The Secrets of Alchemy

The Secrets of Alchemy

by Lawrence M. Principe
The Secrets of Alchemy

The Secrets of Alchemy

by Lawrence M. Principe

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Overview

In The Secrets of Alchemy, Lawrence M. Principe, one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject, brings alchemy out of the shadows and restores it to its important place in human history and culture. By surveying what alchemy was and how it began, developed, and overlapped with a range of ideas and pursuits, Principe illuminates the practice. He vividly depicts the place of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and then explores how alchemy has fit into wider views of the cosmos and humanity, touching on its enduring place in literature, fine art, theater, and religion as well as its recent acceptance as a serious subject of study for historians of science. In addition, he introduces the reader to some of the most fascinating alchemists, such as Zosimos and Basil Valentine, whose lives dot alchemy’s long reign from the third century and to the present day. Through his exploration of alchemists and their times, Principe pieces together closely guarded clues from obscure and fragmented texts to reveal alchemy’s secrets, and—most exciting for budding alchemists—uses them to recreate many of the most famous recipes in his lab, including those for the “glass of antimony” and “philosophers’ tree.” This unique approach brings the reader closer to the actual work of alchemy than any other book.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226103792
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 11/18/2015
Series: Synthesis
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 217,187
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. 

Read an Excerpt

The Secrets of ALCHEMY


By LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-68295-2


Chapter One

ORIGINS

Greco-Egyptian Chemeia

To locate the origins of alchemy, we must travel back to Egypt in the first centuries of the Christian Era. This place was no longer the Egypt of the far more ancient pharaohs and pyramid builders but a cosmopolitan, Hellenized civilization. Egypt had come under the influence of Greek culture following its conquest by Alexander the Great during his vast military campaigns of 334–323 BC. Even after Egypt's absorption into the Roman Empire in the first century BC, its dominant culture and language remained Greek. By the first century AD, its major city, Alexandria (founded in 331 BC and named for Alexander himself ), had become a vibrant crossroads for cultures, peoples, and ideas. From this Eastern Mediterranean melting pot, the earliest surviving chemical texts, and even the origin of the word chemistry itself, date.

Many technical operations fundamental for alchemy had been developed well before its emergence. The smelting of metals such as silver, tin, copper, and lead from their ores had been practiced already for four thousand years. The making of alloys (such as bronze and brass, both alloys of copper) and various techniques for metallurgy and metalworking had been developed to a fairly high degree. In Egypt, artisans had devised an array of processes for making and working glass, producing artificial gems, compounding cosmetics, and creating many other commercial products in what might be called an ancient chemical industry. Generations of workshop laborers had devised and refined these techniques, with the tricks of the trade passed down from father to son, from master to apprentice.

The Technical Literature: The Papyri and Pseudo-Democritus

The earliest documents that scholars routinely attach to the history of alchemy bear witness to this technological and commercial background. These precious and unique texts, written in Greek on papyrus, date from the third century AD. They were discovered in Egypt in the early nineteenth century and now reside in museums in Leiden and Stockholm; hence they are called the Leiden and Stockholm Papyri. They contain about 250 practical workshop recipes. These recipes fall into four chief categories: processes relating to gold, to silver, to precious stones, and to textile dyes, all costly articles of luxury and commerce. Significantly, most of the recipes deal with how to make imitations of these valuable substances: coloring silver to look like gold, or copper to look like silver; making artificial pearls and emeralds; and coloring cloth purple using cheaper imitations of the extravagantly expensive imperial purple dye made from murex snails. Since the Papyri also contain a series of tests to determine the purity of various metals, both precious and common, it is evident that the original users of these formulas clearly understood the difference between genuine and imitation articles.

