Alchemical Texts Research Articles

First entities in the De renovatione et restauratione of Paracelsus: wonder drugs for metals and for people

ABSTRACT Paracelsus was a transmutational alchemist: For most of his career, he believed that one metal could be turned into another. In an alchemical text, the De renovatione et restauratione, he explored the theoretical foundations of transmutation and hinted at recipes for bringing it about. He proposed that from plants, gems, metals, and minerals might be prepared a class of marvelous medicaments, which he called prima entia (first entities). Each primum ens had particular uses, but the entia were all supposed to be able to revitalize the human body and cleanse it of disease. Certain entia could also transmute metals. The De renovatione et restauratione affirmed the metaphysical centrality, in goldmaking and medicine alike, not just of purification or alteration but of renewal and transformation. It expressed the author’s eschatological excitement at God’s works of wonder, whether within or above nature.

Fragments of Alchemy from a Cairene Synagogue: Context, Codicology, and Contents of the Alchemical Corpus of the Cairo Genizah

This article presents the results of a survey and a first assessment of the corpus of alchemical manuscripts retrieved from the Cairo Genizah, a storage room mainly intended for sacred writings that is attached to the Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo. The alchemical manuscripts are described in their codicological and palaeographic features; their content is analysed in the context of the medieval production of alchemical texts in the surrounding Islamic world. The alchemical corpus of the Genizah represents a unique and widely unstudied source for our understanding of the relationship between Jews and alchemy in the medieval Mediterranean World.

Citrination and its Discontents: Yellow as a Sign of Alchemical Change

Many of the “signs and tokens” described in alchemical texts relate to colour, from the Crow’s Bill signifying putrefaction to the philosophical solvents disguised as Green Lions, Red Dragons, and Grey Wolves. While the process of yellowing, or citrination, often appears in medieval recipes, it seems to have interested commentators less than the more familiar processes of blackening, whitening, or reddening. Yet beyond these canonical colours, yellowness turns out to be ubiquitous in alchemy and its associated craft practices, both in Latin texts and vernacular translations. This paper uses source criticism and experimental reconstruction to interrogate the role of yellowness at the beginning, middle, and end of practice, focusing on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. As starting ingredients, yellow vitriol and litharge offered the potential for transmutation but also posed problems for identification and preparation. As an intermediate stage, yellowness offered promising signs of future success, in the form of dramatic colour changes and unexpected products. But yellowness also offered an end in itself, as appears from the many citrination processes attested in recipe collections which aimed to imitate the properties of gold – suggesting that yellowing was prized as a significant indicator of chemical change across diverse areas of craft practice.

Beyond the Literary Sources of Augurello’s Chrysopoeia

In his Neo-Latin poem Chrysopoeia (1515), the Italian humanist Giovanni Aurelio Augurello often declares to be outdoing the ancients in writing the first alchemical poem in Latin. Is this simply an instance of what E. R. Curtius called outdoing a topos? Or is Augurello’s poem actually venturing onto a metaphorically untrodden path? Based on an analysis of Chrysopoeia, its genesis, and its sources, this article aims to assess the extent of this poem’s novelty. In particular, my interpretation focuses on this text’s poetic transpositions of non-literary sources, and more specifically Geber’s Summa perfectionis and other medieval alchemical texts.

Metals as Living Bodies. Founts of Mercury, Amalgams, and Chrysocolla

Ancient and medieval alchemical works include several comparisons between the generation and development of metals and those of plants, animals, and living beings. These comparisons could refer to adopt physiological models in the explanation of the natural formation of metals and their artificial transformation, to justify the place occupied by alchemy within the broader study of the natural world, and to stand as metaphorical descriptions of specific alchemical procedures. This article analyses these features by focusing on the relationship between mercury and gold, the latter being the “perfect” metal that constituted both an ambitious goal of alchemical practice and one of its key ingredients. The interrelationship between gold and mercury emerges in complex myths about metallic rivers, in the use of gold-mercury amalgams in ancient technology, and in the discussion that alchemists developed around the enigmatic chrysocolla (literally “gold solder”). These three foci are discussed in relation to a variety of ancient sources – from Aristotle and the Stoics to late antique, Byzantine, and Syriac alchemical texts – to explore the different forms of conceptualising metals as living bodies and the interactions of these models with ancient theories on the formation of metals and the alchemical practices aimed at their transformation.

