Forshaw Cabala Chymica

ambix, Vol. 60 No.
4, November, 2013, 361389
Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica

Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala
Peter J. Forshaw
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and
the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the
Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth
century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth
century. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical
methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting
enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel
combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their
work. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of
Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy
and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation
to chemical medicine. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic
elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the
discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly
consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the
Kabbala Denudata.
Early historiography of the relations between Kabbalah and

Alchemy
The early seventeenth century was witness to various publications that intimated
of links between the laboratory art of alchemy and the mystical Jewish art of
Kabbalah. Two of the best-known instances are publications by Paracelsians:
Franz Kiesers Cabala Chymica (1606) and Stephan Michelspachers Cabala:
Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia (1616). Both include engravings that
imply that Cabala was a necessary part of alchemical theory and practice, one
that related the supernatural to the natural, the Emerald Tablets heavens
Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2013
DOI 10.1179/0002698013Z.00000000039
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PETER J. FORSHAW
above to the earth below.1 In truth, neither work displays anything that would be
recognised as Kabbalah by a Jewish practitioner. This essay investigates the problematic relationship between alchemy and Cabala and shows that the latter was
deployed in different ways by a variety of alchemists experimenting with disciplinary combinations that fell somewhere between Cabalistic Alchemy and Chymical
Cabala (Figures 1 and 2).
Historians of science have devoted little attention to the confluence of alchemy
and Kabbalah, as is the case, too, with the broader subject of alchemy and religion.2
Hermann Kopp (18171892) briefly touched on Jewish and Mosaic connections
with alchemy in his Beitrge zur Geschichte der Chemie (18691875).3 Nowhere
does he make any mention of Kabbalah. A decade later, however, with the publication of Die Alchemie in lterer und neuerer Zeit (1886), he included a section
on the Relations between Alchemy and the Kabbalah.4 Reflecting on how Kabbalah was put to the service of alchemy, Kopp mentions Ramon Lulls apparent knowledge of Kabbalah and the impact of his Ars Magna on alchemical speculation, such
as the combinatorial figures found in the fourteenth-century pseudo-Lullian Testamamentum, but believes that Kabbalah was explicitly brought into contact with
alchemy by Paracelsus.5 In Les Origines de lAlchimie (1885), however, Marcellin
Berthelot (18271907) argues that the Jews have an importance of the first
order in this fusion of the religious and scientific doctrines of the Orient and
Greece, claiming that the chaldeo-rabbinic work of Kabbalah was linked with
alchemy during the Middle Ages; indeed, this liaison between Jewish traditions
and alchemy goes far back.6 Unfortunately, he provides little to support his conviction. A few years later, in Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (18871888),
Berthelot included among the works of Zosimos the Livre vritable de Soph lgyptien et du divin seigneur des Hbreux (et) des puissances Sabaoth, which intimates of
5
6
Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen: Martin Spiessen, 1606). The Figura Cabalae (Fig. 1) on sig.)([ivv]
depicts a bearded figure holding a geometrical compass and square, standing behind a terrestrial globe surrounded
by the seven astrological planets, all radiating their energies onto the earth. The relationship between the planets and
earth is described by the words Supernaturalis and Naturalis, respectively, at the top and bottom of the engraving, and reinforced by the famous As above, so below message from the Emerald Tablet at the base of the engraving. For a variation of this figure, minus the line from the Emerald Tablet, see Lazarus Zetzner, comp., Theatrum
chemicum (Strasburg: Haeredum Eberhardi Zetzneri, 1661), Vol. 6: 343, prefacing the anonymous Physica Naturalis
Rotunda Visionis Chemicae Cabalisticae, 34481. See also Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und
Natur, in Alchymia (Augsburg: David Francken, 1616) (Fig. 2), Plate 2 Anfang. Exaltation and Cabala.
For notable exceptions, see Italo Ronca, Religious Symbolism in Medieval Islamic and Christian Alchemy, in
Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, ed. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leuven: Peeters,
1998), 95117; Chiara Crisciani, Il Papa e lalchimia: Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e lelixir (Rome: Viella, 2002);
Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009).
Hermann Kopp, Beitrge zur Geschichte der Chemie, 2 vols. (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn, 1869), 1: 396402
on Moses; 1: 40206 on Maria [the Jewess].
Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in lterer und neuerer Zeit: Ein Beitrag zu Culturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl
Winters Universittsbuchhandlung, 1886), 2: 22834.
Kopp, Die Alchemie, 2: 229.
Marcellin Berthelot, Les Origines de lAlchimie (Paris: Georges Steinhell, 1885), 5354 (Cabale); 16, 54, 60, 108,
348 (Cabalistique).
CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA
363
figure 1 Figure of Cabala in Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen, 1606). (Courtesy
of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)
profound links between the two sciences and two wisdoms of the Egyptians and
the Jews, but again with no direct discussion of Kabbalah.7 In reality, neither of these
two influential early historians of alchemy were correct; as shall be seen, the first
Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 18871888), 2: 205ff.
364
PETER J. FORSHAW
figure 2 Plate 2 Anfang. Exaltation and Cabala in Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala,

Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia (Augsburg, 1616). (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca
Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)
identifiable combination of alchemy and Kabbalah originates with an Italian priest

in the first decades of the sixteenth century.8
The few historians who have considered the confluence of the two disciplines in
more detail have tended to come from backgrounds in religious studies. Gershom
8
Little has been written by historians of science about the relations between alchemy and Kabbalah. Indicative of this
is the short entry by Karin Figala and Claus Priesner on Kabbala, Kabbalah, Cabbala in Alchemie: Lexikon einer
Hermetischen Wissenschaft, ed. Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998), 18790. There are
some references in Alan Pritchard, Alchemy: A Bibliography of English-Language Writings (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1980), but mostly to primary sources, some of which turn out to have little relevance to the
history of alchemy. French scholars, particularly Sylvain Matton and Didier Kahn, have been the most productive,
and some of their material is cited below.
365
Scholem (18971982), pioneer in the academic study of the Jewish Kabbalah, contributed a short work on Alchemie und Kabbala (1925/1977), in which he displayed
great erudition in Kabbalah, but less familiarity with alchemy, which he tended to
split into either gold-making or some form of mystical practice.9 Scholem remarked
that medieval Hebrew literature included remarkably few alchemical writings, and
problematised the whole relationship between transmutational alchemy that has
gold as its ultimate goal, and Kabbalah, where gold is not at all a symbol of the
highest status.10 While he correctly observed that many alchemical books that
flaunt the word Kabbalah on their title pages actually have little to do with Kabbalah; that there is naturally some overlap of material, given that the Old Testament was shared equally by Jewish Kabbalists and Christian alchemists; and
that there is a possible coincidence of chemical and mystical processes in Rosicrucian material, his essential thesis that alchemy and Kabbalah became widely synonymous among the Christian theosophers and alchemists of Europe oversimplifies
the issue and cannot be justified. This shall be seen below in the case of Heinrich
Khunrath, who, contrary to Scholems claim, explicitly does not argue for this
identification process.11
In his ground-breaking Les kabbalistes chrtiens de la Renaissance (1964), Franois Secret (19112003) included a short section on early modern Christian Cabalists and occult philosophy, including alchemy, a theme that he developed further in
Hermtisme et Kabbale (1992).12 Raphael Patais The Jewish Alchemists (1994)
suggests some instances of overlap between Kabbalah and various kinds of speculative, transmutational, medical, and spiritual alchemy: for instance, the interest shown
in chrysopoeia by Hayyim Vital (15431620), one of the followers of Isaac Luria
(15341572), the individual responsible for the great renaissance and reorientation
of kabbalistic mysticism in the sixteenth century; but Patais claims for links with
Kabbalah are at times tenuous and somewhat overplayed.13 More recently,
10
11
12
13
Gershom Scholem, Alchemie und Kabbala, Eranos Jahrbuch 46 (1977): 196; reprint in Judaica 4 (1984): 19
127. This replaces the article of the same title in Monatsschrift fr Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums
69 (1925): 1330, 95110, 37174. I am using the English translation, Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. Klaus
Ottmann (Putnam, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 2006).
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 20.
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 11, 13, 41, 85, 88.
Franois Secret, Les kabbalistes chrtiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964) and Hermtisme et Kabbale
(Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992). See also Secret, Notes sur quelques alchimistes italiens de la Renaissance, Rinascimento, N.S., 13 (1973): 197217, and Palingenesis, Alchemy and Metempsychosis in Renaissance Medicine,
Ambix 26 (1979): 8192.
Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994),
34064 (Hayyim Vital, Alchemist). See Gad Freudenthals review of The Jewish Alchemists in Isis 86 (1995):
31819, where he criticises Patais historical laxity and his ignorance of Scholems essay Alchemie und
Kabbala, and also questions the criteria by which Patai constituted his corpus, with inclusion of writings that
have nothing Jewish to them. In his review in the British Journal for the History of Science 29, no. 1 (March
1996): 9394, Ole Peter Grell also points out Patais tendency to overemphasise the significance of their [the alchemists] Jewishness. For additional critical reviews, see Marc Saperstein in The American Historical Review 100, no.
5 (December 1995): 1524, and Y. Tzvi Langermann in Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 4 (October
December 1996): 79293. In The Journal of Religion, 75, no. 4 (October 1995): 59697, Dov Schwartz praises Patai
for his trailblazing work in a hitherto untouched area, but questions some of the material selected.
On Vital, see also Gerrit Bos, Hayyim Vitals Practical Kabbalah and alchemy: A 17th-Century Book of Secrets,
366
PETER J. FORSHAW
Andreas Kilcher has revised some of Scholems claims and provided extremely useful
insights into the alchemical material found in the influential Christian publication of
Jewish Lurianic material, the Baroque high point of Christian Cabala, the Kabbala
Denudata.14 Secret and Kilcher, in particular, are inspiring examples of scholars with
an interdisciplinary approach, interested in those intellectually amphibious figures
who crossed disciplinary boundaries and attempted novel combinations of seemingly disparate sciences and arts. This essay provides some slightly more detailed
examples of such hybrid approaches from early modern sources.
From Jewish Kabbalah to Christian Cabala: a brief introduction

