Teaser
Is there a magical powder or “stone” with the power of turning lead into gold? Is there a potion capable of prolonging life indefinitely?
In the wake of pandemics and rising prices, these questions are perhaps more pressing now than ever before. Surely the answer to both is… no. Right?!?
But… dotting the timeline of history, like gold ore embedded in gravel, are a minority of dissenters who not only answer a resounding “yes!” – but who also claim to have developed repeatable techniques for accomplishing these (and other) fabulous ends.
Of course, we’re speaking, here, about the diverse cluster of men and women who engaged in a storied discipline known as alchemy.
Working alone and in secret, these alchemists communicated with one another in code, and they took pains to shroud their beliefs – and, more importantly, their methods – under a veil of elaborate and even grotesque symbolism.
The received view is that these practitioners were largely deluded and superstitious failures who misspent their lives on chimeric quests but who managed, with their fledgling efforts, to pave the way for the advent of Science, which has now cleared the field of these ill-educated dilettantes.
And yet… whispers remain about a select group who may have achieved the impossible.
Introduction:
The term “alchemy” is one striking example of a fascinating family of still-current words whose origins – and primary meanings – are shrouded in mystery.
Among the etymological candidates is the root, khemia,[1] which may have been an ancient reference to Egypt.[2]
Sometimes provocatively labeled the “gay science,” alchemy – which is conspicuously preoccupied with quasi-miraculous changes known as “transmutations” – is commonly represented as divine chemistry.[3]
Alchemical formulæ purport to provide something like a “recipe” for elemental transformation.
And these lofty pretensions are not for nothing. You see, the art and science of alchemy was said to have been primordially and supernaturally communicated to humankind by otherworldly beings.
The legendary Hermes Trismegistus is one of the earliest initiates, if not the source, of this tradition.[4]
In the first place, Hermes is a reference to the Greek god of communication.[5] Hermes – and his Roman counterpart, Mercury – are frequently further identified with the Egyptian Thoth.[6] In this sense, Hermes was believed to have been the fountainhead of all the esoterica associated with Egypt.
But, Hermes Trismegistus – via “many mythical and contradictory genealogies”[7] – is also said to have been a contemporary (and possible teacher) of the Biblical patriarch Moses. He therefore leads a kind of double life, here being identified with a (presumably human) initiate who became a proficient sorcerer.
By the way, “Trismegistus,” means “three times great” and celebrates Hermes’ alleged mastery over a trio of disciplines – alchemy, astrology, and magic – that make up a system known as “hermeticism.”
(For an introduction, see “10 Arcane Words.”)
While the last two of these disciplines will have to occupy us another time, we note that the first, alchemy, influenced the development of numerous fields that now function as self-contained sciences.
Among the most important of these is modern physics[8] which, before the era of Albert Einstein, was dominated by the theories of the 17th– to 18th-c. English polymath, Sir Isaac Newton. According to researchers at Cambridge University in Britain where, once upon a time, Newton himself held a prestigious position as head of the mathematics department, of Newton’s surviving writings, no fewer than one million words – or 10% of his voluminous output – were devoted to his study of alchemy.
Chemistry is another of the so-called “hard sciences” that owes a huge debt to alchemy.[9] Here, we’ll name 17th-c. figures like Belgian physician Jan-Baptiste van Helmont and, again in England, Sir Robert Boyle. Boyle was one of the founders[10] of England’s Royal Society[11] and is sometimes regarded as the father of modern chemistry.[12]
Perhaps most surprisingly, alchemy also informed the investigations of pioneering thinkers operating in sciences that are often considered to be “softer.”[13] For example, the 19th– to 20th-c. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung created a strand of depth psychology that notably diverged from that of his teacher, the Austrian-Jewish founder of “psychoanalysis,” Sigmund Freud. Among the elements that differentiated this Jungian, “analytic” approach from its Freudian parent, was its originator’s fascination with, and use of, the symbolism of medieval alchemy. Jung was inspired by the writings of the 3rd– to 4th-c. Greco-Egyptian alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis who employed “chemical symbols and analogies” to describe a process of “psychological transformation”.[14]
What is it about this subject that so captivated these, and other, undisputed geniuses?
In this video, we’ll lay some historical groundwork for an answer by looking at ten people with enduring reputations for having been able to command nature itself by becoming adepts of alchemy.
1. Nicholas Flamel
Among people who are most famous for their connexions to alchemy, perhaps none has achieved the renown enjoyed by the remarkable, 14th– to 15th– c. Frenchman Nicolas Flamel.
As a sidenote, in the video titled “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults,” we introduced viewers to the possibility that the name “Nicholas” (and its cognates) is a preëminent “name of power.” As a first pass, this means that you may expect it to appear – like in the present context – as a landmark for high strangeness.
Most historians will attest that Nicolas Flamel was indisputably a real person. The burning question, however, is whether the flesh-and-blood man managed to realize two of the main alchemical goals: (1) the creation limitless wealth by means of the fabled “Philosopher’s Stone”; and (2) the attainment of immortality through the so-called “Elixir of Life” – both of which are the result of a glamorous but hazy process termed the Magnum Opus, or “Great Work.”
On the prevailing scholarly view, the historical Flamel was a run-of-the-mill manuscript salesman who had his life story fancifully embellished by 17th-c. chroniclers.
But, legend has it that in 1357 Flamel acquired a copy of an enigmatic spell book, or grimoire, known as the Book of Abramelin the Mage.
Among myriad curious “magical squares,” the book[15] specified rituals which would later become part of the erotically suffused system of notorious 20th-c. British esotericist Aleister Crowley, whom we highlighted both in our “Top 10 Occultists” and “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults” videos.[16]
Flamel reportedly spent two fruitless decades attempting to decipher the seemingly impenetrable text with his wife, Perenelle, before deciding, circa 1378, to travel in search of a knowledgeable interpreter.
Spain was the logical place to seek such a venerable sage since, until the tail end of the 15th century, it had the distinction of being one of the very few feasible European destinations where adherents of the “Big Three” religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – coexisted.
And, indeed, Flamel supposedly cracked Abramelin’s secrets with the help of a Jewish converso (that is, a Jew who had converted to Catholicism) during a chance encounter while on his Iberian tour.
By 1382, the Flamel was supposedly capable of producing silver and gold using his decrypted formulæ.
20th-c. Masonic philosopher Manly Palmer Hall provides a threefold taxonomy of alchemical enlightenment. The lowest rung on Hall’s “Hermetic ladder”[17] are the Initiates – those people who know of the true secret. Slightly higher are the Illuminates, who have had their propositional knowledge bolstered by witnessing a live transmutation. Finally, the Adepts are the ones who have the know how to create the Philosopher’s Stone. Chief among them is Flamel. (Diagram: Imitates [Knowers]; Illuminated Ones [Seers]; Adepts [Doers])
Beyond his significance for fellow occult practitioners, Nicolas Flamel’s impact has been most noticeable in the arenas of arts, entertainment, and literature, where he has several noteworthy mentions.
For one thing, in his masterful 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris, better known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, French Romantic novelist Victor Hugo gives his villain, Monseigneur Claude Frollo, an insatiable lust for knowledge. This leads Frollo to pore over various hermetic insignia attributed to Flamel and carved throughout Paris’s Holy Innocents’ Cemetery.
Hugo’s American contemporary, the Confederate general and high-ranking freemason Albert Pike, connected Nicholas Flamel with famed 13th– to 14th-c. Italian poet Dante Alighieri.[18] For more on Pike, who, in his capacity as Sovereign Grand Commander of the order, rewrote the rituals for the Scottish Rite’s so-called Southern Jurisdiction, see our “Top 10 Occultists” presentation.
