It should be clear that the word "alchemy" of course, was unknown to the Greek alchemists. It translates an arabic word, alkimiya, a combination of the article al and a substantive kimiya. Scholars have proposed two main alternatives as to the origins of the arabic word, kimiya: they derive it either from Chêmia, the Greek word for Egypt or the "Black-land" (Egyptian, Kmt); or from the Greek chûma, which is related to the verb for "smelting" (choaneuein). Our Zosimos fragment lends weight to the first alternative: the sacred science is Chêmeia, the art related to Chêmia, the Egyptian "black-earth"). The idea of "blackearth" has a twofold significance: it points us to the presumed Egyptian origin of the Art, and it represents symbolically one of its chief concepts, prime matter, the black substrate of alchemical transmutation 12). Adding his own fanciful etymological touch, Zosimos links Chêmeia with a mythical figure named Chêmes, who is evidently one of the gigantic offspring of the fallen angels and their human wives. This giant, he tells us, recorded the revelations of the angels in the Book of Chêmes, in which form they were transmitted to the earliest alchemical initiates. In this way, Zosimos appropriates the Enochian story and expands it into an explicit account of the origins of his own sacred art, Chêmeia.

However cosmic sympathy has been a major stumbling block in the study of early alchemy because of the way it has been used as a defining characteristic. For example Greco-Egyptian alchemy is commonly portrayed as the art of transmuting base metals into gold, which, is a modern stereotype that dates back to the eighteenth century, when “alchemy” came to designate gold-making and “chemistry” was given more scientific connotations. A further example of this mystification of alchemy is found in one of the most widespread scholarly theories of transmutation, the theory that ancient alchemists believed that metals grow from seeds like plants and will all eventually ripen into gold, and that the task of the alchemist is to hasten this natural growth process. According to Principe and Newman, this theory was introduced in the 1920s by Hélène Metzger. Thus modern discourses about magic have reinvented and produced magic in the process. This theory of transmutation has been very influential and can be found in the work of several scholars, including A.J. Hopkins (in Alchemy: Child of Greek Philosophy, 25-28), Mircea Eliada (in The Forge and the Crucible, 50), and, Naomi Janowitz (in Icons of Power, 120.) Cosmic sympathy and the unity of matter are certainly present in the Greco-Egyptian alchemical literature, but the idea that metals literally grow from seeds and will naturally mature into gold is not found in these texts.

Zosimus is distinctive among Greco-Egyptian alchemists in that he promotes a philosophical lifestyle aimed at transformation of the self and incorporates these values into his work as a metallurgist. He recommends practicing alchemy in both a corporeal and spiritual manner, and prescribes spiritual exercises for cultivating virtue through the purification of the soul, and for facilitating the soul’s ascent to the divine realms.

Some of the exercises, which involve quietly examining the soul and quelling the passions, were probably not practiced in the workshop in conjunction with the treatment of metals.

Other spiritual practices he mentions involve contemplating the metals and how they reveal the divine presence within nature as well as how they mirror human psychological states; these show how the corporeal and spiritual aspects of alchemy may have been practiced simultaneously. Whether these exercises are practiced at home or in the workshop, Zosimus considers them to be vital to his work. In fact Hermetists and Neoplatonists envisioned the human spirit as a kind of subtle body or ethereal envelope that serves as a vehicle for the soul as it travels through the cosmos, and this spirit was connected to the body via the bloodstream. Indeed, Zosimus expresses a new understanding of embodiment when he awakens from the violent dreams he describes in his writings.