As Jewish Kabbalah and its Christian reformulation may be unfamiliar to some historians of alchemy, let me begin with a brief overview of these traditions. The
Hebrew term Kabbalah, which literally translates as reception or tradition,
refers to the Jewish esoteric teaching that emerged in the High Middle Ages in Provence and Northern Spain. Kabbalah is generally presented as having two main preoccupations, related to cosmogony and theosophy respectively: Maaseh Bereshit
(Work of Creation), based on the exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2; and Maaseh Merkavah (Work of the Chariot), visions and reflections concerning the Throne on its
Chariot described in the first chapter of Ezekiel.15 These two streams of speculation
are seen as complementary, in the belief that to know the stages of the creative
process is also to know the stages of ones own return to the root of all existence.16
The earliest extant Hebrew text of speculative thought on cosmology and cosmogony, the pre-kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), dates from sometime
between the second and sixth century CE.17 It contains speculation on the characters
of the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Creator engraved the Divine Names and
fashioned the Universe, each letter corresponding to a different principle of creation
with its own distinctive power. The Sefer Yetzirah also explicates the metaphysical
principles of the Sefirot (singular Sefirah), generally translated as enumerations
or measures:18 ten principles mediating between God and the universe.19 The
twenty-two Hebrew letters plus the ten Sefirot constitute what the Sefer Yetzirah
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Continued
Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994): 55112. On Luria, see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul,
Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Andreas B. Kilcher, Cabbala chymica. Knorrs spekulative Verbindung von Kabbala und Alchemie, in MorgenGlantz: Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesselschaft 13 (2003): 97119.
For concise introductions to these terms, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian/Penguin, 1978),
1021, 88f.
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 20.
Gershom Scholem, The Problem, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. Raphael J. Zwi Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 25.
Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 72.
See the entry on the Ten Sephirot, in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob
Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1995; repr. 1999), 83943. See also Scholem, Kabbalah, 96116.
367
calls the thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom, by which God created the universe, with three types of things: with writing and numbers and speech.20
The earliest extant text of Kabbalah proper is the Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Illumination or Brilliance), dating from the end of the twelfth century.21 It is in the Bahir
that we first encounter the image of the sefirot as ten hierarchical emanations, which
from the fourteenth century came to be depicted by the Etz Hayyim or Tree of Life.
This image was to become one of the central features of theosophical Kabbalah, a
symbolic configuration of the sefirot arranged in three columns or pillars (Figure 3).
From the end of the thirteenth century, the voluminous Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of
Splendour) became the authoritative text of Jewish mysticism. Like the Sefer Yetzirah and Bahir, it expounds on the notions of the sefirot, but develops a wider
range of themes, beginning with the exegesis of the Mosaic account of creation in
Genesis. The Zohar clearly has no intention of providing simply one authoritative
interpretation of scripture, but instead emphasises that all the words of the
Torah can all bear several meanings, and all good, and the whole Torah can be
expounded in seventy ways, corresponding to seventy sides and seventy wings.22
This flexibility allowed space for many kinds of speculation, including, as we
shall see, those concerning alchemy.23
At the dawn of the European Renaissance, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(14631494) became the first Christian by birth known to have studied authentic
kabbalistic texts. Pico developed his own Christian form of Cabala in his famous
900 Conclusiones Philosophicae, Cabalisticae et Theologicae (1486), 119 of
which were provocative arguments on the Science of Cabala that Pico was the
first to introduce into the mainstream of Renaissance thought.24 Picos two major
influences were the Spanish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia (1240ca. 1291) and the
Italian rabbi Menahem Recanati (12501310), who represent two quite different
types of Kabbalah: the former ecstatic, the latter theosophical-theurgical. Recanati
is mainly concerned with the ten sefirot as divine emanations and engages in a symbolic exegesis of Scripture as the way to unravel their mysteries. The father of prophetic Kabbalah, Abulafia, on the other hand, concentrates on the names (shemot)
of God and their permutations as a spiritual contemplative discipline by which man
can attain union with the divine.25 The presence of both these traditions is evident in
Picos first Cabalistic thesis, in which he declares, Whatever other Cabalists say, in a
20
21
22
23
24
25
A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2004), 59, version C.
On the concept of the Sefirot in the Bahir, see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, Chapter 2 The Book Bahir,
sections 5 to 8.
The Zohar, trans. Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon (London & New York: The Soncino Press, 1984), Vol. 1, 171.
For Scholems thoughts on the influence of alchemy on the Zohar, see Alchemy and Kabbalah, 2540.
On Pico and Kabbalah, see Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrtiens, Cap. III; S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Picos
900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval &
Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998); Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandolas Encounter with Jewish Mysticism
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); M. V. Dougherty, ed., Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
On Abulafia and Recanati, see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy 12801510: A Survey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011).
368
PETER J. FORSHAW
figure 3 The first known published representation of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, on the
title page of a Latin translation of Joseph Gikatillas Portae Lucis (Gates of Light, 1516.)
(Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)
first division I distinguish the science of Cabala into the science of sefirot and
shemot, as it were into practical and speculative science.26 Though neither detailed
nor systematic in his discussion of the Jewish Kabbalah, Pico nevertheless demonstrates an awareness of genuine Jewish kabbalistic literature and familiarity with
some of the highly idiosyncratic Jewish techniques of textual interpretation.
26
Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 519 (11 > 1).
369
Picos professed motivation for studying Cabala is to evangelise against heretics

and Jews and to demonstrate powerful confirmation of the Christian religion
from the very principles of the Hebrew Sages; that is, to make use of Kabbalahs
own hermeneutical techniques to prove, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity.27
The significance of Picos Cabala should not, however, be restricted simply to Christian polemic and apologetics. One of the many syncretic linkings that Pico made in
his Conclusions was his connection of the alphabetaria revolutio (revolution of
letters) of speculative Kabbalah with the ars combinandi or combinatorial art of
the Catalan mystic Ramon Lull (12251315).28 Chaim Wirszubski suggests that
the Cabalistic Conclusions outgrew their original purpose and that Pico came
to view Kabbalah from an entirely new standpoint, as the first Christian who considered Cabala to be simultaneously a witness for Christianity and an ally of natural
magic.29 Picos interest goes far beyond the simple confirmation of Christianity
when in his Magical Conclusions he famously (and notoriously) asserts that the divinity of Christ is best demonstrated by the science of magic and Cabala.30 As we shall
see, at least some alchemical practitioners familiar with both pseudo-Lullian
alchemy and Cabala regarded their laboratory pursuits as part of a programme to
demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion, at the same time as they undoubtedly
hoped to raise the status of alchemy far beyond a mere manual art into a natural philosophical auxiliary to Christianity.
While Pico was active in Florence he was visited by the German scholar Johannes
Reuchlin (14551522), universally regarded as one of the key figures of European
scholarship and intellectual life at the turn of the sixteenth century. Reuchlin was
to write two of the most influential books of Christian Cabala, the De Verbo Mirifico (On the Wonder-Working Word, 1494) and the De Arte Cabalistica (On the
Cabalistic Art, 1517), that were to become the favoured textbooks for those interested in the subject for the next hundred and fifty years.31 Reuchlins first cabalistic
work was important for the contribution it made to the Renaissance debate
about language, that is, the occult powers and properties of words and
27
28
29
30
31
Brian P. Copenhaver, The Secret of Picos Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy, in Renaissance and Early
Modern Philosophy, ed. Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 5681, on 75; Pico
della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J.W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael
(Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1998), 29, 32; Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 523.
Harvey Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000),
119. Just as Lull has sometimes been falsely credited with being the first Christian to show an acquaintance with Kabbalah due to the title of a work attributed to him, the Opusculum de auditu Kabbalistico, despite its lack of familiarity
with the Jewish tradition, so has he been credited with the authorship of many works on alchemy. On pseudo-Lullian
Cabalistic texts that could have inspired Pico to associate the Lullian art with Cabala, see Paola Zambelli, Laprendista stregone: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico della Mirandola e seguaci (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1995),
esp. 5564. On pseudo-Lullian alchemy, see Michaela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raimond Lull
(London: Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 1989).
Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandolas Encounter, 151, 185.
Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 497 (9 > 9).
On Reuchlin, see Joseph Dan, The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and its Historical Significance, in The Christian
Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and their Christian Interpreters, ed. Joseph Dan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
College Library, 1997), 5595; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Einleitung: Johannes Reuchlin und die Anfnge
der christlichen Kabbala, in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag,
2003), 948.
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PETER J. FORSHAW
names.32 By the time he published De Arte Cabalistica, he was the leading Christian
Hebraist of his age.33 In both works Reuchlin promotes a blend of authentic Jewish
sources with Neo-Pythagoreanism, claiming that this philosophy, in particular the symbolic numbers, was ultimately derived from the older and more authentic Kabbalah.
An important aspect of the new concept of language found in these kabbalistic
sources was a set of exegetical techniques having no counterpart in the Christian
interpretation of scripture. The Jewish kabbalistic method of exegesis was fundamentally different: whereas the Christian exegete unravelled meaning while
leaving the text itself intact, the Kabbalist employed interpretative techniques that
reshaped and transformed the written text, decomposing or atomizing it into its constitutive elements, the Hebrew lettersindeed, even reducing the letters themselves
into their parts, discovering (or inventing) a plethora of new meanings in seemingly
familiar material.34 These textual elements were combined and permuted according
to three main hermeneutical techniques, most memorably recalled by the acronym of
the Jewish kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla (1248ca. 1305) in his Ginnat Egoz (NutGarden). The three letters of the Hebrew word for Garden (GNThGinnat)
denote the techniques of Gematria (arithmetical computations), Notarikon/Notariacon (manipulation of letters into acronyms and acrostics, e.g. Ginnat) and Temura
or Tseruf (permutation, commutation, or transposition of letters).35
Since every Hebrew letter possesses an inherent numerical value, every letter,
word, and phrase in the Torah has a mathematical significance through which correspondences can be found with other words, revealing internal resonances within
seemingly disparate sources.36 The thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom with
which the Sefer Yetzirah opens, for example, are denoted by the Hebrew letters
Lamed (with the value thirty) and Beth (with the value two), which combine to
form the Hebrew word Leb, meaning heart.37 These letters are also the first
and last letters of the Torahthe Beth of Bereshit, the first word of Genesis 1:1
and the Lamed of Israel, the last word of Deuteronomy 34:12. Thus, the five
books of Moses constitute the heart of the Kabbalah, together with the ten
sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet that form all of the shemot or
divine names.38 One of the most influential examples of Gematria provided by
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Charles Zika, Reuchlins De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century, Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 10438.
Joseph Leon Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1944), 50; Klaus Reichert, Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings of Christian Kabbala, in Mysticism,
Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, ed. Karl Erich Grzinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1995), 195207.
On kabbalistic exegesis, see Brian P. Copenhaver, Number, Shape, and Meaning in Picos Christian Cabala: The
Upright Tsade, the Closed Mem, and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel, in Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines
in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1999), 2576.
Elke Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatillas Hermeneutics (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 72, 225.
Joseph Dan and Ronald C. Kiener, The Early Kabbalah (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), 11.
Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir Illumination: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (York Beach, Maine: Samuel
Weiser, 1979), 23, 36.
Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 67; Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrtiens, 198.
371
both Pico and Reuchlin relates to the most powerful Jewish name for God, the ineffable Tetragrammaton, YHVH. By cumulatively adding up the values of the groups
of letters when they are aligned according to the points of the Pythagorean Tetraktys
that is by adding Yod (ten) to Yod-He (fifteen) to Yod-He-Vau (twenty-one) to
Yod-He-Vau-He (twenty-six)we reach the significant total seventy-two, associated with seventy-two angelic powers.39
Reuchlin provides his readers with further examples of the techniques of speculative
kabbalistic exegesis, but is far more interested in the theurgical techniques of practical
Kabbalah. He emphasises the performative, ritualistic dimension of Cabala, one that
gives the pious practitioner access to the occult properties of nature.40 This movement
back and forth between the spiritual and practical dimensions of the Cabalistic art is
brought out nicely when Reuchlins representative of the Jewish Kabbalah, Simon ben
Eleazar, speaks of deification. He illustrates his argument that life tends upwards by
instinct with a scientific analogy: Similarly with metals; for the finer metals bubble
up to form superior vapors, when drawn out by the art of alchemy.41
The first Cabalchemist: Giovanni Agostino Pantheo

