate the wicked inventions of these demons, one of which is the cre- ation of statues for worship. Our scant information about the wicked angels in the Hermetica is thus that they are connected to astral fatalism and that they teach, or at least will teach when the gods leave Egypt, unnatural arts to humankind. Wicked Angels in the Physica of Hermes, according to Zosimus of Panopolis It is possible that the motif of the wicked angels in the Perfect Discourse owes something to 1 Enoch, as Philonenko proposed, though they have then been embedded into the essentially Middle-Platonic demonology of Hermes.14 There was another Hermetic work in antiquity concerned with alchemy, now lost to us, that contained more information on these angels.15 Our wit- ness to this Hermetic work is Zosimus, the late third- or early fourth-century alchemist from Panopolis in Upper Egypt, who refers to both technical and 10 Philanthropic demons: Ascl. 5; Daimon Agathos: NHC VI,8 75.3–5. 11 Corp. herm. 16.13; Stob. herm. 6.9–10. Cf. Greenbaum 2016, 209–13. 12 Corp. herm. 16.16. 13 Lactantius, Div. inst.
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