We can get a better sense of what these craftsmen were doing by trying to follow in their footsteps. The eighty-seventh recipe in the Leiden Papyrus describes the "discovery of the water of sulfur." The ancient text's directions are these: "Lime, one dram; sulfur, previously ground, an equal quantity. Put them together into a vessel. Add sharp vinegar or the urine of a youth; heat from underneath until the liquid looks like blood. Filter it from the sediments, and use it pure." The ingredients of this recipe are simple, clearly identifiable, and readily obtainable, so we can replicate the process today. After the ingredients are mixed (I found that urine works better than vinegar, by the way) and boiled gently for about an hour, an orange-red and unpleasantly scented liquid results. Although the Leiden Papyrus does not say how to use the liquid, we can guess. When a polished piece of silver is dipped into it, the metal quickly becomes tawny, then golden, then coppery, then bronzy, purple, and finally brown. Impressively, the shiny brilliance of the metal remains undiminished by the color changes until the very end, and the color and sheen remain stable for long periods of time. With a little practice and careful control of the temperature and the length of time the metal is left in the solution, I succeeded in making silver look astonishingly like gold (see plate 1).

The color changes result from the formation of extremely thin layers of sulfides on the metal surface, owing to the action of calcium polysulfides present in this "water of sulfur." To be sure, similar compositions are still used occasionally today for patinating metal objects (in other words, producing changes to their surface color).

Recipes such as this one provide a necessary background to the emergence of alchemy, but they are not themselves, strictly speaking, alchemical. Alchemy, like other scientific pursuits, is more than a collection of recipes. There must also exist some body of theory that provides an intellectual framework, that undergirds and explains practical work, and that guides pathways for the discovery of new knowledge. Alchemy moreover was to be about more than making look-alikes of precious substances.

It is important to realize that these papyri are the only original documents currently known to survive from the Greco-Egyptian period. Despite the many books about alchemy that we know were written during that time, the only surviving testimony of that distant era comes in the form of corrupt anthologies—that is, collections of excerpts copied from original texts that are now lost. These anthologies—collectively called the Corpus alchemicum graecum—were compiled by Byzantine scribes, and the earliest of them dates from a time long after Greco-Roman Egypt had itself become a faded memory. The oldest surviving copy dates from around the start of the eleventh century, and many of its pages are missing. It contains excerpts from about two dozen books dating from the second to the eighth century, and is now preserved in Venice. This manuscript, called Marcianus graecus 299, is supplemented by a few later manuscripts now in Paris and elsewhere that contain additional texts or alternate readings. While priceless to scholars, these collections represent only a frustratingly slim remainder of alchemy's foundational epoch. Equally problematic is the fact that the Byzantine compilers chose to copy what they thought was important—which could be neither representative of the original texts nor what the original authors themselves would have considered crucial. Hence, the overall picture of what Greco-Egyptian alchemists thought and did is skewed by the way their writings were excerpted centuries later.

The earliest text within the Corpus alchemicum graecum dates from about the late first or second century AD. It carries the title Physika kai mystika, and the text we possess is fragmentary. Its author is named as Democritus; but he is certainly not, as is sometimes claimed, the ancient philosopher of the fifth century BC famous for his notion of atoms. The title, which may have been given to it much later, is often translated as Physical and Mystical Things. Although that might look like a reasonable rendering of the Greek, it is misleading. A better translation is Natural and Secret Things. The Greek word mystika did not refer in ancient times to what we today call mystical, that is, something having a special religious or spiritual meaning, or expressing a personal experience of the ineffable. Instead, it simply meant things to be kept secret. Calling this text Physical and Mystical Things immediately suggests that the author was describing both material and spiritual things, but this is not the case. The Physika kai mystika records workshop recipes similar to those of the Leiden and Stockholm Papyri. In fact, it uses the same fourfold division of processes into those for gold, silver, gems, and dyes. This similarity of format suggests that a whole tradition of practical recipe books once existed in which this division was standard. For pseudo-Democritus, these processes are mystika, that is, secret, because they are lucrative artisanal processes—trade secrets, if you will.