If Giovanni Pico della Mirandola can be called the Father of Christian Cabala, then a
fellow Italian, the Venetian priest Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, assuredly deserves
the title Father of Cabalistic Alchemy or Chymical Cabala, for he is without
doubt the first Christian author to have attempted a combination of alchemy and
Cabala.42 Pantheo develops a hybrid Cabala of Metals (Cabala metallorum) in
two works: the Ars transmutationis metallicae (Art of Metallic Transmutation), published in 1519 and The Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Voarchadumia against
Alchemy), which appeared in 1530.43
Already in Pantheos first work, which appeared just two years after Reuchlins
On the Cabalistic Art, we find references to the ars cabalistica and truth of
metals from the Cabalists in the prefatory material, alongside mention of
Pythagoras and Platos ruminations on the science of numbers (numerorum
scientia), explained as knowledge of how to add mixtures, and proportions of
metals, together with their weights and numbers.44 The Ars transmutationis
includes a circular diagram (Figure 4), with the first eight letters of the Roman
39
40
41
42
43
44
See Farmer, Syncretism, 543 (11 > 56); Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin and Sarah
Goodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 267.
James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and
Medicine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 1: 128. See also Zika, Reuchlins De Verbo Mirifico.
Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, 4647: Eadem est ratio in metallicis quoque cum id quod generosius est in
altiores spiritus ebullit ab alkimia sublimatum, ut puriora semper ea videantur quae sunt sublimiora.
On Pantheo, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 192358), 8: 53740.
Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1519) and Voarchadumia
contra Alchimiam: Ars distincta ab Archimia, et Sophia (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1530). See Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France la fin de la Renaissance (15671625) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), 64.
Ioannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1566), sigs.
Aiijv and 25v. addere misturas, & proportiones metallorum, una cum eorum ponderibus, & numeris.
372
PETER J. FORSHAW
figure 4 Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice, 1519), unnumbered page, preceding 6r. (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)
alphabet around its circumference, each letter with its own symbolic meaning.45
While not identical to the Lullian wheels found in the Testamentum, this inclusion
of a wheel in combination with references to Cabala suggests that Pantheo was
aware of Picos identification of Cabala with Lullian combinatorial art.46
45
46
Pantheus, Ars transmutationis, 7v. For example, C represents the First movement (Primum motum), by which he
means the beginning of the alchemy process, Calcination or Putrefaction; the second movement or process is G for
Generatio; the third H for Augmentatio; and the fourth D for Disiunctio or Separatio.
The same wheel appears in the later Voarchadumia (1550), sig. 35v in a section with the apocalyptic title Aperio
Librum et Septem Signacula. On the following page there is a marginal reference to pseudo-Lulls Codicillus seu
Vademecum. Chapter IX of the Rouen, 1651 edition of the Codicillus, 25ff, contains a similar discussion of the
373
Pantheo is certainly intrigued by the kabbalistic technique of numerically analyzing significant words in enigmatic texts, especially the puzzling Decknamen or cover
names in alchemical literature. Indeed, he criticises those who only pay attention to
the superficial meanings of words, barely grasping the simple sense of a letter, rather
than wisely looking for the kernel inside the shell.47 He introduces a kabbalistic
system that assigns numbers to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew letters and attempts to
show the utility of numerical analysis by taking, for example, the word
Marthek, a cover name mentioned by Lucas and Rosinus in the Turba Philosophorum,48 and glosses it with identifiable terms from the authoritative biblical
languages. Pantheo explains that
the first natural principal is matter, or the material cause of earth, water, fire and air,
according to Gods will (nutu dei), or Marthek, which in Greek is called neusi theu,
and in Hebrew recon heloim, expressed in letters and numbers.49
On the following pages he presents these words in vertical columns, each letter of
the word accompanied by its numerical value, depending on the alphabet being
used. The Latin word Nutu (Will) and the alchemical term Marthek each produce
a total of seventy-two, which immediately endows them with great significance, connecting them with the divine name par excellence, the Tetragrammaton YHVH.50
We then discover that the Tetragrammaton conceals alchemical secrets. Each of its
four letters represents one of the four elements: Yod-Air, He-Water, Vav-Fire, and
He-Earth.51 Pantheo provides each letters value among cabalistic numbers
(inter chabalisticos numeros), respectively ten, five, six, and five, and explains that
these numbers signify the natural elements, the ingredients in the cabalistic magistery of the archimical art.52 The values of the letters of the divine name indicate the
relative proportions of the elements in different stages of the alchemical process. In
the Generation of the Spirits of Metals, for example, one should mix ten pounds
of moist (glossed as Air) with five pounds of dry (metallic Earth),53 in a
process that requires three conjunctions of letters/elements: of (1) Yod and Vav
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Continued
principles represented by individual letters of the alphabet in Lullian fashion: Per B intelligere debes principia materialia, scilicet aurum & argentum Per G. intelligere debes principia materialia secunda, scilicet elementa, terram,
aquam, aerem & ignem, etc.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis (1566), Letter to Leo X, 5v.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 20r and 22r.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 11v: Primum ergo principium naturae est materia, seu causa materialis terrae, aquae,
ignis & aeris, sub nutu dei, vel Marthek, quae graece neusi theu dicitur, & Hebraic recon heloim, positis in literis, &
numeris.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 12r.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 27v. Pantheo uses an extremely idiosyncratic transliteration of YHVH as Iud He
Voph He, but to avoid confusion I have stuck to the more standard Yod He Vav He.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28r: & naturalis sint elementa in chabalisticum archimicae artis magisterium ingredientia. On Archimia, in the Ars Transmutationis, 27v Pantheo writes Quoniam archimia ab Archi, & mia Graece
derivatur. Et Caldaice Archenouevma adumas dicitur, quae initium unitatis esse perhebetur. Quod initium, seu principium nihil aliud esse videtur, nisi tinctura fixa. See below for Pantheos later distinction of Archimia from other
practices.
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28v (De Metallorum Spiritus Generatione).
374
PETER J. FORSHAW
(i.e. ten pounds of Air and six of Fire); (2) the two letters He (i.e. five pounds of
Water and five of Earth); and (3) all four letters of the divine name (i.e. all of the
four elements).54 Here, then, we have an example of how the numeric values of
the letters of the most important divine name of the Jewish Kabbalah can be interpreted as a guide to the relative proportions of elemental substances to be used in the
alchemical (or archimical) art. To what extent this is genuinely religious is impossible to say, but the implication that Gods most powerful name provides the blueprint for alchemical creationrecalling the Sefer Yetzirahs account of God
carving out the universe with the divine lettersis a powerful statement in
support of alchemical interest in Cabala, as well as a tacit claim for the great potential of alchemy as a creative endeavour.
In the Voarchadumia, published eleven years later, Pantheo presents his Cabala
of Metals as a tradition handed down from the hammerer and artificer in every
work of brass and iron, Tubal Cain, from Genesis 4:22. Aware of the prohibition
of alchemy by the Venetian Council of Ten, Pantheo describes different methods of
transmutation and takes pains to distinguish his opusculum concerning transmutation, purification, multiplication and proportion from the forbidden alchemy.55
Pantheo delimits the four types of transmutation. The first is the Alchimia in the
title of his book, The Voarchadumia against Alchimia, where the term has a negative
connotation. By a cabalistic play on a Hebrew transliteration, Pantheo interprets it
as the ferment of vain counsel, explaining that it is simply a fraudulent colouring
of the surface of metals with tinctures.56 The second type of practice is Archimia. This,
we learn, is practised by good men who hope to create the Elixir to be projected onto
metals in order to accomplish chrysopoetic transmutation. Pantheo glosses it etymologically, as it were the principle of unity, and of the one true counsel.57 The third
practice is termed Voarchadumia, which Pantheo explains as meaning the art of the
purification of gold of two perfect cementations.58 Although Voarchadumia is presented as the preferred practice, Pantheo does include a fourth, termed Sophia and
associated with the term Multiplicatio, which he says is possible but difficult, and
brings mediocre returns.59 Only the first method, Alchimia, is rejected outright.
Voarchadumia is superior, he claims, since this method allows a greater part of gold
to be extracted from matter by cementation, more gold to be purified, and more to
be perfected with fewer cementations and less expense.
In the most kabbalistic-sounding chapter of the Voarchadumia, concerned with
the Mixture at the roots of the Unity of the seventy-two Voarchadumic elements,
Pantheo turns again to the numerical analysis of a collection of words, each from a
54
55
56
57
58
59
Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 29r.

Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Paris: Apud Viventium Gaultherotium, 1550), sig. 4r.
Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam, sig. 8r: Alchmiam (ab Alchmo dicta: qu profect ex Hebraica dictione interpretata fermentum vani consilij interponitur) vocamus.
Pantheo, Voarchadumia: Hanc autem metallicam professionem vocant Archimam: quasi unitatis, & unius veri
consilij Principem.
Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 10v: purificationis Auri duarum caementationum perfectarum.
Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 9v.
375
different language, and each connected with alchemical substances.60 The first
natural principle, we learn, is Quicksilver. This is coagulated using fire and materials
of fire and air, under the names Antybar, Marthek, and Stagno or Risoo (which in
Greek is Thlima, and in Hebrew Ren).61 The last two terms both translate literally as Will (as in the Will of God), but their alchemico-cabalistic significance
lies in the realisation that the Hebrew Ren can be transformed anagrammatically
(i.e. by the exegetical technique of Temura) into Eretz, one of the Hebrew words for
Earth (as in Genesis 1:1: God created the Heavens and the Earth).62 Thelima
and Ren both appear in Pantheos list of synonyms for Gold, and it seems likely
that he had the equation of Will with Earth in mind as a kind of Deckname
for gold. As gold is the most perfect metal, it is evidently highly significant for
Pantheo that the words Risoo and Stagno, like Marthek above, both add up to
the divine number seventy-two.
In his somewhat opaque way, in addition to promoting a cabalistic reading of
alchemical texts, Pantheo also promotes a cabalistic investigation of the secrets
of alchemical substances and processes. As he makes few efforts to help his
reader follow his thought process, in a sense he perpetuates the enigmatic forms
of communication found in many alchemical texts, simply substituting one set
of codes for another. Puzzling as his work is, however, Pantheo is a valuable
instance of a laboratory practitioner engaging with polyglot traditions in a cabalistic spirit, in an attempt to discover the numerical secrets and concordances of
elusive alchemical terms. The significance of Pantheos work is increased by the
interest taken in it by a crowd of later cabalistic alchemists, including Jacques
Gohory (15201576),63 Blaise de Vigenre (15231596),64 John Dee
(15271608/9),65 Andreas Libavius (15551616),66 Heinrich Khunrath
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 19r: Mistio in radicibus unitatis septuagesimi secundi Voarchadmicorum elementorum.
Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 40v.
Nicolas Sd, Lor enferm et la poussire dor selon Mose ben Shmtobh de Lon (c. 12401305), Chrysopoeia 3,
no. 2 (1989): 12134, on 131. Cf. Paulus Riccius, De Coelesti Agricultura, Lib. IIII, in Johannes Pistorius, Artis
Cabalisticae Liber (Basel: Per Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1587), 190: Razon: id est, voluntatem.
Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium
(Paris, 1567; my copy Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568), 185. Gohory mentions Pantheos work, together with the
alphabetaria revolutio of Ramon Lull; he suggests that the thirteenth-century natural philosopher Roger Bacon is
the source for Pantheos reflections on the phrase nutu Dei (Will of God).
Blaise de Vigenre, Traict du Feu et du Sel (Paris: Chez la veufue Abel lAngelier, 1618), 121, quotes Pantheus,
[Voarchadumia (1550), 17v] on the perfect product of Voarchadumic practice, which remains uncorrupted by
fire, cementations, acids, etc; on 129 he refers to Pantheo on oleum vitri (oil of glass), i.e. Vitriol.
Dee owned and annotated a copy of Pantheos Voarchadumia contra Alchimiam (Venice, 1530). British Library
shelfmark C.120.b.4.(2.) and refers to it in Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), 7v. See C. H. Josten, A Translation of
John Dees Monas Hieroglyphica, Ambix 12 (1964): 84221, on 137: And if the twenty-first speculation of our
Hieroglyphic Monad gave satisfaction to a Voarchadumicus and provided him with Voarh Beth Adumoth as a
subject for speculation See also Hilde Norrgrn, Interpretation and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dees
Reading of Pantheos Voarchadumia, Ambix 52, no. 3 (2005): 21745.
Andreas Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (Frankfurt: Impensis Petri Kopffij,
1615), 152 (on Pantheuss rejection of the term Alchymia), 178 (on Pantheuss use of alchymia, archymia, and
Sophia), 230 (on Pantheuss Ars & Theoria Transmutationis), 232 (on Pantheus as one who graphically portrays
false alchemists). See also 7677 for Libaviuss condemnatory Nota XXXIV. De mysteriis Cabal Paracelsic.
On Libaviuss reservations about Cabala, see Bruce Moran, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of
Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications,
2007), 117ff.
376
PETER J. FORSHAW
(15601605),67 Oswald Croll (15631608/9),68 Johann Daniel Mylius (1583

1642),69 David de Planis Campy (15891644),70 Martin Ruland (1569
1611),71 and Jean Vauquelin des Yveteaux (16511716).72
Paracelsus and Cabala

Pantheo was by no means the only alchemist stimulated by the exegetical possibilities of Cabala. Given his interest in new approaches to alchemy, including his controversial move from metallic transmutation to the preparation of chemical
medicines, perhaps it is predictable that the Swiss physician Theophrastus Paracelsus
of Hohenheim (14931541) would display some interest in this new art. Walter
Pagel remarked that Paracelsuss work displayed an intent to unravel the occult
kabbalistic and symbolicalmeaning of phenomena by visualising concordances everywhere.73 Pagel even suggested that one Rabbinical source, the
Shemoth Rabba (a compendium of exegetical material on the book of Exodus),
provides a religious background for the homoeopathic principle, so conspicuously
employed by Paracelsus.74 Allen Debus similarly observed, Paracelsus frequently
uses the terms Kabbalah and kabbalistic, indicating a general acquaintance
with this literature even though specific references to the mystical numerical
interpretation of letters are lacking in his work.75 In his consideration of the
relations between alchemy and Kabbalah, Hermann Kopp singled out a passage
from On the Tincture of the Physicians, where Paracelsus declares, If you do not
understand the use of the Cabalists and of the old astronomers, you are not born
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
Heinrich Khunrath, Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum (Magdeburg: Johannes Btcher, 1599), 92: Aus diesem/
und sonsten keinem andern/ natrlichen grunde gehet VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH der alte[n] Weisen. See too
Khunrath, Lux in Tenebris (N.P., 1614), 23.
Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt: Impensis Godefrisi Tampachij, 1608), Admonitory Preface, 7: Those
who are the heirs of wisdom, with Cabalistic eyes, are not ignorant of true Cabala, Magic, and Voarchadumia
(& oculis Cabalisticis, non ignorabunt in vera Cabala, Magia, & Woarchadumia). On Croll and Libavius, see
Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1975).
Johann Daniel Mylius, Anatomia Auri sive Tyrocinium Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt, 1628), 233 (on Augustinus
Pantheuss Voarchadumia as one of many authorities on potable gold).
David de Planis-Campy, LOuverture de LEscolle de Philosophie Transmutatoire Mtallique (Paris: Chez Charles
Sevestre, 1633), 5253: Car selon Panthee, en son Traict de lArt Chimique, la semence principale de lElixir, &
de tous les Metaux, nest autre que le Mars, & Mars nest autre chose que le Feu pour estre un Souphre rouge
chaud & sec, & de facile combustion.
Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt: Cura ac sumtibus Zachariae Palthenii, 1612), 145: Archimia vel
Archodunia sophia & sapientia principalis, 146: Quidam dicunt mutatum esse ex Archimia vel Archodumia,
cum sit ars principalissima.
Vauquelin des Yveteaux, De larbre de vie ou de larbre solaire, Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 238: Pantheus Venetus,
lun des meilleurs auteurs qui ait crit de nostre manne cache, sest servi fort souvent de cette innocente faon de
compter par les lettres. Il a avec un tres bel artifice marqu les trois premiers jours sans soleil et sans lune de la creation
du monde, qui rpondent nos trois premiers mois de preparation des elements, par la valeur des lettres de ces deus
mots NVTV DEI. See Sylvain Matton, Le Trait de LArbre de vie ou de larbre solaire et la Tradition Alchimique,
Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 285302. See also Jacques Rebotier, La Musique de Flamel, in Alchimie, art, histoire et
mythes, ed. Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton (Milan: Arch, 1995), 540.
Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger,
1958), 44, n. 131.
Pagel, Paracelsus, 217, n. 59.
Allen G. Debus, Mathematics and Nature in the Chemical Texts of the Renaissance, Ambix 15 (1968): 128, on 13.
377
by God for the Spagyric art, or chosen by Nature for Vulcans work, or created to
open your mouth about the Alchemical Art.76 Although the Tincture of the Physicians is nowadays considered to be a pseudepigraphic work, it exerted an influence
on many later Paracelsians who considered it to be an authentic part of Paracelsuss
literary legacy, offering a potent argument for the combination of alchemy, astrology
and Kabbalah in the service of Spagyric medicine.77 Looking through Paracelsuss
genuine and pseudepigraphic works, it is easy to find references to what he variously
calls Cabala, Gabala, or Gabalia. Husers 1603 multi-volume edition of
Paracelsus, for example, contains a wide variety of statements concerning Cabala,
from his claim that the Cabalistic Art had its origin with the old Magi, rather
than Jewish sources, in De Natura Rerum,78 to the Fragmenta Medica, where we
learn that Adam and Moses searched for that within themselves that is in man
and opened it, and it belongs all to Cabala; they knew no strange things from the
devil or spirits, but from the light of nature.79 Heinz Schott comments that such
an inward approach to the divine sources of spiritual light recalls the mystical practices of the Kabbalah, with Paracelsuss Light of Nature evoking the emanations of
divine light in the sefirot of the Kabbalah.80 Paracelsuss Cabala is not simply presented as inner knowledge, however, but as an operative power. In Paracelsuss
genuine cosmological work, the Philosophia sagax, the Ars Cabalistica is a
potent adjunct to natural magic, through which, Paracelsus claims, the Paracelsian
magus can accomplish as much in the maturation of natural substances in a month
as Nature can in a year.81 Many more references can be found in the Liber de religione perpetua, the Paragranum, De Vita Longa, and so forth.82 Whatever the depth
or shallowness of Paracelsuss personal knowledge of Cabala, there can be little
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
[Pseudo-] Paracelsus, De Tinctura Physicorum, in Aureoli Philippi Theophrasti Bombasts von Hohenheim Paracelsi Opera , ed. Johann Huser, 2 vols. (Straburg: In Verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 923: Wann du jetzt
nicht verstehest/ was der Cabalisten gewonheit/ und der alten Astronomorum brauch ist: So bistu weder von Gott in
der Spagyrey geboren/ noch von Natur zu Vulcani Werck erkoren/ oder Mundts erffnung in die Alchimistisch Kunst
geschaffen worden. Cited by Kopp, Die Alchemie, 229.
On the issue of genuine and pseudepigraphic works of Paracelsus, see, in particular, Karl Sudhoff, Versuch einer
Kritik der Echtheit der Paracelsischen Schriften, 2 vols. (Berlin: Georg Reimer Verlag, 18941899).
[Pseudo?-] Paracelsus, De Natura Rerum, in Bcher und Schriften, ed. Johann Huser (Straburg: In Verlegung
Lazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 903: Daher hat die Kunst Caballistica jhren ursprung genommen bey den alten
Magis, davon wir in den Bchern der Caballia weitleuffig tractieren. See Hartmut Rudolph, Die Kabbala im
Werk des Paracelsus, in Schmidt-Biggemann, ed., Christliche Kabbala, 111.
Paracelsus, Fragmenta Medica, in Huser, Bcher und Schriften (Strasburg, 1616), 1:141: Sich Adam an/Moysen und
ander/ die haben das in ihnen gesucht/ das im Menschen war/ und das geffnet/ und alle Gabalischen/ und haben
nichts frembdes kennt/ vom Teuffel/ noch von Geisten/ sondern vom Liecht der Natur.
Heinz Schott, Invisible DiseasesImagination and Magnetism: Paracelsus and the Consequences, in Paracelsus:
The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 30921,
on 313.
Paracelsus, Philosophia Sagax, in Huser, ed., Bcher und Schriften, 10: 41 Unnd in Summa/ was die Natur vermag
in einem Jahr zu thun/ das vermag sie in eim Monat/ auch in den Gewechsen de Erdreichs zu vollbringen. Und diese
Species heist mit jrem rechten Nammen Ars Cabalistica.
See Liber de religione perpetua, in Paracelsus, Theologische Werke 1: Vita beataVom glckseligen Leben, ed. Urs
Leo Gantenbein and Michael Baumann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 31415; Paracelsus, Das Bch Paragranum (Frankfurt, 1565), 15v (Gabalisticam); 50r (Gabalisticam scientiam; margin: Gabalia gibt einen waren Astronomum und Medicum).
378
PETER J. FORSHAW
doubt that his usage caught on among many of his followers; indeed an interest in
Cabala chymica appears to be a particularly Paracelsian phenomenon.
Some early Paracelsian definitions of Cabala

