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PURDUE UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL
Thesis/Dissertation Acceptance
This is to certify that the thesis/dissertation prepared
By Angela C. Ghionea
Entitled RECURRING THOUGHT PATTERNS AND RESURFACING ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLS

IN EUROPEAN, HELLENISTIC, ARABIC, AND BYZANTINE ALCHEMY FROM ANTIQUITY TO

THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

For the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Is approved by the final examining committee:

James R. Farr
Chair

Myrdene Anderson

Anthony T. Grafton

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Copyright Disclaimer (Graduate School Form 20), this thesis/dissertation adheres to the provisions of
Purdue Universitys Policy on Integrity in Research and the use of copyrighted material.

James R. Farr
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____________________________________
04/16/2013

Approved by: Douglas R. Hurt

Head of the Graduate Program

Date

RECURRING THOUGHT PATTERNS AND RESURFACING ALCHEMICAL

SYMBOLS
IN EUROPEAN, HELLENISTIC, ARABIC, AND BYZANTINE ALCHEMY FROM
ANTIQUITY TO THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty
of
Purdue University
by
Angela Catalina Ghionea

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree
of
Doctor of Philosophy

May 2013
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana

UMI Number: 3591220

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ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the Department of History
of Purdue University and Puskas Bilsland Fellowship, which provided financial
support throughout the research and thesis preparation process. Professor James Farr
deserves special gratitude for providing academic and organizational guidance and for
steering my work in the right direction. I am also very thankful to my parents
and husband for their patience and encouragement during the research.
Thank you.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT.............v
INTRODUCTION.......1
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW...........................15
CHAPTER 2: PATTERNS AND SYMBOLS IN ALCHEMICAL DATA..31
Part I
The Tunnel Pattern and Symbols of Chaos, Darkness, Blackness, Waters, Hades,
Pit, Channel, Castle, Dome, Temple..................34
Part II
Light Pattern and Symbols of First Dot/ God Manifested/ Deity Exalted into becoming
the First Point of Light/ First Letter/ Letter A/ First Uttering/ First Dot/ Kether (Crown)/
Number 1/ Monad/ Unity/ One/ Oneness/ Wholeness/ Universe/ Cosmos/ Cosmic Egg/
House of the Chick/ Alembic.........56
Horse Symbol (variants: Unicorn and Pegasus)....80
Stag Symbol...........85
Light Pattern...87
Tree Symbol.......89
Hybrid Pattern........94
Angel Symbol....94
Sword Symbol....96
Mermaid Symbol...99
Symbols of Spirit, Soul and Body...101
CHAPTER 3: ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC ALCHEMICAL DATA.....104

iv
Page
Isolation and its exoteric and esoteric meaning in alchemy........105
Disintegration and its exoteric and esoteric meaning in alchemy........109
The exoteric and esoteric meaning of Stone........114
This Stone is a Key..131
CONCLUSION........148
BIBLIOGRAPHY....151
VITA........167

ABSTRACT

Ghionea, Angela C. PhD., Purdue University, May 2013. Recurring Thought Patterns and
Resurfacing Alchemical Symbols in European, Hellenistic, Arabic, and Byzantine
Alchemy From Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Major Professor: James R. Farr.
This study explores the symbolic nature, cognitive origin, and historic
implications of patterns of imagery abundant in alchemical writings of European,
Hellenistic, Arabic and Byzantine origin. In so doing, it seeks to bring greater balance
between exoteric and esoteric aspects of alchemy in the historiography of alchemy that
recently has favored the former and largely ignored the latter. The lack of sufficient
research of patterns of imagery in the history of alchemy constitutes the theoretical
motivation of the study. Textual evidence is provided in support of the three-pronged
thesis: imagery patterns in alchemical writings are largely induced by altered states of
consciousness (ASC), reiterate older symbolic patterns, and recur across cultures for
reasons previously unknown to historians. Under this interpretation, alchemical sources
appear coherently structured and meaningful, which refutes earlier claims that the texts
are semantically intractable, self-repeating gibberish.
The study proposes the hypothesis that the set of imagery patterns generated
during ASC resurfaces as the basic structure of symbols in remote prehistoric shamanism,
early mythologies, Cabalistic philosophical theories, and alchemical allegories. The
comparative investigation of creational myths, Cabalistic schools of thought and
alchemical sources across millennia, demonstrate that these bodies of knowledge share a
common pattern of imagery and a similar set of symbols. The study proposes that mind
patterns are distinguished from symbols, in the sense that patterns are the basic structure
from which symbols are generated.

vi
The results of this study reveal a complex network of relationships which place
alchemical symbols in the middle of the cultural nexus of the fields of esotericisms and
the history of alchemy a complexity overlooked in the current scholarship which
disproportionately emphasizes the exoteric aspects of the history of alchemy.
The study also argues that symbols of the occult art of metamorphosis originate in
Prehistory during shamanism-induced trance-like states. Both the symbols and the
techniques to alter the state of consciousness have been preserved across centuries by
European alchemists in the commonly used practices aimed at divining the secrets of
nature and the universe. By tapping into the unconscious, alchemists encounter
symbols which they attempt to interpret and describe in alchemical books and images.
Gradually, a cultural cyclical process is set in motion, involving first the alchemists
exposure to alchemical symbols (through information present in books and plates), then
the re-encounter with similar symbols during self-induced dreams, and finally the
interpretation and reuse of the same symbols to further create new alchemical texts and
art. During the journey of the soul, the re-encounter with imagery similar to the one
found in alchemical books and drawings confirms alchemists expectations and cements
their belief in the efficiency of alchemical symbols. The creative process of generation,
rediscovery and reuse of alchemical symbols causes these symbols to evolve into an
inventory constantly employed by alchemists. This process appeared beneficial because,
on the one hand, the alchemists viewed it as a theory verification tool, and on the other
hand it was an efficient method of encoding knowledge about perfecting human nature
and base metals.
The study demonstrates that alchemical symbols share a common origin with
prehistoric art. It offers a new explanation and classification of alchemical symbols based
on their pattern structure found in ASC. It uncovers the linear evolution of symbols as
well as possible shifts of meaning in alchemy. It explains the rationale for alchemists to
reuse these symbols, and demonstrates how alchemical symbols and theories have
informed the history of alchemy.

INTRODUCTION

From the moment when alchemist Zosimos1 of Panopolis decided in the late third
or early fourth century CE to embark on a quest for genuine alchemical knowledge and
test the theories he knew from old books, the history of alchemy took a new, esoteric,
turn. He settled to investigate ancient alchemical recipes not through conscious
reasoning, logics, mathematics, or literary analysis. Not even by experimenting with
ingredients through trial and error in his laboratory. Instead, he chose a more personal
method, unconventional by modern standards, one that for centuries will be employed by
Faustian souls thirsty for an answer to the secrets of creation. These men have taken since
prehistoric times a darker path: the dangerous journey of the soul in a quest for the
method to discover those secrets which ordinary humans could not reveal. When Zosimos
felt that his alchemical books had failed him, he attempted to find the answers from
spirits, in dreams. There was no return in alchemy: the shamanic quest was on.
Dating from the prehistoric past a set of ecstatic shamanic techniques, which
occasionally included hallucinogens, have been employed by shamans to induce altered
states of consciousness (ASC).

Important figure in Hellenistic alchemy, Zosimos of Panopolis is the first real historical character known
in history of esoteric alchemy. Unlike Zosimos, whose works remain available, the writings of earlier
esoteric alchemists, also real historical characters, have not survived.

2
In prehistory, these engendered the mental imagery patterns depicted in cave art.
Cognitive studies have found that the same imagery patterns are experienced by modern
subjects during ASC studied under laboratory conditions. Anthropologists have also
found the same set of patterns in modern shamanic paintings and narratives, as
demonstrated in field research reports. Although the same patterns and symbols are
depicted in alchemical works as well, historians have overlooked the significance of such
similarity, and, instead, have acknowledged frustrating difficulties and the lack of
progress in decoding alchemical symbols. Despite the fact that relevant alchemical
esoteric works are teeming with references to shamanic dreams, such works have either
been excised from historical investigation or discussed separately in contexts unrelated to
decoding. Also, in order to fit their theories, historians have chosen to ignore the
references to meditative trances and the key words suggestive of shamanic dreams, which
are however, present in alchemical texts. Consequently, historians have confined their
explanations about the persistence of alchemical imagery across millennia solely to
cultural borrowings. The result is an incomplete state of the discipline. Decoding symbols
and explaining their persistence within the history of alchemy is long overdue.
This study provides rich evidence to sustain the thesis that European and Eastern
esoteric alchemical works are teeming with ASC imagery patterns not yet acknowledged
in the history of alchemy, patterns that repeat a set of symbols that are older than
previously established, and that such alchemical symbols recur across centuries for
reasons previously unexplored by historians. As this study will demonstrate, alchemical
texts are coherently structured and meaningful, which contradicts previous claims that
such texts are endless repetitions of chaotic, abstruse gibberish.

3
The present study is a pioneering introduction on how to recognize ASC patterns
in alchemical esoteric works. It also offers an enriched view of the origin and evolution
of alchemical symbols and explains their resurfacing over time in alchemical works in
Europe and the Middle East. The significance of the research is rich and multifaceted. It
establishes that alchemical symbols have a more distantly remote origin than previously
recognized, reaching into prehistory. Moreover alchemical sources can be rendered
intelligible when decoded through a cabalistic key symbolism. Prehistoric shamanism,
early myths, religions, cabalistic schools of thought and alchemy actually share a
common set of symbols. The same set of symbols resurface in alchemical sources across
millennia, triggered by trance-like states (ASC) prescribed in these sources. Such trances
function to experimentally confirm intellectual theories in alchemy and to establish
symbols as sacred. In other words, trances led alchemists into interpreting symbols as
divine, meaningfully true and magically endowed with potencies in the natural realm.
This interpretation of symbols as sacred and theories as universally true legitimizes
alchemy as a sacred ancient wisdom and fulfills the expectations adepts had about
alchemy as an esoteric knowledge revealed by God.
The present work demonstrates that the ASC patterns were present in the
alchemical dreams in which the adepts tested alchemical theories and attempted to
retrieve hidden information about the secrets of nature, the structure of matter and the
Universe. This research also explains how creative alchemists reused alchemical symbols
over the centuries in order to transmit encoded knowledge about these secrets (such as
understanding human nature, divining immortality, or turning base metal into gold).

4
This study argues that esoteric alchemists attempted to test alchemical theories
from ancient books, or to discover alchemical knowledge considered lost to the world,
through non-conventional methods. These shamanic techniques led to trances, visions,
intuitive dreams, journeys of the soul, hallucinations, or deep meditative states.
Cognitive studies have acknowledged that the narrative content of a trance is culturally
determined. Consequently, this study also argues that the already known alchemical
symbols (apprehended by alchemists from books, images or initiations) re-surfaced
during the alchemists tapping into the unconscious. This process became creative as
alchemists generated new alchemical texts and images based on the tested or
confirmed knowledge of symbols.
This study suggests that symbols of the occult art of metamorphosis, or alchemy,
originated with the induced trance-like states of prehistoric shamanism and both the
symbols as well as the techniques to alter the state of consciousness were preserved over
the centuries by European alchemists. Similar to the prehistoric shamans, or various
Greek seers, Pythagorean numerologists, Jewish kabbalists, or medieval mystic
alchemists attempted to contact the outer or unseen realm through ASC. Alchemists
sought to retrieve information about the secrets of nature and the universe through
contact with the divinity and thereby acquire knowledge, as a revelation or illumination
rather than intellectual apprehension.
As alchemists tapped into the unconscious, they encountered mental imagery
patterns that developed into symbols during a trance. Upon regaining consciousness,
alchemists then attempted to decode what they had just experienced. Alchemical texts
then contain the alchemists description and interpretation of the symbols.

5
This intellectual process begins with a prior exposure to alchemical symbols in
alchemical books and plates, or to theories learned from a community of initiates. Then,
following alchemical recipes in these texts that prescribe meditation, prayers and
techniques to achieve ASC, the alchemists proceed to self-induce trances, in which state
they re-encounter the same symbols they had seen in books and plates or heard about in
alchemical theories. Finally, alchemists interpret and re-use the same symbols in new
texts that they compose and publish.
In other words, the re-encounter during the journey of the soul with the imagery
present in alchemical books and drawings confirms to alchemists their expectations. The
experiencing of these same symbols in books and visions then cements the alchemists
beliefs in the importance of the alchemical symbols as well as their efficiency in his quest
to encode and transmit knowledge about perfecting human nature and base metals. The
cyclical process of learning symbols, confirmation, and then new generation of
alchemical works explains the endurance of alchemy as a field across millennia. The
rediscovery and reuse of the same symbols preserves them in a corpus that stretches over
time and contributes fundamentally to the development of alchemy, and, in significant
ways, of science.
This dissertation is structured around the topical analysis of alchemical symbols
found in a great number of texts.

The argument is developed topically and

chronologically. First chapter reviews the scholarly literature and explains the specific
objectives of the study. The second chapter offers a comparative survey listing the
matching of mental imagery patterns from ASC with the symbolism present in alchemy,
cabala, religions, and shamanism.

6
A discussion of the origins of symbols explains their genesis from a set of mental patterns
universally found in trance-like states. The third chapter presents the chronological and
cross-geographical transmission of a set of alchemical symbols.
For methodological convenience, the general term alchemical data is used in the
study when referring to the body of symbols and theories found in alchemical sources
(primary texts and images). The term trance states, known in cognitive studies as
Altered States of Consciousness (also known as Near Death Experiences), is also
abbreviated to ASC (NDE, respectively). The research offers a comparative analysis by
tracking relevant evidence of ASC present in European and Middle Eastern alchemical
data from Antiquity to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. (However, for comparative
purposes, data gathered from prehistoric shamanism, Creational myths, Greek, Jewish
and Christian Cabalas is also considered.)
To facilitate and better understand the transmission of a symbol, this study will
analyze the process across centuries (vertically or diachronically) as well as within
geographic areas, or horizontally or synchronically. Along these chronological and
spatial lines we can then chart from texts each time the ASC operates to validate a
symbol. I will call this confirmation. These connecting dots on the vertical and
horizontal lines represent moments of confirmation at a deep personal level (trance,
meditation, mystical experience) for the shaman, practitioner, adept or alchemist that
symbols are universally true or real. This represents from the point of view of the
adepts the validation of the theory through spiritual practice. These confirmations of the
validity of symbols through ASC occur in each section of data: prehistoric shamanism,
religions, cabala, and alchemy.

7
The current state of historical alchemical research presents two major problems.
Firstly, it concludes that European alchemy drew inspiration for both texts and imagery
from a diverse array of sources and systems of thought between Antiquity and the Early
Modern period. The inspirational sources range from ancient hermetic texts,
Neoplatonism, Jewish and Christian Cabala, Arabic alchemy and astrology. 2 However,
the rich archeological evidence of cave paintings dated to prehistoric times provides
convincing data for anthropologists, historians and cognitive analysts to advocate for a
significantly earlier use of similar imagery. Consequently, it can no longer be argued that
the origin of alchemical symbols is based in Antiquity. This study argues that symbols
commonly found in alchemical sources have a far more remote genesis: they originate in
the mind of the prehistoric human, and resurface in subsequent ages (suggesting a
physiological constant).
Secondly, no satisfactory explanation has been provided yet in the fields of the
history of alchemy, science3 and intellectual history4 for why alchemists preferred to
choose only certain images from the multitude of representations of the vegetal and
animal regnum. One can observe that within the rich alchemical heritage, only a limited
set of symbols consistently resurface over centuries in both Eastern and Western
European alchemical thought.

Urszula Szulakowska, The alchemy of light: geometry and optics in late Renaissance alchemical
illustration, (Symbola et emblemata, v. 10. Leiden: Brill, 2000).
3
Adam Mosley, Objects, texts and images in the history of science, (Amsterdam [u.a.]: Elsevier, 2007);
International Congress on the History of Sciences, and Michel Bougard, Alchemy, chemistry, and
pharmacy, (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002); Pamela H. Smith, Art, Science, and Visual Culture in Early
Modern Europe, Isis, 97, (2006):83100.
4
Wayne Shumaker, The occult sciences in the Renaissance; a study in intellectual patterns, (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972).

8
Ancient, medieval and especially Renaissance and Early Modern alchemical texts,5 are
teeming with a constant array of the same set of mysterious symbols. The alchemical
imagery may seem baffling to a modern reader, of course, for what do light being born in
a cave, or dragons living hidden in mountains have to do with mathematics, chemistry or
the process of scientific discoveries?
In other words, whereas extensive studies have focused on the role, work and
prestige of noted European alchemists and scientists,6 no one has yet explained the
mystery of the origins of the symbols in alchemy, nor the reasons behind their constant
use. Instead, the modern historiography of alchemy has tracked the evolution and placed
the origins of alchemical imagery exclusively in cultural sources, explaining symbols as
simple cultural borrowings from ancient religions and philosophies. Nor has anyone
satisfactorily explained why alchemists invoked only certain symbols against other
possible choices. This study, then, adds to the history of alchemy what no one has yet
done: address the problem of the continual recurrence of alchemical symbols within
various cultural contexts.
Cognitive studies have located patterns of ASC in the human mind. Recent paleoanthropologists invoking these studies have demonstrated that the geometric and
sensation-patterns found in ASC are replicated on the cave paintings of prehistoric
cultures.
5

Stanton J. Linden, The alchemy reader: from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
6
For example, Peter J. French, John Dee: the world of an Elizabethan magus, (London: Routledge and K.
Paul 1972);
Wayne Shumaker, Renaissance curiosa: John Dee's conversations with angels, Girolamo Cardano's
horoscope of Christ, Johannes Trithemius and cryptography, George Dalgarno's Universal language,
(Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), in contrast to John Dee in
Lynn Thorndike, A history of magic and experimental science, vols. 1-8, (New York: Macmillan, 1923).

9
On cave walls, geometric designs and images of hybrids and shape-shifting shamans
abound. Historians of early religions point to how prehistoric shamanism gradually
evolved into the first organized religions. Within the history of philosophy and the history
of science, however, scholars have attempted to separate the link between ancient
religions and the first schools of thought in early Greece, seeking to prove a breach
between supposedly rational Pre-Socratic Greeks and prior irrational religious beliefs.
Any link between ancient religions and spirituality on one side, and Greek Philosophy on
the other, is lost. However, some recent scholarship has challenged this breach,
demonstrating that often ancient philosophers were at the same time shamans, seers,
prophets, mystics, magicians, numerologists, cabalists, alchemists, astrologers or
members of secretive esoteric societies. Consequently, both the Pre- and Post-Socratic
Greek schools of thought emerge as both mystical as well as rational.
Recent studies in the history of alchemy acknowledge that Cabala and
Neoplatonism contributed to the cultural heritage of esoteric alchemy. However, exoteric
alchemy is not discussed in in this context. Because exoteric alchemy remains neglected
and isolated from the debate on Cabala and Philosophy, no one has tried to understand
alchemy as one, instead of two separated fields of study. This leaves the historical study
of alchemy divided in two distinct scholarly camps: the History of Western Esotericism
versus the History of Chemistry. This dichotomy continues to be reflected in scholarship
as these groups conduct their separate researches, even when publishing in a common
journal.7

Example: Ambix, Journal for the Society of the History of Alchemy and Chemistry.

10
The present study attempts to overcome this dichotomy and investigate both
esoteric and exoteric alchemy as two faces of the same coin. In so doing it seeks to
demonstrate a link between ancient religions, Greek philosophy, Jewish cabalistic schools
of thought, and Alchemy. The research proposes several hypotheses. The first is that the
ASC paradigm offers a key to understand the origins and persistence of symbolism in
shamanism, Creation myths, ancient religions, Greek and Jewish Cabala and Alchemy.
The focus of my research is on Alchemy, but the other mentioned fields offer rich data
for comparison. The result of this comparative investigation is astonishing, for all
symbolic data gathered from creation myths, cabalistic philosophy, and Alchemical
allegories reveal a common blueprint which is identical with the ASC pattern, strongly
suggesting that religious and cabalistic allegories are two facets of the same coin, and
why cabalistic and alchemical symbolism share an identical structure and why alchemical
symbols have the shapes they have and not others.
This study, then, proposes to explain the enduring recurrence of alchemical
symbols along millennia based on findings from textual analysis informed by cognitive
studies. The array of geometric designs and sensations experienced during altered states
of consciousness (ASC) create the backbone structure of the symbols present in
alchemical sources. Trance techniques are common to prehistoric shamanism, creation
myths, ancient religions, alchemy, cabalistic traditions, ancient Greek schools of thought,
Jewish mysticism, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

11
Such trances-like states generate a raw data of imagery which the adept afterwards
translates, interprets and digests into symbols and theories identical in alchemy,
numerology, Pythagorean sacred mathematics, Pre-Socratic schools of thought about
Universe and Matter, Gnostic mysticism, Platonism and Neoplatonism, Jewish medieval
Kabbalah, as well as Rosicrucian allegories and Masonic symbolism.
Consequently, the philosophical ancient tradition known as Cabala has a double
origin: theoretical and practical. On one hand its theory echoes ancient religious beliefs.
On the other hand, its practice stems out of certain trances known as journeys of the
soul. It is known that religions in some ways are interpretations of mythical stories. It
has been demonstrated in the field of the History of Religions that myths emerge from
millennia-long shamanic practices. Similarly, in cabalistic tradition, the communion with
the deity is sought and provoked through a variety of techniques ranging from meditation,
prayer, focused concentration, to singing and chanting. These methods to reach an altered
state of consciousness in Cabala are shamanic at its core and stretch back to prehistoric
times. These trances constitute the same origins of the first myths, early religions,
cabalistic schools and alchemy.
However, the same trance-like states in cabala have the unintended role to
confront theory with practice. In other words, to verify whether cabala statements match
the imagery resulted during trances, to verify knowledge received from humans (mystical
theory) with knowledge received from a deity (revelation). In the advent these two sides
match, the general belief of the cabala practitioner is that theory has been confirmed
through a direct experience of God.

12
In other words, the trance offers the adept the unique opportunity to confront images and
ideas from cabala with what the mind sees during the spiritual practice. Once the images
taught in cabala are seen in the trance as well, the practitioner is under the impression that
symbols have been identified and therefore the theory is believed to be real. Especially if
trances are performed repetitively during a lifetime, such confirmations become the
ground stone of a firm belief in the truths contained in Cabala philosophy.
The goal of the study is to find evidence within esoteric alchemical allegories that
adepts performed at a deep personal level a testing and a confirmation of alchemical
symbols through ASCs. While a link between the Cabala school of thought and alchemy
has been recently acknowledged by a limited number of historians,8 a connection
between ASC, cabala, and alchemy has not been uncovered yet. Making this connection
enables the decoding of alchemical texts and images, long overdue in academic research.
Alchemical symbolism is present in a multitude of European as well as Byzantine
and Arabic sources, from medicinal writings to journals, from religious texts to herbals
and scientific treatises. In a rich pool of sources spanning Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance and the Early Modern period, salient examples of recurring alchemical
symbols can be traced like a red thread across the centuries.

For a discussion on Renaissance imagery See Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light, 200; for a discussion on
Early Modern texts and images see Kevin Killeen and Peter Forshaw, The Word and the World: Biblical
Exegesis and Early Modern Science (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

13
A few such symbols are Chaos, Monad (the Oneness), Dyad (Duality), Triad (Sulfur,
Mercury Salt), birds (Crow, Chicken), plants (Tree), animals (Stag, Horse, Serpent and its
variation Ouroborus), heavenly bodies (Sun and Moon), human figures (King and
Queen), objects (Sword, Pit, Room, Oven, Furnace, Alembic, Egg), landscape (Cave,
Mountain, River, Ocean), nature (Air, Water, Fire, Earth, Light, Wind), substances (salt,
gold, silver, copper, lead) and a particular sequence of four colors such as Black, White,
Red, and Yellow.
The present study is innovative for a number of reasons. Firstly, within the history
of alchemy, as a subfield of the history of science, this is the first systematic study of
alchemical symbols in both esoteric and exoteric alchemical sources. The projects
agenda is: to detect hidden patterns within the structure of the most used alchemical
symbols; to classify alchemical symbols based on the patterns; to identify the origin of
alchemical symbols; to explain the meanings assigned to alchemical symbols; to track
when the meanings of alchemical symbols shift from the esoteric to exoteric and viceversa; to evidence the resurfacing of a selected set of symbols in Prehistory imagery,
ancient religions, cabalistic philosophy, and alchemy; to follow chronologically and
geographically the evolution, migration, and cultural transmission of alchemical symbols;
to demonstrate the process through which symbols are validated or confirmed as true
according to alchemists.
The research here is a significant contribution in the fields of intellectual history,
European studies, history of alchemy, history of religions as well as the study of Western
esotericism, by complementing but not overlapping with new scholarly trends.