Jennifer M. Rampling, The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700, Synthesis series, paperback (2020; paperback ed., Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2023), xvii, 408 pp., 16 halftone figures

In the brief but essential preface to The Experimental Fire, Jennifer Rampling poses a question that she intends to answer in different ways for different English alchemists she considers: “how, exactly, did book learning interact with practical experience?” (4). Related to this are two large questions. First of all, how did English alchemists think of themselves in relation to predecessors going back at least a millennium and to texts in Greek and Arabic that were only translated into Latin in and after the twelfth century? Were the English practitioners restoring the operations claimed by authors since at least Zosimos in the early fourth century C.E. Were they reinterpreting the texts for their time? Or were they doing both? Second, and just as important, how does anyone go about reading an alchemical text?

Beyond the “wonders of India” (‘ajā’ib al-hind): Yogis in Persian medico-alchemical writings in South Asia

AbstractThis article looks at the translation and circulation of yogis’ learning in Persian medical and alchemical texts produced in South Asia. I suggest that looking at the non-religious environment allows for a more accurate understanding of the overall circulation of yogic knowledge and techniques in the Muslim society of South Asia. Furthermore, I suggest that the assimilation of yogis’ learning in Persian sources concerned not only Yoga but also other types of knowledge associated with yogis. Muslim physicians’ interest in yogis’ knowledge focused on one specific aspect: rasaśāstra “alchemy” and the mastery over the production of mercurial and metallic drugs. The technical and pragmatic focus of Persian medico-alchemical writings contributed to give views of yogis beyond the exotic and foreignizing category of the wonders of India. Medical writings helped to develop views of yogis as a socio-economic group involved in the transmission of a specific body of knowledge. This was an important shift away from the perspective of the ‘ajā’ib al-hind “wonders of India” as well as from the ways in which yogis were perceived in Sufi texts. New perspectives on yogis emerged when Persian-speaking scholars and readers in India needed more pragmatic representations of local groups, such as the physicians who were in the process of appropriating alchemical notions that were closely associated with the yogis.

The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

What is needed to understand alchemical texts

The article is written on the basis of the first part of the thesis, devoted to the substantiation, interpretation and re-actualization of spiritual alchemy. Recognizing the great difficulty in reading alchemical texts, it is proposed to consider 3 authors (E. Husserl, M. Eliade and C. G. Jung), with the help of which a separate method is formed to achieve the necessary setting when reading certain treatises of this direction. The methodological principle necessary for its acquisition emerges.

Alchemical lexica in Syriac: planetary signs, code names and medicines

Abstract Technical terminology and Decknamen represent key hallmarks of the alchemical literature in different traditions. The opacity of this vocabulary makes the reading of alchemical texts difficult and, in order to cope with similar challenges, Byzantine, Syriac and Arabic scholars soon started compiling technical vocabularies. In my paper I shall investigate two (partially overlapping) lexica, which open the BL Syriac alchemical MSS Egerton 709 and Oriental 1593. On the one hand, I will explore the variety of sources used by the anonymous compiler(s) to assemble these useful tools (Byzantine alchemists as well as the Greek medical tradition; Syro-Arabic lexicography). On the other, particular attention will be given to the structure and mise en page of the two lexica, which will be compared with analogous alchemical dictionaries in the Byzantine (e.g. MS Marcianus gr. 299) and Arabic (e.g. MS Gotha 1261) traditions.

A Matter of Philosophers and Spheres: Medieval Glosses on Artephius’s Key of Wisdom

The article examines the two Latin versions of Artephius's Clavis sapientiae (Key of Wisdom) that have been preserved in early modern collections of alchemical texts. A comparative analysis of the two versions shows that one of them has undergone a process of textual manipulation. In particular, an interpolation of short philosophical passages concerning the doctrine of prime matter has relevant interpretative implications. These additions appear to be grounded in the early thirteenth-century philosophical debate on cosmology and the first Latinate reception of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

An Alchemist’s Travels, according to Himself

This essay reconsiders a little-known collection of Latin alchemical recipes from the fifteenth century attributed to one “Leonard of Marburg.” Preserved today in only one manuscript (MS Latin 14005, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), these recipes were collected over the course of the narrator’s arduous travels ranging from Italy, to Poland, to Armenia—or so Leonard claims. Are we supposed to believe him? Reading this alchemical text alongside other medieval travel narratives, I show how this travel narrative signals its affiliations with that genre and, in so doing, invites us to regard it as a literary experiment rather than a record of a medieval traveling alchemist’s alchemical practice.