Finally, on the current scene, Nicholas Flamel is mentioned throughout J. K. Rowling’s first installment in what would later become the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise. In the United States, her debut novel was labeled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.[19] But, in the United Kingdom, it bore the unmistakably alchemical title Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.[20]
Flamel is introduced into Rowling’s story as a 665-year-old “French wizard …who was the only known maker of the Philosopher’s Stone.”[21]
2. Maria the Jewess
Alchemical histories are interlaced with fable to such an extent that it is difficult to disentangle the strands. Be that as it may, some names crop up repeatedly.[22]
One such, and a possible candidate for the founder of the entire enterprise (at least, as we think of it), is the Greco-Egyptian woman remembered as Maria the Jewess.
Her appellation is exceedingly interesting, not least because a principal stream of Western occultism – the Kabbalah – coalesced partially out of Jewish-mystical currents.
In any case, competing accounts place Maria variously in Memphis during the 5th century, B.C.,[23] or in Alexandria in the 3rd century, B.C.
She is credited with the invention of alchemical paraphernalia, for example, the Bain-Marie. The phrase, which translates as “Mary’s Bath,” denotes a double boiler that is still used in industry and cooking.
Her distillation vessel, called a kerotakis, incorporated “copper foil” which, at a point in the alchemical process “…change[d] colors – giving the impression that it was taking on the spirit of gold.”[24]
You should realize that, early on, hermetists such as Zosimus of Panopolis began to syncretize alchemy with other mystical doctrines, such as Gnosticism (for an introduction, see “10 Arcane Words”).
The idea that an overarching entity, called the “world soul,” or anima mundi, pervaded all reality became part of the emerging alchemical gnosis. Consequently, one aim of various “spagyric” operations, was to harness the individual latent pneuma that was trapped both in inorganic and organic matter.
In fact, liquor distillers (among others) retain some of the alchemical lingo, and routinely refer to various alcoholic preparations as… “spirits.” Moreover, cosmeticians, herbalists, and perfumers also must familiarize themselves with a variety of usually plant-based “essential oils.” These “natural oil[s are] typically obtained by” processes of “distillation” that hearken back to those of the ancient alchemists.
Suffice it to say that Maria’s legacy of devices and reputed knowledge resulted in her commemoration as one of the few alchemists who had managed to create the Philosopher’s Stone.
3. Jabir / Geber (Al-Sufi)
The so-called “Dark Ages” – spanning roughly from the 5th to 11th centuries – began with the fall of the Roman Empire and the cessation of the study of the Greek language. This period is characterized by a marked decline of learning in general.
For example, the two giants of Greek philosophy had been Plato and his pupil, Aristotle. Whereas the former would enjoy continued influence, at least in the spiritualized form of “Neoplatonism,” the latter went into almost total eclipse for over 500 years.[25]
One of the chief contributions of the Islamic civilization to the world is its preservation of Greek philosophy through this Western downturn.[26] Therefore, it is unsurprising to find that alchemy next surfaces in an Arabic context.
A principal figure, here, is sometimes designated Al-Sufi, but whose given name was Jābir ibn Ḥayyān.[27]
Jābir expanded Aristotle’s doctrine, taken up from “pre-Socratic” philosophers like Empedocles, that the cosmos is composed of various arrangements of four basic “elements” – earth, air, water, and fire – along with two pairs of complementary “qualities” – dryness and moistness, along with coldness and hotness.[28]
This basic, Aristotelian theoretical framework served to underwrite the procedures of alchemy – not to mention Galenic medicine which centered on the closely related concept of the four “humors.”[29] The idea was that, if things (such as metals) are what they are in virtue of their peculiar ratios of elements and qualities, then knowledgeable artisans could change one thing into another by manipulating these (sometimes hidden) natures.
Jābir is, however, somewhat critical of these explanations, and began to move toward an alternative theory. On this new view, which would be developed in terms of “Three Principles” (or Tria Prima): salt, sulfur (or sulphur), and mercury.[30] At least part of the material description for reality would have to invoke this triplet.
The Arabic adept professed that two transmutations into gold were possible: a temporary one, which only modified the superficial, or “accidental properties” of a base metal, and a permanent one, which – to borrow Catholic Eucharistic lingo – managed to transubstantiate, or permanently change, the underlying the essence.
Like many historical characters, Jābir’s identity was later assumed by at least one anonymous author, presumably in the hope that readers would take him more seriously. To this unknown writer, termed “Pseudo-Geber,” is owed an alchemical treatise in Latin, the title of which is variously translated “The Height of Perfect Mastery,” “The Sum of Perfection,” or “The Perfect Magistery.”[31]
Much of the Jabirian corpus is written usually a strategy known as the “dispersion of knowledge”[32] technique, whereby passages are reproduced out of their proper order – like cooking directions that have been scrambled. Thus, possession of an alchemical text – by itself, without the proper key – does little good (even if a reader can decode individual symbols).
In fact, our English word “gibberish,” which means “unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing,” literally comes from the Latinized spelling (“Geber”) of Jābir.
This paranoid secrecy – which resulted in impenetrable texts – was partly due to the fact that alchemical knowledge was frequently considered heterodox – even heretical[33] – by mainstream adherents of the three major, monotheistic religions.
But, it was also because of the fear that the gold-making and life-extending potential of the Philosopher’s Stone, were it to be too widely known, would undermine the proper order of society. We’ll get back to this in a moment.
4. George Ripley
Fear of being labeled a heretic may have been off-putting for most would-be alchemists. But… not for everyone. Among those who sought this recondite information was the 15th-c. English Augustinian canon, George Ripley.
Ripley is one of a handful of people that allegedly achieved alchemical adeptness – at least, according to Freemasonic scholar Manly Palmer Hall. According to Hall, Ripley’s wonderworking was confirmed by the fact that he “…contributed one hundred thousand pounds [of gold] to the Knights of Rhodes,” who later became the Knights of Malta, “so that they could continue their war against the Turks.”[34]
In his important poetic volume The Compound of Alchemy, “Ripley adopted an allegorical approach to” his titular subject. He compared an adept’s completion of the Magnum Opus to passage through “Twelve Gates.”[35] This metaphor, which treats the Great Work as “a kind of spiritual obstacle course,”[36] became the basis for a division of the alchemical process into “twelve stages,”[37] usually enumerated:[38] 1. Calcination; 2. Solution (or Dissolution); 3. Separation; 4. Conjunction; 5. Putrefaction; 6. Congelation; 7. Cibation; 8. Sublimation; 9. Fermentation; 10. Exaltation; 11. Multiplication; and 12. Projection.
The fact that Ripley was an Augustinian hints at what you might call a “Catholic connexion” to alchemy that goes back at least to the 12th century.[39] For example, scholastic theologian and Catholic bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, is sometimes named on rosters of alchemists – as was his most illustrious student, the 13th-c. Franciscan friar, and “proto-empiricist,” Roger Bacon.[40]
Also from the 13th century, German-born Dominican St. Albert the Great[41] was associated with the city of Cologne, where his system of thought, a blend of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism[42] (sometimes called “Albertism”)[43] would influence the mystic Meister Eckhart as well as polymath and out-and-out occultist, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, in the 14th and 16th centuries, respectively.[44]
This is especially noteworthy since, according to 20th-c. British historian Frances Amelia Yates, it “is with Cornelius Agrippa” that alchemy “…very decidedly …enter[s]” the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition[45] as it came to expression during the Renaissance.[46]
Albert – or, according to the strictures of contemporary textual criticism, Pseudo–Albert[47] – is said to have codified eight preconditions for would-be creators of the Philosopher’s Stone – including the ability to, well… keep your mouth shut![48] (display 9th Gate “silence is golden”)
Additionally, Albert the Great was rumored to have been in possession of the Philosopher’s Stone. He is said to have passed its secrets to his best-known student, the precocious Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologiæ (or “Comprehensive Summary of Theology”) revolutionized Catholic philosophical instruction and became the foundation for later publications including the important Catechism of the Catholic Church. An alchemical treatise called the Aurora Consurgens (“Rising Dawn”) is sometimes attributed to St. Thomas,[49] leading to his occasional classification as a hermetic initiate.