14
Indeed, the present study is pioneering attempt to extend analysis from cognitive studies
to alchemy history.

15

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

The history of alchemy will have to
move from the individual scholarship
that still predominates to more
structured multidisciplinary efforts
involving historians and chemists, and
also,
potentially,
philologists,
palaeographers,
art
historians,
archaeologists, materials scientists,
geologists,
metallurgists,
and
physicians."9

A recent article10 in Archaeology magazine suggestively entitled Ancient

Alchemy? provides insights into the ancient Eurasian technics to deplete silver from the
silver-gold alloy in order to make a base metal look like solid gold. The process known as
depletion gilding11 is evidenced in archaeological artifacts recently discovered by Idaho
State University anthropologist David Peterson at the Spiridonovka II site in the Samara
region of Russia, one notable example being a pendant dated to the Late Bronze Age. In
forging this jewel, the purported alchemist worked on a copper core to add a golden
luster. The technique, already known to the Sumerians, was not expected to be found in
1,500 BCE Russia.

Marcos Martinn-Torres, Some Recent Developments in the Historiography of Alchemy, Ambix 58, no.
3, (November, 2011): 236, DOI: 10.1179/174582311X13129418299063.
10
Jarrett A. Lobell, Ancient Alchemy? Archaeology, January/February 2013, 14.
11
The technique was used in covering the copper ornaments with a very thin gold and silver foil, and
then altering the surface to make it look more like pure gold, a strong indication of the high valuation of
gold.

16
The technique, moreover, is unlike other known processes of ancient gilding such as
diffusion bonding (Greeks and Romans) and hammering foil (later Native Americans).
What the article does not say, however, is how similar this technique is to the
main stages of making gold established by alchemists over the ages. Egyptian, Greek,
Arabic, Byzantine, Chinese, Indian and European alchemical literature of all epochs, in
both its esoteric and exoteric aspects, all reiterate that the Philosophers Stone is achieved
through four main alchemical phases: Blackening, Whitening, Reddening and Yellowing.
Archaeologists confirm that the ancient alchemist had first a foil of electrum alloy
covered with a corrosive solution which attacked and blackened the silver, making it
decay in the form of black scale. This process sounds similar to the Blackening phase of
alchemy reported in subsequent literature, which involves the death of Matter. Exoteric
alchemical literature records that this killing of Matter usually occurs in several subphases of the Blackening. Two notable such sub-stages are Calcination and Putrefaction,
both yielding a black dross (usually referred in alchemical texts as black ashes resulting
from calcination, and feces from putrefaction).
Then, after corroding the silver, the ancient alchemist washed away the black
scaleleaving a micrometers-thick layer of gold on the surface, burnished to look even
richer.12 The washing of the alloy foil seems to correspond to the Whitening phase
reported in later alchemical literature, the phase universally referred to as Washing,
Ablution, or a sort of rinsing.
The next phase in the preparation of the pendant by our ancient alchemist,
archaeologists inform us, was to attach the now yellowish foil to some other metal core.
12

Lobell, Ancient Alchemy?, 14.

17
In the case of this pendant, gold was wrapped on a copper base. This corresponds with
the later process of alchemical Yellowing, when the stratum of gold emerges as shiny
yellow after the removal of silver. In short, the chemical processes involved in the
crafting the pendant by the unknown ancient alchemist sound strikingly similar to the
four alchemical stages described in later alchemical literature.
The discovery of ancient metallurgy the Russian steppes is part of the exoteric or
laboratory aspect alchemy, but it provides no clues about the esoteric aspects. Although
we suspect that early Eurasian alchemists13 engaged magical theories we must wait for
texts from antiquity to read about the esoteric side of alchemy. From early Babylonian
tablet-recipes to Hellenistic treatises of the fourth century CE, a common trend has been
to combine the esoteric with the exoteric, a union that will continue into the medieval and
early modern eras but with the Masters decidedly privileging the importance of the
esoteric. Indeed, beginning with the Renaissance, alchemists without the esoteric
knowledge were disparaged by Masters as puffers and were pushed to disreputable
outskirts of alchemy, covered in insults and reproaches by the knowledgeable Masters.
Since the earliest documented recipes found in Babylon, alchemy has maintained
across centuries an esoteric interpretation interrelated with an exoteric practice. Alchemy
has generally been presented as a single body of knowledge, encompassing magic and
metallurgy, sorcery and chemistry, as complementary sides. Alchemy was thus nonrational and rational, philosophical theory and laboratory practice. In other words,
Alchemy, as this dissertation advocates, should be understood as one field with esoteric
and exoteric components.
13

3,500 years ago, Srubnaya pastoralists.

18
The historiography of alchemy, however, has not recognized this, which has led to bitter
debates among historians about whether is chemistry or psychology.
We can trace these disputes to the Freemasons of the nineteenth century. Inspired
by the Rosicrucian texts, they construed alchemy in exclusively esoteric terms, and
viewed it as a mystical knowledge aspiring to the transcendental. 14 Consequently,
freemasonry regarded centuries-old alchemical works as strictly concerned with
resurrection, immortality, the perfection of human soul,15 and claimed to hone innate
psychic powers through mystical initiations.16
This one-sided understanding seeped into the following century, when we find
alchemical works button-holed in either the spiritual or chemical category. This is
reflected in a bifurcation of fields spanning from the Jungian psychology and the history
of religions on one side, and the history of science and specifically chemistry on the
other. The Jungian school, for example, applied17 its psychology framework to the study
of alchemy. In equating alchemical symbols with archetypes18 of the Unconscious, Jung
isolated the field of alchemy and narrowed it to down the alchemy of the soul.19

14

R. Swinburne Clymer, The Rosicrucians, their teachings (Quakertown, Pa: The philosophical Pub. Co.,
1923); also The interpretation of St. Matthew; an impartial interpretation of the Divine laws taught in the
book of St. Matthew directing the seeker on the path to the way of life, to spiritual light, and the ultimate
complete freedom of man (Quakertown, Pa: Philosophical Pub. Co. 1945); The philosophy of fire: arcanum
of the spiritual light, (Quakertown, Pa: Beverly Hall Corp, 1964).
15
See the apology Hall makes to freemasonry and the acclaimed crucial role of a freemason in bettering
himself and humankind in Manly P. Hall, The lost keys of masonry : the legend of Hiram Abiff, ([Belle
Fourche]: NuVision Publications, 2004).
16
R. Swinburne Clymer, Alchemy and the alchemists: giving the secret of the Philosopher's Stone,
(Allentown, Pa: Philosophical Pub. Co., 1907).
17
Robert C. Smith, The wounded Jung: effects of Jung's relationships on his life and work, (Evanston, Ill:
Northwestern University Press, 1996).
18
C. G Jung and Marie-Luise von Franz, Man and his symbols, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964).
19
C. G Jung, Alchemical studies. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967); Psychology and
religion, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938); C. G Jung and Violet Staub de Laszlo, Psyche and
symbol; a selection from the writings of C. G. Jung, (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1958).

19
In the field of the History of Religion, led by Mircea Eliades influential work,
The Forge and the Crucible20 which initially tackled both esoteric and exoteric sides of
alchemy, the emphasis nonetheless fell disproportionately on the spiritual side.21 It is
true that Eliade made an attempt to balance the esoteric with the exoteric, specifically
tracking the practices of metallurgy up to its early origins while discussing the mysticism
associated with rituals performed at the oven.22 His conclusion that ancient metallurgy
was permeated with rites and theories originating in prehistory was a significant
contribution, and he never denied the laboratory practice while discussing esoteric rituals.
However, he nonetheless stepped into overarching generalizations favoring the spiritual.
Eliade explained alchemical symbols23 as universal intrinsic aspects of all human life
across all epochs. Where Jung saw the famous alchemical allegory mysterium
coniunctionis (the sacred marriage of the opposites, or as Rosicrucians put it, the
chemical marriage) as a symbol used by the Mind24 to heal itself, Eliade adopted a
more expansive and philosophical view when he saw the same symbol coincidentia
opositorum (the unity of contraries)25 manifested everywhere,26 at all levels of human
activity. 27

20

Mircea Eliade, The forge and the crucible, (New York: Harper, 1962).
Mircea Eliade, Patterns in comparative religion, (New York: World, 1963). See also, J Girardot and Mac
Linscott Ricketts, Imagination and meaning: the scholarly and literary worlds of Mircea Eliade (New York:
Seabury Press, 1982).
22
Eliade discusses in The forge and the crucible historical evidence to back up both the occult as well as
metallurgy in alchemical ancient practices, starting with Babylonian tablets which evidence magic rituals
associated with chemistry.
23
Mircea Eliade, Myths, rites, symbols: a Mircea Eliade reader, (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); also
Mircea Eliade and Willard R. Trask, Rites and symbols of initiation: the mysteries of birth and rebirth (New
York: Harper & Row, 1965); Occultism, witchcraft, and cultural fashions: essays in comparative religions,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
24
C. G. Jung, Mysterium coniunctionis: an inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in
alchemy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).
25
Mircea Eliade, La
,
rich Rhein-Verlag, 1959).
21

20
It is unfortunate that the agenda of recent camps of historians often overlooks the
merit of Eliades book. Eliade approached both aspects of ancient alchemy while working
with whatever sources he had available, an approach that should be followed in the
historical analysis of alchemy. His seminal studies on shamanism28 should not be
excluded from the chemistry aspect of the field.
Regardless of their errors and merits, both the Eliadian and Jungian approaches to
alchemy can only be understood within the larger context of the epoch29 when these
scholars lived and worked. The messianic zeal toward psychology 30 was the dominant
trend in the early twentieth century. This psychological line of thought in the West can be
explained as integral part of a wider general effort to promote science and incorporate
scientific methods within all disciplines, including the humanities.31 The same sciencedriven agenda also informed the increasing interest in the History of Ideas,32 particularly
the History of Science a young and vigorous, emerging field at the time.

26

Mircea Eliade and Willard R. Trask, The sacred and the profane: the nature of religion, (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1959);
, (Paris: Gallimard, 1962).
27
Jonathan . Smith, Acknowledgments Morphology and History in Mircea Eliade's Patterns in
Comparative Religion 1949-1999), Part 2 The Texture of the Work, History of Religions 39, no. 4 (2000):
332-351, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176543.
28
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstasy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1972).
29
Richard Noll, The Jung cult: origins of a charismatic movement, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1994).
30
Geraldine Joncich, E. L. Thorndike The psychologist as professional man of science, American
Psychologist 23, no.6 (1968): 434, DOI: 10.1037/h0026428.
31
This enterprise however, involved inevitable risks and resulted in unintended consequences of
overlooking the intrinsic differences and varieties of the field of History.
32
Anthony Grafton, The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond, J
f
History of Ideas 67, no.1, (2006): 1-32, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3840397.

21
Similarly is to be noted that in its early years AAAS33 revealed a strong preference for
psychology,34 with two psychologists becoming presidents of the Association.35 One of
them was Edward L Thorndike, brother of the pioneering historian of science and magic
Lynn Thorndike.36 Anthony Grafton acknowledges that Thorndike's History of Magic
and Experimental Science is perhaps the largest in scale among all American
enterprises in the history of ideas. 37
While the interest in science is contextual for Thorndike, echoing the trends of his
time, the psychological approach is not obvious in his method. Instead, he tries a more
empiricist approach. He was not an isolated intellectual case, and his work on the history
of alchemy pioneered the role of alchemy in the development of modern science over an
extended period of time.

33

American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Numerous psychologists have been involved in the AAAS as representatives to its council and as
officers of Section I Psychology), in Deborah J Coon and Heather Allard Sprenger, Psychologists in
Service to Science, American Psychologist 53, no. 12, (1998): 1253, DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.53.12.1253.
35
The presidential office was represented by psychologists James McKeen Cattell and Edward L.
Thorndike, Ibid.
36
Lynn Thorndike, A history of magic and experimental science, 8 vols., (New York: The Macmillan
company, 1923).
37
Grafton, The History of Ideas, 13.
34

22
This empirical shift in alchemy studies from the focus on the mind (prevailing in Eliadeinspired spiritualist trend, Jungian38 psychology) was further promoted by scholars
specifically focused on chemistry, such as Julius Ruska (a German orientalist who
specialized in Arabic alchemical texts),39 Tenney Davis,40 and George Sarton41 (founder
of the History of Science society and its associayed journals Isis and Osiris). However,
neither Thorndike, Ruska, Davis, nor Sarton made alchemy the focus of their studies;
instead, they referred tangentially to it in more general contexts such as the history of
science and the history of chemistry.
In the latter part of the twentieth century two main camps have dominated the
historiography of alchemy. In their narrowed investigations of esoteric or exoteric
aspects, the two dominant camps emerge from psychology and chemistry. Within the first
camp, scholars have opted to embrace Thorndikes empirical approach and distance
themselves from Eliade.

38

C. G. Jung and Robert Alan Segal, The Gnostic Jung, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
Julius Ruska, Arabische Alchemisten, (Heidelberg: Winter, 1924);Tabula smaragdina; ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der hermetischen Literatur, (Heidelberg Winter, 192 ) Muhammad ibn akar y , and Julius
Ruska,
, (Berlin: Verlag
Chemie, 1935); Studien zu Muhammad Ibn Umail al-Taminis Kitab al-Ma al-Waraqi wal-Ard anNajmiyah, Isis 23, (1935-36): 310-342.
40
Tenney L. Davis, The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives, (New York: Wiley, 1941); The autobiography
of Denis Zachaire: an account of an alchemist's life in the sixteenth century, (Edmonds, WA: Alchemical
Press, 1993).
41
George Sarton, A history of science, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952); Six wings: men of
science in the Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957).
39

23
Ironically, however, these scholars were still tacitly drawing on Eliades legacy. Hlne
Metzger,42 Betty Jo Dobbs,43 feminists Carolyn Merchant44 and Evelyn Fox-Keller,45 and
I. L. C. W. McPhail46 presented medieval and early modern alchemy as a religious
process.

42

Helene Metzger, Les Doctrines Chimiques en Fmnce au debut du XVIle ala fin du XIIIe Siicle (Paris:
Presses Univ. France, 1923).
43
Betty J. T. Dobbs, The foundations of Newton's alchemy: or, "The hunting of the greene lyon",
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); The Janus faces of genius: the role of alchemy in Newton's
thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Betty J. T. Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob, Newton
and the culture of Newtonianism, (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995).
44
For a critique of Merchants feminist historiography of science, see Brian Vickers, "Francis Bacon,
feminist historiography, and the dominion of nature," Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no.1 (2008): 117.
45
Evelyn F. Keller, Reflections on gender and science, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
46
I. L. C. W. MacPhail and Richard Pachella, Alchemy and the occult: a catalogue of books and manuscripts
from the collection of Paul and Mary Mellon given to Yale University Library, (New Haven: Yale University
Library, 1968).

24
Other informative studies explore alchemys potential to enrich aspects of material
culture in the history of alchemy and chemistry, pioneered by M. Berthelot,47 Eric J.
Holmyard,48 J. R. Partington,49 Taylor, F. Sherwood,50 Walter Pagel,51 Robert P.
Multhauf,52 John Read,53 Robert J. Forbes,54 C. A. Reichen,55 C. S. Smith,56 Jacob
Bronowski,57 as well as C. U. M. Smith.58 Alan Pritchard provides a bibliography of
primary and secondary works on alchemy (and chemistry, reflecting the conceptual
conjoining of the fields) between1597-1978.59

47

M. Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 3 vols. (Paris: G. Steinhel, 18871888).
Eric John Holmyard, Alchemy, (Baltimore, Md: Penguin Books, 1968) and Chemistry to the time of
Dalton, (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1925).
49
J. R. Partington, A short history of chemistry, (New York: Dover Publications, 1989).
50
Taylor, F. Sherwood, The alchemists, founders of modern chemistry, (New York: Schuman, 1949), and
The alchemists, (New York: Collier, 1962).
51
Walter Pagel, Joan Baptista van Helmont: reformer of science and medicine, (Cambridge
[Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Paracelsus; an introduction to philosophical
medicine in the era of the Renaissance, (Basel: Karger,1958); and Walter Pagel and Allen G. Debus,
Science, medicine, and society in the Renaissance; essays to honor Walter Pagel, (New York: Science
History Publications, 1972).
52
Robert P. Multhauf, The origins of chemistry, (New York: F. Watts, 1967); Allen G. Debus and Robert P.
Multhauf, Alchemy and chemistry in the seventeenth century. Papers read by Allen G. Debus and Robert P.
Multhauf at a Clark Library seminar, March 12, 1966, (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, Univ. of California, 1966).
53
John Read and F. H. Sawyer, Prelude to chemistry; an outline of alchemy, its literature and relationships,
(New York: The Macmillan company, 1937); The alchemist in life, literature and art, (London: T. Nelson,
1947); Through alchemy to chemistry; a procession of ideas & personalities, (London: G. Bell, 1957), as
well as John Read, Humour and humanism in chemistry, (New York: British Book Centre, 1947).
54
Robert J. Forbes, Was Newton an alchemist? (University of Penn. Press, 1949); Studies in ancient
technology, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964); also his article "The origin of alchemy," Studies in Ancient
Technology 1, (1955): 121-144.
55
Charles A. Reichen, A History of Chemistry, (New York: Hawthorn, 1963).
56
A. G. Sisco and C. S. Smith, Lazarus Ercker's Treatise on ores and assaying, (Chicago: University of
Chicago press, 1951).
57
Jacob Bronowski, Science and human values, (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
58
C. U. M. Smith, The problem of life: an essay in the origins of biological thought, (New York: Wiley,
1976).
59
Alan Pritchard, Alchemy. A bibliography of English-language writings, (London, Boston and Henley,
Routledge & Kegan Paul jointly with the Library Association, 1980).
48

25
More recently two antagonistic camps, cabalist hermeticists and chemistryhistorians have squared off and seem irreconcilably at odds. Moreover, in addition to
topical distinctions, current historiography of alchemy has drifted away from grand
narratives to in-depth analyses of exoteric details. Unfortunately, these exoteric analyses
ignore the esoteric, even when the latter is apparent in their findings. A lack of a dialogue
between the two camps seems to have brought the discipline to an impasse. This
dissertation attempts to re-open a dialogue, suggesting that the most fruitful approach to
the history of alchemy is a holistic one that balances its exoteric and esoteric dimensions.
One approach that offers potential to bring the exoteric and the esoteric together
follows recent developments in cognitive studies and their expression in archaeology,60
anthropology,61 the history of popular culture62 and folk magic,63 witchcraft,64 literature,65

60

See pioneering works in archaeology, a quest for shamanic evidence in Prehistory, in Miranda J. and
Stephen Aldhouse-Green, The quest for the shaman: shape-shifters, sorcerers, and spirit-healers of ancient
Europe, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005); as well as in Robert E. Ryan, The strong eye of shamanism: a
journey into the caves of consciousness, (Rochester, Vt: Inner Traditions, 1999).
61
Andrei A. Znamenski, The beauty of the primitive: shamanism and the Western imagination, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007); Roger N. Walsh, The world of shamanism: new views of an ancient
tradition. Woodbury, (Minn: Llewellyn Publications, 2007); Lewis-Williams, D., & Pearce, D. Inside the
Neolithic mind: Consciousness, cosmos, and the realm of the gods, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005);
62
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: deciphering the witches' Sabbath, (New York: Penguin Books, 1992); as well as
The night battles: witchcraft & agrarian cults in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries, (Baltimore, Md:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin
and the phantoms of the night, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998).
63
va P cs, Between the living and the dead a perspective on witches and seers in the early modern age,
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999); Emma Wilby, Cunning folk and familiar spirits:
shamanistic visionary traditions in early modern British witchcraft and magic, (Brighton [England]: Sussex
Academic Press, 2005); as well as Edward Bever, The realities of witchcraft and popular magic in early
modern Europe: culture, cognition, and everyday life, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
64
Norman Rufus Colin Cohn, Europe's inner demons: an enquiry inspired by the great witch-hunt, (New
York: New American Library, 1977); Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick, A history of pagan Europe,
(London: Routledge, 1995).
65
See seminal discussions of altered states of consciousness in medieval literature with a comprehensive
analysis of the visions of medieval mystic and saint Teresa de Avila, in Barbara Mujica, Beyond Image
The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Avila, Hispania 84, no. 4 (December, 2001): 741-748; for a
discussion on the pros and cons of using psychoanalysis in the study of literature also see Leonard F.

26
art history,66 psychology and neuroscience,67 kabbalah,68 and botanic shamanic
alchemy.69 Scholars specializing in esoteric alchemy have benefited from such cognitive
research and blended it with interdisciplinary approaches. Pioneering studies in esoteric
alchemy have thus branched out to several topics: shamanic alchemy,70 shamanic
cabalistic alchemy,71 cabalistic hermetic alchemy,72 symbolism in hermetic art,73 spiritual
alchemy and theosophy,74 and Jungian semiotic studies.75

Manheim, and Eleanor Manheim, Hidden patterns: studies in psychoanalytic literary criticism, (New York:
Macmillan, 1966).
66
See Staffords attempt to unite both neuroscience and art in Barbara Maria Stafford, Echo objects: The
cognitive work of images, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007); also P. Cavanagh, The
artist as neuroscientist, Nature 434, (2005): 301307; V. S.Ramachandran & W. Hirstein, The science of
art A neurological theory of aesthetic Experience, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, (1999): 1551;
also, about how painters engage in optical experiments see S. Zeki, Inner vision: An exploration of art and
the brain, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); J. Robinson, Deeper than reason: Emotion and its role in
literature, music, and art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Andreas Lommel, Shamanism; the
beginnings of art, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966);
67
K. Walton, Mimesis as make-believe: On the foundations of the representational arts, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1990); D. Dennett, Sweet dreams: Philosophical obstacles to a science of
consciousness, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Paula Amey Shepard, Seeing with the strong eye:
psychotherapists' initial experience of Shamanic journeying, (Thesis Psy. D., Massachusetts School of
Professional Psychology, 1999).
68
Jonathan Garb, Shamanic trance in modern Kabbalah, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011);
Charles H. Silverstein, Kabbalistic Influences on Alchemy, Psychoanalysis, and Analytic Psychology,
Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought 55, no. 2, (2012): 205-218,
DOI:10.1080/00332925.2012.677652;
69
Clark Heinrich, Magic mushrooms in religion and alchemy, (Rochester, Vt: Park Street Press, 2002); Carl
A. P. Ruck, The hidden world: survival of pagan shamanic themes in European fairytales, (Durham, N.C.:
Carolina Academic Press, 2007); Carl A. P. Ruck, Blaise D. Staples, and Clark Heinrich, The apples of Apollo:
pagan and Christian mysteries of the Eucharist, (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2001);
70
See above, note 55.
71
See above note 54.
72
See Kevin Killeen and Peter J. Forshaw, The word and the world, as well as note 91; Urszula
Szulakowska, The alchemy of light; Raphael Patai, The Jewish alchemists: a history and source book,
Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press, 1994) see also Part I Natural Philosophies in Anthony
Grafton and Nancy G. Siraisi, Natural particulars nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe,
Cambridge, Mass MIT Press, 1999) Istv n Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai, Symmetry: a unifying
concept, (Bolinas, Calif: Shelter Publications, 1994).

27
While some scholars in the exoteric camp seek to purge from the core of alchemy
the abstract elucubrations of much early scholarship76 and do so by multiplying a
myriad of isolated case studies,77 more synthetic scholarly literature dedicated to
exoteric alchemy has recently emerged, focusing on such various topics as patronage,
craft, and alchemical medicine, often pointing toward the role of alchemy in the
Scientific Revolution.78

73

Jacob Wamberg, Art & alchemy, (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006); Urszula Szulakowska,
Alchemy in contemporary art, (Farham: Ashgate Pub, 2011); L. M. Principe and L. DeWitt, Transmutations.
Alchemy in Art: Selected Works from the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage
Foundation (Philadelphia, Penn.: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2002); Alexander Roob, Alchemy &
mysticism: the hermetic museum, K ln Taschen, 2
) A. Adams and S. J. Linden, ed., Emblems and
Alchemy (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 1998); P. 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; Early
Science and Medicine 5, no. 2 (2000).
74
Urszula Szulakowska, The sacrificial body and the day of doom: alchemy and apocalyptic discourse in the
Protestant Reformation. Leiden: Brill, 2006); Daniel Merkur, The Study of Spiritual Alchemy: Mysticism,
Gold-Making, and Esoteric Hermeneutics, Ambix 37, no. 1, (1990): 35-45; Ralph Slotten, Exoteric and
Esoteric Modes of Apprehension, Sociological Analysis 38, no. 3, (Autumn, 1977): 185-208; A Faivre, The
Notions of Concealment and Secrecy in Modern Esoteric Currents Since the Renaissance (a
Methodological Approach), in Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed.
E.R. Wolfson, (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 1999): 155-176; Kocku von Stuckrad, Western esotericism:
Towards an integrative model of interpretation, Religion 35, no. 2, (2005): 78-97.
75
C. G. Jung and Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Jung on alchemy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1995).
76
Marcos Martinn-Torres, Some Recent Developments in the Historiography of Alchemy, Ambix 58,
no. 3, (November, 2011): 218.
77
Ibid, 235.
78
William R Newman and Anthony Grafton, Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern
Europe, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001).