Manuscrito de Voynich - Análisis del algoritmo de codificación con los métodos de cifrado conocidos en la época medieval y resultados de las marginalias que no fueron encriptadas

En el presente estudio describo y analizo dos objetivos, el primero es sobre la oposición y la equivalencia del algoritmo de codificación del manuscrito Voynich con los métodos conocidos de cifrado del período medieval. Según los resultados de mi investigación innovadora del manuscrito Voynich, este fue escrito en gallego medieval (gallego-portugués). Su algoritmo de codificación fue influenciado por el cifrado de sustitución del uso de un cifrado polialfabético para la mayor parte de su texto, así como definitivamente fue influenciado por el cifrado de transposición para texto alquímico de cifrado doble. Sin embargo, debe mencionarse que existen diferencias significativas entre los códigos que se usaron en el período medieval y el algoritmo codificado del manuscrito Voynich. Por la razón que hizo que el descifrado fuera más complicado a lo largo de los siglos, el cifrado por sustitución de un cifrado polialfabético se usó en parte y simultáneamente con cifrado monoalfabético, además del texto sin codificar. Por lo tanto, lo principal a tener en cuenta es que el segundo objetivo de mayor interés en este artículo en particular son partes de los textos del manuscrito de Voynich –marginalias– que no se cifraron en absoluto y su lectura.

El huevo en los antiguos alquimistas griegos: un acercamiento al origen del concepto «huevo filosófico»

There are numerous materials and substances that the ancient alchemists used as their raw material. One of these is the egg, which has an emblematic or symbolic significance since the first Greek alchemical texts. In this sense, it is worth mention three: Λεξικὸν κατὰ στοιχεῖον τῆς Χρυσοποιίας (Alphabetical Lexicon of the Crisopea), Περὶ τοῦ ὠοῦ οἱ παλαιοί φασιν οὕτως (What the ancients say about the egg) andὈνοματοποΐα τοῦ ὠοῦ・ αὐτὸ γάρ ἐστιν τὸ μυστήριον τῆς τέχνης (The nomenclature of the egg: this is the mystery of art). In these texts, of which a translation is offered in this work, in addition to the Greek text, a whole allegorical nomenclature is enclosed, unknown to the uninitiated in alchemy.In the last part of this work, a possible origin of the concept of «philosophical egg» will be discussed, based on one of the passages in the text The nomenclature of the egg: this is the mystery of art

Encoding Newton’s Alchemical Library: Integrating Traditional Bibliographic and Modern Computational Methods

The Chymistry of Isaac Newton (http://chymistry.org) project team has digitized and encoded, following the TEI Guidelines, the complete corpus of Newton’s alchemical manuscripts, which total more than two thousand pages and over one million words. Newton cited more than five thousand published and unpublished works in these manuscripts; many of his annotations reference items in his own library, as he was an exceptionally dedicated reader of alchemical texts. Newton’s extensive citations and annotations provide a window into his alchemical research and practices, and serve as the basis for our authoritative bibliography of his alchemical sources. The bibliography is being developed as both a stand-alone reference work and an integrated resource with the alchemical manuscripts, providing additional context for Newton’s citations and florilegia. Once finished, the bibliography will provide complete, structured citations—which often would appear very abbreviated or incomplete in the manuscripts—that can be formatted to comply with modern bibliographic conventions and bibliographic management systems. Our bibliography will also link to digitized online versions of the source texts available through Early English Books Online, HathiTrust Digital Library, and other digital repositories. The citations include quasi-facsimile title page transcription, a technique used for bibliographic description of rare books, to enable richer forms of citation analysis. By analyzing the citations, we will be able to date Newton’s manuscripts, cluster manuscripts that cite the same or related sources, and, ultimately, generate network graphs that will reveal connections between the cited authors and texts and how they influence Newton’s own ideas and work.