On one level it shows that Zosimus truly viewed his work as a Sacred Art; he represents the alchemical vessel as an altar in order to emphasize that alchemical operations need to be performed in both a corporeal and a spiritual manner. Also the so called Demiurge in Zosimus’s primary religious orientation. In the Hermetic text entitled The Mixing Bowl, the Demiurge created all humans with reason, but not all of them have mind (nous), which in this context means knowledge of one’s divine essence. The Demiurge puts mind in a mixing bowl and sends it down to humans, placing it between souls, as a prize for them to win. He has a messenger announce the following proclamation: Immerse yourself in the mixing bowl if your heart has the strength, if it believes you will rise up again to the one who sent the mixing bowl below, if it recognizes the purpose of your coming to be. Those who immerse themselves in the mixing bowl that contains the divine gift of mind become perfected; they become immortal rather than mortal. for in a mind of their own they have comprehended all things on earth, things in heaven and even what lies beyond heaven.( CH IV. trans. Brian Copenhaver).

Zosimus alludes to this text, and in Zosimus’s dreams, the altar first appears in the temple of punishments, and the people immersed in the altar’s boiling waters are suffering as their bodies are being transformed into spirits. There are fifteen steps that lead to this altar. When the sacrificing priest appears at the altar a mysterious voice proclaims that he has accomplished the descent of the fifteen steps of darkness and the ascent of the steps of light. (Taylor, p. 57.) Throughout the rest of the allegory, Zosimus mentions only seven steps. Zosimus says he wishes to ascend the seven steps and to look upon the seven punishments, which refers to the seven celestial zones ruled by the seven planets. (Ibid., 59.) The fifteen steps, then, can be divided into seven descending steps and seven ascending steps; the remaining step is the Ogdoad, or eighth region: the realm of the fixed stars. (Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Memoires Authentiques, 226, n. 3.)

Also frequently mentioned by Zosimus is the celestial serpent that bites itself in the tail, is a popular symbol in Greco-Egyptian alchemy, for the unity of matter, or what Zosimus calls the one nature, or the nature, Zosimus’s instructions for sacrificing the snake involve separating its parts and put them back together again. And according to Plato, the Demiurge brought this invisible matter, which has no qualities in and of itself, into order by giving it form: the four elements are the primary visible manifestations of this underlying matter, and this cosmic matter is sustained by the divine World Soul, the intelligent, ordering principle of the cosmos that engenders all physical being. Thus when Zosimus awakens from these dreams he beliefs to understands how nature gives and receives, he proclaims that the natural methods he employs in his alchemical work are an extension of the creative method of the one nature.

Zosimus also explains that people still wear talismans of electrum (corresponding elsewhere to the planet Jupiter) to ward off lightning, and that mirrors made of electrum are believed to ward off all pains. When one gazes into the electrum mirror, it gives him the idea to examine and purify himself, from his head to the tips of his nails. Zosimus then takes the symbolism of the mirror to a deeper level. The purpose of the mirror is not for a man to contemplate himself materially, he says, but rather this should be understood as a symbol of spiritual contemplation: The mirror represents the divine mind; when the soul looks at itself, it sees the shameful things that are in it, and it rejects them; it makes its stains disappear and remains without blame. When it is purified, it imitates and takes for its model the Holy Spirit; it becomes spirit; it possesses calmness and constantly turns to this superior state, where one knows (God) and where one is known. Becoming then without stain, it gets rid of its inherent ties and those that it has in common with the body, and it (rises) toward the All-powerful. Indeed, what is the philosophical saying?  Know thyself. This is indicated by the spiritual and intellectual mirror. What then is this mirror, other than the divine and primordial mind?

Ultimately according to Zosimus, one has to make the ascent through the cosmos in order to gaze into the mirror of the divine mind, because this mirror is located above the cosmos, where it serves as a mirror reflecting the divine presence within the universe: This mirror is positioned above the Seven Doors [planets], on the side of the west, so that the one who watches there sees the east, where the intellectual light shines, which is above the veil. That is why it is also placed next to the south, above all the doors that answer to the Seven Heavens, above this visible world, above the Twelve Houses [of the zodiac] and the Pleiades, which are the world of the thirteen. Above them exists this Eye of the invisible senses, this Eye of the mind, which is present there and in all places. One who sees this perfect mind, in the power of which all is to be found, will be held in hand and kept from death. We have reported this, because we have been driven there while speaking of the mirror of electrum, that is to say the mirror of the mind. (CMA, Syr. II.12.3)