28
An especially rich area of investigation in exoteric alchemy concerns the
dynamic exchange of information between artisans,79 metallurgists,80 miners, potters,
jewelers, and smelters on one the hand, and the theorists, natural philosophers,81 scholars,
doctors and intellectual alchemists on the other.82 Indeed, many alchemists were
themselves both skillful metallurgists as well as educated humanists capable of great
insights theorizing science.83 The most recent capstone to the historiography of exoteric
alchemy (dubbed the New Historiography of alchemy) is the work of Newman and
Principe.84

79

Recent revisionist literature does not agree with the artificial separation between humanists and
craftsmen, and argues instead for a joint scholar and craftsman thesis. About the role of artisans and
the role of manual labor in shaping theory, as well as how they theorized about nature from their
manipulation of natural materials, see Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the
Scientific Revolution, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). In contrast, Paolo Rossi argued that
craftsmen were regarding their workshops as generators of cognition, meaning their early experimental
methods and observation would contribute to natural philosophy and theories of matter, see Paolo Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era.
80
On metallurgist alchemist Vannoccio Biringuccio see Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts
in the Early Modern Era, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
81
About the role of humanists such as Rodolphus Agricola see Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and
the Arts in the Early Modern Era.
82
Monika Wulz, The material memory of history Edgar ilsels epistemology of historiography, Studies
in East European Thought 64, no. 1, (2012): 91-105, DOI: 10.1007/s11212-012-9159-1.
83
W. R. Newman and L. M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian
Chymistry (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
84
Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire.

29
The New Historiography is not without its critics (notably Tilton, Vickers and
Calian),85 however, called to task for viewing alchemical texts through a single exoteric
lens and thus over-emphasizing the role of chemistry and de-emphasizng the importance
of alchemical symbols and their rich and multifaceted meanings (found in, as we will see
in this dissertation, cabalistic, hermetic, gnostic, religious philosophic and theosophical
ciphers).
This dissertation joins an emerging though still small camp that embraces a
balanced approach to bridge the exoteric and esoteric literature. It joins recent work by
Peter Forshaw, Bruce Moran, Paul Magdalino and Maria Papathanassiou. Forshaw, for
example, integrates cabalistic alchemy into more exoteric themes, and has published in
exoteric-oriented journals86 and books,87 without losing sight of the esoteric elements.
Moran also combines a balanced esoteric and exoteric analysis on Libavius. The seminal
studies of Magdalino and Papathanassiou on the Byzantine alchemist Stephanos of
Alexandria also demonstrate a balance of the esoteric and exoteric sides.88

85

G.F. Calian, Alkimia operativa and alkimia speculativa: Some Modern Controversies on the
Historiography of Alchemy, Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 16 (2010): 1669 B. Vickers, The New
Historiography and the Limits of Alchemy, Annals of Science 65 (2008): 12756, and response in W. R.
Newman, Brian Vickers on Alchemy and the Occult a Response, Perspectives on Science 17, no. 4
(2009): 482506; H. Tilton, The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work of
Count Michael Maier (Berlin: Walter de Gruyte, 2003), 918.
86
Ambix, http://www.ambix.org/publications/ambix/
87
See Peter Forshaw, Alchemical Exegesis Fractious Distillations of the Essence of Hermes, and Bruce
Moran, The Less Well-known Libavius Spirits, Powers, and Metaphors in the Practice of Knowing Nature
in ed. Lawrence Principe, Chymists and chymistry: studies in the history of alchemy and early modern
chemistry, (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2007).
88
See Paul Magdalino, Stephanos of Alexandria a famous Byzantine scholar, alchemist and astrologer,
as well as Maria Papathanassiou, Graeco-Egyptian alchemy in Byzantium, in Paul Magdalino and Maria
V. Mavroudi, The occult sciences in Byzantium, (Geneva: La Pomme d'or, 2006).

30
Moreover, in two separate articles, Magdalino and Papathanassiou demonstrate
that Stephanos was versed in cabalistic alchemy and astrology, as well as in laboratory
practices to transmute base metal into gold. Combining the esoteric and exoteric, after
observing the starry sky and determining planetary aspects, Stephanos selected for work
only those metals corresponding to the visible planets, thus achieving a mirroring of the
sky in his alembic. The goal of this dissertation, then, is to join the current historiography
by bridging the esoteric and exoteric camps and nudge the field into a more holistic
approach. It rests upon the assumption that the history of alchemy cannot be reduced to
either the history of chemistry or the history of shamanic techniques, clinical
hallucinations, or magic alone, but instead must achieve a balance between the esoteric
and exoteric elements of alchemy.

31

CHAPTER 2 PATTERNS AND SYMBOLS IN ALCHEMICAL DATA

"Wer sich zum Forscher ausbilden will, muss die Originalwerke... studieren."89
[One who wants to become a researcher, one should study the originals.]
A seer, prophet, saint, cabalist, magician, alchemist, and shaman had different
reasons to embark on a journey of the soul. Occasionally, through revelation or visions,
sacred dreams and meditative trances, alchemists such as Zosimos of Panopolis attempted
to understand the secret laws of nature and the decoding of ancient books about and the
making of gold and elixirs. In doing so, they were following an ancient path of tapping
into the repository of divine knowledge believed to be accessible only through contact
with the hidden spirit world. Ancient seers, believed to be healers, sought to find much
needed cure through the contact with the souls of their patients, gods and the dead.90
Shamans of various cultures also shared a belief in the unseen powers and virtues of
plants, and the communication with spirits to cure the sick tribesmen whose souls were
believed to be lost, trapped or kidnapped in the otherworld.91

89

My translation of Kekules reconstructed account about the speech he presented in 189 at the German
Chemical Society; the German original text can be found in G. Schultz, Bericht iiber die Feier der
Deutchen Chemischen Ge-sellschaft zu Ehren August Kekule's [Report on the celebration of the German
Chemical Society in honor of August Kekule], Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 23, (1890):
1265-1312.
90
Carl A. P. Ruck, The hidden world: survival of pagan shamanic themes in European fairytales, (Durham,
N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2007), 10-23.
91
Miranda J. and Stephen Aldhouse-Green, The quest for the shaman: shape-shifters, sorcerers, and spirithealers of ancient Europe, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 11-12.

32
Religious mystics also sought visions, for reaching closer proximity to God, gain
the knowledge of the divine, heighten their emotions to ecstatic states, and explore their
inner self.92 Cabalists also sought to achieve a mystical union with the deity, and through
the contact with the sacred light rabbis attempted to cure their communities.93 During
trances, witches94 and practitioners of folk magic95 sought protection of village crops,
husbandry, family and neighbors, by engaging in action against purported malevolent
forces or other occult competitors.96
This chapter will demonstrate that an ancient seer, medieval mystic, cabalist,
Renaissance witch, both modern and prehistoric shaman and a number of visionary
alchemists shared a common pattern of mental imagery. However, their fundamental
understanding of the meanings attached to those images varied depending on their
scholarly, spiritual and practical agenda and cultural context they lived in.

92

Barbara Mujica, Beyond Image: The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Avila, Hispania, Vol.
84, no. 4 (Dec., 2001): 741-48.
93
Charles H. Silverstein, Kabbalistic Influences on Alchemy, Psychoanalysis, and Analytic Psychology,
Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought 55, no. 2, (2012): 205-218,
DOI:10.1080/00332925.2012.677652.
94
va P cs, Between the living and the dead a perspective on witches and seers in the early modern age,
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999).
95
Emma Wilby, Cunning folk and familiar spirits: shamanistic visionary traditions in early modern British
witchcraft and magic, (Brighton [England]: Sussex Academic Press, 2005).
96
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: deciphering the witches' Sabbath, (New York: Penguin Books, 1992); as well as
The night battles: witchcraft & agrarian cults in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries, (Baltimore, Md:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

33
While their worldviews obviously differed in cultural and historical details, there was a
shared fundamental cognitive foundation.97 It is this foundation that is addressed in this
chapter, because establishing the origin of symbols sheds light on their evolution.
Commonalities, however defined, across symbolic systems provide a robust theoretical
foundation upon which the cultural, religious and historical variation can be explored.
Both shared foundations and variation help improve our understanding of the formation,
invariable structure and historical evolution in the meaning of alchemical symbols. A text
based analysis will compare explanatory patterns from cognitive studies about ASC,
against selected descriptions of alchemists visions, shamans personal stories about spirit
travel, religious mystic confessions about soul explorations, witches accounts about
flying, and laboratory reports of tested subjects.
Cognitive studies have developed a number of definitions when referring to ASC:
hypnagogia for the transitional stages between wakefulness and sleep,98 synaesthesia
for sensations when sound is experienced as color, or one feels that can touch music,99
Near Death Experience100 (NDE), and drug-induced hallucinations.101 Three main
phases of inducing ASC have been singled out.

97

On one hand, some scholars have viewed emotions and feelings as cognitions, thus treating the mind
and the body as separated entities. On the other hand, another divide in scholarly literature has
promoted a strict separation of the individual from the collective. Seminal recent studies have
demonstrated the opposite while discussing the continuities between the personal and the social, the
emotional and the cognitive. E.g., Charles Stewart, Fields in Dreams Anxiety, Experience, and the Limits
of Social Constructionism in Modern Greek Dream Narratives, American Ethnologist 24, no. 4 (Nov.,
1997): 877-894.
98
Andreas Mavromatis, Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness, (London: Routledge, 1987).
99
Richard Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, (Bradford Books, 2003).
100
Mark Fox, Religion, Spirituality and the Neardeath Experience, (London: Routledge, 2003), 17.
101
Jeremy Narby & Francis Huxley, Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge, (Tarcher:
Book Club Ed., 2001).

34
The first phase includes luminous geometrical images, known by a variation of terms:
phosphenes,102 entoptic phenomena,103 endogenous percepts,104 and constants.105
The second phase develops as a transition106 where images are fuzzy and deformed while
tunnel sensation107 (i.e. the experience of being carried through a tunnel) occurs. The
third phase involves perceiving complex narratives in vivid hallucinations, with all five
sensory systems actively engaged.

Part I
The Tunnel Pattern and Symbols of Chaos, Darkness, Blackness, Waters, Hades,
Pit, Channel, Castle, Dome, Temple
A tunnel is a fairly common symbol in alchemical texts. While the symbol has
baffled generations of readers and sparked debates among scholars, no satisfactory
analysis has been offered. A plausible explanation for the recurring experience of tunnels
in alchemical texts and drawings is offered in this study. More specifically, similarities
between the experiences described by alchemists and subjects undergoing ASC will be
explored.

102

Aldhouse-Green, The quest for the shaman, 11-12; G. Oster, Phosphenes, Scientific American 222,
no. 2, (1970): 83-87.
103
Ronald K. Siegel, Cocaine Hallucinations, American Journal of Psychiatry 135, (1978): 309-314.
104
Jeremy Ch. Dronfield, Subjective visual phenomena in Irish passage tomb art: vision, cosmology and
shamanism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
105
Heinrich Klver, Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
106
Aldhouse-Green, 3o.
107
In scholarly literature, also compared to vortex, swirl, whorl, and whirl, while subjects under
investigation refer to it as immersion, corridor, sewer, train tunnel, cave hall, labyrinth, funnel, hollow
cosmic tree, spiral, narrow chasm, dizzying precipice, pit, tower, cylinder, etc.

35
Severe forms of ASC described in clinical studies report sensations of emerging through
a tunnel or a dark channel in a vortex motion;108 tumbling down a tunnel, sometimes
followed by drowning sensation. Alchemical texts depict allegorically a tunnel through
which alchemists, spirit guardians of alchemical secrets and angels ascend and descend.
Studies of ASC induced by cannabis-induced hallucination report the vision of
darkness and the sensation of moving chaotically through a tunnel: The tunnel belched
and geared its images, then inhaled and sucked [him] into its very center...109 Similarly,
the NDE reports in Cognitive Studies note of a pattern of moving through [a]long
dark place [which] seem[ed] like a sewer110 and describe the phase two tunnel as a
speed travel through a vortex111: I was moving at high speed towards a net of great
luminosity The grid appeared as a barrier that I did not want to move through, though
for a brief moment my speed appeared to slow down.112 A relevant example in alchemy
is a work attributed to a mysterious fourteenth-century Italian alchemist known as
Bernard of Trevisan. He confesses:
[I] was buried in a most profound sleep when I thought I saw a statue Then
taking me by the hair, he made me cross the regions of the heavens...He
carried me still further on, then having tossed me in a tornado, he disappeared and
I found myself upon an island floating on a sea...113

108

Ronald K. Siegel, "Halucinations", Scientific American 237, (1977): 132-140.

Narby & Huxley, Shamans Trough Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge, 144.
110
Fox, Religion, Spirituality and the Neardeath Experience, 17.
111
P. C. Bressloff &P. J. Wiener, Geometric Visual Hallucinations, Euclidian symmetry and the functional
architecture of the striate cortex, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, London, Series B 356,
(2001): 299-330.
112
Fox, 57-58. See also, Eugene G. DAquili & Andre B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of
Religious Experience, (Series: Theology and the sciences, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999).
113
Text attributed to Bernard Trevisan in Adam McLean, How to read alchemical texts An introductory
study course for the perplexed, (2005), PDF e-book, CD-ROM, Lesson 3, 5-6.
109

36
Bernards mentioning of a trance-like state, the vision of a hybrid creature
carrying the adept, followed by the experience of being plunged into a chaotic whirlpool
reveals a pattern typical for the second phase of ASC, commonly described as the
sensation of ascending via a tunnel. The mentioning of the tornado is a perfect illustration
of the vortex sensation,114 also commonly reported during ASC.
Another significant account of shamanic initiation reveals similarity in the
recurring symbols used in alchemical works: When you are learning to be a doctor, your
teacher can take you to a big hole in the spirit worldthat goes underground ...The
underground place means spirit hole, I can go either up or down115 The famous
late antique alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis describes a series of self-induced trances in
which allegoric depictions of tunnel-like paths, underground meanders, dark labyrinth
and chaos resurface as well. He also describes the descent of the 15 steps of
darkness,116 and depicts the place having neither beginning nor end in its construction,
and he invites the reader to notice on which side is the entryFor narrow is the place at
which the temple opens.117 The chaotic meandering along this tunnel-like path is vividly
described, including chaos in the darkness, where Zosimos eventually loses his way.
Without guidance in the labyrinth, he shortly awakens and soon falls back to sleep:

114

Ronald K. Siegel, The Psychology of Life After Death, American Psychologist 35, no. 10, (1980): 911931.
115
African San shaman-healer in Bradford Keeney, Ropes to God: experiencing the bushman spiritual
universe, (Philadelphia, Pa: Ringing Rocks Press, 2003), 105.
116
Stanton J. Linden, The alchemy reader: from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 51.
117
Ibid, 52.

37
And then on returning I could not find the way, not seeing how to get out
And I saw in my sleep And I said to him 'I stand here because, having missed
every road, I find myself at a loss.'And again I went along the road, and as I
came near to the punishment again I lost my way, losing sight of the path,
wandering And again I saw he that bore the sword said 'You have fulfilled
the seven steps beneath.'118
More subjects experiencing ASC report similar patterns: something very vague
moving in the dark, like a train entering a tunnel or something similar, not very clear.119
Further similarities in the experience of chaos in ASC accounts and alchemical texts
could be observed. Zosimos describes that in his shamanic dreams, he experiences a
markedly chaotic amalgamation of incongruous and contrastive states and qualities: For
all things are interwoven and separate afresh, and all things are mingled and all things
combine, all things are mixed and all unmixed, all things are moistened and all things
dried and all things flower and blossom in the altar shaped like a bowl.120 When
interpreting this vision, the alchemist assigns it an exoteric meaning. This description of
a chaos-like episode is used to illustrate an alchemical state to which metals are brought
before being perfected through fire. In many pagan cultures, both ancient and present, a
bowl or cauldron is a common allegory of chaos and potential female energies of Mother
Nature, in which a neophyte is cooked to be killed and resurrected. Zosimos elaborates on
the return to chaos as a bubbling water, and also as a chaotic movement of an
undistinguished formless swarming and dissolving of metallic souls: And I saw the same
altar in the form of a bowl and at the top the water bubbling, and many people in it
endlessly.121

118

Ibid, 52, 53.

Mavromatis, Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness, 20.
120
Linden, The alchemy reader, 52.
121
Ibid, 51.
119

38
The association between chaos and water is recurrent in Zosimos accounts: and
authority over this water and the men under punishment was given to him, 122 [t]he
copper man gives and the watery stone receives.123 Similar to Zosimoss vision, various
reports on ASC also mention the connection between chaos and water. For example, a
South-American Piro reports that in his vision he slipped into a big holeHe went
down into that hole. When he came out again, he was in another world by a shallow
river.124 Additionally, a Renaissance alchemical poem attributed to the alchemist and
astrologer Simon Forman, has a noteworthy title, Of the Division of Chaos, and depicts
tunnel sensation along with descending movement:
Into darkness then did descend the spirit of God,
Upon the watery chaos, whereon he made his abode.
Then out of this Chaos, the four elements were made:
Heat and cold, moist and dry, in like wise,125
The notion of Chaos in a text by the Renaissance author Thomas Vaughan can be
explained as a correspondence to phase 1 of ASC (darkness with dots of light) and phase
2 (tunnel sensation, descending version). Similar to Zosimos who had a vision about
descending fifteen steps, and describes the temple having neither beginning nor end in
its construction,126 in Vaughans mysterious discourse, Aula lucis, (Lat. The House of
Light, 1651), we read about seven steps to Chaos:

122

Ibid.
Ibid, 52.
124
P. Gow, An Amazonian Myth and its History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 58.
125
Bodleian Library Oxford, MS Ashmole 240, attributed to Simon Forman (1552-1611).
126
Linden, 52.
123

39
A steep descent extends beneath the earth, leading seven ways by stages and beneath
which is the throne of a horrible necessity.127 The author comments on Trismegistus
visions: in his vision of the creation, did first see a pleasing, gladsome light, but
interminated [without end]. Afterwards appeared a horrible sad darkness, and this moved
downwards, descending.128 Thomas Vaughan also hints at meditative states while
confessing in same work that there is inherent a certain secret, concomitant lustre, and
while they last the possessors also are subject to a clearness and serenity of mind.129 The
alchemist author continues on the same tone, echoing cabalistic theories and religious
creational stories:
This darkness he said was condensed into a certain water, but not without
a mournful, inexpressible voice or sound, as the vapors of the elements are
resolved by thunder. After this said that great philosopher the Holy Word
came out of the light and did get upon the water, and out of the water He made all
things. Let it be your study then who would know all things to seek out this
secret water, which hath in itself all things.130
Lab studies show that subjects in experiments during the second phase (Tunnel)
of an ASC reported a series of observable patterns and sometimes combinations of
patterns: a drowning sensation (going down),131 a whirling sensation similar to being
sucked into a tunnel where a small light is visible at its end, as well as a flying sensation
(going up).132

127

Thomas Vaughan, Aula Lucis, or House of Light: A discourse written in the year 1651... (London, 1652),
printed by William Leake, with transcription from the A.E. Waite edition of the works of Thomas Vaughan,
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/aula_lucis.html.
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
131
Aldhouse-Green, 46.
132
Robert E. Ryan, The strong eye of shamanism: a journey into the caves of consciousness, (Rochester, Vt:
Inner Traditions, 1999), 115-116.

40
As previously seen, there is a similarity between a shaman performing an initiatory path
of entering the big hole in the spirit world133 and a famous episode in the Rosicrucian
document Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz134 edited in 1616. After praying,
the protagonist is involved into a mystical soul-journey where he finds himself a prisoner
in a pitch-dark tunnel, which he calls Tower.135 He escapes from the dark and chaotic
pit by ascending through the bright hole above: a round Hole at the very top was
uncoveredThey with the wings were instantly above through the hole.136 Similarly to
the Rosenkreutzs tower, an ASC report describes: it was like being in a cylinder.137
Zosimos accounts offer a notable illustration of the tunnel sensation pattern, its
various facets and features, as well as symbols evoked by it. The sensation of darkness,
chaos, humidity, or wet creeping creatures often accompanies the tunnel sensation
pattern. The continuous and blurred nature of these visions and other sensations suggests
that the adepts ASC is in its second phase.

133

When you are learning to be a doctor, your teacher can take you to a big hole in the spirit worldthat
goes underground ...The underground place means spirit hole, I can go either up or down in
Keeney, Ropes to God: experiencing the bushman spiritual universe, 105.
134
Anonymous work attributed to Johann Valentin Andreae, and the third of the original manifestos of
the Rosicrucian movement or Fraternity of the Rose Cross," in Christian Rosenkreutz, Chymical Wedding
of Christian Rosenkreutz, (Magnum Opus Hermetic, Sourceworks Series, Phanes Press, 1991),
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/chymwed6.html. On Rosicrucianism in general, see Frances Yates, The
Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
135
so that we imagined no other that we have been imprisoned in this Tower in Paul Marshall Allen
and Carlo Pietzner, A Christian Rosenkreutz anthology, (Blauvelt, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1968),
139.
136
Christian Rosenkreutz, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, Sixth Day,
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/chymwed6.html.
137
Fox, 21.

41
When the ASC transitions to its third phase, specificity increases, visions and sensations
take sharper shape and become more tangible, giving rise to a wide array of symbols
including moist darkness, primeval infinite Cosmic Waters, crepuscular ocean, fountain,
deem castle, wet labyrinth, humid pit, chaotic movements in a tunnel of snakes, fish or
mermaids etc.
The associative connection between tunnel sensation and darkness and Chaos and
Water can also found in religious experiences,138 which often describe reaching a dusky
spaceless space where words are inadequate.139 It is interesting to compare the findings
reported in the cognitive studies into ASC to written accounts of practices of spiritual
transformation developed in Christian religious traditions. To illustrate, while extensive
literature exists on the division between the introspective, tacit and meditative apophatic
and the expressive, image-driven and verbal katophatic traditions in early Catholicism,140
no inquiry has been made into the similarity between mystic experiences in each tradition
and the ASC phases.

138

Tunnels seen in prehistoric visionary experiences are believed to be the origin of many ancient
religious practices and rituals. The examples include shamans entering tunnel-like chambers in caves to
paint their visions from dream journeys induced by ingesting hallucinogenic plants. One may recall other
religious practices such as digging very deep and narrow pits to throw in the sacrifices for gods and the
dead South America) holes in the ground that are attributed to other worlds, such as Sepapu mound
(fig. 19) of the Hopi tribe (North America); or Australian Northern Aranda tribesmen creating hypnoticlooking designs in the ground that were believed to facilitate the entrance into the other world. Ancient
myths and religious texts abound in references to underground dark chaotic labyrinths. The examples
include the myth of the Minotaur in the Minoan civilization; spirals drawn on stones that were believed to
facilitate the entrance into the other world Maltese mysterious complex of ruins) mandala paintings
made by the Tibetans for purposes of deep meditation, Italian churches having the labyrinth drawn on
their pavements, etc.
139
Mujica, Beyond Image The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Avila, 745.
140
Ibid, 741-748.