5. Salomon Trismosin
Not that Catholics corner the market on this sort of endeavor. As we have seen, there was no shortage of Arabic-Muslim influence, and it is arguable (for example, from the case of Maria the Jewess) that the whole enterprise was at least partially informed by Hebraic mystical currents as well.
And this influence continued unabated until – or, was at least renewed during – the Renaissance. One of the principal figures credited with tuning Europe onto a Hermetic wavelength was the legendary Salomon Trismosin.
Trismosin, which name is suspected of being a pseudonym, is said to have had his alchemical curiosities piqued after a chance meeting with an otherwise unknown alchemist named “Flocker.” After witnessing the metamorphosis of lead into gold, but being unable to wrest the secret from Flocker, Trismosin threw himself into a lifelong investigation for the formula for the Philosopher’s Stone.
His travels took him to Venice, Italy, where he apprenticed to an itinerate German master named “Tauler”[50] and finally learned the key to transmutation.
As an aside, Venice, home of the 15th– 16th-c. Franciscan Cabalist Francesco Giorgi, formed the backdrop for some of the action in Dan Brown’s 2013 mystery novel, Inferno,[51] which was adapted into a film in 2016 by director Ron Howard.
According to Franz Hartmann, the 19th– to 20th-c. German occultist and cofounder, with Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss, of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Trismosin also managed to discover the Elixir of Everlasting Life. At least, Hartmann makes use of this hypothesis to explain allegedly sightings of Trisomosin throughout the 17th century.
One of Trismosin’s lasting contributions was the gorgeous, illuminated manuscript titled Splendor Solis (“The Sun’s Splendor”), which was first printed around 1532. The illustrations are some of the most recognizable representations of alchemy extant.
It’s worth remarking that such works – whether handwritten or typeset – left tremendous impressions, sometimes changing European history for good, …or ill.
Consider the works of the (possibly fictional) alchemist Bernard of Treviso.[52] They were rumored to have exerted a formative influence upon Joan of Arc’s 15th-c. companion and later diabolist, Gilles de Rais. According to the 20th-c. English Catholic scholar and priest Montague Summers,[53] the highly influential 19th-c. French occultist Éliphas Lévi said “…that Gilles de Rais ‘sought the Philosophical Stone in the blood of murdered children…”.[54]
Recall that the elusive Philosopher’s Stone is oftentimes described as a “red powder that transmutes base metal into purest gold.”[55]
Summers then proceeds to quote Lévi’s further assertion that Gilles de Rais “…had doubtless derived his [alchemical] recipe from …old Hebrew Grimoires…”.[56]
As the book collector Victor Fargas puts it in Roman Polansky’s 1999 film, The Ninth Gate, “Some books are dangerous, not to be opened with impunity.”
6. Paracelsus
One of Salomon Trismosin’s proverbial “claims to fame” was undoubtedly the power he exerted over that man who has been dubbed the “Martin Luther of medicine.”[57] In fact, “the scientific debates of the late sixteenth century were centered more frequently on …[this man’s] innovations …than they were on the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus.”[58]
I’m speaking now of the pioneering anti-Galenic physician born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, but better known as Paracelsus.[59]
In the ancient world, “Western alchemy [was] based on the Hermetic tradition,” and consisted of “a syncretism of Egyptian metallurgy” and magic, along with Greek Neoplatonism and Jewish-Christian Gnosticism.[60] But, under Paracelsus’s influence, European Renaissance alchemy started to assume the characteristics of (what we’d today think of as) chemistry, homeopathy, pharmacology, and surgery.[61]
Although he rejected medical explanations framed in terms of the “four humors,” he was by no means anti-alchemical. On the contrary, according to Paracelsus, “…chemically prepared medicines …would work only if the physician first understood the relationship between the patient, the cosmos, and God. An essential key to that understanding lay in the study of alchemy…”.[62]
From a Hermetic perspective, alchemy is merely a set of procedures for speeding up natural processes of physical and spiritual evolution whereby “metals evolve toward gold …[j]ust as all life evolves toward Divine Perfection.”[63]
The Hermetic philosopher holds that human beings are miniature versions – or “microcosms” – of the entire universe – or macrocosm. Consequently, there are meaning (albeit hidden) correspondences between lower-level and higher-level realities. This is the significance of the famous alchemical maxim “as above, so below,” which is expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet.
For his part, “…Paracelsus …claimed to have received the final secrets of the Great Work in Constantinople…”.[64]
A famous drawing of Paracelsus shows him grasping an upside-down sword by its hilt, with the word “Azoth” (/AZ-oth/) engraved on the pommel.
The well-known 19th-c. French occultist Éliphas Lévi likened the Azoth – also called the panacea or the “universal medicine”[65] – to a mysterious, fabled “fifth element” called the quintessence. According to Lévi, the Azoth “is a combination of gold and light.” (onscreen quote: (Ignis et Azoth tibi sufficiunt. [“Fire and Azoth are enough for you.”])
Enthusiasts have considered these dense and obscure claims worthy of reflection, since – according to Paracelsus – therein lies the “key to creating spiritual gold.”[66]
Who can say whether Paracelsus cracked the ultimate code? But upon his alleged death in 1541, “…a few suggested that the alchemist …had found the elixir of life and given himself a dose of immortality.”[67]
Paracelsus had a number of intellectual successors, including Gérard Dorn (who exerted a powerful influence on Carl Jung), Oswald Croll (who had contact with John Dee’s collaborator, Edward Kelley), Jan Baptiste van Helmont, and Valentin Weigel. They all, in one way or other, came to believe that the “Book of Nature” could be just as illuminating as the Holy Bible – and held just as many secrets.
7. Basil Valentine
Like Maria the Jewess, Salomon Trismosin, and several others on this list, Basil Valentine[68] is the subject of many stories.
Depending upon the report, he is said to have lived anywhere between the 12th and 15th centuries – or even beyond. This either means that his precise origins are unknown, or else that he is suspected – similarly to Counts Cagliostro and St. Germain, as well as to the 16th– to 17th-c. English barrister, philosopher, and one-time Lord High Chancellor of England, Francis Bacon – of having unlocked the secret of eternal life.[69]
As an aside, Cagliostro claimed affiliation with the same Catholic military order – though, under their new name, the Knights of Malta – that had been funded been George Ripley. “The famous and elusive Saint-Germain convinced many European aristocrats he could create gold.”[70] And Francis Bacon included a “section on the making of gold” in his Sylva Sylvarum, or a Naturall Historie in ten Centuries,” published posthumously in London in 1627, and which he had intended to form “part of …[his] unfinished Instauratio Magna.”[71]
According to one persistent legend, Basil Valentine was a Benedictine monk;[72] though, revisionist biographers have begun identifying him with a German salt miner named Johann Thölde.[73] In any event, he cultivated a “reputation for obscure learning.”[74]
Like Paracelsus, Valentine was an early medical experimenter and critic of the establishment. Also like Paracelsus, he certainly picked up on the “Azoth” current. This is evident from one of the most recognizable alchemical diagrams that is owed to Basil Valentine.
It is a prominent illustration in the work titled “Azoth of the Philosophers.” According to writer Dennis William Hauck, “Azoth” is an alpha-omega symbol, and hints obliquely at “the chaotic First Matter at the beginning of the [alchemical] Work and the perfected Stone at its conclusion.”[75]
“The Azoth is believed to be the animating energy (spiritus animatus) of the body…”[76] – and its crucial in the gold-making endeavor, as occultist Franz Hartmann explains. “This [spirit, the ‘prime mover’[77]] is the great alchemical agent, and in it are contained all productive and generative powers. If this spirit is extracted from gold or silver and united with some other metal it transforms the latter into gold, respectively silver.”[78]
Much of the symbolism of alchemy was subsequently imported into the 17th-c. Rosicrucianism movement. Special mention should be made of the possible authors of the “manifestos” published between 1614 and 1617, namely, Johannes Valentinus Andreæ, Christopher Besoldus, and Tobias Hess.