In this meditation on electrum, Zosimus leads the reader from a mythical story of the metal’s origins, to a discussion of how talismans and mirrors made of electrum are commonly thought to ward off disaster and pain, to a philosophical interpretation of the mirror as a means to know thyself, and finally, to the noetic realm of the divine mind. These correspondences form a ladder of ascent from the material to the spiritual worlds. For Zosimus, to deeply contemplate the nature of metals is to contemplate the divine mysteries that nature holds. Electrum is not only a substance used in making mirrors (for scrying?), it is a substance that reflects the divine presence in all things.

Zosimus also views letters of the alphabet as divine signatures that can reveal the cosmic mysteries. In Apparatuses and Furnaces (Letter Omega), he explains that the letter omega has a material and an immaterial significance:

Round Omega is the bipartite letter, the one that in terms of material language belongs to the seventh planetary zone, that of Kronos. For in terms of the immaterial it is something else altogether, something inexplicable, which only Nikotheos the hidden knows. In material terms Omega is what he calls Ocean the birth and seed of all gods. (Jackson’s translation, Zosimos of Panopolis On the Letter Omega, 29.)

The alliteration of the first letters of these words and their associations (e.g., alpha/ascendant/air) is probably a mnemonic aid for contemplating the various correspondences. Adam is the cosmic man, and the letters of his name connect the human to the four elements and the four cardinal points of the zodiac. The letter M corresponds to the realm of the sun, the fire in the midst of these bodies. Zosimus explains that Adam is the name of the flesh, the visible outer mould, but that the Man within him, the Man of spirit, has a proper name as well as a common one. Like the letter omega, this secret name is known only to the initiates who perceive the immaterial reality within the divine signatures. Zosimus says that the common name of the spiritual Adam is light; therefore the solar fire ripening in the midst of the cosmos is like the light of spirit ripening within the human being. In Stoic and Hermetic literature, the divine is described as an ethereal, fiery substance that permeates all things, so this fire in the midst of these bodies is also the divine fire.

By meditating upon these sunthumata, Zosimus makes connections between the human, the cosmos, and the divine, and in doing so, he experiences the divine power that is immanent in the world. This spiritual exercise of contemplating the metals and their symbolic correspondences appears to be Zosimus’s modus operandi for practicing alchemy in a spiritual and corporeal manner simultaneously. Observing the properties of metals and chemical reactions provides the alchemist with ample opportunity to reflect upon nature and the divine, and thereby elevate the human spirit.

In Final Account, Zosimus claims that unnatural methods were devised by daemons who were greedy for sacrificial offerings, and that these methods could only work with their assent. Natural methods, on the other hand, act by themselves, and involve repelling the daemons, who are jealous of these methods. Zosimus sometimes refers to these daemons as ephoroi, and as Daniel Stolzenberg has shown, other late ancient writers used this term, which means guardians or overseers, to designate planetary gods, gods of polytheistic cultures (e.g., the Greek gods, Egyptian gods), as well as other cosmic beings that preside over various domains of human and terrestrial life. Zosimus furthermore is the first known alchemist to write about Jewish metallurgical techniques, and he incorporates Jewish religious ideas into his writings. Julius Ruska proposed that Zosimus may have been Jewish, but scholars generally agree that there is not enough evidence to support this claim. (See Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, 56.)