42
A notable example of an in-depth account of psychological experiences derived
from both apothactic141 and katophactic spiritual practices can be found in the writings of
sixteenth-century Catholic saint and visionary Teresa de Avila. Most importantly,
numerous introspective accounts of her inward movement to the soul142 reveal striking
similarities to the three phases of ASC. More concretely, she authored accounts about
mystic raptures illustrating the recurring experience of withdrawal,143 e.g. being
transported through a dark path, construed of as a turtle shell, a composite symbol of
water and tunnel. All of her images connote retreat, interiority, shutting out, and the
soul encounters light only after it has undergone a prolonged purgation, or darkness.144
A dedicated apophatic,145 she also incorporated katophactic elements (i.e. images) into
her prayers and therefore presents an interesting amalgamation of both spiritual
traditions. However, as Mujica explains, it is essentially the obliteration of image and
word that Saint Teresa achieves, what finds an affinitive resonance with the
apophaticism's" super-essential darkness.146

141

Apophaticism relies on "intuitive" rather than acquired knowledge and recognizes the inadequacy of
language to express Truth in Mujica, Beyond Image, 741-42.
142
Ibid.
143
Then the soul withdraws into itself, penetrating the interior castle through meditation and prayer. The
culmination of the experience is union, the mystical marriage that paradoxically fuses the darkness of
unknowing with divine illumination, in Mujica, 743.
144
Ibid, 741-42.
145
As Mujica explains This eradication of the ego, this complete yielding, is the "mystical marriage
"between the soul and God, characterized in some mystics, such as Teresa de Avila, by raptures, visions or
other altered states. Apophaticism emphasizes introspection and stillness, in Mujica, 741-742.
146
Ibid, 745.

43
Similarly, other spiritual journeys account for immersions147 from Lapp shamans, while
NDE reports describe the float[ing] down the hall.148
An interesting aspect of ASC phases is the evolution of visions from luminous
geometric patterns (typical of the first stage) and transition to a complex geometric form,
where the tunnel morphs into a dome, vault, or a castle, while the initial white pulsing
lights from stage one become resplendent precious stones (typical of second and third
stages).149 To exemplify, a report on hallucinogenic mushrooms explains:
visions began with art motifs, angular or the drawing board of an architect.
They evolved into palaces with courts, arcades, gardens - resplendent palaces all
laid over with precious stones my spirit had flown forth, ... There [the subject]
was, poised in spaceinvisible, incorporeal...150
Similarly, Zosimos sees a temple of one stone, like ceruse in appearance, like alabaster,
like marble of Proconnesus.151 One report on hypnagogic states mentions the wander
through the aisles of vast cathedrals, and the walking down a corridor built of
transparent, iridescent planes set at angles.152 Similarly, a report on mescaline153
intoxication describes: Then I saw halls and passages very plastically...two vaults were
separated by a very sharp edge.
147

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstasy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1972), 235.
148
Fox, 17.
149
Occasionally there is sudden transition from blurred drawings to distinct perspectiveAt the climax of
intoxication, however, visionary forms such as human and animal faces, monsters and architectural
details can be viewed comfortably At the climax of intoxication, however, visionary forms such as
human and animal faces, monsters and architectural details can be viewed comfortablyCertain visions
are of such solidity that they do not disappear or become indistinct upon the appearance of objective
light, in Kl ver, Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucination, 28.
150
Narby & Huxley, 144.
151
Linden, 52.
152
Mavromatis, 23.
153
alkaloid drug, C11H17NO3, obtained from mescal buttons, which produces hallucinations. Also
called peyote, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, (Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000), http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mescaline

44
On one side of the edge it was extraordinarily bright, on the other side it was shaded.154
Ecstatic Saint Teresa of Avila also has a vision of the dwelling of the soul as an enclosed
space, not only as a protective shell, but also as a castle dungeon.155
As per the reports and studies, the second ASC phase includes visions of unclear
or incomplete shapes, and the third phase includes visions of very vivid and clear images.
Examples of phase two abound when a visionary sees undefined shapeless creatures
lurking in the dark watery tunnel. Reports typically describe something animate could
be a human but animal-like with big teeth. A dragon, many interwoven snakes.156
Images of serpents often accompany the recurring vision of watery darkness around the
castle in writings of Saint Teresa of Avila. The association between tunnel sensation and
primeval Waters and reptiles also is recurrent in contemporary shamanism, as evidenced
in anthropological field reports on personal trance experiences. A notable example is
anthropologist Michael Harner who describes his first NDE from ingesting a
hallucinogenic mushroom called ayahuasca (tr. the little death) used by Conibo Indians
from Peruvian Amazon. Harner describes the beginning of the trance, when the bright
violet hues formed a roof which began to expand and became a celestial cavern.157 At
that moment, he heard the sound of water grow louder and [he] could see dim figures
engaged in shadowy movements.158

154

Klver, 27.
The central image of Las moradas is the spherical diamond castle comprising seven mansions, or
dwelling places, through which the soul travels inward to find God, who inhabits the center. In Las
moradas Teresa compares the soul with a sea urchin or a turtle, animals that retract into their shells, in
Mujica, 741-42.
156
Mavromatis, 21.
157
Michael J. Harner, The way of the shaman, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 3.
158
Ibid.
155

45
Then, as his eyes seemed to adjust to the gloom, the moving scene revolved into a
hugehouse, where there was a gigantic, grinning crocodilian head, from whose
cavernous jaws gushed a torrential flood of water.159
Reverberating the same visions of violet hues or deep dark waters of Chaos
encountered by Harner, a work attributed to a French Renaissance alchemist Nicolas
Flamel, opens chapter nine of His Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures with a
reference to a dark violet field and continues: The field violet and darke, tells us that
the stone hath obtained by her full decoction, the faire Garments...

160

The exoteric

recipe to make gold is here clearly encrypted with symbols borrowed from an enduring
tradition of esoteric imagery. That is, the alchemist attempts to express a connection
between theory, which is esoteric in its aspect, and practice, which is exoteric. In other
words, he tries to match a much sought correspondence in alchemy between the below
and the above, or between microcosmic water in the laboratory and the above
macrocosmic infinite Waters. In other words, it can be observed that generally all esoteric
references maintain a grand aspect of macrocosm where primarily light and ChaosWaters are the dominant features.161

159

Ibid.
Flamel, H Ex
f
H
F
(London, 1624), in Linden, 135.
161
It is unfortunate that in the academic community, osimos writings, Rosicrucian texts, or any other
esoteric alchemical texts are often labeled as obscure, abstruse, mad language, gibberish,
unintelligible, arcane, secretive, accursed, dark, hard to comprehend, mysterious,
encrypted, encoded, ciphered, riddles or even an abomination. Viewing these writings in light
of ACS phases could help achieve a better understanding of the seeming unintelligibility of the writings.
160

46
Similarly, when a Renaissance anonymous author advocates for an esoteric
meaning of the Philosophers Stone, he scolds readers for their misunderstanding of
alchemical denominations, and he is warning that the following names of the Stone
actually do not represent real ingredients, as one may think. In contrast to such deceiving
exoteric titles, when the stone has an esoteric meaning162 then it is presented at
macrocosmic scale and equated to Cosmos which is dominated by heavenly waters.
Therefore, following the tradition, the alchemist is adamant that the esoteric Stone is
liquid: For truly the Sulphur, Arsenicum, Auripigment, Zandorit, Vibrick, Mercurius,
Salt, Saltpeter, Sala Pculi, Salmiac and Allum signifie in this Noble art in truth nothing
but water.163 Not every alchemist, however, follows the esoteric tradition. Exoteric texts
do not contain such warnings. Instead, real ingredients are encrypted under water-related
denominations as reference to liquid materials such as molten metals or even mercury.
Another alchemical poem published in the seventeenth century164 and attributed to
a certain Crasselame, La Lumire sortant par soi-mme des Tnbres, reverberates the
same ideas. Also found in creational myths, Genesis, Cabala as well as alchemy, the
watery Chaos is rich in potential. The author addresses the children and imitators of the
divine Hermes:

162

see chapter 3 for esoteric Stone as Gods key name.

A Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus
de Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick
art made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611, in MS Ashmole 1415, (Bodleian Library,
130-146), http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
164
[Crasselame?], La Lumire sortant par soi-mme des Tnbres, pome en III chants sur la composition
de la Pierre des Philosophes, traduit de l'italien avec un Commentaire Dans "bibliothque des philosophes
chimiques" de G. Salmon, (Paris, 1741), http://www.alchemywebsite.com/crassbib.html.
163

47
The dark Chaos had come out as a confused mass from the depth of the
Nothing, on the first sound of the almighty Word, and one would have said
that disorder made it, and that it could not be the work of a God, formless
as it was. All things in it were in a deep rest, and the elements in it
were confused, because the divine Spirit did not yet distinguish them.
Who could eventually understand how everything has received its own
denomination, has been animated by its proper spirit, and while coming out
of the impure and unordered mass of the Chaos, has been regulated by a law,
a quantity and a measure?
O you, children and imitators of the divine Hermes, to whom the science of
your father showed the nature discovered, only you, only you know how this
immortal hand has formed the Earth and the Heavens out of this formless
mass of the Chaos; since your Great Work shows clearly that God has created
all things in the same way that your Philosophical Elixir is made.165
Similarly, the alchemist esoterically denominates Chaos as Noble water and
Artificiall water, and has no intention to speak about it in exoteric terms even if
denominations may have an exoteric appearance. He insists that esoteric alchemical texts
have been misunderstood, and attempts to clarify that by waters he means the shapeless
chaotic state of matter, or rich potential, or neutral androgenic medium to which
everything returns: When the Masters speake here and there, they still come to this
Noble water. The reason is because that water is a medium between the contrary things,
this comes from thence, and it is water and no water, fire and no fire, aire and no aire,
earth and no earth. Because then it is and is not, according to its Noble Nature it is a right
medium betweene the unlimited Elements.166 Such esoteric texts can only be read
through a cabalistic key, a common trend, intellectual preoccupation and encryption
method among the medieval167 and Renaissance168 alchemists.

165

Ibid.
A Chymicall treatise, in MS Ashmole 1415, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
167
E.g. Roger Bacon
168
E.g. Johannes Trithemius, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Battista Alberti, John Dee, etc.
166

48
Christian Cabalists, drawing on ancient numerology of the Pythagorean cabalistic school,
as well as Jewish medieval Kabbalah, believed that chaos is where everything returns
when its existence ceases.169
Jewish Kabbalah also echoes the ancient Creational myths as well as Genesis. In
Jewish mysticism, the equivalent of Water and Darkness is the fertile Potential of the
Deity during Creation, or the Unformed.170 It is the Nothingness from which the Mind of
God manifests His first thought. It is the static Deity before becoming active. When God
chooses to be manifested, He leaves the state of Emptiness and expresses His first
thought, represented as the first point of light exploding in the Darkness. In Judaic
kabbalistic tradition, God creates through His Mind, an idea also present in Pre-Socratic
schools as well as the alchemical sources. Jewish medieval tradition also refers to the
feminine force within God with the Talmudic term Shekhinah171 (the Indwelling of
God).172 This feminine divine173 was believed to be present in the world as life force,174
however, to be concentrated or resting in the Tabernacle.175

169

In all cabalistic schools, of ancient, medieval or recent Western traditions, this idea when expressed
mathematically, it corresponds to the Nothingness to which the compass returned when raised from the
drawings of the surface (see chapter 3 for details. The cabalistic geometric language attempted to
represent visually ideas expressed in written texts, mostly creational mythical accounts about the
becoming of Matter from Chaos. In this particular example, it was needed to visually translate or
transmute the ancient religious texts about Chaos seen as a primordial spiraling serpentine-like dark
Waters, into a drawing).
170
Cf. similarity to the first stage of matter Chaos Hebrew tohu) in Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah = The
Book of Creation, (York Beach, Me: S. Weiser, 1997), 131.
171
Raphael Patai, The Jewish alchemists: a history and source book, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1994), 334, 494.
172
Alan Unterman, Dictionary of Jewish lore and legend, (New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 181.
173
Raphael Patai, The Hebrew goddess, (Detroit, Mich: Wayne State University Press,1990), 140.
174
Joseph Dan, Kabbalah: a very short introduction, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 45-49.
175
Raphael Patai, The Hebrew goddess, 141.

49
Jewish mysticism refers to Shekhinah as female inner glory or potential of God, however,
she can be androgenic, similar to Abyzou.176 The medieval cabalistic text Zohar equated
her to Malchut (the tenth Sephirot closer to creation understood as center through which
the feminine energy of God flows).177
Similarly, in Pythagorean tradition, it corresponds to the nothingness on which,
God the architect, mentally draws his first geometric point on the dark canvas of the
Universe. It is equated to the empty surface, sand or dusty ground on which one draws
the first point with a stick or a compass. By placing the compass in one dot, it will
become the center of a future circle or the very first creation. Until then, the surface
represents the ground zero of any thought or project, therefore it is a symbol of potential
and chaos.
In both the Greek and Jewish cabalistic traditions, the mystical and philosophical
concepts were considered difficult to put in words and therefore any attempts to express
the ineffable God would border the profane. Moreover, in Jewish Kabbalah, the
unconceivable and dangerous dark Chaos is symbolized as an unspoken letter in Hebrew
alphabet, not to be uttered: the silent letter Ayn.178 Therefore, because language failed to
express the transcendental or because mystical ideas could not accurately be depicted in
words, it was believed that such concepts about Creation would be somehow better
expressed through abstract mathematics. Therefore, the unmanifested deity was
represented as the empty space surrounding the first dot and the first circle in geometry.
176

Babylonian Chaos-goddess, in A.A. Barb, Antaura. The Mermaid and the Devils Grandmother A
Lecture, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966): 123.
177
Sol Steinmetz, Dictionary of Jewish usage: a guide to the use of Jewish terms, (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2005), 152.
178
George Margoliouth, The Doctrine of the Ether in the Kabbalah, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol.
20, No. 4 (Jul., 1908): 825-861. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1450868.

50
Consequently, in Jewish mysticism, Chaos or Darkness was understood as resisting or
surrounding all geometric forms or divine shapes.
Since Chaos would gradually be transformed into Creation, then the cabalist
Jewish authors assigned several names corresponding to the degrees by which God
gradually became manifested. Jewish Kabbalah refers to absolute Chaos as Ayn"
(Nothing, the non-existent), and then distinguishes the Ayn Sof (Limitlessness) as a
consecutive stage when God approaches creation but still has not decided to become
manifested.179 From these stages creation emerges as a concentration or condensation of
the dark chaos until becomes light in the point of Crown or the first thought of God. The
Mind of God was seen as the creative agent in both Jewish and Pre-Socratic schools, and
the first light understood as the first thought of the deity. Consequently, light was a
concentrated form of thought in the middle of a chaotic dark mass.
In medieval Kabbalah, some Jewish authors refer to chaos or the potential of
God as ether. One example is the work Shekel-hak-Kodesh attributed to Moses de
Leon,180 where one may suspects a corruption of previous sources or mistranslations of
originals by the copyists because the Ether is also equated with the cabalistic Crown
(Kether)181 which is supposed to be the first point, so it would be manifested instead of a
non-manifested potential. Echoing the Hebrew Kabbalistic theories of Chaos and its
representation in Hebrew as silent Ayn letter, Goethe majestically writes in verses:

179

Ibid, 852-57.
Ibid, 825-27.
181
Ibid, 829.
180

51
And silent before us, /Veiled the dark portal,/Goal of all mortal;/Stars silent rest over
us,/Graves, under us, silent.182
Besides Tunnel, Darkness and Water, another common term for Chaos in
alchemical texts is Materia Prima. Shrouded in mystery, Materia Prima remained an
enigmatic notion in both esoteric and exoteric alchemy. In antiquity, it was believed to
represent the primordial matter of Chaos and consequently had an immaterial character.
Because initially the meaning assigned by alchemists to this symbol was Chaos, and
because it was believed to play a role in the Creation of the Universe, for such reasons,
many contemporary readers found Materia Prima similar to our modern concepts of antimatter in quantum physics. However enticing such views may be, the term is only a
reminiscence of what ancient myths, religions and cabalists taught about the potential of
the primordial Chaos.
Materia Prima is an important term which Western alchemists acquired from the
Arabs. In turn, the Arabic alchemists syncretically borrowed the concept from late Greek
alchemical sources, where it was understood as Chaos. In its early Hellenistic stages, the
term seemed to be an esoteric exponent of Chaos. Ancient Greek sources such as the
anonymous dialogues attributed to Cleopatra the Alchemist183 and Maria the Jewess184
contain similar references. At the same time, Hellenistic discourse is highly symbolic,
representing both the esoteric and the exoteric.

182

Goethe, The Lodge, in Aug. C. L. Arnold Philosophical History of Freemasonry and Other Secret Societies
(Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2003), 1.
183
Holt N Parker, Galen and the Girls: Sources for Women Medical Writers Revisited, The Classical
Quarterly 62, no.1, (May 2012): 359-386, DOI: 10.1017/S0009838811000619.
184
Patai Raphael, Maria the JewessFounding Mother of Alchemy, Ambix 29, no. 3, (1982): 177-197.

52
In such cases, the rhetorical language camouflages material ingredients and laboratory
processes, metaphorically referring to the correspondence between macrocosmic waters
and microcosmic waters, which animate dead matter. Also, the Arabs were aware of even
earlier works on numerology (e.g. ancient cabalistic schools) where Materia Prima was
viewed as the opposite of chaos (e.g. the first light or monad). The Arabs also combined
these ideas about the prime matter with the post-Socratic school of thought, when they
translated Aristotles texts. Such Aristotelian fragments discuss gold as being engendered
underground from certain cosmic vapors, another reminiscent idea of the cosmic Waters,
which were believed to be descending from the above as its subtle exhalations.185
Thus, within the Arabic tradition, Materia Prima is completely redefined and
acquires an exoteric meaning, while preserving liquid qualities. The Arab alchemist
Khalid wrote: For if the prima materia of our Magistery is not conveniently managed,
the Work will be spoiled.186 In the same exoteric tone, the first matter became later
accepted as an encryption for another water-like ingredient, the chemical mercury, which
dissolves and therefore returns every metal except gold to Chaos, death, non-being.
However, neither religious borrowings such as Hades,187 nor the earliest ancient
cabalistic attempts to transpose in geometric narratives various Creational myths
including Genesis, were the earliest accounts equating Chaos with water and darkness.

185

Aristotle, Meteorology, in Linden, 34-37.

Khalid, Secreta Alchymiae, Ibid, 73.
187
Cf. Hades symbol in the first century CE Hellenistic work Dialogue of Cleopatra and the Philosophers, in
Linden, 45.
186

53
Envisioning chaos as water and darkness can be found in both religion-inspired
alchemical symbols and geometric representations of creational myths developed in
cabala. However, both traditions are predated by even earlier accounts in the SumeroBabylonian tradition, where the primordial goddess Abyzou188 is often depicted as having
serpentine-looking body and is considered to represent Chaos before the Order.
In Babylonian mythology, Abyzou is the Shapeless, before any form could exist.
She represents the state of non-creation. The deity is constantly pregnant with the
potential of everything that can be but is not, because it has not been manifested yet. For
this reason, however pregnant, she is imagined as infertile, meaning that she is the
allegory of the unborn. For this reason, she is represented as an envious demon-woman
who jeopardizes every attempt of creation, action, self-expression, or coming into being,
such as the child-birth or creativity. In Jewish religious lore, she is identified with Lilith,
a demon responsible for killing babies, trying to prevent conception and birth, causing
miscarriages and damage at child-birth. Given her heightened potential nature she hates
everything that is not a reflection of her state. Abyzou envies whatever contradicts her
non-creative state. To be is contrary to her nature.
Abyzou is the Abstract before the concrete. She is an embodiment of the raw
chaotic state of everything that could ever happen. Abyzou is the primeval Chaos,
Cosmic Chasm, the Nothingness, Void, Vacuum, the Endless, Limitless, and the Eternal.
She is the opposer, the adversary, or unmanifested God(s), the Absolute. Because she is
always a potential, she attempts to prevent creation.

188

A.A. Barb, Antaura. The Mermaid and the Devils Grandmother A Lecture, 123.

54
Since the creative forces are hidden or latent within herself, she is originally depicted as
asexual, bisexual and hermaphroditic. Since the female and male aspects are not
manifested or separated within yet, Abyzou is the origin of every two opposites, the
female and male principles in nature. When she is split in half, the first generation of
gods appears: the goddess Tiamat (the Deep, the Abyss) and god Abzu/Apsu
(, ab=ocean zu=to know, deepness).189
It is interesting to consider the earliest written evidence of shamanic techniques.
A notable example is a fragment from Gilgamesh, the worlds first recorded epic poem.
The text fully describes the drowning sensation190 (an element of phase two of ASC or
NDE) during a dream-journey when Gilgamesh reaches the bottom of an ocean after a
prolonged sleep deprivation. In this depth of water, he is able to breath, and he attempts
to collect the herb of immortality. Similarly, alchemists often clam that immortality and
eternal youth can be achieved through swimming (another common element of phase
two, descending version) or performing ablution in a miraculous Fountain of Youth.191
This alchemical luminous fountain is described as located at the center of a paradisiacal
realm that can be accessed through a meditative state. The use of hallucinogenic plants as
well as the painting of hybrid creatures or luminous eerie geometric images of the spirit
world all these point to a striking similarity between old, modern shamans, ancient
myths, as well as alchemical imagery.

189

Ewa Wasilewska, Creation stories of the Middle East, (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000), 45-51.
subaquatic travel in Lewis-Williams, J. David, and D. G. Pearce. Inside the Neolithic mind:
consciousness, cosmos, and the realm of the gods (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 54.
191
Salient example being S. Michelspacher, Cabala, (Augsburg, 1616), in Roob, Alchemy & mysticism: the
hermetic museum, 419.
190

55
If the Creation myths mention chaos as the Waters of Above, Formless, Darkness,
Serpentine Nothingness, fragments survived in later Jewish copies, one of them being the
famous Genesis (1:2) episode: without form and empty, and darkness on the face of the
deep, and the spirit of God moving gently on the face of the Waters.192
In addition to allegories about black pitch darkness and dark primeval Waters, the
same enduring symbol of Chaos resurfaces in alchemical exoteric works under several
relevant denominations. Exoteric Nigredo (Lat.) or Melanosis (Gr.) alchemical phase, or
Blackness, described in recipes as the first stage of processing the Magnus Opus in the
laboratory is also closely followed by a water-based phase, also known as Ablution,
Washing, or Albedo.

192

1.

Book of Genesis in Interlinear Bible,Hebrew, Greek, English (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 2007),

56
Part II
Light Pattern and Symbols of First Dot/God Manifested/ Deity Exalted into
becoming the First Point of Light/First Letter/Letter A/First Uttering/ First
Dot/Kether
(Crown)/
Number
1/
Monad/
Unity/One/
Oneness/Wholeness/Universe/Cosmos/Cosmic Egg/House of the Chick/Alembic

Fig.1 [Mother of the Universe, the serpentine dark and humid

Chaos-Goddess is entwined around Creation (the Cosmic Egg). She is named Necessity
(Gr. Ananke). Out of a dark horrible necessity193 which wraps Cosmos, everything
comes into being.] Source caption: Jacob Bryants Orphic Egg 1774.194
In Sumero-Babylonian myths, Creation originates from Nothingness, or Abyzou.
In Jewish Kabbalah, out of the formless and undecided Emptiness, God decides to create.
Out of his unmanifested state, He becomes manifest, and chooses to accomplish this
through his Mind. This original manifestation is understood as the first Creation. When
God chooses to create from Chaos, he first thinks. Kabalistic sacred texts refer to His first
thought as the first particle of light in the Universe. This is expressed in Pythagorean and
Judaic numerology as number 1, the number of God, or the Unity of all, and the origin of
all numbers. In sacred geometry this moment of creation is represented as the first point
on a surface, or the central point where the compass will start its rotation to form future
shapes. In spatial reference, it is the center of a future sphere.

193

Thomas Vaughan, Aula Lucis, or House of Light: A discourse written in the year 1651... (London, 1652),
printed by William Leake, with transcription from the A.E. Waite edition of the works of Thomas Vaughan,
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/aula_lucis.html.
194
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_egg_creation_myth.

57
Significantly, the mysterious Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, and
purportedly copied and transmitted by the Arabs,195 also echoes the Cabalistic ideas:
And as all things have proceeded from One, by the meditation of One, so all things are
born from this One Thing, by adaptation.196

Fig. 2 [Eggs-shaped figurine of fertile Mother-Goddess]

Source caption: Upper Paleolithic, Venus of Willendorf, estimated to
have been carved 24,000-22,000 BCE.197 Matthias Kabel, 2007.

Fig. 3 [Roman: Oriental archetype of egg-breasted mother-goddess,

symbol of fertility and strong potency of Nature.]
Source caption: Artemis of Ephesus1st century CETurkey.198
In ancient religions a sphere is the shape of the Universe and is sometimes
referred to as a Cosmic Egg, and also a deity. The Universe is also finite, and its
limitations are symbolically delineated by the egg shell. On the other hand, Chaos, from
which the Universe originates, is the Limitless Nothingness. For Pythagoras, the sphere is
an attribute of the planetary gods and a symbol of perfection.

195

There are no extant versions earlier than in medieval Arab works.