The French physician and alchemist Jacques Gohory (15201576) published a Compendium of Paracelsuss works in 1608, including the De vita longa (On Long Life)
with extensive scholia by Gohory.83 This commentary includes a valuable indication
of the significance of the Cabala for at least one of the earliest promoters of
Paracelsian philosophy in France.84 In his commentary on Book 1, Chapter 6 of
De vita longa, which contains a discussion of the influence of supernatural
bodies on the attainment of long life, Gohory includes a special section On
Cabala. According to Gohory, the Cabala is sometimes universal, sometimes
particular. Strictly speaking it is the uninterrupted handing down of mysteries by
the Jews since Moses received them on Mount Sinai. However, the ars combinandi
or their alphabetaria revolutio, as well as the part of magic concerned with the
virtues of the higher supralunar powers, are also called Cabala by the Jews.85
Gohory is familiar with Picos Magical Conclusions, and indeed paraphrases one
without giving the source: we will say that characters belong to magic, numbers
to Cabala, and the letters are in someway intermediary between the two.86
These numbers, Gohory informs us, again from Pico, are both formal and
material: the former being the Ternary and Denary, the latter all of the rest
(Unarius, Binarius, and so forth).87 Gohory introduces this into a discussion of
the Spagyric extraction of the celestial quintessence, including a comparison
between Paracelsuss De vita longa and the De vita libri tres (1489) of Marsilio
Ficino.88
83
84
85
86
87
88
Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium
(Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568).
On Gohory, see Franois Secret, Jacques Gohory et le Paracelsian revival, Chrysopoeia 5 (19921996): 46770.
See also Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, esp. 14971, 21832; Allen G. Debus, The French Paracelsians: The
Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991; repr. 2002), 26ff.
Gohory, Compendium, 191. Cf. Secret, Les kabbalistes chrtiens, 297; Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 167.
Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: characteres proprios esse magiae, numeros vero Cabalae, literas
esse quodammodo medias inter utrosque. Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 50203 (9 > 25): Sicut caracteres
sunt proprii operi magico, ita numeri sunt proprii operi cabalae, medio existente inter utrosque, et appropriabili
per declinationem ad extrema usu litterarum (Just as characters are proper to a magical work, so numbers are
proper to a work of Cabala, with a medium existing between the two, appropriable by declination between the
extremes through the use of letters).
Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium & denarium sunt materiales, illi sunt formales, & in Arithmetica mystica sunt numeri numerorum. This is reasserted in a later section, De
Cabala numerali (213). Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 50203 (9 > 23): Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium et
denarium sunt materiales/ in magia; isti formales sunt, et in magica arithmetica sunt numeri numerorum (Every
number besides the ternarius and denarius are material numbers in magic. Those are formal numbers, and in
magical arithmetic are the numbers of numbers).
On the relation between these two works, see Peter J. Forshaw, Marsilio Ficino and the Chemical Art, in Laus
Platonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees
(Leiden, Brill, 2011), 24971, on 265.
379
Gohorys contemporary, the Paracelsian physician Michael Toxites (15141581),

included what would become an influential definition of Cabala in his Onomastica
II (1574).89 In the preface to the second of these two dictionaries, devoted as it was
to explaining the many neologisms coined by Paracelsus, Toxites explains that Paracelsus took much from the art of the Cabalists (ex Cabalistarum arte), and followed their advice to protect his knowledge from the vulgar by employing
existing enigmatic words from the alchemists as well as creating new words from
various languages, such as the titles of two of his most influential works, Paragranum and Paramirum.90 In the Onomasticum we read,
Cabala, Cabalia, or the Cabalistic Art is a divine science, that reveals to us Gods teaching concerning the Messiah, brings about friendship with the angels for its practitioners,
bestows knowledge of all natural things, and, shadows having been driven away, illustrates the mind with divine light. The word is Hebrew and in Latin means reception.91
There is more, but a summary must suffice: Moses received Cabala divinely on
Mount Sinai together with the Ten Commandments, but because it was forbidden
to write it down or reveal it to the profane, instead it was passed on in a sequence
of revelations as if by hereditary law. Reuchlin, Pico, and the Franciscan doctor of
philosophy and theology Pietro Galatino (14601540) are mentioned by name as
prime representatives of a specifically Christian Cabala.92 Toxites informs his
readers that Galatino asserts that through the science of Cabala the ancient
Jewish rabbis acknowledged the Trinity, and that Christ was the son of God.
Toxites also states that Paracelsus wrote much about this certain and celestial
science, referring his readers to the Philosophia sagax, and mentions Paracelsuss
belief that the Persians were more correct practitioners of Cabala than the Jews,
as proved by the fact that the three Magi went to adore Christ in Bethlehem.93
This entry enjoyed some success, for a variant appears in the Dictionarium
Theophrasti Paracelsi (Dictionary of Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1583) by another
89
90
91
92
93
On Toxites Onomastica, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, Lex lexiques bilingues philosophiques, scientifiques et notamment alchimiques, in Lexiques bilingues dans les domaines philosophiques et scientifiques, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse
and Danielle Jacquart (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 197205. On his role in the Paracelsian publishing industry, see
Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007), 2324. Nummedal also mentions another Paracelsian Onomasticum (157483; my copy 1587) by Leonhart
Thurneisser zum Thurn. It does not contain an entry for Cabala, but there are entries for Cabalistic words, e.g. on
18 (Abzachochor: Di ist ein Cabalistischs wort/ und bedeut des Chaos) and references to Jewish Cabalists, Pico,
and Lulls ars combinandi, 3435.
Toxites, Onomastica II, sig. [alpha] 3r Theophrastus ex Cabalistarum arte multa accepit: quaedam ex diversis
linguis, ut paragranum, paramirum, Carboanthos, & similia nova confinxit: non pauca Chemistis ficta usurpavit.
Michael Toxites, Onomastica II. I Philosophicum, Medicum, Synonymum ex varijs vulgaribusque linguis. II. Theophrasti Paracelsi: hoc est, earum vocum, quarum in scriptis eius solet usus esse, explicatio (Straburg: Per Bernhardum Iobinum, 1574), 41012: Cabala, Cabalia, sive cabalistica ars, scientia est divina, quae nobis Dei doctrinam de
Messia patefacit, cum angelis amicitiam cultoribus suis contrahit: rerumque naturalium omnium cognitionem tradit,
ac divino lumine mentem pulsis tenebris illustrat. Vox est Hebraea, Latinis dicitur receptio.
Galatino was a Jewish convert to Christianity, author of De arcanis catholicae veritatis (About the Mysteries of
Catholic Truth) (Ortona Mare: Gershom Soncino, 1518), which introduced Christian readers to the Talmud and
quickly became an important text of Christian Cabala. On Galatino, see Giuseppe Veltri, Der Lector Prudens
und die Bibliothek des (uralten) Wissens: Pietro Galatino, Anatus Lusitanus und Azaria de Rossi, in Christliche
Kabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann, 13342.
Toxites, Onomastica II, 41112.
380
PETER J. FORSHAW
enthusiastic translator and promoter of Paracelsian thought, the Belgian Gerard

Dorn (ca. 15301584), and then later in the Lexicon Alchemiae (Lexicon of
Alchemy, 1612) by the German alchemist and Paracelsian physician Martin
Ruland (15691611)much of whose information was lifted verbatim from the
preceding works of Toxites and Dorn. Dorn and Ruland slightly modify Toxitess
original text, stating that Cabala is a most occult science, said to have been divinely transmitted to Moses, but the essential message remains the same.94 In all
three dictionaries, the emphasis is less specifically on combinations and permutations of numbers or letters, but rather on Cabala as an art bestowing knowledge
of things natural and the prospect of supernatural revelation, in keeping with the
general message of Christian Cabalist authorities. This underlying religious dimension should not be ignored when discussing alchemy in the context of Cabala. It is
arguable that the Mosaic basis of Cabala would have appeared far more legitimate
as an adjunct to the Paracelsian Christian philosophy of nature than the pagan
philosophy of Aristotle and Galen which Paracelsus so famously rejectedparticularly given the Christian reorientation being given to the Kabbalah during Paracelsuss time by Pico, Reuchlin, and others, and the later uptake of Paracelsuss ideas
by Lutheran and Calvinist thinkers eager to find an alternative to the medieval dogmatic theology of the Schools.
Heinrich Khunraths definitive blending