As Raphael Patai notes in The Jewish Alchemists, scholars have come to wildly different conclusions about Jewish alchemy: some claim that Jews invented alchemy and played a major role in its development throughout history, while others argue that Jewish participation in alchemy was either insignificant, or non-existent. Patai¡’s discussion of Jews in Hellenistic alchemy (in Part Two of The Jewish Alchemists) is flawed due to his literal reading of Zosimus and other early alchemical texts, and his use of later alchemical works to support his points about early alchemy. His work also contains several errors, and should be used with caution.Yet in the Greco-Egyptian alchemical texts that date from Zosimus’s time or earlier, who may have been Jewish.So for example  Maria the Jewess (ca. 2nd century CE), who is quoted extensively by Zosimus, though none of her original texts survive. Medieval alchemists associate her with Moses’s sister, Miriam, and also with the Virgin Mary. However, these legendary portrayals of Maria do not appear until the ninth century, and Zosimus gives no indication that she has any relationship with these biblical or legendary figures. (See Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, 74.)

In the Babylonian Talmud, which dates from Zosimus’s era (3rd-4th centuries), however there is mention of Jewish guilds of metalworkers in Alexandria who apparently exercised a great deal of control over their craft and trade. (See Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 97.) And Zosimus speaks of Jewish metallurgy as a distinct (and ancient) tradition, and claims that they carefully guard their trade secrets and initiatory formulas, and that they are like the Egyptians in this regard. (See Festugiere’s translation in La ReveInitoation de Hermes Trismigiste Vol. I,278, or Jack Lindsay’s English translation, based on Festugire’s, in Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt, 336.)

In The True Book of Sophe the Egyptian and of the Divine Lord of the Hebrews and the Powers of Sabaoth, Zosimus extols Maria’s kurotakis methods along with Egyptian doubling (diplosis) methods for yellowing copper, and claims that Jewish and Egyptian alchemists are united by a common spiritual philosophy that represents the best of their science and wisdom. (See Berthelot and Ruelle (CAG III.41.1) and by Festugie¨re (La ReveInitiation d¡ Hermes Trismegiste Vol. I, 261).

Therefore, Zosimus is synthesizing these predominant features of Jewish and Egyptian science and wisdom, and presenting this as a unified spiritual theory of alchemy, which ultimately describes his own vision of alchemy. Zosimus views alchemy as a means of uniting matter and spirit and ascending to the noetic realms; Iamblichus has a similar approach to mathematics. This fusion of scientific and religious goals sounds strange to modern ears, and this is one of the reasons why scholars have referred to alchemy and Pythagorean mathematics as bizarre and irrational practices. But Zosimus and Iamblichus lived in a time when the boundaries between science, religion, and philosophy were not strictly demarcated. Egyptian temples functioned as major centers of scientific learning, and philosophy was a polymathic enterprise that encompassed both science and religion where often still integrated them.

Zosimos as we have seen, however, blends conceptions from the Hermetica with an "archontic" Gnosticism, in the vein of the Apocryphon of John. Contemporary scholars have attempted to differentiate these Hermetic and Gnostic currents (which for Zosimos are clearly part of one framework) in terms of "optimistic" and "pessimistic" gnôsis. While it is true that the Hermetica generally give a more positive assessment of the natural world, and of the roles of the Demiurge and the archons, it is misleading to suggest that they offer an "optimistic" conception of gnôsis. Clearly gnôsis is required precisely because humanity is fallen, and requires salvation. The Hermetic Poimandres is quite close in spirit to the so-called "gnostic" viewpoint, and there are many other allusions in the Hermetic corpus to the negative features of embodiment. As Garth Fowden has argued, the optimistic and pessimistic (or "monistic" and "dualistic") attitudes to the material world should be understood as reflecting different stages in the soul’s ascent to the divine (see Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 102ff). On the other hand, we shall find that the dualistic tendencies in Zosimos, as reflected in his anxieties about embodiment and the daimonic ministers, are indeed in a certain tension with his commitment to the material operations of alchemy, thus his concerns about the role of daimonic and astrologic influences in the processes of tincturing.