Tabula Smaragdina, in Linden, 28.
197
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venus_von_Willendorf_01.jpg.
198
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artemis_Efes_Museum.JPG.
196

58
Alchemical imagery and texts abound with references to a certain Cosmic Egg, and often
a Celestial Sphere is depicted in the hands of either God, Alchemy personified as a
woman, or an alchemist.
Cabalistic alchemy equates roundly shaped symbols (e.g. spheres, circles, eggs,
and the ouroborus) with the meanings of God, Universe, Unity, Wholeness, Oneness, the
Timeless Time, Eternity, Perfection, and Completion. Alchemists often translate images
into encoded texts, or substitute encrypted words for imagery. The depictions the
ouroborus, when encrypted, translate into phrases such as it is completed, or it is
accomplished, a symbolic reference to the completion of the Philosophers Stone.

Fig. 4 [Alchemical: Ouroborus in a Byzantine manuscript.]

Source caption: Fol. 196 of Codex Parisinus graecus 2327 a copy (made by Theodoros
Pelecanos (Pelekanos) of Corfu in Khandak, Iraklio, Crete in 1478) of a lost manuscript
of an early medieval tract which was attributed to Synosius (Synesius) of Cyrene
(d.412).199

199

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Serpiente_alquimica.jpg.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ouroboros.png.

59

Fig. 5 [Alchemical: Hermaphrodite holding

symbols of egg and mirror, suggestive of how the macrocosm (Cosmic Egg or Universe)
is mirrored in the microcosm (Nature)], S. Trismosin, Splendor Solis, (London, 16th
century)].Caption Source: Splendor Solis. Image 9 - Hermaphrodite with egg. 200
Similar to the egg symbol, the oven, or the athanor represents the cosmos, where
the Philosopher Stone is grown. In its symbolic representation of the cosmos, athanor is
similar to the alembic, also known as hermetic chicken, or the house of chick.
Alchemists view athanor as a place of transformation, a sort of mini-laboratory in itself.

200

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/ss9.html. Also in Roob, 419.

60
Examples of alchemical imagery that depict athanors are found in engravings, woodcuts,
paintings, and drawings in books and include a rare fourteenth-century fresco from
Padua, Alchemist with his furnace;201 the fifteenth-century manuscript Opera chemica,
where Raimon Lull is painted as an alchemist;202 the sixteenth-century engraving by Hans
Weiditz, An Alchemist;203 the seventeenth-century painting by Heindrick Heerschop,204
The Alchemist's Experiment takes Fire; the eighteenth-century painting of Derby,205 The
Alchymist in Search of the Philosophers' Stone discovers Phosphorus (Fig. 9); and an
anonymous 19th century engraving of Goethe's Faust and Homunculus.206 In all these
instances, texts and imagery reveals that alchemists understood the oven as the core of
transformation where light, immortality or knowledge is gained.

Fig. 6 [Hellenistic: egg-shaped Ambix (alembic), replicating the

Cosmic Egg in the laboratory.] Source caption: Ambix, cucurbit and retort of Zosimos,
reproduced in Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs by Marcelin Berthelot (3 vol.,
Paris, 1887-1888.207

201

c. 1380, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/painting_laboratory_fresco.html.
c. 1470, now in Florence, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/opera_chemica1470.html.
203
c. 1520, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/weiditz.html.
204
Heindrick Heerschop (1627-?) http://www.alchemywebsite.com/heerscho.html.
205
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97) http://www.alchemywebsite.com/wright.html.
206
19th century engraving, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/faust_and_homunculus.html.
207
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zosimosapparat.jpg.
202

61

Fig.7 [Germany, Nrenberg National Museum: House of the

Chick, egg-shaped as well as bird-shaped alembic from eighteenth-century].208
Brodde, 1954.
Retaining the characteristics of all the symbols above, the egg also is structured as
an enclosure where metamorphosis takes place, same as an oven where matter
transforms, or a laboratory where knowledge is gained, or like Descartes chamber where
revelations are made, Mendeleevs room where dreams are dreamed, or caves as
imaginary spaces where spirit is bettered and enlightened. Informed by such symbolism,
the apparatus of an alchemical laboratory is often designed as an egg. The rationale
behind it is the doctrine of similarities, where similarity attracts similarity. Therefore,
both vials and athanors of alchemical laboratories are egg-shaped, as shown in frescos,
paintings, engravings and woodcuts. Because some egg-shaped equipment would have a
neck for distillation purposes, the resulting overall design would often remind that of a
bird, a concept also related to egg.

208

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F0019410003,_N%C3%BCrnberg,_Germanisches_Nationalmuseum.jpg.

62

Fig. 8 [Philosophical Egg.]209

Source caption: Emblem 8 from Atalanta Fugiens.210

Fig.9 The Alchymist in Search of the Philosophers' Stone

discovers Phosphorus. Painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771.211
According to cabalistic interpretation of Genesis, the chaos or the Feminine side
of God is exalted or condensed into becoming the First Point of Light through the first
uttering Be!

209

Cf. osimos during his tunnel sensation describes he enters the hole and descends to arrive at the
place of punishments, boiling waters and dismembering And again I saw he that bore the sword said
'You have fulfilled the seven steps beneath,' in Linden, 53.
210
M. Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, Oppenheim, 1 18. Source commentary In a courtyard in front of a fire
burning in a chimney on the left, a man stands holding a sword out in his right hand. He is about to strike
an egg which stands on a small table. In the background wall is set a tunnel or alley way.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl280.html. For emblems and text see:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/lambjrny.html.
211
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/wright.html.

63
The word known as Fiat in Latin translations is echoed in alchemical manuscripts
together with similar variants: let it be!, so be it!, it is accomplished, or it is
completed. The name of God in Old Testament/Thora specifically makes reference to
Gods existence, in contrast to His non-existential state before His first manifestation as
Light/original point. According to sacred Jewish texts, at the Moses inquiry, the deity
identifies itself as the one who already is, as opposed to not being, naming Himself as I
am or the one who exists. This self-identification as the existing one makes sense in
cabalistic theory and is understood as the first dot of light in the emptiness of Cosmos, or
in the geometrical language of kabbalah as the first point on any empty paper. The
emphasis on the existence of the deity is referred in cabala as the self-expression of God
or the original dot of light coming out of its feminine darkness, the chaos or Materia
Prima (Latin: First Matter).
In cabala, the primeval moment or the first manifestation of the deity is referred to
as the moment when the deity is exalted or agitated. In other words, God exalts
Himself within the chaotic matter, or stirs the waters or the first matter, until he reaches
an exalted state. At the moment of creation, God is exalted in the first point of light, or
comes into being or expression, first as a white dot on the dark canvass of the Universe.
Each subsequent creation is understood as the reiteration of this phenomenon. Therefore
the process of continuing the creation involves new exaltations which become new points
of light on the canvass of nature. Identically, according to the Pythagorean and rabbinic
schools, new geometric points continue being born out of the intersection of circles.

64
Similarly, one of Saint Teresa of Avilas most exquisite metaphors is that of the
soul as a moth, a creature that starts its life as a worm, then dies unto itself to be reborn as
something more beautiful a being drawn inexorably to the light.212 Mujica argues that
Saint Teresas practice of repeating divine names during prayers has also been reported in
Cabalistic rituals;213 and both may have been inspired by Oriental transcendental
meditative techniques, which often used repetitive nonsensical chants aimed at
suppressing rational reasoning.
While meditating, alchemists seem to travel through imaginary locations where
they encounter light manifested under various forms. A prayer for alchemists by Karl von
Eckartshausen states: Light Supreme, who art the Divine in Nature and dwellest in its
innermost parts as in Heaven, hallowed be thy qualities and laws! May our will in all our
work be only thee, self-moving Power of Light! 214 Also, from the eighteenth-century
alchemical work Of Nature and Art, one understands that this main ingredient of
alchemy, this occult light they work with, visible only to initiates, but hidden for the rest,
is of spiritual nature and essentially divine:
This Light is the universal working Fire which the Wise call Nature or the object
of all Wonder, Spirit, Sperma, Hyle Archaeum, or the Universal Spirit, This
Light or Universal Heavenly Fire of Nature, the life and movement of all things
remains as long as God wills it, nourishing vegetation.215
212

Like the moth drawn to the flame, the soul seeks divine light, but will be immolated (that is,
enraptured and transformed) only after it has undergone a prolonged purgation, or darkness, in Barbara
Mujica, Beyond Image The Apophatic-Kataphatic Dialectic in Teresa de Avila, Hispania, Vol. 84, No. 4
(Dec., 2001): 741-742.
213
Likewise, Cabala, from which, as Catherine Swietlicki shows, Teresa may have drawn some of her
imagery, induces personal transformation through the repetition of divine names. By combining letters
and words in unfamiliar ways, the Cabalist induces a kind of psychological reorientation that purifies and
frees the individual, in Mujica, 744.
214
Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-18 3), Two Prayers for Alchemists, ber die Zauberkrfte der Natur,
Munich, (1819), translated by Joscelyn Godwin, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/eckarts.html.
215
I.C.H. Of Nature and Art, (1781), in Adam McLean, How to read alchemical texts An introductory study
course for the perplexed, CD-ROM, 22.

65

The Rosicrucian literature mentions that the hole was again covered, and we
were friendly received by the Virgin. For even those with the wings had no advantage by
them but when they were to mount through the hole.216 Also, the anonymous work
Glory of Light mentions a core of light situated above that eerily resembles the notion of
any modern bulb light:
Other Hebrew Doctors say it was a precious stone hung in the midst of the Ark,
which gave light to all living creatures therein, this the greatest carbuncle could
not do, nor any precious stone that is only natural, but the Universal spirit fixed in
a transparent body shines like the Sun in glory, and gives sufficient light for all
the room to unveil by.217
From Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (1606), we are informed that:
Up from below there came a white glistening star, whose rays spread outwards
and intermingled in the middle of the quadrangle. This star grew [] shined so
brightly that I could not look directly at it. It had a threefold circle or halo around
it, the innermost ring golden-yellow, the second red, and the third blood-red. The
light from this star grew so intense and powerful.218
Similar states of mind are described in various non-alchemical sources as well,
some of them being confessions related to religious rites, or accounts of shamanic
practices, from antiquity to modern times. Some of the earliest textual accounts of seeing
light during religious trance come from the ancient Greeks.

216

Christian Rosenkreutz, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, Sixth Day,

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/chymwed6.html.
217
Ms. Ashmole 1415, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
218
Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (1606), in Adam McLean, How to read alchemical texts, 21.

66
When discussing the Eleusinian Mysteries, Aristotle mentions that neophytes had to be
put in a certain state of mind (diatethenai), and have an eye-opening experience that
transcended earthly realities and mundane learning, where they beheld the light, and
their lives were renewed.219
Prehistoric shamans depict images of radiant beams, arrow-like lights or bright
horns above the heads of hybrid-creatures. The earliest evidence of shamanic activities
can be traced archaeologically as far back as Paleolithic and Neolithic times, when
shamans dreamed and painted a multitude of horned animal-spirits. Cognitive studies
explain that during the third phase of trance the formation of complex images is culturally
determined.220
Indeed, such imagery is richly documented in various cave paintings 221 as well.
ASC reports that the dot of light from stage one shapes into a circle light or a round beam
of light during the second phase of trance, and then into a hybrid during the third stage. In
prehistoric shamanic cave art, all these stages are depicted. Cave and rock paintings often
depict colored or white dots either isolated or surrounding hands and animals. During the
third stage of ASC, the round light seen or perceived to be situated at the end of the
tunnel sensation, gradually transforms into a new image of a talking hybrid-creature.222
Images in cave art that are sequenced into a mental narrative depict creatures emerging
from having one line above the head to many lights surrounding the head.

219

Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient mysteries: a sourcebook: sacred texts of the mystery religions of the
ancient Mediterranean world, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987): 12.
220
J. M. Atkinson, Shamanism Today, Annual Review of Anthropology 21, (1992): 307-30.
221
Figures 22, 23, 33, 35, 38, 41, 43.
222
Fig. 12-15, 17-28, 30-42.

67

Fig. 10
[Paleoshamanism and modern shamanism: Upper Paleolithic signs and modern Tukano223
phosphenes (geometric patterns of pulsing light seen during phase one ASC).
Source caption: Tukano phosphine motifs and Upper Paleolithic signs.224

223
224

Indigenous tribe of Northwestern Amazon, in present Colombia and Brazil.

Ryan, The Strong Eye of the Shamanism, 204.

68

Fig. 11
[Patterns of entoptic phenomena in paleoshamanism and contemporary shamanism.]
Source caption: Fig.1 Six categories of entoptic phenomena compared with San
and Coso rock-art depictions. Redrawn from the following : IA, Siegel (1977
:138a); B, Richards (1971:93); C, Thackeray et al. (1981:fig . 3); D, Manhire,
Parkington, and Yates (1985 :fig 4); E, Grant (1968:82); IIA and B, Siegel (1977
:138d and c); C, Pock and Pock (1984:fig. 258); D, Pager (1971:fig . 307); E, Grant
(1968:102); IIIA andB, Siegel (1977 :138b and k); C, Pock (1979:pl. 100); D, LewisWilliams (198ia:fig. 20); E, Wellmann (1979a:pl. 164); IVA, Siegel (1977 :138e); B,
Horowitz (1975:fig. 2); C, Pock and Pock (1984:fig . 259); D, Pager (1971:fig. 338);
E, Grant (1968:66); VA, Siegel (1977 :138j); B, Richards (1971:91b); C, Wilman
(1968:pl. 59); D, Lewis -Williams (n.d . b); E, Grant (1968:28); VIA, Horowitz (1975
:fig . 2);C, Pock and Pock (1984:fig. 251); D, Lewis-Williams (1981b:fig. 2); E,
Grant (1968:101).225

Fig. 12 [France: Pech Merle Cave, paleoshamanism

example of initiatory rites in caves, where paintings with ghostly shades and dots on
horses abound. Estimated between 25,000-16,000 BCE.]226
225

Lewis-Williams and Dowson, The Signs of All Times, Current Anthropology, vol. 29, nr. 2, (April 1988):
206.
226
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pech_Merle_cave,_painting.JPG.

69

Fig.13 [North America: Luminous dots and geometric

patterns.] Source caption: Coso rock art, Archaic abstract curvilinear style, in California.227

Fig.14 [Peru: Halo with spirals on a winged creature.] Source

caption: Ceremonial knife, 850-1015.228

Fig. 15 [Pre-Columbian America: Female figure with luminous

zig-zag pattern, terracotta from Chupicuaro culture, 500 BCE-200 CE.]229

227

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coso_archaic.jpg. Also, cf. the luminous dots on the body paint of

natives in John Bierhorst, The Mythology of North America, NY: William Morrow and Company, p. 162.
228
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ethnologisches_Museum_Dahlem_Berlin_Mai_2006_002.jpg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sican_culture.
229
http://www.authenticite.fr/authenticite_uk_news_view-barbier_mueller_collection_at_auction-3981.html.

70

Fig. 16 [Entoptic phenomena: and

Phosphenes and Tunnel sensation Phases one and two in ASC.]
Caption from Getty Images: Visitors discover a piece by Hans Kotter named Tunnel
View at the artfair PAN Amsterdam on November 21, 2010. The PAN is the most
important national art and antiques fair of Holland.230

Fig. 17 [European Renaissance art: Tunnel sensation in phase

two ASC experienced during raptures or ecstatic states by religious mystics, saints and
prophets.] Source caption: Ascent of the Blessed by Hieronymus Bosch. 1500s.231

230

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitors-discover-a-piece-by-hans-kotter-namedtunnel-view-news-photo/107046828.
231
Oil on panel. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Italy. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_the_Blessed.

71

Fig. 18 [Central Australia: tunnel sensation

representation used as meditative tool to achieve ASC, a journey into the Netherland.]
Source caption: Northern Aranda tribesmen and sacred ground painting representing
Ilbalintja Soak.232

Fig. 19 [North America: is the

entrance into the Lowerworld, a traditional belief of the Hopi people from Grand
Canyon]. Source caption: Sepapu233

Fig. 20 [North America: Drowning sensation, phase two ASC]

Source caption: Entrance into the earth. Drawn by Barbara Olsen.234

232

Ryan, 113.
Harner, The Way of the Shaman, 27.
234
Harner, 79.
233

72

Fig. 21 [France: Prehistoric cave painting at Trois-Frres, Arige. Paleo

shaman metamorphosing into an animal, hybrid-creature of phase three ASC.]
Source caption: Sorcerer. 235

Fig. 22 [Italy: Fumane Cave in Lessini Mountains. 32,000 - 35,000 BCE.

Cave painting illustrating the split of the luminous power line from above the head into
a pair of beams during the shamanic journey of the soul.]236

Fig. 23 [Algeria: Shaman transformation. Division of the white

luminous power line above the head in several beams during trance.] Source caption:
The Great Fishing God of Sefar, one of the oldest paintings on earth, Tamenrasset,
Algeria.237
235

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/606267/Trois-Freres.
This fragment shows the silhouette of an anthropomorph seen from the front. The axis of the body is
painted along the length of a small ridge. The 18 cm high figure has two horns on its head or a mask, in A.
Broglio and F Gurioli, The symbolic behaviour of the first modern humans The Fumane cave evidence
(Venetian pre-Alps), La Spiritualit. Acte
q
8
UI PP (Palolithique
suprieur), Lige, 1012 dcembre 2003, edited by M. Otte, 97102. (Lige: tudes et Recherches
Archologiques de lUniversit de Lige, 2004).
237
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_art#cite_note-16, detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tassili.jpg.
236

73

Fig. 24 [division of white power line in two luminous

horns, next to a vortex or spiral motive. Phases one (geometric spiral, two (vortex
sensation) and three (horned hybrid) in ASC.]238 J. Q. Jacobs, jqjacobs.net.

Fig. 25 [Greek: Medusa Rondanini, unknown 1887 copy after a

Greek original by Phidias, 440 BCE. (Glyptotek, Mnchen). The deities and hybrids seen during
journeys of the soul have the power line or first light beam above the head morphed in two
beams, horns or wings, during subsequent phases of ASC.]239

Fig. 26 [Roman: Gorgona with the power line

morphed in two wings above the head.] Source caption: Roman Gorgon Mosaic from
the first century AD.240

238

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_art#cite_note-16.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rondanini_Medusa_Denkm985.png.
240
http://ferrebeekeeper.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gorgoneion-mosaico-romano-s-i-ii-a-d.jpg.
http://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/the-gorgoneion/
239

74

Fig. 27 [Babylon: 2nd BCE/CE, Source caption: Figurine of Astarte with a

horned headdress.241

Fig. 28 [Roman: Diana/Selene The moon goddess with lunarcrescent]. Source caption: The statue of Selene.242

Fig. 29 [Colombia: Rock engraving at Nyi. Geometric luminous

patterns with two lights forming above the head of a being, morphing toward more
complex images.] Caption source: god.243

241

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Statuette_Goddess_Louvre_AO20127.jpg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Luna_statue.jpg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selene.
243
http://www.comunidadtawantinsuyu.org/ingles/the-ngo/.
242

75

Fig. 30 Ecuador: Pre-Columbian

figurine. Hybrid-creature with dots and halo, and flying sensation

Fig. 31 Ecuador: Pre-Columbian figurine. Being with dots and

halo.

Fig. 32 [Illustration by a Jivaro shaman. The aura seen in ASC, formed

initially from one beam of light, then two, and then multiple lines united in a halo.] Source
caption: Golden halo244

Fig. 33 [France: Enigmatic painting depicting a hybrid creature,

during shamanic shape-shifting phase, in the cavern known as 'The Sanctuary' at TroisFrres cave, Arige.] Source caption: The Sorcerer.245

244
245

Harner, 23.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art).

76

Fig. 34 [Celtic: Gundestrup

Cauldron, I B.C. ritual cauldron was found in the Danish bogs. It is believed to represent
Cernunnos, Celtic god of the hunt with radiant beams as horns, with animal symbols of
power, magic and fertility. Similarly, field reports conducted on the trances of
contemporary shamans, unanimously depict an encounter with a hybrid identified as
Master/Mistress of the animals.]246 Bloodofox.

Fig. 35 [France: Stag with radiant horns and multiple dots, possible
representation of entoptic phenomena. Lascaux, early period, 15,000-13,500 BCE.]247

Fig. 36 [Magic deer with radiant horns.] Source caption in

original manuscript: Amazed she saw the Magic Deer.248

246

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_antlered_figure_on_the_Gundestrup_Cauldron.jpg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaus,_Megaloceros.JPG. Also can be seen at: Norbert Aujoulat,
Lascaux: movement, space, and time, (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2005).
247

77

Fig. 37 [Saint Huberts purported vision of a stag with divine halo

and crucifix. Stage of trance when the division of power line occurs, resulting in two or
multiple beams of light resembling horns.]249

Fig. 38 [France: Prehistoric cave

drawing entitled The Sorcerer, in the Gabillou Village, Dordogne County, France,
15,000 BCE. During trance, the shaman believes he is metamorphosing in goat-man and
perceives two bright horns above his head (when one luminous power line becomes
two lines)].250

248

W.D. Monro, Stories of Indias gods and heroes, pdf-book, illustrations by Evelyn Paul, (NY: Thomas,
1911), 6. http://archive.org/details/storiesofindiasg00monr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amaged_Sita_saw_the_Magic_deer.jpg.
249
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubertus-liege.jpg.
250
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabillou_Sorcier.png.

78

Fig. 39 [Greek: Maenad and Goat-Man (Satyr) with horns and

tail].

Fig. 40 [Greek: Satyrs (horned hybrids) crushing grapes

for Dionysus potion].

Fig. 41 [France: Les Trois Frres Cave. Bison-shaman bleeding from

the nose during metamorphosis into a goat-hybrid].251 Jean Clottes

251

http://humbleapproach.templeton.org/Innovations_Material_Spiritual_Cultures/chair.html.

79

Fig. 42 [Sumer: winged goat deity and the Cosmic Tree].252

A common theme that traverses alchemical texts is the emphasis on allegories of
light described as: an above luminous hole,253 a stone of light,254 white Pegasus,255 silvery
Unicorn,256 Golden Ass,257 brilliant Sun,258 living water or fire of the Moon,259 shiny
Star,260 luminous halo,261 sacred fire,262 spiritual light,263 a brilliant living water,264 a tree
of light,265 a golden flower,266 a bright statue with hair of silver and lips of gold,267 etc.

252

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xjy2/38630998/.
Christian Rosenkreutz, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, (Magnum Opus Hermetic
Sourceworks Series: Phanes Press, 1991).
254
Ms. Ashmole 1415
255
Giordano Bruno, Sidney L. Sondergard, and Madison U. Sowell, The Cabala of Pegasus, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2002).
256
Idem.
257
Nuccio Ordine, Giordano Bruno and the philosophy of the ass, (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996).
258
Ms. Sloane 1321, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/100aphor.html.
259
Musaeum Hermeticum, 1625, a treatise first published in German as Gloria Mundi sonsten Paradeiss
Taffel, Frankfurt, 1 2 . From the fragment entitled The Glory Of The World, or The Science Of The
Philosopher's Stone, part III.
260
Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica, 1606.
261
Idem.
262
I.C.H. Of Nature and Art, 1781.
263
Johann Friedrich Fleischer, Chemical Moonshine, (1739):
http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy5/fleischer.htm.
264
Conference betwint Philochrysus and Philadelphus On the Philadelphian Gold possibly written by
Francis Lee,
1697.
265
Paracelsus and Jacobi Jolande Szk cs, Selected writings, Bollingen series, 28, (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1951).
266
C. G. Jung and Marie-Luise von Franz, Man and his symbols, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964).
253

80
The Composite hybrid-creature symbols Horse (Unicorn, Pegasus), Stag

The most common imagery patterns and symbols in alchemy reemerge across
independent cultures and civilizations. We find them in Paleolithic cave paintings and in
diverse cultural shamanic expressions. Over the millennia, the objective seems to be a
channeled communication between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between the
heavens and the earthly realm.

Horse Symbol (variants: Unicorn and Pegasus)

Fig. 43 [France: Lascaux Cave. Prehistoric

Unicorn with geometric patterns. Horse with beam(s) above the head seen during
ASC]. Caption source: The Unicorn, in Hall of the Bulls.268

267

Work Trevisanus de Chymico miraculo, quod lapidem philosophiae appellant was edited in 1583 by
Gerard Dorn, and attributed to Bernard Trevisan, a common name for possibly several Italian alchemists.
268
Aujoulat, Lascaux: movement, space, and time. http://www.savelascaux.org/gallery2.php#.