One figure singled out by Scholem for his definitive blending of alchemical
and cabalistic traditions is the German Lutheran physician Heinrich Khunrath
(15601605), who held both Paracelsus and Reuchlin in high esteem and showed
familiarity with the work of Pico and pseudo-Lullian alchemy.95 Khunrath takes
up the notion of the symbolism of individual letters in his book Vom hylealischen
Chaos (On Primordial Chaos, 1597). There, he provides an imaginative
example of speculative Cabala with his polyglot etymology of the alchemical term
Elixir. He glosses the German Elixeir as Fortitudo (Strength), with the explanation
that El in Hebrew means Mighty or Strong. In Roman numerals the following two letters I and X equate to One and Ten, the latter being the symbolic
number of total perfection. Finally, the last three letters are held to form the
Greek word [eir], translating into Latin as a bright shining, fire-spark or
flash. EL-I-X-EIR therefore means a bright shine, flash and spark of the uniquely
Mighty and Strong.96 According to its varied preparations it is called EIR, X-EIR,
94
95
96
Gerard Dorn, Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi (Frankfurt: Christoph Rab, 1583), 2526: Cabala vel Cabalia,
est occultissima scientia quae divinitus una cum Lege Moysi tradita fuisse fertur. See too Dorns explicatio, on
104; Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt, 1612), 108: Cabala, Cabalia, Ars Cabalistica, est scientia
occultissima, quae divinitus una cum lege Mosi tradita fuisse fertur.
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 88. On Khunrath, see Peter J. Forshaw, Curious Knowledge and Wonderworking Wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich Khunrath, in Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to
the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and A. Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 10729.
Heinrich Khunrath, Vom hylealischen, Das ist pri-materialischen catholischen oder Algemeinem natrlichen Chaos
der Naturgemessen Alchymiae und Alchymisten (Magdeburg: Andreas Genen Erben, 1597), 54: So wird nun (sage
381
I-X-EIR, EL-I-X-EIR, a sequential development calling to mind the progressive emanations of YHVH in the Pythagorean Tetraktys.97
In another of his works, the Christian Cabalist, Divinely Magical and PhysicoChymical Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Amphitheatre of Eternal
Wisdom, 1609), baroquely illustrated with its theosophical and hieroglyphical
figures, Khunrath prominently places a Hebrew word in his engraving of an Alchemical Citadel.98 The word in question is Aben, one jointly significant for both Khunraths alchemy and his Cabala: any alchemist familiar with Hebrew would
understand the primary meaning of [ Aben] as Rock or Stone and would
doubtless recognise the Christian-Cabalist unpacking of the word as being formed
of the Hebrew words for both Father [ Ab] and Son [ Ben].99 Needless to say,
this word, Aben, can have had little to do with the Jewish Kabbalah, but it does
encapsulate an extremely important message for Khunrath: the analogical relationship between Christ, the Christian Cabalist Son of the Microcosm; and the Philosophers Stonethe Alchemical Son of the Macrocosm. Although never explicitly
stated, it is also possible that theosophically inclined alchemists, or theoalchemists,
like Khunrath, seeking divine inspiration through personal revelation, would not
have hesitated to carry out a further permutation of these three letters to discover
the word [ Nebh]the Hebrew root to Prophesy.
In his Bouquet compos des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Bouquet Composed of
the Most Beautiful Chymical Flowers, 1629), David De Planis-Campy locates one of
Khunraths acquaintances, the Elizabethan magus John Dee (15271608/9) among
those most versed in Chymical Cabala (plus versez en la Caballe Chimique),100
primarily because of the composite alchemical symbol Dee mathematically, magically, cabbalistically, and anagogically explained in his Monas Hieroglyphica
(Hieroglyphic Monad, 1564).101 Dees hieroglyph is formed from the astrological
symbols for the seven planets of the Ptolemaic cosmos, which also happen to be
the symbols for the seven major metals in alchemy. With this he unites the practices
of superior and inferior astronomy, i.e. astrology and alchemy. Khunrath is familiar
with the Monas, and in the Amphitheatre he cites Dees distinction between his
96
Continued
ich) EL-I-X-EIR recht und eigentlich heissen/ splendor fulgureus siv scintilla perfecta Unici Potentis ac Fortis, Ein
heller schein/ Blitz und Fewerfunck des einigen Mechtigen und Starcken. Suidas defines the Greek word as
, i.e., lustre or brilliance, sometimes of lightning. See Suidae Lexicon. ed. Immanuel Bekker (Berlin:
Georg Reimer, 1854), 333.
97
Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 56. For a similar treatment of Ir (Manus seu mancipans), Xir (Mercurius
fusibilis), Ixir (Mercurius prparatus, & separatus), and Elixir (Mercurius inceratus), see Consilium Conjugii in
Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 2: 25961.
98
Khunraths alchemical citadel can also be found in De arte cabalistica, seu De magisterio magno philosophorum, MS.
Codex 114, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
99
Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 282: ABEN, Hebraic LAPIS: Pater & Filius in Lapide; AB, in ea lingua Patrem
significat; BEN, Filium: Mundus maior hc notetur, eiusdemque Filius. Khunrath probably took this unpacking of
Aben from Reuchlins De verbo mirifico, 79, as most likely did Joachim Frizius [Robert Fludd] in Summum Bonum
(Frankfurt: Impensis Wilhelmi Fitzeri, 1629), 17.
100
David de Planis Campy, Bouquet compos des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Paris: Chez Pierre Billaine, 1629), 1002.
101
See Peter J. Forshaw, The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dees Monas Hieroglyphica, Ambix 52 (2005): 247
69; Michael T. Walton, John Dees Monas Hieroglyphica: Geometrical Cabala, Ambix 23 (1976): 11623.
382
PETER J. FORSHAW
Cabala of the Real and the Cabala of the Word.102 The former relates to the
Book of Nature; the latter to the Book of Scripture, where Dee turns from an exclusively literal Cabalistic reading of Hebrew letters and printed books to one connected with natural magic and deciphering the hieroglyphs and signatures of the
cosmos.103
Dees hieroglyphic monad is a significant presence in Khunraths engraving of the
Alchemical Citadel, where it surmounts the archway into the heart of the citadel.
This all-encompassing glyph is also central to another of Khunraths Amphitheatre
engravings, that of the Rebis or Alchemical Hermaphrodite, which also features the
Hebrew terms Esch and Urim, respectively denoting terrestrial and celestial fire.
There, Dees monad forms the O in the composite word AZOTH on the breast of
the equally composite Bird of Hermes, representing the major processes of
alchemy, start to finish. In the pseudo-Paracelsian Liber Azoth, published in 1590,
just five years before the appearance of the first edition of Khunraths Amphitheatre,
the reader looking for insights into the three primary constituents or modes of
matter is informed that fiery Sulphur conceals the Cabalistic Unarius in itself,
while Salt (Edas) conceals the Cabalistic Binarius, and the mutable, liquid
AZOT Mundi (i.e. Mercury of the Wise) either has or is the Cabalistic Ternarius.104 Furthermore, the term AZOTH, famed as the word on the pommel of Paracelsuss sword and popularized in the sixteenth-century alchemical works of Basil
Valentine, is one of the best-known instances of cabalistic-style letter-play in
alchemy, being formed of the first and last letters of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew
languages (AZ, Alpha and Omega, Aleph, and Tau). As such, it is the ideal word
to denote the alchemical materia prima et ultima.105 In Khunraths most alchemical
engraving, then, we have Dees composite hieroglyph at the centre of a composite
word, on the breast of a composite bird, hovering above the alchemical Rebis
(Two-Thing), the compound or conjunction of the two primary ingredients
(Mercury and Sulphur) of the Philosophers Stone.106 Although utterly remote
from the Jewish Kabbalah, this amalgamation of words and symbols is arguably
a prime instance of kabbalisation in alchemical material.
Khunrath is a strong example of a physico-chymist, interested in both metallic
transmutation and chemical medicine, seeking insights into nature and divine
102
Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae: Christiano-Kabalisticum, divino-magicum, nec
non physico-chymicum, tertriunum, catholicon (Hanau: Excudebat Guilielmus Antonius, 1609), II: 6.
103
Josten, A Translation of John Dees Monas Hieroglyphica, 13335. See Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word:
Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 24243. For some recent work
on Dee and Cabala, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, Beyond Pico della Mirandola: John Dees Formal Numbers and
Real Cabala, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 48997; Andrew Campbell, The Reception of John Dees Monas hieroglyphica in Early Modern Italy: The Case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (ca. 1562
1616), Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 51929.
104
[Pseudo-] Paracelsus, Liber Azoth, sive, De Ligno et Linea Vitae, in Paracelsus, Opera (Straburg, 1603), 2: 532.
105
Basil Valentine, Azoth: LOcculta Opera Aurea dei Filosofi (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1988), 103.
106
For later alchemical speculations on Azoth, including several riddles providing Cabalistic Reckonings of Philosophical Mercury and Gold, out of Greek, Hebrew and Latin, see Anon, Testamentum Chymicum, in Taeda Trifida
Chimica, das ist Dreyfache Chimische-Fackel (Nrnberg: Johann Andre und Wolffgang Endters, 1674), 190284,
on 197, 212, 268.
383
revelation, and adamant that one should not separate Oratory from Laboratory. He
believes that the Philosophers Stone and other alchemical products can help substantiate religious belief, for instance, in the resurrection of the flesh.107 This can
both act as support for personal faith and have evangelical value as a miraculous
effect for the conversion not only of elements, but also of unbelievers. Khunrath
argues that the
Pagans, or Turks, looking on Sacrosanct Scripture (GOD!) as nothing, can be clearly
shown the sense and reason of the truth from the book of Nature; and (Divine grace
cooperating) be converted to Christianity. And the Jews in the same way.108
As Scholem remarked, Khunrath absolutely insisted that Kabbalah, magic, and

alchemy shall and must be combined and used together.109 Sometimes, Kabbalah is
employed in the service of alchemy, while at other times, alchemy is put to the service
of religion. Khunrath, however, would certainly not consent to his labelling as one
who emphatically argues for the identification of alchemy and Cabala.110 While
Khunrath asserts an analogous harmony between the two disciplines, he is careful to
distinguish their ends: the goal of Physico-Chymistry is the Fermentation of our
glorious and surpassingly perfect Stone with the Macrocosm, while the ultimate
goal of Cabala is the union of man, the microcosm, with God.111 Perhaps these
ends can be regarded as complementary; with Khunrath there is certainly the implication that it is only the pious alchemist, engaged in his Christian Cabala, who has
any real chance of achieving the Philosophers Stone. However, the two disciplines
should be considered not as identical or synonymous, but rather as parallel or analogical processes.
A Christian alchemist reads Jewish Kabbalah

Although most of the Paracelsians so far mentioned appear to have acquired their
knowledge of Kabbalah from Christian Cabalist authors, there is one notable exception. This is the French scholar, Blaise de Vigenre (15231596), who moves with
facility between discussions of alchemy, astrology, and Kabbalah.112 Vigenres
early attempts to combine these different conceptual systems can be seen in Les
images ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate (1578). There, he takes up
the thirteenth thesis from Picos Conclusions on the Orphic Hymns, where the
107
Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, Preface, Avijr.

Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, II, 207: Sic Ethnicus, aut Turca, SS.m Scripturam (DEVS!) nihili aestimans, ex Naturae libro, ad sensum & rationem potest conuinci veritatis, atque (Diuina cooperante gratia) conuerti
ad Christianismum. Sic & Judus.
109
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 91. See Heinrich Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque secreto externo
& visibili (Straburg: In verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1608), 87: Kabala, Magia, Alchymia Coniungendae, Sollen und
mssen mit und neben einander angewendet werden.
110
111
Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II: 203.
112
On Vigenre, see Sylvain Matton, Alchimie, Kabbale et Mythologie chez Blaise de Vigenre: lExemple de sa Thorie
des Elements, in Cahiers V. L. Saulnier, 11: Blaise de Vigenre, pote et mythographe au temps de Henri III (Paris:
Presses de lcole Normale Suprieure, 1994), 11137.
108
384
PETER J. FORSHAW
Italian philosopher declares that Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are
the same.113 Vigenre develops this into a speculation on Paracelsian material:
That which Orpheus calls Typhon is with the Cabalists Samael, and to Paracelsus his
Archeus, that is, as he interprets it, the heat or virtue of nature acting in the bowels of
the earth on universal matter equally suitable for all three animal, vegetable and
mineral kinds, all depending on primitive salt.114
In Paracelsuss conceptualisation of how Nature transforms primal matter into

ultimate matter, the primary personification of this process is Vulcan, assisted by
two additional principles: the Iliaster, representing the primordial matter-energy of
nature (a neologism from the Greek Hyle/Primal Matter and the Latin Astrum/
Star) and the Archeus, the internal workman that impresses the specific and individual attributes upon the elemental material world.115 Here, Vigenre equates the
almost demiurgic nature of the Archeus with the two fiery antagonists of heaven
in Orphic and Cabalistic mythology. Vigenre takes this analogy further, moreover,
by claiming that Paracelsus equates the three divine brothers mentioned by Orpheus
in his hymns, i.e. Zeus, Neptune, and Pluto, with Arez (Hebrew for Earth), Iliaster
and Archeus, all according to Cabala (le tout suivant la Cabale). Vigenre
suggests that these three represent the formal principles that act as counterparts to
the three Paracelsian material principles of all matter: Salt, Sulphur, and
Mercury.116 Here, for Vigenre, Cabala appears primarily to denote an analogical
way of thinking, with the implication that all mytho-alchemyas practised, for
example, by the alchemist Michael Maier (15681622) in his alchemical interpretations of classical mythis a form of Cabala.117 If this is an aspect of Vigenres conception, however, it is not everything, for elsewhere Vigenre briefly refers to a
manual tradition, which the Jews call Cabala.118
Although this comparison of Paracelsian formal and material principles with
Orphic and Cabalistic figures may seem strange to the modern reader, it was probably
not quite so odd for the well-read Paracelsian. One of the foremost promoters of
Paracelsian medicine, the Danish physician Peder Srensen (15421602), known in
Latin as Petrus Severinus, had already drawn on Picos Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion,
Night in Orpheus and Ein-Sof in the Cabala are the same, to argue that the same
rational seeds of Nature are conserved in Orphic Night, Hippocratic Orcus, and
Paracelsian Iliaster. Severinus makes it clear that the drawing of such analogies and
113
Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 511.

Secret, Les kabbalistes chrtiens, 297. Blaise de Vigenre, Les images ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate
(Paris: Chez Nicolas Chesneau, 1578), 430r: Ce que doncques Orphee appelle Typhon, est envers les Cabalistiques
Zamael; Et Paracelse son Archee, cest dire (comme il linterprete) la chaleur ou vertu de nature agissante dans les
entrailles de la terre, sur la matiere universelle esgallement appropriee tous les trois genres: mineraux, Vegetaux,
animaux, dous dependans du sel primitif.
115
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Paracelsus: Essential Readings (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1999), 28.
116
Vigenre, Les images et tableaux, 430; Secret, Les kabbalistes chrtiens, 298.
117
On mytho-alchemy, see Thomas Reiser, Mythologie und Alchemie in der Lehrepik des frhen 17. Jahrhunderts
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 21ff.
118
Vigenre, Les images et tableaux, 217v: une tradition manuelle, que les Hebrieux appellent Cabale.
114
385
the insights gained from them are understood with difficulty by those who have not
drunk from Cabalistic sources and are still blind in Adept Philosophy.119 The
Hebrew term Ein-Sof, translated literally as the infinite or without end, stands
for the absolute perfection in which there are no distinctions and no differentiations.120 It is easy to see how an alchemist might see this as a fitting analogy for
primal and ultimate matter, but since Ein Sof was usually taken as an image signifying
the most abstruse essence of the Godhead, I imagine this identification of the opposite
extremes of spirit and matter would have been offensive to Jewish Kabbalists.
In a later work, the posthumously published Trait du feu et du sel (Treatise on
Fire and Salt, 1618), we gain a clearer idea of Vigenres familiarity with authentically Jewish sources of Kabbalah. He quotes directly from the Zohar, for
example, when discussing how an ethereal body arises from the destruction of the
elements,121 and even anticipates Scholems observation that in the Zohar silver is
of a superior order to gold.122 He quotes Kamban Gerundense, or Rabbi
Moses ben Nahman (11941270), known as Ramban, to the effect that through
Cabala it is revealed that holy scripture was written with black fire on a white
fire, shining with marvels,123 an image surely appealing to the alchemical artists
of fire. He also cites the Nut-Garden of Rabi Ioseph Castiglian (Gikatilla), on
the fact that there is not a form of letter, point or accent that does not concern
some mystery.124
Along with rehearsing material familiar to Christian Cabalists, such as the Sefirot,
Vigenre includes less common information, such as how the glory and essence of
God, which the Jews call the Shekinah, cannot perceive itself except in the matter
of this sensible world.125 Information like this must surely have been included to
raise the profile of alchemical investigation into the essence of matter. Alchemy is presented as a divine art, Cabalas genuine sister (soeur germaine de la Caballe),126 and
Vigenre frequently draws parallels, demonstrating their shared fascination for fire
and light.127 He also makes clear his intention to enlarge, by the same method, the
works and progress of nature, for which the key principle is Alchemy, in order to
move upwards to the archetype, the Creator, by means of Cabala.128
119
Petrus Severinus, Idea Medicin Philosophic (Basel: Ex officina Sixti Henricpetri, 1571), 87; 121 Hae Generationes difficulter ab ijs comprehenduntur qui Cabalistic fontes non degustarunt, & in Philosophia Adepta etiamnum caecutiunt. See Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual
Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus: 15401602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 174.
For other allusions to Picos Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion, see Joseph DuChesne, Liber de priscorum philosophorum
verae medicinae materia (S. Gervasii: Apud Haeredes Eustathij Vignon, 1603), viir-v; Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II:
74; see also Croll, Basilica Chymica, 54.
120
Scholem, Kabbalah, 8896.
121
Vigenre, Trait du feu et du sel (Paris, 1618), 14.
122
Vigenre, Trait du feu, 153.
123
124
Vigenre, Trait du feu, 150: il nya forme de lettre, poinct, ny accent, qui nimporte quelque mystere; comme il est
particulierement specifi au Ghinah Egoz, ou Iardin du noyer de Rabi Ioseph Castiglian.
125
126
127
128
386
PETER J. FORSHAW
For the Hebrew-, Chymistry- and Wisdom-loving reader