Nevertheless, the text also contains an account of how the frustrated author, unable to carry out his craft adequately because his master had died before teaching him the necessary techniques, tried to contact the deceased. The attempt was only half successful. The master's shade spoke only to say that he was not allowed to relay information freely across the gulf that now divided him from the living, and that "the books are in the temple." A little later, a pillar in the temple suddenly opened up to reveal a hidden niche containing a terse expression of the master's secret knowledge: "Nature delights in nature, nature triumphs over nature, nature masters nature." (This is not the only tale of alchemical secrets suddenly revealed in a place of worship.) This repetitive and rather obscure phrase is used like a refrain throughout the recipes of the Physika kai mystika. Whatever meaning we attach to this tale of discovery, the recipes themselves remain straightforward and practical, with no trace of the mystical (in a modern sense) or the supernatural.

The Birth of Alchemy

The recipe literature such as the Papyri and the Physika kai mystika aims to imitate or extend precious materials. But probably during the third century AD, a crucial juncture in the emergence of alchemy was reached. At some point—no texts survive to inform us of exactly how or when this first happened—the idea of actually making real gold and silver emerged. This development would have seemed reasonable enough from the point of view of a worker at that time. If the water of sulfur can tinge the surface of silver to look like gold, why shouldn't there be some way to tinge it through and through—even more than that, to give silver not only the color of gold but all the properties of gold? The process for making gold is called chrysopoeia, from the Greek words chryson poiein (to make gold), and it is accompanied by the less common (and less lucrative) argyropoeia, the making of silver. The general process of transforming one metal into another is called transmutation.

From this point onward, alchemists had a coherent goal toward which to strive with both head and hand. They would pursue a great many things besides chrysopoeia, but the making of gold and silver remained one of the central goals of what would come to be called the Noble Art. The authors of the earliest alchemical treatises borrowed techniques, processes, and tools from a wide variety of contemporaneous artisans, yet they saw themselves as a group distinct from those artisans. Thus, both alchemy and alchemists acquired an independent identity in the third century.

The birth of alchemy required the union of two traditions: the practical artisanal knowledge exemplified in the recipe literature, and theoretical speculations about the nature of matter and change present in Greek natural philosophy: What is matter? How does one thing change into another? A Greek speculative tradition centering on these questions stretched back for some seven hundred years before the emergence of alchemy. Such questions preoccupied the earliest Greek philosophers, known collectively as the pre-Socratics. The first thinker generally cited in this tradition is Thales of Miletus (sixth century BC), who claimed that all the different substances around us are really modifications of a single primordial substance that he identified as water. Many other thinkers followed Thales with their own ideas. Democritus and Leucippus (fifth century BC) proposed the concept of invisibly small atomoi (atoms), from which everything is composed. Empedocles (circa 495–435 BC) attributed the origin of natural substances and their transformations to four "roots" of things he called fire, air, earth, and water. These four combine in various ways and separate under the influence of forces he called love and strife. Perhaps most prominently of all, Aristotle (384–322 BC) devoted substantial attention to the nature of matter and change, devising theories and ways of thinking that would prove highly influential and fertile for further investigations.

All these Greek philosophers endeavored to explain matter's hidden nature and to account for its unending transformations into new forms. Most of them embraced the idea that beneath the constantly changing appearances of things, there existed some sort of a stable, unchanging substrate. The notion that a single ultimate substance lies beneath all material things is known as monism. For Thales, this ultimate substance was water; for Democritus, imperishable atoms; for Aristotle, what he called "first matter" or "prime matter" (proton hyle). Empedocles' four elements, strictly speaking, represent a position of pluralism, since he implied that more than one kind of ultimate matter exists, but he nevertheless maintained the idea of a constancy beneath change. So far as we know, however, these natural philosophers had only a secondhand acquaintance with the practical knowledge of the crafts.