But, among the Rosicrucian apologists we must also count English Paracelsan doctor Robert Fludd, German Hermeticist Heinrich Khunrath, and Michael Maier[79] whose alchemical epigrams were famously printed in the volume titled “Atalanta Fleeing,” alongside gorgeous illustrations by Matthias Merian.[80]
Not quite a relic of bygone eras, a handful of quirky personalities have also philaappeared to continue Basil Valentine’s legacy. One of these was the French adept known only as “Fulcanelli.”[81]
The name – ostensibly a mashup of Vulcan, god of the forge in classical Roman mythology, and El, a semitic word for “god” – appeared as the byline of a book titled “The Mystery of the Cathedrals,”[82] arguing that medieval stone masons preserved the formula for the Magnum Opus through decorations in the great churches of Europe.[83]
According to Fulcanelli’s protégé, Eugène Léon Canseliet, Fulcanelli’s (theoretical) teacher – whether through books or via some miraculous attainment of old age – had been none other than… Basil Valentine.
8. Alexander Seton
Alexander Seton[84] stands near the top of a short list of those “…very few alchemists, reportedly, who succeeded in the great experiment of the transmutation of metals.”[85] It is for this reason that Seton’s story also serves as a cautionary tale for would-be gold makers.
The story begins in 1601 when a Dutch boat shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland. By chance, the ill-fated vessel had crashed near Seton’s home. At personal risk, Seton rescued many of the sailors and nursed them back to health.
One of the survivors, a pilot named James Haussen, was thankful to the point of offering to host Seton for a vacation in his native Holland.
During the trip, Seton disclosed to Haussen “that he was a master of alchemy …and proved his words by performing several transmutations.”[86]
Apparently, Seton continued to tour continental Europe – and he continued, also, injudiciously displaying his much-coveted talents along the way. Some of these alleged exhibitions – if the stories are true – are among the most remarkable accounts of their kinds.
Unlike scores of seeming charlatans, such as the miserable 18th-c. British chemist James Price who, when challenged to repeat a carefully choreographed lead-into-gold demonstration in front of a scrutinous, scientific audience, opted instead to commit suicide, Alexander Seton invited crowd participation.
Spectators brought their own lead. Chemical equipment was brought by disinterested third parties – such as town apothecaries and smithies. Seton himself purportedly touched nothing – he merely directed the action, as it were. And the results of the process were immediately available to contributors for close inspection.
All this was most impressive to Seton’s audiences. Unfortunately, word of these spectacular feats reached the avaricious Christian II, who held the title “Elector of Saxony” from 1591 to 1611, until he died at the age of 27. But, while he drew breath, he summoned Seton to his court.
After trying to evade the sham “invitation” by sending an emissary[87] in his stead, Seton was at last sufficiently pressured to appear personally. Satisfying that request was Seton’s final and most grievous error – in a long sequence of mistakes.
Ultimately, he ended up in Christian’s prison tower. According to Manly Palmer Hall, Seton: “was pierced with pointed iron, scorched with molten lead, burned with fire, beaten with rods, and racked from head to foot; yet …he refused to betray his God-given knowledge.”[88]
Enter Michael Sendivogius.
9. Michael Sendivogius (knew John Dee;[89] went to Prague)
Sendivogius was born into a family of means. The official account has it that he was moved by the plight of the hapless Seton and used his influence to gain access to the prisoner.[90]
During their tête-à-tête, Sendivogius supposedly proposed staging a jailbreak in exchange for the Seton’s alchemical secret. This plan was then put into place with the help of strategic bribes and, after plying the guards with food and drink, Seton was freed.
However, Seton refused to divulge his gold-making recipe and soon died from the trauma of abuse sustained during his imprisonment.
Before he expired, Seton entrusted to Sendivogius his stock of the so-called “projection” catalyst, that scarce red powder which is also called the “Philosopher’s Stone.”
It is said that Sendivogius used his magic powder to effect numerous, genuine transmutations.
But, without the all-important formula, he was operating on borrowed time. Desperate to unearth the preparation instructions, he accosted Seton’s widow – on the assumption that she knew something of her husband’s techniques.
Being unsuccessful at that interrogation, Sendivogius absconded with a manuscript in Seton’s hand, bearing the title The New Light of Alchemy. “In its pages, he thought he saw a method for increasing the powder, but he only succeeded in lessening it.”[91]
Doubtless bitter, and perhaps desperate for money, Sendivogius published New Light under his own name, and died among the ranks of pretenders.
At least, such is the tale as “[m]ost biographers have assumed”.[92]
Prague was the “metropolis of alchemy.”[93]
10. George Starkey & Thomas Vaughan
George Starkey has the distinction of being the only American on our list.
Like Paracelsus, Jan van Helmont,[94] and numerous others, he was a physician by training. In fact, Starkey received his medical instruction at Harvard during the 1640s, just a few years after its founding in 1636.
He decamped from Boston to London to find an intellectually stimulating environment more congenial to his esoteric interests.
Starkey associated with the great chemist Robert Boyle,[95] from whom we know of the existence of the so-called “Invisible College.” That institution deserves its own treatment. Suffice it here to say that it was a precursor to the Royal Society.
As a token of good will, and likely to impress his European collaborators, Starkey produced manuscripts bearing the name Eirenæus Philalethes, which is Greek for “Peaceful Lover of Truth.”[96]
“The authorship of the Philalethes manuscripts has never been firmly established, but most scholars are of the opinion that George Starkey wrote the books himself.”
Starkey bankrupted himself and alienated his English colleagues. For a time, he was reduced to performing experiments in the cell of a debtor’s prison.[97]
He managed to secure a release but died shortly after an “outbreak of bubonic plague” in London. In 1665, he and physician George Thomson offered to dissect a corpse to gain insight into the mechanisms behind the affliction. His proposal was scornfully rejected by the medical establishment. When Starkey passed following the attempt, which the pair proceeded with anyway, naysayers told exaggerated stories about how his death had come “within minutes” of the idiotic procedure.
Weirdly, Freemasonry also includes a ritual referred to by the same word – autopsy – which is in common use to designate the very operation Starkey had proposed.[98]
Starkey has a generally poor reputation – even among esoteric writers. Freemasonic scholar Manly Palmer Hall described him as “of unsound character.”[99] Still, he is important for at least two reasons.
Firstly, it was arguably the work of Boyle and Starkey that sparked the alchemical interests of the young Isaac Newton whose Hermetic library eventually grew to one of the largest in the world.[100]
Secondly, he is of interest because of his possible connexion to the shadowy figure of Thomas Vaughan.
According to the usual retelling, Thomas Vaughan[101] was born in Wales in 1621. He studied to become a physician, but “never practiced” that profession – preferring, instead, to devote himself to alchemy.
Vaughan seems to have adopted “the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes,” under which he published several Hermetic treatises.[102]
Supposedly, Vaughan killed himself (accidentally, one presumes) while engaging in an obviously dangerous chemical experiment.[103]
According to Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, the aforementioned Count Saint-Germain: “belonged to the Martinist-related Masonic Rite of the Philalethes, ‘whose members made a special study of the Occult Sciences’.”[104]
The Freemasonic connexion crops up repeatedly. For one thing, Masonry has adopted numerous alchemical emblems. For another, some of the earliest English Freemasons had Hermetic interests. This includes Elias Ashmole who, in 1652 published a compilation of alchemical texts under the title Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum;[105] as well as Sir Robert Moray, who was one of Vaughan’s patrons.
Conclusion:
It makes sense that states would have a mercenary interest in bottomless coffers. Regents like James IV of Scotland and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II were among the array of monarchs with more than passing interests in funding gold-making. And then there’s the interest of private parties and corporations.