The Duke, the Soldier of Fortune, and a Rosicrucian Legacy: Exploring the Roles of Manuscripts in Early-Modern Alchemy

By the time it was published in 1705, the Speculum Sapientiae claimed to have had a long history going back to 1672. However, the fact that exaggerated stories were commonplace in alchemical literature leads us to question its credibility. This paper explores the secret lives of this alchemical text prior to its print publication to clarify the roles of manuscripts in early-modern alchemy. Specifically, I argue that there were three aspects that could distinguish manuscript from print: provenance, materiality, and exclusivity. These can be seen at work in the fate of Johann Heinrich Vierordt, an itinerant alchemist and cavalry captain whose career is inextricably linked to the scribal dissemination of the Speculum Sapientiae. In addition to manuscript copies of that text at libraries across Europe, a significant cache of correspondence preserved in Gotha documents Vierordt’s dealings with Duke Friedrich I of Saxe-Gotha. The verisimilitudinous provenance of Vierordt’s alchemical secrets and tincture played a crucial role in allowing him to gain Friedrich’s trust. Yet it was only after Vierordt presented him with a precious parchment manuscript of the Speculum Sapientiae that he truly succeeded in gaining the duke’s patronage. Subsequently, reports of multiple conflicting copies surfacing in Amsterdam sealed Vierordt’s fall from favour.

O "Livro vermelho": a escolha de Jung em produzir sua obra alquímica como livro

Uma das vias para a compreensão do "Livro vermelho" é relacioná-lo ao processo da opus (obra) alquímica ou opus magna, o trabalho dos alquimistas para a obtenção da pedra filosofal. Carl Gustav Jung usa esse processo na formação do "Livro vermelho", fato que ele mesmo foi compreender somente a posteriori. Lembrando que seu primeiro contato com textos alquímicos se deu em 1910 e que as atividades em relação ao "Livro vermelho" ganharam força entre 1913 e 1930, podemos entender que esta publicação e a alquimia têm uma relação causal. A percepção de que a psique segue os mesmos passos dos símbolos alquímicos no processo da individuação influenciou a psicologia analítica de maneira determinante. Nas etapas de elaboração da obra alquímica é revelada uma sequência de símbolos alquímicos que compõem o processo. O presente trabalho pretende demonstrar que o "Livro vermelho" segue uma conduta alquímica e que é nesta obra que Jung encontra o seu caminho pessoal rumo à individuação.

The Alchemical Manuscripts of David Lindsay (1587–1641), Lord Lindsay of Balcarres

The private book collection of David Lindsay, First Lord Lindsay of Balcarres (1587–1641), was one of the largest in early modern Scotland. Despite being dispersed during the following three centuries, this collection still provides evidence for Lindsay’s scientific interests and approach to the study of alchemy. In this paper we seek to partially reconstruct his library by describing and, where possible, identifying the sources of Lindsay’s own transcriptions of alchemical texts, as well as works mentioned in a book-list written in his hand. We conclude that Lindsay was not just an important early modern collector, but also a careful reader, part of an extensive network of contacts with whom he exchanged books and information.

Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England. Katherine Eggert. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xi+351.

<i>Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England</i>. Katherine Eggert. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xi+351.

Turning Toward Earth: Themes, Sources, and Influences in the Emerald Tablet

This article traces and elaborates upon Jung's analysis of the alchemical text known as the Emerald Tablet. It highlights unpublished excerpts from the manuscripts of the classes on the subject, known as the ETH Lectures, taught by Jung from November 1940 to February 1941. As a comparative religionist, as well as a Jungian psychotherapist, the author provides insight into the origins and historical and religious influences on this material, as well as speculating upon a variety of possible cross-cultural and philosophical influences on the general body of work known as the Hermeticum, of which the Emerald Tablet is a crucial example. Revisiting obscure alchemical texts such as this serves to remind us of the important relationship of alchemy to Jungian analysis, revealing the unique and direct link between alchemy, which attempted to bring together matter and spirit, with Jung's psychology, which attempts a reconciliation in the individual between matter and spirit, science and religion.