As a final example, let us look at a publication that attempts to ground alchemy
more seriously in the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, or Purifying Fire. This was printed in 1677 as part of the Kabbala denudata, seu doctrina
Hebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atque Theologica (The Kabbala
Unveiled or the Transcendental, Metaphysical, and Theological Doctrine of the
Hebrews, 167784), a Latin translation of parts of the Zohar together with other
kabbalistic treatises and commentaries, including works of the new, sixteenthcentury form of the Jewish Kabbalah promoted by the students of Isaac Luria
(15341572). It was published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (16361689)
and Frans Mercurius van Helmont (16141699) and dedicated, notably, to the
Hebrew-, Chymistry-, and Wisdom-loving reader.129
The title page of the Kabbala Unveiled announces that it contains a Compendium of the Cabalistical-Chymical Book, called the Aesch Mezareph, concerning
the Philosophical Stone.130 The Aesch Mezareph provides several instances of
Cabalistic word-play, including one of Gematria in the service of an alchemical
reading of Daniel 7:5: And behold another beast like a bear stood up on one
side: and there were three rows in the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof, and
thus they said to it: Arise, devour much flesh. The explanation is provided that
Let him eat Flesh should be interpreted as Let him digest the mineral
Stibium, on the grounds that the Hebrew words Bashar (Flesh) and Puch
(Stibium) can both be made to share the same number seven.131 Although antimony
is more commonly symbolised by a wolf (sometimes a lion) in European alchemy,
the combination of the devouring bear-like beast with the isopsephic equation of
Stibium and Flesh must have seemed particularly apposite for this
cabalist-alchemist.132
Although Pico della Mirandola and Athanasius Kircher (16021680) had already
drawn correspondences between the planets and the Sefirot on the Tree of Life, the
Aesch Mezareph, as far as I know, is the first text to attempt to correlate them with
129
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, seu doctrina Hebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atque
Theologica, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Joannis Davidis Zunneri, 1684), Vol. 1: a2r: Ad Lectorem Philebraeum,
Philochymicum, & Philosophum.
130
See also Raphael Patai, Esh Msaref: A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Treatise, in The Jewish Alchemists, 32235;
Nicolas Sd, Lalchimie et la science sacre des lettres: notes sur lalchimie juive propos de lsh mesareph, in
Kahn and Matton, Alchimie, art, histoire et myths, 547649.
131
Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 20607 (the values of the letters forming Puch add up to 106 [80 + 20 + 6]; those of
Bashar to 502 [2 + 300 + 200]; both reducible to 7).
132
For the wolf, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012),
146; for the lion as crude antimony, see William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an
American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. With a New Foreword (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago
Press, 2003; first printed 1994), 131. See also R. Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes Chymisches Werk (Erfurt: Verlegts
Augustinus Crusius, 1735; rept. Leipzig, 1760), 29, 37, 46. See also Part II, Samuel Baruchs Donum Dei, 53.
This book also discusses the Hebrew word Puk, identifying it, however, not as common stibium but as magnesia,
bismuth, or black lead (Plumbum nigrum). A reader familiar with the hieroglyphic figures of Nicolas Flamel
would immediately recognize some of the engravings used in the Uraltes Chymisches Werk. See Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 238, where Eleazars book is described as the most Jewish alchemical book in existence.
387
the alchemical metals.133 The author provides two models for this. One has the first
Sefira, Kether (Crown) related to the root of metals (i.e. prima materia); while the
second Sefira, Chochmah (Wisdom) is Lead; the third, Binah (Understanding)
Tin, and so forth.134 This is curious as the higher Sefirotthose at the top of the
Treeare generally regarded as more subtle, whereas the metals are here presented
in the inverse sequence, from the crudest, lead, down to the noblest, gold. This
makes more sense if we think of the topmost Sefira Kether as the source of the
lower emanations, just as primal matter is the source of all metals.135 The second
model is particularly intriguing in that it has the first three Sefirot corresponding
respectively to thick water (i.e. Mercury), Salt, and Sulfur.136 Having started
this essay with Paracelsians drawing inspiration from the Cabala, do we perhaps
have here a case of a Jewish Cabalist drawing inspiration from Paracelsian
alchemy? Both Scholem and Kilcher agree that this must be the case, nor is it exceptional, for Scholem also discusses the sixteenth-century Rabbi and alchemist Mordechai de Nello, who was known to be a follower of Paracelsus.137
The Aesch Mezareph generated interest in the alchemical community. Johann
Hannemanns Ovum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum (Hermetico-ParacelsicoTrismegistan Egg, 1694) contains references, and an English translation of the
Chymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, sch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire was
published in London in 1714.138 One of the Aesch Mezarephs most famous
readers is Isaac Newton (16421727), one of whose chymical manuscripts contains
the note that In the Cabala of the Jews [the second Sefira on the Tree of Life]
Chochmah is the degree of lead or of primordial salt, in which lies hidden the
lead of the wise.139 It is worth noting that even though Scholem points out that
Rosenroth describes the Aesch Mezareph as an example of Kabbala naturalis (a
term not found in Jewish sources),140 suggesting that the Kabbalah was being put
to the service of material alchemy, Scholem also believes that in the dedicatory
verses of the Kabbala Denudata, Rosenroth alludes to the Kabbalah functioning
as a kind of mystical alchemy, with the claim that his Kabbalah Unveiled
133
For Pico, see Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 541; for Kirchers famous Tree of Life engraving, see Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652), Vol. 2, between pages 290 and 291.
134
Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 11718.
135
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 6869, expresses his own reservations about these sefirotic attributions.
136
Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1:118.
137
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 58f.
138
Johann Ludovicus Hannemann, Ovum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum, i.e., Commentarius-PhilosophicoChemico-Medicus (Frankfurt: Impensis Friderici Knochii, 1694), 165, 390; A Short Enquiry concerning the Hermetick Art by a Lover of Philalethes. To which is Annexed, A Collection from Kabbala Denudata, and Translation of
the Chymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, sch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire (London, 1714).
139
Keynes MS 30a, Kings College Library, Cambridge, Index Chemicus, fol. 17r: In Judaeorum Cabala Cochma est
gradus plumbi vel salis primordialis in quo latet plumbum sapientum. Lexicon Zohar. Cf. Knorr von Rosenroth,
Kabbala denudata, 1: 345: In doctrina metallica Chochmah est gradus Plumbi; vel salis primordialis, in quo latet
plumbum sapientum.
140
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 70. See Kabbala Denudata, 1: 449. Scholem suspects that the source for this term
lies with Paracelsus, though it could have been influenced by Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome: Ex
Typographia Vitalis Mascardi, 1652), 2: 338 Caput X. De Cabala Naturali, quam Bereschith siue fabricae
appellant.
388
PETER J. FORSHAW
changes the abstruse course of the minerals in the heart.141 Kilcher proposes that
the Aesch Mezareph should not be seen as an alchemical text that appears to flaunt
the name Kabbalah in its title, as do so many works, like Franz Kiesers Cabala
Chymica (1606) or Stefan Michelspachers Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Natur
in Alchymia (1616), but rather as a kabbalistic text with an alchemical orientation.142 He convincingly argues that the Aesch Mezareph plays a key role in the
publication of the Kabbala Denudata, for it enhances the function of the Kabbalah
for the natural philosophical projects of Rosenroth and Van Helmont. For him, their
Cabalistical-Chymical Book exemplifies a kind of meta-discipline between science
and theology, a spekulative Zentraldisziplin that applies the theology of the Kabbalah scientifically and supports alchemical science by means of Kabbalah.143
Conclusion
In conclusion, what can be said about these textual encounters between Cabala and
alchemy, between the secretiores theologi and secretiories philosophi, the more
secret theologians and philosophers?144 Christian Cabala and, to a lesser extent,
Jewish Kabbalah did apparently have some impact on transmutational and medicinal alchemy, appearing in texts which also included practical discussions of laboratory practice and alchemical recipes. Save for the Aesch Mezareph, little of this
cabalistic alchemy seems particularly Jewish: indeed, Scholem suggests that the
very deformation or transformation, if not transmutation of the Jewish Kabbalah
into Christian Cabala was necessary in order to make it accessible for alchemical
interpretation.145 The first experiments in what we might call Cabalchemy by
the Venetian Priest, Giovanni Pantheo, in the early sixteenth century enjoyed
some success, for the Voarchadumia was reprinted in 1550,146 and then later
included in the second volume of the most famous compendium of alchemical
texts, Lazarus Zetzners Theatrum Chemicum (1602, 1659), which also included
Dees Monas Hieroglyphica and Kiesers Cabala Chymica (1606).147 Although
modern scholars may express their doubts about the depth of Paracelsuss knowledge of Kabbalah, this was certainly not the message transmitted by four of his
most influential disciples. Despite their personal disagreements, Gohory, Toxites,
Dorn, and Ruland all include Cabala as an important theme in their presentation
of Paracelsian knowledge.
141
Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 80. On the Bahir as a possible foundation for kabbalistic spiritual alchemy, see
Nicolas Sd, Le Symbolisme de lOr selon le Livre Bahir, Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 16280.
142
Kilcher, Cabbala chymica, 101.
143
Kilcher, Cabbala chymica, 108.
144
Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 64.
145
146
Joannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars et theoria transmvtationis metallicae cum Voarchadmia, proportionibus,
numeris, et iconibus rei accommodis illustrata (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1550). There also appears
to be another copy available with 1556 on the title page and 1550 in the colophon.
147
Zetzner, comp., Theatrum chemicum (Oberursel: Ex Officina Cornelij Sutorij, sumtibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1602), 2:
528630.
389
What should be evident by now is that there is little real indication in any of the
works discussed above of alchemists practising a transcendentally mystical form of
spiritual alchemy, or engaging in any supernatural forms of alchemical practice,
though there is no denying the fundamental piety of many of the practitioners.
Some alchemists strove hard to integrate cabalist notions, though it is difficult to
say what might have been their criteria for success. Pico and Reuchlins promotion
of the value of Cabala for exegetical purposes certainly attracted the interest of some
alchemists who applied it heuristically in calculating the values of alchemical words,
and seeking insights into quantitative aspects of laboratory practice, and the weights
and relative proportions of mixtures. Some combined mathematics with philology
and engaged in elaborate polyglot etymologies, or constructed and deconstructed
acronyms with the aim of discovering or disguising the true identity of substances;
yet others anatomized words to discover new terms concealed within them, or composed Cabalistic Enigmas to stimulate the imagination of their readers. Some, like
Dee, generated and permutated glyphs, either in order to intuit new connections
between elements, or to create a systematic new semiotics for chymistry. The
results bear little semblance to Jewish Kabbalah, but were inspired by cabalistic techniques. And, finally, some explicitly attempted to draw correlations between the two
intellectual systems, such as the identification of the Hebrew Mother letters with the
Paracelsian principles, or the mapping of alchemical substances onto the kabbalistic
Tree of Life. In these works, the Hebrew language and cabalistic words were called
as witnesses to the great antiquity of the alchemical art.148 The impact Cabala
undoubtedly had on Paracelsian forms of alchemy is evident in the entries that
can be found in the dictionaries of Toxites, Dorn, Ruland, and Thurneisser, and
the works of figures like Khunrath and Vigenre. For these writers at least, the combination of the two arts helped to strengthen and uphold their faith and invigorate,
perhaps, both science and religion, as a way of discovering a deeper, more profound
understanding of Gods two books of nature and scripture.
Notes on contributor
Peter J. Forshaw is Senior Lecturer in History of Western Esotericism in the Early
Modern Period at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam. He researches the intellectual and cultural history of
learned magic and its relation to religion, science, and medicine in early modern
Europe. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism.
Address: Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 147, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
E-mail: p.j.forshaw@uva.nl
148
Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 67; Jean-Pierre Brach, Remarques sur le Symbolisme des Nombres en Alchimie,
Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 30310, on 307.

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ambix, Vol. 60 No.

4, November, 2013, 361389

Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica

Early historiography of the relations between Kabbalah and

Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2013

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

figure 2 Plate 2 Anfang. Exaltation and Cabala in Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala,

identifiable combination of alchemy and Kabbalah originates with an Italian priest

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

From Jewish Kabbalah to Christian Cabala: a brief introduction

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 519 (11 > 1).

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

Picos professed motivation for studying Cabala is to evangelise against heretics

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

The first Cabalchemist: Giovanni Agostino Pantheo

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 29r.

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

(15601605),67 Oswald Croll (15631608/9),68 Johann Daniel Mylius (1583

Paracelsus and Cabala

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

Some early Paracelsian definitions of Cabala

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

Gohorys contemporary, the Paracelsian physician Michael Toxites (15141581),

enthusiastic translator and promoter of Paracelsian thought, the Belgian Gerard

Heinrich Khunraths definitive blending

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

As Scholem remarked, Khunrath absolutely insisted that Kabbalah, magic, and

A Christian alchemist reads Jewish Kabbalah

Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, Preface, Avijr.

In Paracelsuss conceptualisation of how Nature transforms primal matter into

Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 511.

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

For the Hebrew-, Chymistry- and Wisdom-loving reader

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA

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