But, would you believe that alchemy also influenced… modern finance?!
Consider, as a first pass, Hungarian-born American financier, George Soros.[106] Provocatively, he titled his 1987 book, The Alchemy of Finance![107]
Soros became world famous in 1992 when he made one billion dollars by using an investment tactic called “short selling” to profit off the Bank of England.[108]
The Bank of England is the British ancestor of the United States’s Federal Reserve, and it “…was formed in 1694 to institutionalize” a money-lending procedure called “fractional-reserve banking.”[109]
Without getting too technical, the “fractional-reserve” system allows money changers to lend out more than they actually have in their vaults. In other words, through the “magic” of fractional reserves, bankers are literally authorized to create money out of thin air.
If this were not a modern form of gold-making alchemy, then why did agents of the Invisible College, including Sir Robert Boyle,[110] agitate for the passage of the Mines Royal Act of 1688?[111]
The answer is: The Mines Royal Act repealed the 1404 Act Against Multipliers in which then-King Henry IV “…had made it a felony to create gold and silver by means of alchemy.”[112]
With the anti-alchemy law off the books and out of the way, private banking interests were free to charter the Bank of England, which they did around five years later.
With this in mind, consider the possible Hermetic interests of economist John Maynard Keynes. You see, Keynes was one of the principal purchasers (through the famed auction house, Sotheby’s) of Sir Isaac Newton’s treatises on alchemy.[113]
Perhaps all this is not so strange. After all, recall that alchemy was said to have descended from Hermes. And among Hermes’ grandiose titles was …the god of commerce.
(Onscreen quote: Thomas Norton: “This art must ever secret be. / The cause whereof is this, as ye may see: / If one evil man had thereof all his will, / All Christian peace he might easily spill, / And with his pride he might pull down / Rightful kings and princes of renown.”[114])
“False alchemists seek only to make gold; true philosophers desire only knowledge.”[115]
Copyright 2023, TheSynchroMystic. All rights reserved.
[1] It is sometimes rendered “land of black earth.” See Douglas Harper, “Alchemy,” Online Etymology Dictionary, Oct. 13, 2021, <https://www.etymonline.com/word/alchemy>.
[2] With only slight variations, the word was subsequently imported into Arabic, Greek, and Latin, from which it has come to us in English. As one source (“Egypt, Chemi, Kham,” Esoteric Philosopher: Study of the Endless Path of Wisdom, <>.) notes: “…‘The Land of Ham’ or chem, Greek (chemi),” is mentioned in “Psalm cv. 23”: “Then Israel entered Egypt; Jacob resided as a foreigner in the land of Ham.” (Psalm 105:23, New Intl. Vers.)
[3] Or a “chemistry of god.” See, e.g., “Gnostic Chemistry or Alchemy,” Gnostic Studies, n.d., <https://gnosticstudies.org/index.php/alchemy/>.
[4] Sometimes, “Tubal-Cain, who lived before the Flood, was considered the father of alchemy since it was said of him that he was ‘the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron’ (Gen. 4:22),” J. E. Grennen, “Alchemy,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, Jun. 11, 2018, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/alchemy>. “The fire chemist is descended from the mighty smithy, Tubal-cain (sic), the iron worker…”, Hall, op. cit., p. 27.
[5] In fact, the word “hermeneutics” is still current in specialized circles that are engaged in the interpretation of literary works, such as the Holy Bible.
[6] Also sometimes called “Tahuti.”
[7] Antoine Faivre, Western Esotericism, Christine Rhone, transl., New York: SUNY Press, 2010, p. 25.
[8] The “hard sciences” include: astronomy (“father of modern astronomy” was Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1543); chemistry (if it’s not Boyle, then the “father” was probably Antoine Lavoisier, 1743-1794); and physics (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642). If one had to name a single “father” for the entire enterprise of modern science, the honor could also go to Galileo. Though, Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, could be called the “father of modern empiricism.”
[9] Allied disciplines didn’t surface until the 16th c. or later – at least, not in any form resembling what we think of as “modern science.” For example, minerology was comparatively early; the “Father of Mineralogy” was the German humanist Georgius Agricola (born Georg Bauer; 1494-1555). On the other hand, geology proper came about later: the “father” of that area of study usually being credited as the Scottish naturalist James Hutton (1726-1797). Especially up to a certain point in history, it’s almost impossible to draw a sharp line between alchemy and other disciplines. For example, part of the “alchemy” of 13th-c. Spanish thinker Ramon Llull was his project of reimagining Christian apologetics and theology along the lines of a grand synthesis that recognized similarities Christianity had with Islam and Judaism. In this way, he both combined opposing principles along alchemical lines, as well as anticipated the later “Christian Cabala” of people like Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin. See Yates, loc. cit.
[10] The fascinating history is complicated and cannot be told without reference to the curious “Invisible College.” But, the proximate founders were notables from a group, operating out of London’s Gresham College, known as the “Oxonian Society.” In the year 1660, some of these met in what is called the “Committee of Twelve,” and formed the Royal College as we know it. They were: William Ball, Robert Boyle, William Brouncker, Alexander Bruce, Jonathan Goddard, Abraham Hill, Sir Robert Moray, Paul Neile, William Petty, Lawrence Rooke, John Wilkins, and Christopher Wren.
[11] Originally known as “The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.”
[12] But, see previous footnote on the “hard sciences.” It is conceivable that once chemistry really “got going,” there was a renewed interest in alchemy (in some circles) in virtue of the hope that newly discovered information, or recently developed technology, might equip practitioners to at last realize the fabled, ancient goals.
[13] The “soft sciences” are, for the most part, even later still. They are frequently adumbrated as: anthropology (“father of physical anthropology” was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1752-1840; the “father of cultural anthropology” was Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, 1832-1917; while the “father of American cultural anthropology” was Franz Boas, 1858-1942; the “father of social anthropology” was Bronisław Kasper Malinowski, 1884-1942; but precursors included Sir James George Frazer, 1854-1941, and Sir Edward Evan “E. E.” Evans-Pritchard, 1902-1973), economics (“father of economics” should probably be credited to Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, 1723-1790), psychology (“father of modern experimental psychology” was Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, 1832-1920); and sociology (“father” was Auguste Comte, 1798-1857; or, sometimes, it is given as David Émile Durkheim, 1858-1917; “father of sociology of religion” could be thought of as Maximilian K. E. “Max” Weber, 1864-1920). Though, some incarnations of these were a bit earlier: economics (some of the earliest modern writers on economic theory were Jesuits – e.g., Luis de Molina, 1535-1600 – from the Spanish School of Salamanca); political science (“father of modern political science” may have been Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527; of course, political philosophy goes back to Aristotle); psychology (“father of modern psychology” was arguably Juan Luis Vives, 1493-1540).
[14] Zosimos of Panopolis, The Book of Pictures, Theodore Abt, ed., transl., Zurich, Switzerland: Living Human Heritage Publ., 2007, p. 33.
[15] Crowley availed himself of a then-recent translation produced by his erstwhile colleague Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers: The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, As Delivered by Abraham the Jew Unto His Son Lamech, A.D. 1458, London: J.M. Watkins, 1898.
[16] Reportedly, some of these were conducted in conjunction with George Cecil Jones, Jr., who was a fellow member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and co-founder, with Crowley, of the magical order designated the “A∴A∴” – which is sometimes said to stand for Argentium Astrum (“Silver Star”), but may have any of a number of alternate interpretations (including Arcanum Arcanorum, or “Secret of Secrets”). See, “A∴A∴,” Wikipedia, Apr. 2, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley>; “Aleister Crowley,” Wikipedia, Aug. 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley>; and “George Cecil Jones,” Wikipedia, Mar. 30, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cecil_Jones>.
[17] See Hall, op. cit., p. 36.
[18] As well as with 13th-c. French poet Jean de Meung. See Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma…, reprint ed., Richmond, Va.: 1946, L. H. Jenkins, p. 823.