In the cosmopolitan crossroads of Greco-Roman Egypt, the two streams of craft traditions and philosophical traditions coexisted. Their merger—probably in the third century AD—gave rise to the independent discipline of alchemy. The intimate mingling of the two traditions is evident in the earliest substantial texts we have about chrysopoeia. These writings come from a Greco-Egyptian alchemist who would be revered as an authority for the rest of alchemy's history, and the first about whom we have any reasonably substantial or reliable historical details: Zosimos of Panopolis.

Zosimos of Panopolis

Zosimos was active around 300 AD. He was born in the Upper Egyptian city of Panopolis, now called Akhmim. We know that he was not the first chrysopoeian, because his writings refer to earlier authorities, and even to rival "schools" of alchemical thought that had already developed by his time. (Of these other schools we know absolutely nothing save what he writes in criticism of them.) Zosimos is thought to have written twenty-eight books about alchemy; alas, most of what he wrote is now lost. We have only scraps: the prologue to a book titled On Apparatus and Furnaces (sometimes called the Letter Omega, under which letter it was once classified), several chapters from other works, and scattered excerpts. Some of Zosimos's writings are addressed to Theosebeia, a woman who seems to have been his pupil in alchemical matters, although whether she was a real person or a literary device we will never know for sure. Despite the fragmentary nature of what survives and the difficulty in interpreting it, these writings provide the best window we have onto Greek alchemy. Surprisingly, these early texts establish many concepts and styles that would remain fundamental for much of later alchemy.

Zosimos's orientation toward a central goal (metallic transmutation), his insightful engagement with the practical problems in reaching it, his search for the means of surmounting these problems, and his formulation and application of theoretical principles clearly underscore his writings as something new and significant. While earlier texts are recipe miscellanies, Zosimos's texts witness a coherent program of research that draws on both material and intellectual resources. He describes a wide array of useful apparatus—for distillation, sublimation, filtration, fixation, and so forth—in great detail. Many of these instruments are adapted from cooking utensils or items used in perfumery or other crafts. Zosimos did not devise all these instruments himself, indicating how developed practical chrysopoeia must already have become by the start of the fourth century AD. The writings of his predecessors form a key resource for him, and he cites them frequently. One of the most prominent authorities is named Maria—sometimes called Maria Judaea or Mary the Jew—and Zosimos credits her with the development of a broad range of apparatus and techniques. Maria's techniques include a method of gentle, even heating using a bath of hot water rather than an open flame. This simple but useful invention preserved the legacy of Maria the ancient alchemist, not only for the rest of alchemy's history, but even down to the present day. It is her name that remains attached to the bain-marie or bagno maria of French and Italian cookery.

Several of the pieces of apparatus Zosimos describes—for example, one called the kerotakis—are designed to expose one material to the vapors of another. Indeed, he seems particularly interested in the action of vapors on solids. This interest is partly grounded on practical observations. Ancient craftsmen knew that the vapors released by heated cadmia (or calamine, a zinc-containing earth) could turn copper golden by transforming it into brass (an alloy of zinc and copper). The vapors of mercury and arsenic whiten copper to a silvery color. Perhaps knowledge of these color changes induced Zosimos to seek analogous processes that would bring about true transmutations. Guiding theories are certainly discernible in his writings. This is a crucial point to stress. Today there is a common misconception that alchemists worked more or less blindly—stumbling about mixing a little of this and a little of that in a random search for gold. This notion is far from the truth; already with Zosimos we can identify theoretical principles that guided his practical work, as well as practical observations that supported or modified his theories. Many theoretical frameworks for alchemy would develop in various times and places, and these frameworks both supported the possibility of transmutation and suggested avenues for pursuing it practically.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from The Secrets of ALCHEMY by LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE Copyright © 2013 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Is Alchemy?

1   Origins: Greco-Egyptian Chemeia
2   Development: Arabic al-Kīmiyā’
3   Maturity: Medieval Latin Alchemia
4   Redefinitions, Revivals, and Reinterpretations: Alchemy from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
5   The Golden Age: Practicing Chymistry in the Early Modern Period
6   Unveiling the Secrets
7   The Wider Worlds of Chymistry

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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