81

Fig. 44 [Stag and Unicorn],

Caption source: Emblem 3 from Book of Lambspring, Frankfurt, 1625.269

Fig. 45 [Unicorn]270
Caption source: Emblem 136 The Hermetic Garden.

269

The Stag as a symbol is often associated with the Sun, and the Unicorn is usually associated with the
Moon. These polarities are to be coupled together through the alchemist's work. Source commentary In
a forest with a lake or river in the background a unicorn enters from the right and meets with a stag with
twelve pointed antlers which is on the left. The unicorn has its left front hoof raised, while the stag has it
right front hoof raised. Online primary source database:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl260.html.
270
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl136.html.

82

Fig. 46 [Alchemical Horse]

Caption source: Emblem 5 from The Cabinet of Minerals.271
The horse as unicorn appears in several famous early modern alchemical works.
In the Libellus de lapide philosophico272 (The Book of the Philosophic Stone, 1625), the
text makes analogies between deer and mercury, and unicorns and sulfur: "If we apply
the parable to Our Art, we shall call the forest the Body.../ "The unicorn will be the Spirit
of all times. / "The deer desires no other name / "But that of the Soul; which name no
man shall take away from it. / "He that knows how to tame and master them by Art / "To
couple them together / "And to lead them in and out of the forest / "May justly be called a
Master." Because mercury is a considered the ingredient of what alchemists refer to as
soul, according to their own explanations, the white stag symbol replaces both mercury
and soul meanings. The anonymous Hermaphrodite Child of the Sun and Moon273
(published by John Frederick Krebs, in Mainz, 1752) also mentions:

271

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl447.html.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/a-archive_apr02.html.
273
Online text of primary source: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/herm04.html.
272

83
I am the good unicorn of the ancients./ Dissociate me into two,/ And then bond us back
together,/ So that my mortal remains no longer decompose./ That is how to get the most
powerful medicine./ Pay no attention to my wild and poisonous nature,/ Because, God
willing, I cure all sickness and give long life. The Chymical Wedding274 (Foxcroft
edition, 1690) where is stated that there came forth a beautiful snow-white unicorn with
a golden collar (having on it certain letters) about his neck,275 the symbol of the spirit
of matter is represented by the silvery white unicorn. In alchemical writings, both the stag
and the unicorn are depicted in luminous light colors, and any account of ASC would
concur that animals or hybrid creatures are made of light. The stag and the unicorn
envisioned during a trance by alchemists would reinforce their belief that these mythical
creatures are true symbols of the spiritual matter that they have to work with, in their
laboratory alchemical experiments.
The first known images of unicorns are encountered in prehistoric cave paintings.
Some of these horses are shown as having a power line (a term used by native
American shamans), or the luminous straight light that emanates from the head, a sign of
divine power. However, the unicorn is not the only altered form of an equestrian image
that we encounter in alchemical sources. Another variation is the winged horse, or
Pegasus, and it is commonly depicted in alchemical texts and drawings of the
Renaissance. Inspired by the Greek mythology, these texts depict Pegasus as a white
horse with enormous wings. The white color (symbol of light), as well as wings (symbol
of flight), both suggest divinity.
274

The text is translated into modern English by Adam McLean and Deirdre Green, and forms the basis of
the Magnum Opus Edition, published in 1984.
275
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/chymwed3.html.

84
Alchemical imagery sometimes shows additional syncretic alterations to the unicorn
image. Take, for example, the anonymous alchemical hand-colored drawing dated
between 1701 and 1712, the Philosophorum Praeclara Monita.276 This alchemical
aquarelle depicts a white horse upside down, fire sparkling from its hoofs, a red dragon
biting its own tail positioned on the horses belly, while the Moon and the Sun are
watching. In alchemical primary sources, both the Sun and the Moon are symbols of the
male and female energies of Nature that have to be employed in their Art or Work, in
order to obtain either gold or silver. Another example is the alchemical work entitled
Triumphal Chariot of Basil Valentine, 277 Latin edition, 1646.278 The horn of the unicorn
here is presented as a marvelous item, performing its own natural functions such as
repelling venom and attracting silver. This unicorn suggests several sources, for medieval
bestiaries often depicted white unicorns as symbols of the virtues of Christ accompanying
moralistic texts.
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the unicorn became an
emblem of feminine energy in alchemical texts and engravings, as in The Book of
Lambspring. The cosmic feminine energy was considered one of the essential alchemical
ingredients to create gold or silver, or the alchemical stone. In both religious and hermetic
traditions, all feminine symbols are connected to the moon.

276

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, The occult in early modern Europe: a documentary history, Documents in history
series, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999). One copy is available on the cover of the book, while the
original is located at Saint Andrews University Library.
277
Basilius Valentinus, Theodor Kerckring, and Arthur Edward Waite, The triumphal chariot of antimony,
(London: Elliott, 1893).
278
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/antimony.html

85
The moon has been widely considered the regulator of menstrual and, more broadly, of
all natural cycles, including birth and rebirth. The unicorn plays an interesting role in this
respect. All known alchemical texts depict the unicorn as white, which not only
symbolizes the moon, but also silver, an important ingredient in alchemical experiments.
Moonlight often serves as background in unicorn images. Additionally, many pictures
portray unicorns as having feminine and lunar qualities.

Stag Symbol

The stag appears as a symbol in alchemical imagery beginning in the late

sixteenth-century.279 The symbolic nature of the stag can be seen in The Book of
Lambspring, an alchemical collection of emblems published in Frankfurt in 1625. Here
and elsewhere in European alchemical emblems and engravings of the seventeenthcentury the stag is a symbol for both the soul 280 as well as Mercury as a chemical
substance. Mercury itself was perceived in alchemy being both metallic and fluid in
nature. The learned readers of the Renaissance viewed theoretical and experimental
alchemy as two mutually complementary sides of one coin. Thorough knowledge of both
was the necessary prerequisite of a thorough understanding of alchemical writings. This
dualism also informed the interpretation of alchemical symbols.

279

The Book of Lambspring, published in 1625 by Lucas Jennis, in Frankfurt. Source:

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/lambjrny.html.
280
Raymond Buckland, Signs, symbols & omens: an illustrated guide to magical & spiritual symbolism, (St.
Paul, Minn: Llewellyn Publications, 2003), 18.

86
Before being absorbed by the Renaissance alchemical imagery, the stag had
appeared in the history of various cultures, myths and religions (European, Native
American, Siberian, and Asian) and was first expressed in Paleolithic cave paintings.
During its original phase as a Paleolithic cave painting totem, the stag (fig. 33, 35)
embodied light and power, where its antlers are the expression of an aura (a clear parallel
to what Native American shamans refer to as the power line, a luminous energy situated
above the head).281
The Paleolithic shamanic stag evolved in later epochs as a symbol of gods and
goddesses (fig. 34, 36). Greeks associated stags with their Moon goddess, Artemis,
Romans with their moon-goddess of hunting, Diana (fig. 28). Celts depicted their god of
fertility and prosperity,282 Cernunnos, as a hybrid creature: sometimes a human with stag
horns (fig. 34) assuming a shamanic meditative cross-legged posture. Medieval
Christians associated the image of the stag with Christ, and their bestiaries contain
numerous depictions of the stag as a symbol of purity and Christ the redeemer.283
Moreover, the syncretic blending of Christianity and paganism resulted in associating the
stag with the saints Hubert and Eustachius (fig. 37)
These saints, especially in their English versions of the twelfth century, are
depicted in hunting episodes involving stags among trees with light emanating from the
head with a bright luminous Christ crucified among its antlers.

281

Harner, 23. See Fig. 32.

Miranda Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth, (London and NY: Routledge, 1992), 228.
283
Thomas J. Elliott, A medieval bestiary, (Boston: Godine, 1971).
282

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The stag is a portent of a divine command to build a church on this spot, but in the image
we see the coming together of three images (the tree, the cross, and the stag) closely
related to divine light and connected to the concept of the axis mundi.
This medieval syncretic hybrid emerges yet again in Renaissance alchemical
drawings, as a stag with bright antlers, next to another white and equally luminous horned
animal, the unicorn. They form a pair in the alchemical discourse as two integral parts of
the alchemical stage of coincidentia opositorum. This alchemical phase employs a variety
of symbols to represent two opposites, mainly two archetypal mineral seeds, paired as
stag and unicorn, (Sun and Moon, King and Queen, rooster and chicken, lion and lioness,
etc.) which are being combined, mixed, and amalgamated, in order to obtain the next
alchemical stage284.

Light Pattern

The image of concentrated light described in alchemical texts powerfully recalls

the concept of axis mundi, often discussed within the Eliadean school of thought. Both
Eliadean and alchemical traditions view light as a crucial manifestation of the divine
essence.

284

Dobbs, The foundations of Newton's alchemy.

88
Eliade describes axis mundi285 as a common image pattern that he detects especially in
religious texts, but also in the structure of Paleolithic buildings and Neolithic
architecture286.
In Eliades opinion287, the function of this primordial axis is invariable across
cultures, religions, and civilizations and aims to unite the upper parts of the universe
(heavens), with the middle (earth, or humans realm) and the lower parts (the
underworld). Our study attempts to explain the presence of the axis mundi imagery in
alchemical texts. Such imagery can plausibly be explained in terms of ASC phases.
To exemplify, alchemists undertake extensive journeys of the soul or mystical
dreams where they claim to see a tree of light, which extends in the same three realms,
also typical of the axis mundi concept. According to alchemical texts, the duty of a
doctor-magus is to channel this axis of pure and unseen light from above, below and
middle. In his eighteenth-century alchemical work Chemical Moonshine, Johann
Friedrich Fleischer writes about such a spiritual substance, that is neither celestial nor
infernal, but rather a pleasant clear pure substance, the fixed middle between the lowest
and the highest.288 Also, the anonymous alchemical work, Ms. Sloane 1321,289 defines
the virtue of a true alchemist as the ability to emanate and control light: He that can by
light draw light out of things, or multiply light with light, he knows how to add the
universal spirit of life to the particular spirit of life, and by this addition do miracles.
285

Mircea Eliade, Patterns in comparative religion, (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958).
Michael Balter, The goddess and the bull, (New York: Free Press, 2005).
287
Mircea Eliade, Images and symbols: studies in religious symbolism, (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1991).
288
Johann Friedrich Fleischer, Chemical Moonshine,
http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy5/fleischer.htm.
289
Ms. Sloane 1321, http://www.alchemywebsite.com/100aphor.html.
286

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Tree Symbol

In ASC reports, the tunnel sensation often morphs into a cosmic hollow tree,
which is explored, ascended and descended by the seer. Descriptions also picture
underground and a gigantic tree. To exemplify, a shaman from India explains that he
climbs down a gigantic tree which unites the realms of the above and the below: the path
includes dizzying precipices on the descent to the murky-sun.290 Also, a hypnagogic
state report elaborates: something very vague moving in the dark, like a train entering,
tunnela tree from under the ground.291
Pretiosa Margarita Novella,292 a Renaissance compilation293 of old European
alchemical treatises, also features a fourteenth-century alchemical manuscript294
attributed to Petrus Bonus. One of its drawings presents an alchemical cosmic tree
nourished by a sacred fire at its roots, which has red-golden fruits, and in the middle of its
branches sits a crowned female being of red fiery color who blesses the Sun, Moon, and
stars below. Paracelsus, a sixteenth-century physician, also refers to a cosmic tree.295

290

P. Vitebsky, The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon,
(London: MacMillan, 1995), 70.
291
Mavromatis, 20.
292
Modena, Biblioteca Estense MS. Latin 299 (Alpha M 8, 16). Petrus Bonus. Incipit pretiosa et notabilis
Margarita Novella et ipsa est quaestio de speculatione et virtute artis alchimie... per magistrum Bonum
Ferrariensem scilicet utrum ars alchimie sit omnino vere vel fantastic, 59 folios, paper. Attributted to
Petrus Bonus of Ferrara, alchemist writer, supposedly written in 1330, first time printed in 1546 in Venice
by Giovanni Lacinio, also known as Janus Lacinius.
293
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/virtual_museum/pretiosa_margarita.html.
294
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/almss22.html.
295
Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus speculative theory and the crisis of the early Reformation. SUNY series in
Western esoteric traditions, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

90
He insists in his alchemical treatises that the divine light flows down through a central
worlds tree towards the earthly realm, where it can be used for healing humans if one
knows the alchemical secret to manipulate it. Paracelsian alchemical medicine 296 tried to
control the flow of light through this central tree and to channel it into charms and
potions297 to be administered to afflicted patients.
The tree is one of the numerous examples of alchemical symbols that we can trace
as far back as Prehistoric times, on cave walls. Sacred tree symbols, expressions of the
axis mundi pattern, also appear early in several ancient religions. In Norse mythology, for
example, we find the ash-tree Yggdrassill (also a symbol of letter A in Norse alphabet,)
298

yew-tree Yule (the bleeding tree, a symbol for runes EO or Z),299 birch-tree Beorc or

Bjarkan (traditionally cut to make maypoles, and a symbol for rune B), oak-tree (symbol
for letter Ac or short A), and pear-tree (symbol of rune P).
Often symbols like the tree are appropriated by a culture from another, through a
syncretical process. Syncretism implies that though the concept of the axis mundi
remains, the symbol itself acquires specific cultural meanings. One example is the
Christmas Fir tree, borrowed into Christian culture from the Norse symbolism: thus the
Yule tree becomes the Christmas Tree. The Judeo-Christian Eden Tree, another example
of syncretism, becomes in Alchemy the apple tree.

296

Philip Ball, The devil's doctor: Paracelsus and the world of Renaissance magic and science, (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).
297
Manly P. Hall and Paracelsus, Paracelsus, his mystical and medical philosophy, (Los Angeles:
Philosophical Research Society, 1980).
298
Nigel Pennick, Magical alphabets, (York Beach, Me: S. Weiser, 1992), 92.
299
Ibid, 97.

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It is interesting to observe in alchemical treatises the preference for the apple tree over
any other type of tree, where it is adapted to colors laden with meaning to alchemists:
golden or red apples symbolize gold, and white apples silver.
The cabalistic Tree of Life,300 borrowed from the Judaic tradition, later becomes
the Rosicrucian Tree of Awareness.301 Cabala is an ancient school of thought that
systematically influences alchemy, emerging under many traditions and disguises from
ancient Greek cabala, to Jewish cabala which acquires a special strength from the twelfth
century, and later on develops in the major Christian seventeenth-century cabala.
Rosicrucianism is another mystical school claiming its pedigree from alchemy. Officially,
the Fraternity of the Rose Cross emerges in seventeenth-century Germany as an
underground movement of a group of alchemists, publishing their program in three
manifestos, but claiming their tradition from an earlier legendary founder, Christian
Rosenkreuts, an alchemist doctor who supposedly lived in fifteenth-century.
A similar case of syncretism is when Hermetism and Neoplatonism, two ancient
schools of thought, merge syncretically into Renaissance alchemy. Neoplatonism inspired
medieval and Renaissance alchemists to equate the image of a cosmic Christ with the
alchemical tree, while the ancient hermetic tradition that was revived during the
Renaissance reintroduces into European culture and alchemical discourse the pagan
imagery of Diana or The Goddess. Thus emerged the alchemical symbol of Dianas
Tree.302

300

Paul Lunde, The book of codes: understanding the world of hidden messages : an illustrated guide to
signs, symbols, ciphers, and secret languages, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), 54-55.
301
Ibid, 58-59.
302
Jacques Ozanam and Jean Etienne Montucla, Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, vol
4, (London: T. Davison, 1814), 372-374.

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This tree, also referred to as the Philosophers Tree,303 becomes during the Renaissance a
key symbol for practical laboratory alchemy. It is used as a hidden meaning for the
amalgam of crystallized silver, obtained from mercury.
An important metaphor in alchemy that reflects the idea of unity and oneness,
wholeness or uniqueness is the Seed. Following the early Greeks and Jewish cabalistic
alchemists, the Arab alchemist Khalid also refers to One Seed, a universal and unique
substance. To exemplify an exoteric text, The Secret Book dated to twelve century CE
attributed to an elusive figure known as Artephius, is possibly a copy from Arabic
sources. The alchemical tradition attributes to Artephius a birth in the first centuries CE
and death to twelve century, implying that he has discovered the elixir of life which
helped him prolong his life to a thousand years.304 And from both these you may draw a
great arcanum, viz. a water of saturnine antimony, mercurial and white; to the end that it
may whiten sol, not burning, but dissolving, and afterwards congealing to the consistence
or likeness of white cream.305
Following the same tradition, the cabalistic pattern is also expressed in the
alchemical discourse. The point of Light in the middle of the chaotic Waters from
Genesis, or the first white dot coming out of Darkness in cabala, is a theme echoed in
exoteric alchemy as the making of the White out of the Blackness.
303

Robert Collis, Alchemical Interest at the Petrine Court, Esoterica7, 2 5) 52-77.

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeVII/Russianalchemy.htm#_edn22Alchemical.
304
But when I had for the space of a thousand years, or thereabouts, which has now passed over my
head, since the time I was born to this day, through the alone goodness of God Almighty, by the use of
this wonderful quintessence. When I say for so very long a time, I found no man had found out or
obtained this hermetic secret, because of the obscurity of the philosophers words, in Artephius, The
Secret Book transcribed from In Pursuit of Gold by Lapidus.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/artephiu.html.
305
Artephius, The Secret Book transcribed from In Pursuit of Gold by Lapidus.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/artephiu.html.

93
In exoteric alchemy, this process is known as the Whitening or Purification of the Waters.
It represents the second step in the making of the Philosophers Stone. It is also referred
as (In Latin manuscripts it is known as Albedo, or Albification). Example: and the
making white the Philosophers talk of, is nothing else but the purification of the Water
that it may be clearer and purer.306 Following closely, the confused exoteric alchemists
attempt to imitate. They try not to change the letter of the esoteric texts which abound
with references to dark waters that become white through condensing or congealing.
Consequently, during this phase, practical alchemists try performing certain laboratory
whitening, washing and cleansing of black substances. However, sometimes it is
hard to distinguish between esoteric and exoteric texts because they follow the structure
and ideas and look almost identical. The only difference is that such apparent exoteric
texts play with laboratory terms and substances at an unprecedented level. To classify this
type of texts which seem to yield an uncertain agenda, from those which are clearly
esoteric or remarkably exoteric, for technical purposes they will be referred as hybrid
texts for the remainder of the chapter.

306

For truly the Sulphur, Arsenicum, Auripigment, andorit, Vibrick, Mercurius, Salt, Saltpeter, Sala Pculi,
Salmiac and Allum signifie in this Noble art in truth nothing but water, and the making white the
Philosophers talk of, is nothing else but the purification of the Water that it may bee clearer and purer, in
Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.

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Hybrid Pattern and Symbols Angel, Sword, Mermaid, Spirit, Soul and Body

Angel

Angels are a common image among alchemical representations. Hybrids abound

in early mystical texts. Examples are the Copper Man, the Tin Man, the Silver Man or the
Gold Man, who guide the pagan Greek Zosimos in his dream journey helping his to
understand the nature and processes of alchemy. Another example are bird-Men of
Egyptian lore who were gods teaching humankind alchemy and magic. However, the
Jewish, Christian and Gnostic mystical literature prefers a version where the same
Egyptian helpful hybrids are not called gods but angels, and sometimes are even regarded
as good and fallen angels. Most of these beings display human features, a giant stature,
sometimes having appendages such as wings but not always because levitation and
speedy rapturous cosmic flying between realms often occurs without wings, and
nevertheless accompanied by a noisy manifestation such as trumpets, thunder, loud music
or, a deep and scary voice. Inspired by the godly bird-men of the Egyptians, the Judaic
texts start the lore of angels, and are followed closely by the Christian and Gnostic
traditions. The imagery continues to be employed by European alchemists for many
centuries, as late as eighteenth century.

95
The Book of Enoch mentions the fallen angel Azazel responsible for teaching
humans various crafts, e.g. metallurgy and the use of antimony, a clear reference to
alchemy.307 Besides mystical apocryphal texts, most of the alchemical texts present
encounters with angels in a certain order of events which correctly follows the rules
established by researchers of the ASC phenomenon. That includes the order of phases
and the sensations one experiences during a vision or journey of the soul. First is the
act of eating or drinking which may very well imply the consumption of a hallucinogen,
followed by a loud sound accompanied by staggering fear. A subject may experience
various emotions in the initial stages of substance-induced ASC, and paranoid fear is one
of them, followed by the vision of conversing with hybrid creatures. The Rosicrucian
text The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz follows the same pattern.
In this fascinating story published in the seventeenth-century, the protagonist
named Christian is dining at his kitchen table and in the next moment finds himself
embarking on a most extraordinary journey into the underworld, where he visits both hell
and heaven. Right after the eating, he hears a very thunderous sound behind himself and
he turns to witness his first encounter with an angel. This angel plays loudly trumpets and
takes Christian Rosenkreutz to the next phase: the experience of tunnel sensation
encountered in both the speedy flight when transported by the angel, as well the dark pit
in which he is thrown to witness the chaos and fate of the dead souls awaiting salvation.
The imagery of angels assisting alchemical processes in laboratory work is often
depicted in drawings, woodcuts, paintings, and plates accompanying alchemical books.

307

Joseph Lumpkin, The lost book of Enoch: a comprehensive transliteration of the forgotten book of the
bible, (Blountsville, AL: Fifth Estate Publishers, 2004), 8.

96
One famous angelic depiction is found in Mutus Liber (Lat. The Silent Book), Plate 8,
where two angels from the upper world look propitiously and seem to be assisting two
alchemists, male and female, in their work at the athanor in the lower world. Another
important esoteric book in alchemy is Rosarium Philosophorum. The Mylius version of
the book includes Emblem 11 entitled The Fermentation and depicts the alchemical
metallic seeds as dual archetypes, generically represented as King and Queen. Curiously,
both gendered seeds, male and female, are now winged, and to further promote the
meaning of alchemical seeds, both seemingly-looking angels are conjoined in a field
where a man sows seeds.308

Sword

Early representations of swords ready for dismembering are to be found in the

third-century CE pagan alchemical texts. The Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of
Panopolis, in his book Visions, describes his personal ASCs, events he witnesses during
repetitive initiatory journeys of the soul which he undergoes in order to retrieve the
correct alchemical recipe for making gold: For one came headlong in the morning,
dismembering me with a sword, and tearing me asunder according to the rigor of
harmony.309 Guided by the many hybrids he encounters, Zosimos repetitively witnesses
the same process:

308
309

The Fermentation http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl191.html.

Linden, 51.

97
And so, falling again, I fell asleep another little while, and while I mounted the
fourth step I saw, coming from the East, one who had in his hand a sword. And I saw
another behind him, bearing a round white shining object beautiful to behold, of which
the name was the meridian of the Sun, and as I drew near to the place of punishments, he
that bore the sword told me 'Cut off his head and sacrifice his meat and his muscles by
parts, to the end that his flesh may first be boiled according to method and that he may
then undergo the punishment.' And so, awaking again, I said 'Wel1 do I understand that
these things concern the liquids of the art of the metals.' And again he that bore the sword
said 'You have fulfilled the seven steps beneath.' And the other said at the same time as
the casting out of the lead by all liquids, 'The work is completed.'310
The sword is regularly employed in religious allegories, magical lore, as well as
alchemical iconography as a symbol of the air element. Consequently, the sword often
becomes a symbol for everything else that travels by the air or has an airy connotation.
The word, the act of speaking, preaching or singing, chanting or muttering, whispering or
invoking, usually uttering sacred words is associated often with the sword. In Christian
religious symbolism, such two swords appear to protrude from Christs mouth according
to The Book of Revelation, as a symbol of sacred speech. The esoteric Tarot game
classifies as Suit of Swords (for European tradition) or Spades (for Anglo-American
packs) a section of fourteen cards referring to one of the four elements, mainly the air,
next to the other three symbols: cups for water element, wood wands for fire element, and
coins or sometimes diamonds for the earth element. In alchemy, the sword is often
associated with the Sacred Word, or a special Divine Name or formula generically called
The Philosophers Stone (see Chapter 3) that needs to be uttered at the athanor in the
presence of the substance ready to be transformed into gold or sometimes immortality
potion.

310

Ibid, 53.