[19] New York: Scholastic, 1998.
[20] London: Bloomsbury, 1997. (Underlining added.)
[21] “Nicolas Flamel,” Harry Potter Wiki, n.d., <https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel>.
[22] Another early – if not seminal – 3rd-c. (B.C.) figure was Bolos (or Bolus) of Panopolis. The place name is also intriguing. Geopgraphically, Panopolis was an Egyptian city now called Akhmin. The principal deity worshipped at this location was supposed to have been Min, sometimes understood as an alter ego of Horus. In any event, Min is routinely depicted ithyphallically, and (presumably for this reason) was associated with the ever-amorous, rustic Greco-Roman deity Pan. Connexions abound. Fortean anomalist Jim Brandon formulated an entire study – his 1983 volume, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit (Firebird Press, Dunlap, Ill.) – around the theme. For my part, I’ve had opportunity to mention Pan in the past (for one example, see “Omicron”). A dedicated presentation may be forthcoming.
[23] According to some legends, she taught the late 5th-c. to early-4th-c. “pre-Socratic” philosopher Democritus, one of the earliest expositors of atomism, the idea that reality is explicable in virtue of the interplay of irreducible, microscopic pieces of matter (“a-toms” – which word literally means “un-cuttable”) and the in-between spaces (the “void”). To confuse matters, there is a secondary character, one Democritus of Alexandria, who enters the picture – though, frequently, he is said to have been a student of another alchemical master named Ostanes.
[24] Janet Cave and Robert A. Doyle, et al., eds., Mysteries of the Unknown: Secrets of the Alchemists, Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1990, p. 24.
[25] From St. Augustine onward, Aristotle would only be known indirectly, through his quotation by previous generations of scholars, or through scattered translations, such as Boethius’s version of the Organon.
[26] Streams of ancient Greek tradition were also preserved in the Byzantine Empire. Alchemically speaking, the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus the Younger (or an unknown author that we may call “Pseudo-Olympiodorus”) penned Περί τῆς ἱερᾶς τέχνης τῆς φιλοσοφικῆς λίθου (“On the Divine and Sacred Art of the Philosophical Stone,” in Latin: De arte sacra lapidis philosophorum).
[27] Or “Geber.”
[28] These dovetail in a surprisingly compelling and intuitive way. As rehearsed on the relevant Wikipedia page: “…fire was both hot and dry, earth, cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air, hot and moist.” “Jabir Ibn Hayyan,” Wikipedia, Aug. 24, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabir_ibn_Hayyan>.
[29] The four are: blood (associated with a sanguine temperament), “yellow bile” (resulting in a choleric personality), black bile (melancholic), and phlegm (phlegmatic). This schema was assumed for centuries, but began to be challenged around the 10th century, e.g., by the Arabic physician Al-Rāzī (Rhazes).
[30] On the usual picture, “all things” are inherently “hermaphroditic,” Guiley, op. cit., p. 9. (For more insight, see “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”) This is to say that they are, in some sense, mercurial-sulfurous composites. “Sulfur,” here, is not an anachronistic gesture toward the periodic table of elements (where it has the symbol “S” and an atomic number of 16). Rather, it is an emblem of “soul” (anima), the fiery, masculine energy of thought, symbolized by the sun. “Mercury,” on the other hand, is “spirit” (spiritus), the watery, feminine energy of emotion, represented by the moon. And salt – added later – is an oblique reference to sensations and the “body” (corpus), in which the “fiery water” is incarnated. See, e.g., ibid. and Hauck, loc. cit. “The adept is the child of the sun and the moon,” Hall, op. cit., p. 29. But, on the subject of the periodic table, it’s worth noting that the search for foundational chemical “elements” as the building blocks of matter was arguably given impetus by the hermetic philosophizing of people like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (see his concept of “monads”) and Robert Boyle (via his idea of “corpuscles”).
[31] Summa perfectionis magisterii.
[32] Tabdīd al-ʿilm. See Noah Daedalus Gardiner, Esotericism in a Manuscript Culture: Ahmad al-Buni and His Readers Through the Mamluk Period, dissertation, Univ. of Mich., 2014, pp. 125-127; online at <https://1library.net/article/tabd%C4%ABd-%CA%BFilm-esotericist-reading-communities-b%C5%ABn%C4%AB-tabd%C4%ABd-%CA%BFilm.yn9w3mjq>.
[33] Zandaqa.
[34] Hall, op. cit., p. 22.
[35] Sir George Ripley, Alchemical Works: The compound of Alchemy & al.; online at <https://www.labirintoermetico.com/01Alchimia/Ripley_G_Compound_of_Alchemy_et_al.pdf>.
[36] Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 55.
[37] One thinks, also, of various “twelve-step” programs – such as Alcoholics Anonymous (“AA”) – which fit into a broader tapestry of “Mind Cure,” “Positive Thinking,” and “self-help” literature.
[38] Helpfully summarized in: “Magnum opus (alchemy),” Wikipedia, Apr. 17, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_opus_(alchemy)>.
[39] One obscure personality of the period is John Dastin (or John Daustin). He was a 14th-c. alchemist, living in England, who apparently achieved prominence enough to correspond with the Pope (then John XXII). According to his Wikipedia article, Dastin was known to Elias Ashmole, Hermannus Condeesyanus, and Arthur Dee. “John Dastin,” Wikipedia, Aug. 23, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dastin>.
[40] In the midst of his treatment of Bacon, Manly Hall makes a point of criticizing medieval education. Growing frustration with “sterile scholasticism” is a point of commonality amongst Roger Bacon, Paracelsus, Francis Bacon, the Rosicrucians, and other Renaissance figures. The usual summary has it that the apriorism of the Catholic Middle Ages was based on axioms that were uncritically assumed solely in virtue of appeals to authority: whether the Church’s or that of antiquity (e.g., Aristotle was esteemed so highly that he was simply referred to as “The Philosopher”). Nothing was subjected to experiential testing – which became a rallying cry for malcontents and hallmark of later empirical science. Leonardo Da Vinci, another product of the period, referred to himself as “a disciple of experience,” quoted by Bill Gates, “Walter Isaacson’s Terrific New Biography Sheds Light on Every Facet of the Artist’s Life,” GatesNotes (weblog), May 21, 2018, <https://www.gatesnotes.com/books/leonardo-da-vinci>. Practical disciplines, like medicine, weren’t the only ones affected by the new patterns of thinking. The whole ad fontes (“back to the sources”) movement undergirding humanism, and priming the pump for theological change vis-à-vis the Protestant Reformation, must also be factored in. Moreover, intellectual discontent would engender political discontent, as the 18th century (and later centuries) of revolution would demonstrate. It’s not for nothing that Manly Hall refers to part of the pertinent period (specifically, the years between 1590 and 1630) as the “Universal Reformation,” op. cit., pp. 62-63. See, also, James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publ., 1999. Incidentally, Roger Bacon was called “Doctor Mirabilis,” meaning “Miraculous Doctor,” or one who is “amazing, wondrous, remarkable,” see: “Roger Bacon,” Wikipedia, Aug. 14, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon> and “Mirabilis,” Wikipedia, Aug. 31, 2020, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabilis>.
[41] A.k.a., “Doctor Universalis,” or “Universal Doctor.”
[42] At the time, Neoplatonism had a respectable veneer among learned Catholics, since one of its key expositors, now referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius (late 5th– to early-6th– c.), was believed to have been the genuine, 1st-c. Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian converted by St. Paul as told in the Holy Bible (the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 34).
[43] Albertism differed from competing systems, such as those of St. Thomas Aquinas (“Thomism”), Duns Scotus (“Scotism”), and William of Ockham (“Nominalism”), as well as of the revived Augustinian Neoplatonism of St. Bonaventure and the Franciscans. It arguably faded into oblivion because: (1) Albertism wasn’t as thoroughgoing a philosophical system as, say, Thomism or Augustinianism; (2) unless you count its inspiration of occultists or members of secret societies supposedly founded by Agrippa (see Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1979), Albertism was never (per se) embraced by any religious order (as Thomism had been by the Dominicans, Augustinianism by the Franciscans, etc.); and (3) Albertism was anti-nominalist (and nominalism became philosophical orthodoxy along with the rise of mechanistic science).