In turn we also understand that the charge of "magic" was part of a rhetorical strategy employed by Christians, Hellenes and Jews alike, sometimes against one another and sometimes against rival factions or schools within their own religious traditions. One important aspect of this polemical use of the category "magic", evident also in the Book of Enoch, is the notion that magic, wittingly or unwittingly, works through the wrong powers, through daimons or fallen angels, to the ultimate enslavement and destruction of the magician). Seen in this context, Tertullian’s appropriation of the Enochian story makes good rhetorical sense. It allows him to legitimate the Christian religion in contradistinction to other "false" or "illicit" religions. What is perhaps more difficult to understand is the fact that some alchemists, including as we have seen Zosimos, were also sympathetic to this account, which seemed to play so neatly into the hands of their detractors, and potential persecutors. Plutarch explains that the daimons, as intermediate beings, have a share of divinity, but their divine nature is conjoined with a soul and a body, capable of perceiving pleasure and pain. Consequently, the daimons, like humans, are moved by appetite, and are capable of both good and evil ). Viewed in a positive light, the daimons seem to constitute our link to the divine, bridging the distance between the earthly and the heavenly; viewed in a negative light, they can be regarded as responsible for the incarnation of our souls, and so for maintaining our enslavement to materiality and Fate.

In the end, however, the problem of daimons remains largely unresolved. Given that the alchemist must take some account of these daimonic and astrologic influences, inasmuch as he works through the material world, how can he do so without compromising the spiritual integrity of the Art and risking daimonic seduction? Is there any way to reconcile the spiritual aims of the Art with its material necessities? There is one tantalizing suggestion. Zosimos advises Theosebeia to perform certain sacrifices after the example of Solomon: ‘Then, without being called to do it, offer sacrifices to the daimons, not the useful variety, not those which nourish and comfort them, but those which deter and destroy them, those which Mambres [Jambres?] gave to Solomon, king of Jerusalem, and of which he himself has written according to his wisdom’ (Final Quittance, Fest. p. 367, ll. 24-27). Zosimos here shows his familiarity with the folk legends of Solomon as a magus and exorcist, who holds divine dominion over daimons. In the end, however, the problem of daimons remains largely unresolved. Given that the alchemist must take some account of these daimonic and astrologic influences—inasmuch as he works through the material world, how can he do so without compromising the spiritual integrity of the Art and risking daimonic seduction? Is there any way to reconcile the spiritual aims of the Art with its material necessities? There is one tantalizing suggestion. Zosimos advises Theosebeia to perform certain sacrifices after the example of Solomon: ‘Then, without being called to do it, offer sacrifices to the daimons, not the useful variety, not those which nourish and comfort them, but those which deter and destroy them, those which Mambres [Jambres?] gave to Solomon, king of Jerusalem, and of which he himself has written according to his wisdom’ (Final Quittance, Fest. p. 367, ll. 24-27). Zosimos here shows his familiarity with the folk legends of Solomon as a magus and exorcist, who holds divine dominion over daimons. One wonders whether he has read the Testament of Solomon, in which pseudo-Solomon describes how he harnessed the powers of the daimons, with the aid of their angelic superiors, in order to complete the construction of the Temple. See Testament of Solomon, trans. D.C. Duling. In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, 935-987. There is disagreement as to the date of the Testament, but the consensus seems to place it between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, in which case Zosimos could be familiar with it. If the "Mambres" of Zosimos is the Egyptian sorcerer Jambres, mentioned in the Testament (25.4), then the connection is strengthened (see Duling, 950-51, nt. 94). In any case, Zosimos seems to be familiar with the tradition, even if we cannot be certain that he knows this version of it. A similar legend can be found in the Nag Hammadi Testimony of Truth. There we are told that Solomon built Jerusalem by means of daimons, which he subsequently imprisoned in the Temple (in Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, N.H.C. IX, 3.70).