98
Consequently, Christian alchemists in Europe would prefer to paint the sword in the
presence of Christ, who is also named the Logos (Gr. the Word), meaning the Divine
Word incarnated, or the God/Word made human). One such sword is depicted next to
Christs mouth, in the earliest German alchemical work yet discovered, Buch der heiligen
Dreifaltigkeit (Ger. Book of the Holy Trinity).311 Curiously, the red sword is pointing
towards rather than from the mouth of a resurrected smiling Christ, among many other
emblems of alembics, athanors, and numerous other alchemical symbols (the inverted
triangle as a symbol for water, the four elements, a green serpent-dragon, etc).
However, the sword is not to be found exclusively within the esoteric, mystical
side of alchemy, such as cabalistic formulas for ritualistic uttering. Instead, the sword is
also to be found as a symbolic representation of laboratory practical procedures. One
example is the separation process, or filtration, represented allegorically in alchemical
imagery as a sword ready to cut in pieces a mans body, one example being Emblem
10312 in the famous alchemical book, Splendor Solis (Lat. Splendor of the Sun).313
Another example is the Emblem 158 from The Hermetic Garden, which reads as: A
warrior holds aloft a sword with which he has dismembered the body of a man which lies
on the ground beside him. He holds the decapitated head with his left arm.314
311

Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (Book of the Holy Trinity) Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum,
MS. 80061, emblem 38. Copies of this book are scattered among European libraries today, and further
reference to such locations can be found at
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/imagery_buch_der_heiligen_dreifaltigkeit.html:
Wolfenbttel, Herzog-August Bibliothek, codex Guelf. 468 (433 Hemstedt); Berlin, Kupferstichkabinnett
der staatlichen Museen Prussischer Kulturbesitz, MS. 78 A 11; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CGM.
598; Wolfenbttel, Herzog-August Bibliothek, codex Guelf; 188 Blankenburg (W); Manchester, John
Rylands Library, MS. German 1; Leiden, University Library, Voss. Chem. F. 29; Glasgow University Library,
MS. Ferguson 4; Donaueschingen, Hofbibliothek, MS. 811; Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS. 238.
312
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/ss10.html.
313
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl210.html.
314
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl158.html.

99
Other curious dismembering examples are found in European alchemical books, such as
Book of Eleazar, where the emblem 45, an engraving of 142x96mm, is showing men
with swords killing babies, blood is collected and gives a description of the image:
On the right under a tree, four soldiers with swords are killing children, and
throwing the bodies into a well on the left. Beside the wall of this well stand two
figures, one Sun-headed and the other Moon-headed. One of these seems about to
enter the well. In the foreground a woman collects the blood of one of the infants
into a jug, or vessel. On the left beside her a plant with two flowers grows.315
Sometimes the sword is ready to divide a huge esoteric egg, as in the eighthemblem of British Library MS. Sloane 3645,316 which is an English translation of the
original Atalanta Fugiens by Michael Maier, an alchemical Latin manuscript first
published in 1617. One unclear meaning of the sword is found with Emblem 3 in Speldor
Solis. The image represents a crowned knight wearing armor, a shield and a sword, who
is emerging from a double fountain, with each foot engrained in one of the two fountains.

Mermaid

This is another hybrid originated during a descending phase version of ASC and
is manifested during the story phase. This is associated with the drowning sensation
and the brain tries to adapt the newly formed and conflicting sensations and make an
intelligible story out of it. The brain takes separate notions such as the water and the
hybrid that would not match any scenario in a real life, and resolves the conflict by
creating a story of a talking/singing half-fish woman/men within the journey of the soul.
315

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/iconology/imag1.htm.
th
British Library MS. Sloane 3645, Emblem 8 Accipe ovum & igneo percute gladio Lat. Take an Egg
and smite it with a fiery sword.) http://www.alchemywebsite.com/atalanta.html.
316

100
Alchemy is not the only field that borrows the mermaid symbol to encrypt ideas
related to liquid states of mater, alchemical waters, ablutions and washings of substances,
etc. Mermaids have been popular outside alchemy as well, mostly preferred in European
art during Renaissance. By then, adorning castles and mansions was a fashion especially
in Venice.317 Alchemical representations of mermaids however is encountered mostly in
books, in both plates and texts formats, and only sometimes in architecture.
One example is the crowned mermaid with double tail found in Emblem 3 of the
famous alchemical book Azoth allegedly authored by the mysterious Basil Valente, a
legendary alchemist, and printed in 1613. This strange double-tailed mermaid apparently
squeezes her breasts to let flow two streams of liquid which are to be identified in later
colored versions of this same image as being blood and milk respectively. The same
details are retained in another reproduction found in Emblem 140318 of the alchemical
book Hermetic Garden. The same identical image is also reproduced on the Tarot card
number Seventeenth, entitled The Star, where a crowned double-tailed mermaid gives
blood and milk from each of her breasts into the sea.
Further versions of mermaids are found in classical colored collections of
emblems. One example is MS. 973 Solidonius, which reproduces a series of watercolor
drawings among which one classified by historians as Figure 2, reads the following
description: Winged mermaid at centre of the drawing holding a chalice with a serpent.

317

Alison Luchs, The mermaids of Venice: fantastic sea creatures in Venetian Renaissance art, (London:
Harvey Miller Publishers, 2010).
318
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/emblems/embl140.html.

101
The four elements are represented at the corners of the page.319 Magical books used by
alchemists also occasionally contain mermaids.
One good example is the type of book called grimoire. 320 One such French
grimoire is British Library MS. Lansdowne 1202, containing 116 folios organized in four
books and two appendages, its original title being Le Vrais Clavicules Du Roi Salomon
par Armadel. Pentacle de Salomon (Fr. The True Key of King Solomon, by Armadel.
The Pentacle of Solomon). In the section called Livre Premier (Fr. First Book), the
fifth chapter is accompanied by a pen drawing of a mermaid and the chapters title reads
Conjurations plus fortes & plus puissantes (Fr. Stronger and More Powerful
Conjurations).

Symbols of Spirits and Bodies

Spirits and bodies are denominations for states of matter. Spirits stand for the
volatile and gaseous states such as vapors and fumes, while bodies refer to solids. When
the Greek alchemist Zosimos provides the first definition of alchemy we know today (see
Chapter 1), he uses specific terms such as bodies and spirits that will become part of
a tradition shared by alchemists around the world. Such a symbolic discourse does not
actually originate with Zosimos, but his contribution is important because his definition
provides and cements the alchemical jargon that will stand for centuries.
319
320

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/s_solid.html.
Owen Davies, Grimoires: a history of magic books, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

102
A previous reference to bodies and spirits comes with Cleopatra, a legendary figure in
ancient alchemy (not to be confused with the queen of Egypt). She advises the reader to
Look at the nature of plants, whence they comeLook at the divine water which gives
them drink and the air that governs them after they have been given a body in a single
being.321 The text continues: Cleopatra said to them. The waters when they come,
awake the bodies and the spirits which are imprisoned and weak.322
Volatile states of matter are named Souls and Spirits. However, across time, the
denomination Spirit becomes more specialized. It evolves to represent a particular
energy essence present in matter, actually hidden or trapped into solids, liquids or vapors.
For instance the spirit is trapped with the soul of a substance, and travels together with
vapors along the intricate alembic distillatory tubes, it is released only when subjected to
fire. One example is the distillation of an alcoholic beverage, which is diluted alcohol
such as mead or wine. The substance in this case, wine or beer, would be boiled and
release vapors called the soul of the wine, while the spirit of the wine remains initially
trapped into the wine. Through the distillation process, the spirit or the essence of the
wine is going to be released by the vapors or the soul, and then collected into a receiver
as a transparent liquid called fiery water, which is known today as ethanol, a pure and
much concentrated state of alcohol. Following this Arabic alchemical tradition,
pharmacies today generically label the more purified forms of alcohol as spirits.
This chapter has discussed the recurring ASC patterns, sets of symbols associated
with these patterns, and their similarity to the experience during ASCs.

321
322

Linden, 44.
Ibid, 45.

103
While the cognitive patterns remained invariable, the symbols underwent modifications
in their meanings, mergers and bifurcations across cultures and historical periods. The
chapter also illustrated how, through repetition and reinforcement, the recurring ASC
patterns have historically crystallized into symbols and sets of symbols. Objects, features
and processes captured by these symbols often mirror the original experiences and
visions rooted in ACS patterns.

104

CHAPTER 3 ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC ALCHEMCAL DATA

He led him to suck honey from the rock
and oil from the stone of flint
(Deuteronomy 32:13)

The chapter discusses the esoteric and exoteric meaning of the process of making
the Philosophers Stone. It should be noted that historical scholarship has offered a
somewhat asymmetric account of the practice, concentrating mostly on the exoteric
meaning its key steps and elements. One reason the esoteric interpretation did not receive
extensive attention was the lack of sufficient understanding of the cognitive and symbolic
nature of alchemical meditative practices and their written accounts. It is this authors
hope that the framework outlined in the first two chapters of this study will serve to
alleviate this imbalance. With this in mind, the chapter will offer an account of two key
steps in the process of making the Philosophers Stone isolation and disintegration, and
then discuss the role and meaning of Stone in the process.

3.1 Isolation and its exoteric and esoteric meaning in alchemy

Many of the alchemical writings mention caves as a particularly important

element in the making of the Philosophers Stone. Esoterically, caves serve as an
enclosed space, thus isolating the practicing adept from the outside world.

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3.1 Isolation and its exoteric and esoteric meaning in alchemy

Many of the alchemical writings mention caves as a particularly important

element in the making of the Philosophers Stone. Esoterically, caves serve as an
enclosed space, thus isolating the practicing adept from the outside world.
At the exoteric level, encasing the matter into a hermetically sealed shell serves to
provide the required chemical environment, which facilitates the processes of purification
and transformation. It is interesting to consider the historic origins of the image of
caves.323 Withdrawal into caves has been a significant part of shamanic meditative
practices from Paleolithic times up to the modern day.324 As a shaman entered the cave,
s/he would leave stones in wall cracks to remember the point of entry, and place tokens to
honor the souls of the dead ancestors.325 In many early religions, caves were believed to
be inhabited by gods.326 As myths evolve into religious traditions, the abode of the gods
often changes into a mountain (e.g., the Hellenistic Olympus, the Judeo-Christian Tabor,
and the Arabic Jabal al-Nur). Caves served as ritual and festivity sites.
To illustrate, the Mithraism cult in Rome celebrated a solar deity, god of light born in a
cave, from a virgin rock, on 25 December.

323

Andreas Lommel, Shamanism; the beginnings of art, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966): 25-26.
Miranda J. and Stephen Aldhouse-Green, The quest for the shaman: shape-shifters, sorcerers, and
spirit-healers of ancient Europe, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 12-18, 46-93.
325
Robert E. Ryan, The strong eye of shamanism: a journey into the caves of consciousness, (Rochester, Vt:
Inner Traditions, 1999), 28-66.
326
Carl A. P. Ruck, The hidden world: survival of pagan shamanic themes in European fairytales, (Durham,
N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2007), 10-20. Also, to the entire work of Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: archaic
techniques of ecstasy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), and vol. 1 History of Religious
Ideas, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
324

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Many alchemical writers would emphasize the invisible, secretive nature of caves
hiding the true light and knowledge. Alchemist Fleisher speculated on the privilege of the
wise, who know that the substance is hidden in the earth: It is really a fat, heavy and
juicy earth, which is very useful and very precious, hidden to the ignorant, but quite
common to the knowledgeable.327 Fleischer teaches us in his work, Chemical
Moonshine, that the alchemist is one that must be able to draw the Sun out of the
mountains, because the saltpetre of the wise is a corporeal spirit or a spiritual body
(that one sees glittering if one looks into the Sun). And one can catch hold of this
splendid Matter everywhere, in valleys and level fields, in mountains and caves or
galleries, even in ones own house.328
The oldest known written alchemical texts survive in Babylonian tablets. Such
sources mention the bowels of Earth as the location where the embryos of the minerals
grow. Scholarly investigations demonstrate that theories about the entrails of the Mother
Earth predate the written sources far back to prehistory.329 Babylonian alchemy teaches
that Nature acts like a mother, whose womb is referred to as the bowels of the Earth.
The process of maturation of embryonic seeds of metallic ores and minerals unfolds in
the dark, secretively, and along a very long duration. A Babylonian alchemist is always
attempting to imitate the secretive work of Mother Nature. In Natures similar ways, he
tends secretively at his oven. However, his work takes place in an artificial environment,
precursor of future alchemical laboratories.

327

Johann Friedrich Fleischer, Chemical Moonshine, (1739),

http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy5/fleischer.htm.
328
Ibid.
329
Mircea Eliade, The forge and the crucible, (New York: Harper, 1962).

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In his view, a Babylonian alchemist only attempts to speed-up the pace of a lengthy
natural process, while forcing it into a non-natural, man-made environment: the oven.
Echoing the Babylonian alchemy, possibly via the Persian alchemy as an
intermediary link, medieval Arabic sources also mention the allegoric womb of Mother
Earth. The eighth-century Umayyad prince and alchemist, Khalid, refers to the Seed and
Womb to the Generation of Living Creatures, which are shaped in the Womb, and therein
receive their Fabrick, Increase, and Nourishment.330 But you ought to consider the seed
of the Earth whereon we live, how the heat of the Sun works in it, till the Seed is
impregnated with its influences and Virtues, and made to spring, till it grows up to
ripeness: This is the first change or transmutation.331 Khalid teaches us that the
metamorphosis of the Seed into Gold is a gradual process: the Seed whereof, (as the
Philosophers say) is such, that its progress and perfection consists in the fire, which is the
cause of its Life and Death332 He also draws attention that is a perfectly natural
process, something to be observed and not to be denied: Composition or Generation is
according to the Natural Generation in the Mines, or in the Heart and Bowels of the
Earth.333
As the Universe (Cosmic Egg) is the macrocosm or the above mirrored into the
alchemists, so is a chamber, a room, house, or cave, as well as the egg-shaped alembic
(Hermetic Egg, House of the Chick) a microcosm mirroring the macrocosm. The deity is
depicted alone before creation in Genesis.

330

Linden, 73.
Ibid, 76.
332
Ibid.
333
Ibid, 72
331

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Similarly, the alchemists isolation is also a mirroring of the Creator, while insulation of
the alembic (known as luteum) is a prerequisite for alchemical laboratory work.
Isolation is a prerequisite to any ASC as well. Shamanic initiations undergo self-imposed
prolonged isolations. Moreover, before an aspiring shaman decides to retreat into
solitude, the first sign of being chosen is a sudden melancholia or withdrawal from
society. Alchemical texts often contain allegorical accounts of Melancholy. In exoteric
alchemy, the hermetically insular alembic mirrors Cosmos, as well as of the human body,
and the alchemist himself, as per the as above so below dictum. Similarly, a
Renaissance anonymous alchemist confesses that One time [he] sate alone in [his]
Chamber with [his] Wife, and read the Bookes of the ancient deceased philosophers,
before attempting his alchemy work.334
Goethes Faust is a loner, and confines himself to his chamber before invoking the
four elements. Mathematician, philosopher, alchemist and Rosicrucian, Descartes also
writes about his very hot chamber, is perhaps a reflection of the alembic, in search for a
scientific discovery. In such oven or hot personal cave he isolates himself and
meditates for a prolonged time, to generate a series of dreams rich in potential. To
follow Descartes own words, he refers to his own chamber as an oven.335

334

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html
335
Amir D. Aczel, Descartes' secret notebook: a true tale of mathematics, mysticism, and the quest to
understand the universe, (New York: Broadway Books, 2005).

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The reference to an oven is relevant, because not only Descartes inserted alchemical
symbols in his journal entries, made acquaintance with alchemists, but also allegedly was
a member of the Rosicrucian movement. There are therefore reasons to believe that, his
mentioning of an oven may have symbolically referred to the alchemical athanor.
While meditating over his scientific quest in his small study, Descartes reportedly
saw mystical dreams that helped him discover the system of coordinates and equations
that revolutionized mathematics. He viewed his own isolation as an oppressive boiling in
a cauldron, akin to being cooked or prepared for a future transformation. In his
Meditations, Descartes confessed that he emerged as a new man from the experiences he
had in the oven when a series of dreams led to important revelations and discoveries.

3.2 Disintegration and its exoteric and esoteric meaning in alchemy

Depictions of human bodies being dismembered in alchemical texts are

numerous. Writings that focus on the experimental side of the making of the
Philosophers Stone often refer to the disintegration of matter as an important step in the
purification and transformation process. It is plausible to suggest that both types of
accounts are complementary interpretations of the process of disintegration. When
considered esoterically, disintegration manifests itself as various narratives of the cutting
or tearing apart of limbs of a practicing alchemists as part of his/her transformation and
perfection. When considered exoterically, disintegration manifests itself as the
dissolution of solid matter into powder as part of its purification and transformation.

110
Narratives of physical deformation followed by death and subsequent revival are
common among many religious traditions. Images below illustrate rituals of
dismembering and flogging in Ancient Greece.

Fig.47 [Roman: Maenad dancing at banquet, painted

pottery].

336

Fig.48 [Greek: Dionysus himself holding a dismembered animal].

Fig.49 [Greek: Orpheus with lyre, dancing ecstatic with Satyrs].

Oh, Thebes, nurse of Semele, crown your hair with ivy! Grow green with bryony! Redden with berries!
O city, with boughs of oak and fir, come dance the dance of god! Fringe your skins of dappled fawn with
tufts of twisted wool! Handle with holy care the violent wand of god! And let the dance begin! He is
Bromius who runs to the mountain! To the mountain! Where the throng of women waits, driven from
shuttle and loom, possessed by Dionysos! in Euripidies, The Bacchae, in The poetry of Greek tragedy,
edited by Richmond Lattimore, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958), 133.
336

111

Fig. 50 [Roman: Winged hybrid, flogging. (ASC pains symptom, girl in trance,
exhaustive dances and rhythmic music). Scenes of a Mystery Cult. Mural Frieze. Built 50
B.C. Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, Italy.]337 Leo C. Curran 1997.
The dismembering of a deity is a common theme in ancient religions, ranging
from Osiris being murdered and his body parts being thrown into the Nile (later
reassembled by the mourning wife Isis who magically restores him), to Christ being
found by a mourning Magdalene after the Passions of Crucifixion. Christian hagiography
famously describes physical suffering experienced by Saint Anthony when, after a
prolonged exhaustive fasting and underground isolation, demons invade his cave and lift
him up in the air, attempting to tear his body apart.
The Greco-Roman literature occasionally provides references to unfortunate
episodes of killing and dismembering during Mysteries festivals.
337

http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/italy_except_rome_and_sicily/pompeii/ac881734.html
http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/general_contents.html

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In such texts, the episode of tearing off the flesh of an animal by the participants, or
inadvertently dismembering a person, can be interpreted as a memento of the dismantling
episodes described by all initiatory rites involving shamanic techniques.
And there takes place every other year during the Agriona a flight and pursuit of
these women by a priest of Dionysos holding a sword. And he is permitted to kill
anyone he catches, and in our own time Zolius the priest did so. (Plutarch,
Quaest. Graec)
A mother with a foaming mouth, possessed by Bacchus, mentioned in a poem
depicting Roman Mysteries, murders her son, Pentheus, when she does not recognize him
as a result of being possessed by Bacchus. In a fit of amnesia and supernatural frenzy, a
mob of Bacchantes join her: One tore off an arm,/another a foot still warm in its shoe.
His ribs/ were clawed clean of flesh and every hand/was smeared with blood as they
played ball with scraps/of Pentheus's body.338
Moreover, the paintings preserved on the walls of a Roman villa from the ancient
town Pompei, allow viewers to gain a better understanding of the secrets of the initiatory
rituals of sacred Mysteries. The art is vivid and depicts a young female neophyte
undergoing initiation flogging by a hybrid creature. The creature is a winged
hermaphrodite, a bird-woman dressed as a male, very similar to angel Michael from later
Christian iconography. In line with the old shamanic understanding of the purifying role
of deities and spirits, the Greco-Roman world dedicated a month from their calendar year
to god Februa, the purging god.

338

Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient mysteries: a sourcebook: sacred texts of the mystery religions of the
ancient Mediterranean world, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 77.

113
Every year in February, when purging festivals were dedicated to Februa, pious citizens
would undergo flogging to purify their souls and bodies, and to banish evil from their
lives. Women were specifically flogged during this period to preserve purity, health, and
fertility. The purging festival took place around mid of February and later evolved as a
fertility festival called the Lupercalia. Later versions of the festival have eliminated
physical afflictions and orgies and developed into what is known today as the Valentine
Day.
Similar to narratives of physical dismemberment, alchemical texts talk about the
metaphoric stage of dissolution and decomposition of chemical substances during
laboratory experiments. In addition to fighting, running and devouring episodes, episodes
of body pains, death and resurrection often reappear in alchemical texts. It may also refer
to the same dismantling episodes that shamanic journeys give account of: hybrid spiritcreatures attack and devour neophytes during shamanic initiations, and replace their
bones with shiny light-stones or crystals, followed by resurrection. Such alchemical
episodes references may give us a clue of the extent to which shamanic were methods
used by alchemists. Evidence suggests that alchemists pursued both the hallucinogenic
and the non-hallucinogenic methods to induce trances.

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3.3 The exoteric and esoteric meaning of Stone

Alchemists often insist on what the Stone could be, and sometimes they express in
plain words what the stone is not. Alchemists warn that the esoteric Stone is not a
material rock, stone, boulder or pebble.
Zosimos from third century CE, mentions "In speaking of the Philosopher's Stone,
receive this stone which is not a stone, a precious thing that has no value, a thing of many
shapes that has no shape, this unknown which is known by all. Echoing the same words,
a Renaissance anonymous author mentions: it is a Stone and no Stone. 339 Another
Renaissance author, when reverently speaking about the Stone it is obvious he is referring
to an esoteric meaning. Cabalistic alchemy launches a quest for the matrix, pattern,
mystical Number or lost Word. When alchemical texts are read with a cabalistic key, they
prove more meaningful: "But the world knows it not. Above all, it is the subject of the
great Stone of the philosophers which the world has before its eyes and yet knows it not."
References to the animal nature of the stone are allegorical as well. While
animals, similar to humans, are made of flesh and body, they must share the four
elements or basic matter.

339

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html

115
In this light, perhaps alchemical texts encrypt references to matter through allegories of
animal, blood, body, mountain, or anything solid: thirdly why the Stone is animal like
our blood, fourthly why it is called herball or Radicall;340 Know my sonne that our
Stone is animal-like. The Scholar saith, what is the reason of this? The Master replyes,
because hee hath a Spirit, and therefore a soul which makes it animal-like.341 A most
relevant fragment comes with: Another saith, in the Herball Stone are Haire, Blood,
Eggs, and this hee said to shew in these words, the 4 Elements,342 and also, our Stone
as Hermes speakes is in a living thing;343 Alchemists warn their reader that symbols
about the Stone shall not be considered ad literam: The Scholar sayes: why is our Stone
blood? Because Arcaglaus sayes take the Stone which the ancients bid you take and rub
him so long till he be rub'd to blood, that is, till he become redThe Scholar saith, why
is this Stone Herball? The Master answers: because as the herbe hath a moveable soule,
so our stone hath a Soule, for Hermes saith our Stone is of a thing having a Soule,344
now I'le tell you what our stone is, Sol, Luna, Azoth.345
Across centuries, the endurance of alchemical symbols in European sources is
more than striking. One important symbol which often resurfaces in European alchemical
texts is Magnesia, a term shrouded in mystery. It is mentioned in a variety of sources,
few of which have survived, some being partially lost, and the majority completely lost.
340

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
341
Ibid.
342
Ibid.
343
Ibid.
344
Ibid.
345
Ibid.