[44] Other “Albertists” included Heymericus de Campo, Johannes Hulshout of Mechelen, Gerardus de Harderwijck, Arnoldus Luyde de Tongeris, and others associated with the “Gymnasium Laurentianum.” See Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, “Albertism,” Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, Jan., 2011, pp. 44-51; online at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302883424_Albertism>. Albert also influenced Dietrich of Freiberg, Berthold of Moosburg, and John of Freiburg, as well as Ulrich of Strasbourg. See: Irene Zavattero, “Ulrich of Strasbourg,” Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2020, pp. 1351-1353; online at <https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_509>.
[45] Due primarily to difficulties transliterating Hebrew, the word “Kabbalah” sometimes displays spelling variations. Some of these variations should be treated synonymously, across certain contexts. However, in my lexicon, “Cabala” is reserved the sort of “Christianized,” Neoplatonized variety that flowed from Pico and Reuchlin. On the other hand, “Qabalah” (not employed as such in this text) is the peculiar version that is often blended with Tarot (courtesy of Éliphas Lévi) and was widely adopted by esotericists (such as Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn members) after the Nineteenth-Century “Occult Revival.” Kabbalah is reserved for specifically Jewish varieties; though, even here, we must allow for development. See “10 Arcane Words” for a very basic introduction.
[46] Yates, op. cit., p. 97.
[47] “Among these works [that are now considered ‘Pseudo-Albertine’] are many treatises relating to chemistry. The titles of some of them will serve to show how explicit was Albert in his consideration of various chemical subjects. He has treatises concerning Metals and Minerals; concerning Alchemy; A Treatise on the Secret of Chemistry; A Concordance, that is a Collection of observations from many sources with regard to the Philosopher’s Stone; A brief Compend on the Origin of the Metals; A Treatse on Compounds; most of these are to be found in his works under the general heading ‘Theatrum Chemicum’,” James Joseph Walsh, The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries, New York: Catholic Summer School Press, 1907, p. 46; online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=_rofAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA2-PA46> and <https://books.google.com/books?id=kvQRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA46>. N.B.: The quoted author seems to have thought that the listed works were penned by the historical Albert the Great. It was only later, it seems, that they were relegated to the knockoff.
[48] See, Hall, op. cit., p. 22.
[49] It is now more commonly ascribed to “Pseudo-Aquinas.”
[50] One remembers that a main disciple of Meister Eckhart was Johannes Tauler. Tho, this Tauler likely died in Germany (Strasbourg) over 100 years (1361) before Trismosin’s sojourn to Italy (ca. 1473).
[51] New York: Doubleday.
[52] A.k.a. Bernard Trévisan; see Hall, op. cit., p. 32.
[53] Scholars have begun questioning Montague Summers’ priestly bona fides. As the relevant Wikipedia article states, Summers was apparently never connected to any parish or religious order. One possibility, mentioned (but not developed), would be that Summers was ordained by an irregular, or “Wandering” bishop (or episcopus vagans) named Ulric Vernon Herford – which would be another story and, therefore, cannot be taken up, here.
[54] Montague Summers, Witchcraft and Black Magic, Detroit: Grand River Books, 1971 (orig. London & New York: Rider, 1945/6), p. 151.
[55] Joseph Caezza, “Who Were the Alchemists?” The Alchemy Website, n.d., <http://www.levity.com/alchemy/caezza4.html>.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Lutherus medicorum (“the Luther of physicians”), see Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 63. Other of Paracelsus’s important instructors were Ulrich Poysel and – especially – the Abbot Trithemius, about whom (the latter) I hope to say more in a subsequent video.
[58] According to Allen G. Debus, “Paracelsus and the Medical Revolution of the Renaissance,” Paracelsus, Five Hundred Years: Three American Exhibits, St. Louis, Mo.: Washington Univ. School of Medicine Library, 1994; blurb online at <https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/paracelsus/index.html>. Whereas Copernicus overthrew Ptolemy, Paracelsus displaced Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna. Paracelsus’s decision to favor the German language over academic Latin (which was also characteristic of Reformers like Martin Luther) was, at least in part, a declaration of war against received medical opinion.
[59] The name, para-Celsus is meant to signify that von Hohenheim was moving “… ‘beyond Celsus,’ …the celebrated first-century Roman physician…,” Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 63.
[60] See, e.g., Rosemary Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, New York: Facts on File, 2006, p. 8.
[61] “Paracelsus is credited with starting to build the science of chemistry on the footings of alchemy,” simultaneously “…establish[ing the] …basis …of pharmacy,” Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 63. He had received the standard university education for the time but was dissatisfied with state of medical knowledge. So, he took to interviewing “…wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws …tak[ing] lessons from them,” Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 63. Again, we see that Paracelsus anticipates the emergence of experimental science by simply going out and asking everyday people with experience one simple question: “What works?” This hearkens back to Roger Bacon who, as Manly Hall reports, “[broke] with the rigid scholastic pattern” not only by conducting his own “experiments” which “contributed much to the profession of medicine,” but also by gleaning “some of his …ideas from lesser-known contemporaries,” op. cit., p. 41. Although alchemical knowledge is a sort of “gnosis,” it is a “…religious gnosis [that] demands direct personal experience rather than pedestrian faith,” Caezza, loc. cit.
[62] Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 64.
[63] Caezza, loc. cit.
[64] Hall, op. cit., p. 33. Perennially, Constantinople has been the setting for various intrigues – both fictional and genuine. Examples of this include Graham Greene’s 1932 novel, Stamboul Train (London: William Heinemann), and Agatha Christie’s 1934 mystery, Murder on the Orient Express (Glasgow, Scotland: William Collins). Or consider Allen Welsh Dulles, who was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953 by then-President Dwight Eisenhower, and who served in that capacity until being fired in 1961 by John F. Kennedy, after the botched “Bay of Pigs” operation. Before his tenure as CIA chief – before, even, his involvement with William “Wild Bill” Dononvan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – “…Dulles joined the U.S. Foreign Service” in 1916 and “was assigned to Constantinople (later Istanbul) from October 1920 to April 1922.” “Dulles, Allen Welsh,” Encyclopedia.com, May 17, 2018, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/us-history-biographies/allen-welsh-dulles>.
[65] At least, “the universal remedy” is how Paracelsus used the term, “Azoth,” Dictionary.com, 2022, <https://www.dictionary.com/browse/azoth>. For other alchemists, “azoth” designated “quicksilver” or “mercury, …the assumed first principle of all metals,” ibid. About this “Universal Medicine,” Paracelsus remarked that it “consumed all diseases …like an invisible fire,” Guiley, op. cit., p. 245. The aim of the Paracelsian physician, like later practitioners such as Robert Fludd, was to restore a patient’s place in the delicate cosmic balance.
[66] Guiley, op. cit., p. 245.
[67] Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 69.
[68] Manly Hall speculates that his name – Basil Valentine – means (something like) “the strong or mighty king,” op. cit., p. 57. It may have been the nom de plume for “a circle of Hermetic initiates,” ibid., pp. 57-58. This is an intriguing possibility. One thinks, also, of (one version of) the so-called “Baconian hypothesis” for Shakespearean authorship. Somewhat sophisticated Baconians frequently hold that Francis Bacon may have been the “principal” author or editor of a literary society (the “Knights of the Helmet”) in a way analogous to how “a typical Renaissance studio” painter may have had a whole “studio of pupils.” According to Peter Dawkins, interviewed in Christian J. Pinto, Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings: Volume 1, The New Atlantis, DVD, Los Angeles: Antiquities Research Films, 2005. Cf. Peter Dawkins, The Shakespeare Enigma, London: Polair, 2004.