One first sight Iamblichus falls on the other side of the debate. On his view, the idea that daimons are nourished by theurgic sacrifice involves a confusion of "wholes" and "parts", making the daimons subject to, and dependent upon, the material substances over which they are supposed to hold dominion. See Les Mystères d’Égypte, 210.15ff (des Places). Hence we next turn to the idea of ‘Theurgy’. Alchemy and theurgy have long been considered to be compatible practices, and they are frequently associated with magic and esotericism, both in a positive and a negative sense.

Numerous modern-day ceremonial magicians, pagans, and “new age” thinkers in 2007 however, still embrace alchemy and theurgy as part of their spiritual heritage. At the same time one would also have to stress that neither Zosimus nor Iamblichus would consider their theurgic practices to be magic, though alchemists, theurgists, and “esotericists” in different times and places might use “magic” as a self-descriptive label. Iamblichus died around 325 CE, and Zosimus probably flourished around 300 CE. For issues regarding the dating of Iamblichus and his work, see the introduction to Iamblichus: De Mysteriis, trans. and ed. Emma Clarke, John Dillon, and Jackson Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), xviiixxiv. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Iamblichus’s surviving work on theurgy, De Mysteriis (abbreviated DM), are from this translation, which is based on the Budé edition of Édouard Des Places.

Theurgy (theourgos), which means “work of the gods” or “divine work,” is a term used by late ancient writers to denote ritual techniques for purifying and elevating the soul. The term first appeared in the Chaldean Oracles, a collection of verses from the late second century CE that were allegedly transmitted by the gods to Julian the Chaldean and his son, Julian the Theurgist. (See Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1989),1-3.) She also notes that Franz Cumont was the first to refer to the Oracles as the “Bible of the Neoplatonists.”

According to Daniel Stolzenberg Zosimean alchemy is indeed a type of “Gnostic theurgy,” (4, 29-31) and Kyle Fraser suggests that Zosimean alchemy is a form of late ancient theurgy in“Zosimos of Panopolis and the Book of Enoch: Alchemy as Forbidden Knowledge,” 131, n. 22. As Ruth Majercik further writes, “the Oracles were regarded by the later Neoplatonists, from Porphyry to Damascius, as authoritative revelatory literature equal in importance only to Plato’s Timaeus.” Porphyry was the first to write a commentary on the Oracles and evaluate the efficacy of theurgic rites, but his student Iamblichus expanded theurgy beyond its original scope and developed it into a fullfledged Neoplatonic cult.

Since Zosimus tends to promote contemplative exercises, and since the technical aspects of alchemy should not be reduced to ritual praxis (though there is indeed some overlap in Zosimus’s case), Iamblichus’s broader notions of theurgy can be applied more readily to Zosimean alchemy. There are further examples of why this is so. As Gregory Shaw has argued, Iamblichus, who was a so called Pythagorean, who considered the contemplation of numbers to be theurgical because this activity orients the soul toward the divine structure and harmony of the universe. Since Iamblichus views this spiritual approach to mathematics as a form of theurgy, then it is likely that he would have considered Zosimus’s approach to alchemy to be theurgical as well.. See Shaw, “The Geometry of Grace: A Pythagorean Approach to Theurgy,” in The Divine Iamblichus, ed. Blumenthal and Clark, 125-130; and Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, chs. 18 and 19. Porphyry, on the other hand, considered Pythagorean contemplation of numbers to be a form of “intellectual sacrifice” or philosophic contemplation, and therefore non-theurgical. (See Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, 2.36.)

Thuergy also makes use of astronomical calculations and observances to determine proper times for cultic activities and as we have seen  Zosimus, was trained in this art, as it is the foundation of his “natural” alchemical methodsand  that as we have seen the contrasts the “timely tinctures” he produces in accordance with natural rhythms with the “unnatural” methods of his competitors, who summon demons to assist with their tinctures. Given the above, we can contend that Zosimean alchemy can indeed be considered a form of theurgy.

 

Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and Iamblichus P.1.

Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and Iamblichus P.3.

Hermetic Alchemy and Zosimus of Panopolis and Iamblichus P.4.
 
Bibliography

 

For updates click homepage here