[69] Saint-Germain is sometimes considered a part of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Great White Brotherhood.” Other times, Francis Bacon and Saint-Germain are said to have been one and the same person. To borrow a phrase from Manly Hall (though, he wrote it in a different context): “It is all very difficult…”! Hall, op. cit., p. 94.
[70] Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 98.
[71] Marcus Williamson, trans., “Francis Bacon – The Making of Gold,” The Alchemy Website, n.d., <http://www.levity.com/alchemy/bacongld.html>.
[72] Hall admits: “Substantially, nothing is known of Brother Valentine except such stray and fugitive information as appear on the title page of various editions of his supposed writings or in the introductions affixed thereto by editors and translators equally obscure,” op. cit., p. 59.
[73] John Maxson Stillman, “Basil Valentine, a Seventeenth Century Hoax,” The Popular Science Monthly, Dec., 1912, p. 591; online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=7SQDAAAAMBAJ>.
[74] Hall, op. cit., p. 57.
[75] Dennis William Hauck, “Azoth of the Philosophers,” Alchemy Lab, n.d., <https://www.alchemylab.com/azoth.htm>; excerpted from Dennis William Hauck, The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation, New York: Arkana (Penguin), 1999.
[76] “Azoth,” Wikipedia, Jun. 25, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azoth>. This recalls Parcelsus’s claim that the fabled First Matter – or prima materia – out of which all actualized, particular substances were formed, “is the essence of the world soul,” or anima mundi. See Guiley, op. cit., p. 245.
[77] Primum mobile.
[78] Franz Hartmann, In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom, London: Theosophical Publ. Society; Boston: Occult Publ. Co., 1890, p. 38.
[79] There was a tendency in some writers – for example, Michael Maier and the previously mentioned psychoanalyst, Carl Jung – to interpret classical mythology as alchemy allegory. This would also include “Dom Pernety,” Antoine-Joseph Pernèty, an 18th-c. French-born supposed Benedictine monk who, with Polish Count Tadeusz Grabianka, created a Masonic society colloquially termed the “Illuminati of Avignon” (ca. 1760). The Avignon Illuminism entered around the so-called Rite hermétique, which was informed by the (sometimes sexual) mysticism of Emanuel Swedenborg. For all three men, see: Nicholas Goodricke-Clark, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2008, pp. 121, 146, and 245ff.
[80] Atalanta Fugiens, Oppenheim: Johann Theodor de Bry, 1617. Another, lesser-known figure was the 18th-c., German-born illustrator and physician Sigismund Bacstrom who was a prolific translator of alchemical and Rosicrucian manuscripts. Contemporary alchemical writer Adam McLean relates that Bacstrom claimed to have been initiated into various arcana by one “Comte Louis du Chazal,” on the Island of Mauritius. Chazal supposedly had attained unnaturally long life for the time, having reached ninety-six years. McLean supposes that “Chazal” was none other than the Comte de St. Germain. See: Adam McLean, “Bacstrom’s Rosicrucian Society,” Hermetic Journal, no. 6, 1979; reproduced online at: <https://www.alchemywebsite.com/bacstrm1.html>.
[81] Possible identity was Jules Louis Gabriel Violle. See “Jules Voille,” Wikipedia, Jan. 24, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Violle>.
[82] Le Mystère des Cathédrales, Paris: Jean Schemit, 1926.
[83] This line of thought inspired Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges’s volume The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time, Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 2003, as well as Weidner’s subsequent follow-up video, Secrets of Alchemy: The Great Cross and the End of Time, DVD, Seattle: Wash.: Sacred Mysteries Productions, 2004.
[84] Also spelled “Sethon.”
[85] “Seton (Or Sethon) Alexander (D. Ca. 1604),” Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology; online at Encyclopedia.com, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/seton-or-sethon-alexander-d-ca-1604>.
[86] Ibid.
[87] History records that Seton’s friend William Hamilton initially went in his place.
[88] Hall, op. cit., p. 82.
[89] Another alchemist of the period, and John Dee’s contemporary, was Thomas Charnock. He is mentioned by Elias Ashmole in the latter’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (“Chemical Theatre of Britain,” Lond: Brooke, 1652).
[90] Accounts that I have read do not seem to countenance that Sendivogius was part of a Mutt-and-Jeff routine where Christian’s sentinels were “bad cops” and Sendivogius played the part of the savior / “good cop” in order to learn Seton knew.
[91] “Seton (or Sethon)…,” loc. cit.
[92] Hall, op. cit., p. 82.
[93] Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 60.
[94] Starkey was an “intellectual heir” to van Helmont, Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 96.
[95] He collaborated with Boyle on several projects – one of which, a medical treatment for some variety of fever, “met with extensive praise,” ibid.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Ibid.
[98] For the story, see Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 97.
[99] Hall, op. cit., p. 94.
[100] Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 98.
[101] Or Vaughn, as in Guiley, op. cit., p. 329.
[102] Ibid.
[103] Ibid.
[104] “Saint-Germain, Comte De,” Theosophy World, Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, n.d., <https://theosophy.world/encyclopedia/saint-germain-comte-de>.
[105] Among the alchemical writers represented are some that we have not had occasion here to mention, such as: D.D.W. Bedman, William Bloomefield, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Dastin, John Gower, John Lydgate, Thomas Norton, and Thomas Robinson.
[106] Born György Schwartz.
[107] Subtitled: Reading the Mind of the Market, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
[108] Soros’s nickname is “Soros is known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England.”
[109] “History Of Fractional Reserve Banking Which Became Model For The Federal Reserve System, The Unbroken Record Of Fraud, Booms, Busts, Economic Chaos,” Seeking Alpha (weblog), Nov. 16, 2015, <https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/25783813-peter-palms/4549696-history-of-fractional-reserve-banking-which-became-model-for-federal-reserve-system-unbroken>. According to Investopedia: “In 1668, Sweden’s Riksbank introduced the first instance of modern fractional reserve banking,” Julia Kagan, “Fractional Reserve Banking,” Somer Anderson, reviewer, Aug. 10, 2022, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalreservebanking.asp>.
[110] Boyle was “intellectual heir to Francis Bacon, …the Rosicrucians”, and alchemists like Jan Baptista van Helmont. See Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 95. On the Rosicrucians, see Christopher McIntosh, The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order, Newburyport, Mass.: Weiser, 1998. Van Helmont made numerous advances – such as articulating a model of digestion and identifying various gases. As Time-Life Books put it: “These contributions now belong to the realm of science, but they were made in the name of alchemy,” Cave and Doyle, eds., op. cit., p. 92.
[111] A.k.a. the Royal Mines Act, it was passed by parliament under the reign of William & Mary. “Mines Royal Act 1688,” Jun. 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_Royal_Act_1688>.
[112] Ibid. “The Act Against Multipliers was signed into law by King Henry IV of England on 13th January 1404. It ordered that ‘None from hereafter shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication; and if any the same do, they incur the pain of felony’,” John Welford, “The Act Against Multipliers, 1404,” Medium, Apr. 4, 2022, <https://medium.com/@johnwelford15/the-act-against-multipliers-1404-dd01d63ca86f>. This had followed a condemnation of alchemy (in the decree Spondent quas non exhibent; a.k.a. Spondent partier, 1317) by Pope John XXII.
[113] Possibly related is the fact that former Microsoft chieftain, Bill Gates, bid on and won one of the working notebooks (variously called Codex Hammer or Codex Leicester) from Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci. According to Gates: “…it doesn’t contain codes protecting age-old secrets,” Gates, loc. cit. On the other hand, what would you expect him to say if it did?
[114] Qtd. Janet Cave and Robert A. Doyle, et al., eds., op. cit., p. 45. See, also, “10 Arcane Words” and “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”
[115] Quoted by Cave and Doyle, op. cit., p. 55.