116
The earliest reference about alchemical Magnesia dates from first century CE. A famous
text attributed to Pseudo-Democritus is considered by some authors the first known
alchemical treatise. The Treatise of Democritus On Things Natural and Mystical
repeatedly mentions magnesia. It is hard to establish with certainty whether this text is
esoteric or exoteric, as its nature is elusive and contains both types of discourse.
Therefore to classify this text as hybrid is more appropriate.
When referring to magnesia, the Pseudo-Democritus instructs with an exoteric
attitude, however, every step described matches the cabalistic Whitening from the
esoteric texts.
Taking Mercury thrust it into the body of magnesia, or into the body of the
Italian antimonyfor nature conquers nature.346 Taking white earth from
ceruse, I say, or from the scoriae of silver, or of Italian antimony, or of magnesia,
or even of white litharge, whiten it with sea water, or with water from air under
the dew, I say, and the sun, that it, when dissolved, may become white as
ceruse.347 but whitened magnesia is also excellent,You dissolvest iron by
throwing into magnesia, or the half of sulfur, or a little loadstone, since that has
affinity with iron. Nature rejoices with nature. Take white magnesia; thou shall
whiten it with brine and alum, in sea-water, or citron juice, or with the smoke of
sulfur; for the fume of sulfur when it is white, whitens all things; for whitened
magnesia does not render bodies fragile, or allow the blackness of bronze to come
forth. Nature restrains nature348
It is not clear how far back this alchemical term may find its origin. However, the
alchemical term certainly predates the first century and it may be a borrowing from
Greek, not Latin. Plato for instance mentions Magnesia as a mythical ideal state in his
famous dialogue The Laws. Therefore, it is perhaps not unusual that Greeks may have
coined the alchemical Magnesia by borrowing the name from one of their famous cities,
any time before the first century CE, while the text is now lost.
346

Linden, 39.
Ibid, 40.
348
Ibid, 43.
347

117
Whether the alchemical symbol originates with the ancient Levantine Greeks or
with the ones located in Europe is still unclear. That is because during Antiquity, three
important cities are called Magnesia. One located in mainland Greece, and two other
colonies, both established around seventh century BCE in Anatolia (modern Turkey):
Magnesia ad Sipylum in Lydia region, and Magnesia on the Maeander in Ionia region.
The epic poem attributed to Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, dated around seventh-century
BCE, lists among the forefathers of the Hellenic nation a certain Magnes, founder of the
Magnetes tribe and the region Magnesia, homeland of mythical heroes Jason and
Achilles.349
Although of uncertain origins, Magnesia as an alchemical term is certainly
preserved by the Greeks of Late Antiquity. To exemplify, the next reference to
Magnesia resurfaces with fifth-century Greek bishop Synesius, a disciple of the famous
mathematician Hypatia. The link connecting Magnesia (alchemical reference to an
encrypted divine Number/Word) to the disciples of the most advanced school of
mathematics and astronomy of the century cannot be overlooked as a mere coincidence.
Mathematics and numerology are methods of encryption in alchemy, of an importance
equated only by astronomy as a field. Not incidentally, all alchemists of all ages who are
known for taking very seriously Alchemy as an Art, are also famous mathematicians,
astronomers (sometimes astrologers) and cryptologists at the same time (most salient
example being Newton).

349

Hesiod and Glenn W. Most, The shield; Catalogue of women; Other fragments, (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 2007).

118
It can be affirmed that the alchemical work attributed to Hypatias disciple reverberates
with esoteric meanings, The True Book of Synesius, explains: For that is the White
Mercury, the White Magnesia, Foliated Earth.350
However, the text reference to Magnesia in most certain esoteric terms comes
from a seventh-century Byzantine author. Stephanos of Alexandria clearly conceives
Magnesia as a mystical formula. The work attributed to him, Secreta Alchimiae, lists
Magnesia as another encryption of the cabalistic sacred Name of God which is deemed to
change matter. Later on, a treatise attributed to the tenth-century Arabic alchemist
Muhammad Ibn Umail, known in the Latin West under the name Senior, lists Magnesia
as an ambivalent term. In this hybrid alchemical text, entitled Hall ar-Rumuz (Arabic:
Explanation of the Symbols), magnesia is both a mystical word of the unspoken mystery,
as well as a laboratory substance.351
Magnesia resurfaces in an exoteric text known as The Secret Book of uncertain
authorship, attributed to a twelfth-century author known as Artephius. The exact
reference to magnesia and the antimony found in Pseudo-Democritus is echoed in
Artephius, however, still matching the attributes of the whitening/condensing/congealing
found in cabalistic esoteric alchemy. The whole, then, of this antimonial secret is, that
we know how by it to extract or draw forth argent vive, out of the body of Magnesia, not
burning, and this is antimony, and a mercurial sublimate.

350

Lyndy Abraham, A dictionary of alchemical imagery, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 121.
351
Theodor bt and u ammad bn mayl, Book of the explanation of the symbols,
, Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum (CALA), (IB. Zurich: Living Human Heritage
Publications, 2010).

119
That is, you must extract a living and incombustible water, and then congeal, or coagulate
it.352 And this white vapor, this white gold, to wit, this quintessence, is called also the
compound magnesia, which like a man does contain, or like a man is composed of a
body, soul and spirit.353
However, the thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar and alchemist, Bartholomeus
Anglicus354, in his eclectic compilation De proprietatibus rerum, lists Magnesia as a city
instead.355 The fourteenth-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer also mentions magnesia in
Canon's Yeoman's Tale. The character of the tale is a disciple of Plato, and he asks his
master:
Tell me the name of the privy stoon?/ And Plato answered to him anoon, / Take
the stoon that Titanos men name. / Which is that? quod he. Magnesia is the
same, / / What is Magnesia, good sir, I yow preye? It is a water that is maad,
I seye/ Of elements foure, quoth Plato.356
The tale obviously attempts to echo the Plato dialogues The Laws. However, in
Chaucers dialogue, Magnesia is not an ideal city, but an alchemical substance. Even so
the Plato theme may be preserved, the transition from toponymy to an established
alchemical term is by now complete.

352

Artephius, The Secret Book, paragraph 3, transcribed from In Pursuit of Gold by Lapidus.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/artephiu.html.
353
Ibid, paragraph 23.
354
Also mentioned as Bartholomew of England in Lynn Thorndike, A history of magic and experimental
science, vol. 2, (New York: The Macmillan company, 1923), 425.
355
Among many topics, Bartholomew writes on gems, minerals and medicine.
356
Mark Haeffner, The Dictionary of alchemy: From Maria Prophetissa to Isaac Newton, (Aquarian Press:
HarperCollins, 1991), 135.

120
The alchemical manuscript The Golden Rotation357 equates magnesia with the
fifth element or the quintessence of alchemists which, according to alchemical theories,
results from the combination of the four alchemical elements.358 The sixteenth-century
German Heinrich Khunrath places Magnesia at the center of his Paracelsian alchemy.
For him, Magnesia is the primal chaos, as he defines it as a Catholic or Universal that
is a Cosmic Ens or Entity, Three-in-One, naturally compounded of Body, Spirit and Soul,
the one and only trueUniversal Material Lapidis Philosophorum.359 A certain Treatise
of Rosinus, attributed to Rosinus ad Sarrantatem is part of a Renaissance compilation
published in 1593, Artis Auriferae (Latin: The Art of Making Gold). This alchemical
source lists magnesia as both esoterically as a mystical concept as well as exoterically, a
laboratory substance. Rosinus advises: Take therefore this animate stone, the stone
which has a soul in it, the mercurial, which is sensitive, and sensible to the presence and
influence of the magnesia and the magnet.360
Also, a seventeenth-century alchemist George Thornley, known by the pen names
George Thor and Astromagus, allegedly compiled a collection of alchemical works. The
work attributed to him was published in 1667 in London under the title An Easie
Introduction to the Philosophers Magical Gold' To which is added Zoroaster's Cave.361
Astromagus lists many predecessors who have mentioned the mysterious Magnesia in the
past, authors he is familiar with and whom he highly esteems.

357

Abraham, A dictionary of alchemical imagery, 122.

Ibid, 121.
359
Haeffner, 136.
360
Ibid.
361
The work attributed to him, Zoroaster's Cave. Or, The Philosopher's Intellectuall Echo to one another
from their Cells, (London, 1667) is in reprint today, cover available to be seen at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/bookshop/opuscula09.html
358

121
Many of the authors and books listed in Zoroaster's Cave are currently lost. A certain
Jodocus Greverius is quoted by Astromagus in chapter two: that Amalgam, to conceale
it from the unworthy, is calld by Philosophers our Venus, our Gold, The earth of
Magnesia, the whole Compound. Another author mentioned in this collection is Adeptus
Anonymus, to whom the following quote is attributed: When better decocted, then it is
Argent, then Magnesia, and white Sulphur. Also, the compiler states that Magnesia is
That whole mixture from whence is drawn our humidity calld Argent vive, when
quoting from the lost source entitled Ludus puerorum. The book Speculum Arnaldi listed
by Astromagus teaches that Our Stone after its putrefaction is called Magnesia, and in
the putrefaction it is called Saturnus. Also, the source Tertia Synodus Pythagorica
Manuscripta allegedly enumerates several encrypted names for one same substance:
Terra Alba, White Earth, White Sulphur, White Fume, Auripigment, Magnesia, and
Ethel, signifie the same, in this Art. A quote from Democritus Apud Flamellum explains:
Our divine Water, the Spume of Silver mingled with Magnesia, rids away the Darke
Umbra of the body.362
During the Middle Ages alchemists refer to Magnesia sometimes as a city
(Bartholomew of England), other times as a mysterious substance (Synesius,
Astromagus, Chaucer, etc). Subsequent epochs retain within European alchemy the same
code name for a variety of laboratory substances. Newton mentions magnesia in his
Propositions when referring to an active, vitalistic alchemical agent, Mercurius.363

362

Anthon Mithae, Zoroaster's cave or the philosopher's intellectual echo to one another frrom their celles,
(St. Louis, Mo: E.A. Hitchcock, 1855).
363
Abraham, 121.

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Newton also refers to magnesia as the quintessence of the alchemists, in his treatise
Praxis.364 However, the reference to Magnesia as a substance remains elusive, and it has
not always been understood as material in its nature. In addition to its exoteric chemical
concept, there is a secondary meaning attached to magnesia, which does not pertain to the
material world. The earliest extant Byzantine reference to Magnesia dates to seventh
century, and is impregnated with cabalistic potent symbolism. Therefore, for the
Byzantine alchemy, Magnesia is an esoteric encryption, and its meaning pertains to the
spiritual, not chemical realm. Unlike the Arabs who refer more or less openly to
alchemical substances and concepts, with the Byzantines, one may observe the endurance
of secrecy and encryption in alchemy is best exemplified.
The Byzantine encoding seems to have two main origins. The first factor might be
the Byzantine rhetoric, which, compared to modern European standards, is rather
convoluted and hard to understand. The second reason is the centuries-old tradition of
alchemical secrecy typical to the Mediterranean basin as well as the ancient Middle
Eastern area. Such tradition can be traced back to earlier Hellenistic authors, when
Cleopatra and Zosimos wrote encrypted texts, or it may go as far back as the Babylonian
sources, well known for their secrecy.
Byzantine rhetoric is meant to impress the audience. It is delivered as pretence for
intellectual prowess and is a precursor of the later Western scholastic manner of speech
and argumentation. During the seventh century, Byzantine alchemy is ambivalent.

364

Betty J. T. Dobbs, The Janus faces of genius: the role of alchemy in Newton's thought, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 162.

123
On one hand alchemists may address publicly and discuss freely such topics like alchemy
in front of large audiences, with no censorship. Alchemy also features as a field to be
taught openly in imperial academic institutions, such as the university in Constantinople
protected by the Byzantine emperor. On the other hand, public lectures on alchemy are
delivered to large audiences in a manner that only students initiated into the secrecies of
alchemy would understand. One salient example is the famous seventh-century alchemist
Stephanos of Alexandria, also known as the practical philosopher in the Byzantine
sources365.
Alchemical tradition attributes the important work The Great and Sacred Art of
Making Gold to Stephanos of Alexandria, alchemist, philosopher, astrologer, and lecturer
at the court of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. Regardless of its disputed authorship,
the Byzantine origin of the treatise is acknowledged by historians as certain.366 The
alchemist refers in his manuscript to the magnesia of Lydia,367 and the body of
magnesia by which the whole mystery is brought about.368 In a bombastic discourse,
Stephanos mentions Magnesia without clearly defining it. The author encrypts the
meaning in a shroud of allegories and metaphors, making the whole text hard to follow:
For when the incorruptible body shall be released from death, and when it shall
transform the fulfilment which has become spiritual, then superior to nature it is
as a marvellous spirit; then it masters the body moved (by it), then it rejoices as
over its own habitation, then it conquers that which in disembodied fashion haunts
the whole which is engendered of the whole, that is admirable above nature.
'Which I say to you is the comprehensive magnesia.369

365

Paul Magdalino and Maria V. Mavroudi, The occult sciences in Byzantium, (Geneva: La Pomme d'or,
2006), 164.
366
Ibid, 170-72.
367
Linden, 58.
368
Ibid, 55.
369
Ibid, 56.

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The rest of the text is not easy to comprehend either. Attempts to establish a clear
meaning for Magnesia remain difficult for both the modern reader as well as any of the
non-alchemist students attending Stephanos lectures. However, the context of the text
relates Magnesia to other concepts and thus hints at its true identity, helping an attentive
and intitiated audience to decipher it. In the section entitled Lecture 1, with the Help of
God, Stephanos gives one of his long tirades about the exceptional qualities of alchemy
and nature. Here, Magnesia is identified with Tetrasomia, another important term
circulating among cabalist-alchemists.
O conjunction of the tetrasomia adorned upon the surface, o inscription of the
threefold triad and completion of the universal seal, body of magnesia by which
the whole mystery is brought about, o golden-roofed stream of heaven, and silvercrested spirit sent forth from the sea, o thou that hast the silver-breasted garment
and providest the liquid golden curls, O fair exercise of the wisest intellects, O
wise all-creative power of men most holy, O sea inscrutable by uninitiated men,
370
According to alchemy, a specific agent is crucial for the metamorphosis of base
metals into gold, as well as of imperfect souls and bodies into immortal perfected
humans. This agent is not of a material substance however, and its nature is hard to grasp,
possess, and use. It is also immaterial and resists misuse by an uninitiated operator. This
agent is known to alchemists of all cultures and civilizations across centuries, from China
to India, from the Arabs to the Europeans. It is known to alchemists mainly under the
generic terms Philosophers Stone and the Name (referring to Gods Name). It is an
enduring symbol in the history of alchemy, and survives disguised under several
denominations. Regardless of the variety of the shapes it can take, one common feature
exists for all its terms.
370

Ibid, 55.

125
These encrypted titles maintain one key aspect of the Sacred Name of the One God (or
Wholeness): it is made of four main parts. In spite of Gods intrinsic unity, the divine
force seems to have a Name made of four divisions, mainly four syllables, four letters,
sometimes four consonants, other times four vowels, or four elements, etc. European
sources referred to this Divine Name as: Tetraktys (Ancient Greeks and the
Pythagoreans), Tetragrammaton and Magnesia (Hellenistic alchemists in Late
Antiquity and Middle Ages), Abraxas (syncretic: Judaic, Greek Hellenistic and Egyptian
Gnostic), Tetrasomia (medieval Byzantines), YHVH (four consonants in Jewish
cabalistic and alchemical sources), AYON (also Aeon, Aion, or Ion, in Christian Gnostic
alchemy), and Azot (Arabic alchemists).

Fig. 51 [Gnostic: Abraxas deity embodiment of four

elements. Ancient medicine charms and amulets had Abraxas name written in a cyclical
or repetitive pattern,371 echoing Tetraktys and Tetragrammaton].
According to Cabala, the sacred Name of God consisting of four elements gives
power over Nature to the one who uses it unselfishly and without abusing it. Among the
Israelites, only the chief Rabbi of the Great Temple was entitled to know the true Name
of God and pass it to his successor at death. The Name is still known to the Israelites at
the time of the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple by the
Romans in first century CE.
371

Cf. the same repetitive pattern and also pointing downward triangle as for the esoteric Kalemaris in
Davies, Grimoires: a history of magic books, 131.

126
However, the Word is thus lost to the world, together with the Ark of Covenant, as well
as many sacred objects, books and magical knowledge. Now forgotten and missing, the
powerful Name which grants all wishes to the initiate, continues to be searched and
researched feverishly across centuries. Officially the Word has never been retrieved yet.
However, along centuries, claims have occasionally been made in Europe that the Name
is still known and jealously guarded under sworn secrecy by certain initiates into the
mysteries of God. A few European alchemists, cabalists, Rosicrucians, occultists, rabbis
and freemasons allegedly stated in private letters as well as published pamphlets and
books that the Name was in the possession of certain Masters, and it is not to be disclosed
unless loyal membership to the selected group is first secured.

Fig.52 [Tetragrammaton: IHVH letters written in Tetraktys].

Source caption: The tetragrammaton as a tetraktys. In the Cabala, the work of creation
unfolds according to a similar pattern, in four steps starting with the letters of the
tetragrammaton, the unpronounceable divine name: in alchemy too this fourfold step, the
axiom of Maria Prophetissa, plays a leading part.372
In equating Magnesia with Tetrasomia, Stephanos uses the term not for a
chemical substance, but a concept of non-material origin and texture. Magnesia turns out
to be a cabalistic powerful word, a sacred Name of One God, not to be uttered or
mentioned directly ever, given its potency. It has to be indirectly spoken of, given the
dangers it can bring about.

372

Roob, 90.

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According to cabalistic Judaic tradition, the name of God cannot be pronounced or
written down, as it embodies a powerful force which, once unleashed, can bring about the
end of the world. The Name can destroy both the entire world and the person who
misuses or abuses the Word. Alchemists retain the cabalistic lore related to the Gods
Name, and believe that this word can perfect the reality, both matter and soul. In other
words, if properly handled, the Word can transform any metal into gold, as well as
humans into immortals. Stephanos is familiar with the Cabalistic theory, and with several
occasions he comments in his work on the secret name of the Philosopher's Stone,
avoiding however to expatiate on it. Stephanos mentions nine letters forming four
syllables in the structure of the Divine Name.373 In other words, according to the
Byzantine author, Magnesia is made of four syllables, with a total of nine letters.
However, the Byzantine sources do not always refer to immaterial concepts.
Laboratory work and substances are also hidden from peering eyes. Magnesia was a
black powder ingredient. Mercury, an elusive both metal-looking as well as liquidlooking substance, is often encrypted under many names in alchemical sources.

One

example is the famous Ouroborus, the snake which bites its own tail. Byzantine sources
make reference to enduring symbols in Egyptian, European and Islamic alchemy. Such
symbols like Ouroborus cross centuries maintaining a similar image, however, constantly
changing and enriching the meanings ascribed to the image. Ouroborus changes its
meaning by the context of various alchemical text, where it can symbolize anything
between Cosmos, Time, Zodiac, the Path of the Sun, the Year, to the concept of the
Completed Work, or sometimes all of these meanings at once.
373

Magdalino and Mavroudi, The occult sciences in Byzantium, 176.

128
An anonymous eighth to tenth-centuries poem, ascribed to a certain Theophrastos,
probably a Byzantine sophist, also mentions the Ouroborus, slightly modified from snake
into another reptile, the dragon.A dragon springs therefrom which, when exposed / In
horses excrement for twenty days, /Devours his tail till naught thereof remains. /This
dragon, whom they Ouroboros call, / Is white in looks and spotted in his skin, / And has a
form and shape most strange to see.374 In this context, the Byzantine author makes direct
reference to Mercury as a changing agent to obtain silver:
And change its nature to a stream divine / quenching draughts; then pour the
mercury / Into a gaping urn and when its stream / Of sacred fluid stops to flow,
then wash / Away with care the blackened dross of earth. Thus having brightened
what the darkness hid / 'Within the dragon's entrails thou wilt bring / A mystery
unspeakable to light; / For it will shine exceeding bright and clear, / And, being
tinged a perfect white throughout, / 'Will be revealed with wondrous brilliancy, /
Its blackness having all been changed to white; / For when the cloud-sent water
flows thereon / It cleanses every dark and earthy stain.375
An anonymous Renaissance alchemist, the author of MS Ashmole 1415, echoes
the words of ancient Masters, when explaining that the Stone is made of four elements
(reminiscence of Tetraktys and Tetragrammaton, with Four expressed as One):

374
375

Linden, 65.
Ibid, 66.

129
Another saith, in the Herball Stone are Haire, Blood, Eggs, and this hee said to
shew in these words, the 4 Elements,376 He expatiates on the topic, and while
doing so he reveals the exact pattern we find in cabala about the generation of
dots, circles and again new dots at the intersection of circles. Here are foure
things, two are manifest, how many are the things, to which the other said,
there are foure,Then the one asked, how is this? to which the other answering
said the wise man understands but twowhich are they two?The hidden thing
after this hee adds two words and they signifie foure, and foure signifie but two,
and hee changed the words of the wise before mentioned and said foureHereby
meanes the Master nothing else then that out of the foure things two should bee
set together, man and wife.377

376

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
377
Here are foure things, two are manifest which hee named the lead, and that which is like lead. Then
said one of the men, how many are the things, to which the other said, there are foure, and said
moreover: These art words of the prudent and wise, and have a darke obscurity in them, and are taken
out of the apparent sentences of the wise. Then the one asked, how is this? to which the other answering
said the wise man understands but two. The one asked againe, which are they two? The man answered
and said, The hidden thing after this hee adds two words and they signifie foure, and foure signifie but
two, and hee changed the words of the wise before mentioned and said foure. And the wise men say but
two. Then he answered and said as it was said before, In these words is a hidden obscurity and they are
taken out of the illustrious sayings of the wise. Hereby meanes the Master nothing else then that out of
the foure things two should bee set together, man and wife. And having thus used diverse words among
the rest he said, Take Fire and water, and mingle these two together, and there will bee one thing out of
it. After this he said, Take Lead and that which resembles lead, and he changed these words and said,
Take Azoth and that which resembles Azoth; with such hidden words doe they hide their words to all
unwise men. Perceive therefore and trust God, that thou mayst perceive the better the aforesaid saying
of the wise. Of this le give thee an example when the aster saith, Take Lead, according to a
philosophicall sense or meaning. The word lead is a manly name and word, and so one of the number of
the names of men. Hereby mayst thou truly know the name of the man. And he saith further, That which
resembles lead, that is, that which resembles the man. So hee hides the name of the Woman, and the
reason why he mentions the mans name first is because shee is of him, and not hee of her. Therefore
said the master, That which resembles Lead. After this one said, Take Azoth and that which resembles
Azoth. The Masters hereby meane the wife. Here he names the Woman, and mentions not the name of
the man, for hee had named him before in the beginning of these words, where he saith, Take Adam and
what resembles Adam. Afterwards hee changeth this Speeche againe, to make it more occult to him that
is not altogether wise, and said, Take Eva, and what resembles Eva, here thou namest Eva and not the
man, and this thou doest, because thou didst begin in the first speech with the man. That these Speeches
doe not at all hinder a wise man in his reason, but make him more ingenious, and more intelligent, in
Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.

130
The author is adamant in his explanation that out of the dyad or the conjoining of
the opposites, the joining of the contraries, or the marriage of the Two, the Four is
generated:
Mingle the warm with the cold, for so an equall mixture will arise out of it,
which is neither warme nor cold, and mix the moist with the dry, and you'le have
an equall mixture, which is neither moist nor dry. The Speech now uttered, is
manifest from 4 things, and out of these foure are numbered and terminated Man
and Wife. The man is hot and dry, the wife cold and moist, but when they come
together, and unite themselves naturally, there is made an equall mixture of the
warme and the cold, of the moist with the dryMix together fire and water, and
there will be two, Mix together aire and earth, and there will bee foure, Afterward
of foure make one, then thou art come to what thou wouldst bee att. And when
this is done make out of that body a non-corpus, that is a Spirit, as out of the noncorpus or Spirit make a body againe, which may bee constant on the fire, and not
remove any way from it. Already, thou hast comprehended the Wisdom.378
Similar ideas are expressed in other alchemical texts. The Secret Book attributed
to Artephius follows the same cabalistic order of ideas; the same structure or pattern is
evident: for in such a dissolution and natural sublimation or lifting up, there is a
loosening or untying of the elements, and a cleansing and separating of the pure from the
impure.379The famous dictum enclosed in the Emerald Tablet, as above, so below380 is
echoed in every alchemical text, imagery or action undertaken by the alchemists. To
follow the correspondences between the above (macrocosm) and the below (microcosm),
is recommended that the alchemist imitate entirely and follow closely the structure and
the actions of the above Cosmos when working in his below laboratory.

378

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html.
379
Artephius, The Secret Book, paragraph 18, transcribed from n Pursuit of Gold by Lapidus.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/artephiu.html.
380
Tabula Smaragdina, in Linden, 28.

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Consequently, alchemists carefully follow the above into every aspect, and carry this
instruction up to the most minute detail. One such intricacy is observed in an exoteric text
instructing on the laboratory equipment, where the four elements are mirrored in the
measurements of the matrass (bottom part of the alembic): in a broad glass vessel, and
four inches high or more.381

This Stone is a Key382

The Byzantine alchemist Stephanos of Alexandria, according to Maria

Papathanassiou, already in the seventh century was wedding [h]is theoretical approach
to the riddle of the philosophers, i.e. the secret name of the philosophers' stone.383
Stephanos also joined the Philosophers Stone with the Philosophers Egg.
Papathanassiou points out that [a]ccording to Stephanos, the mysterion of the
philosophers (where mysterion is a multi-valent word meaning mystery, secret, but
also mystic rite, an object used in magic rites, talisman and symbol) is carried out by
means of the seven planets; philosophers call it the Egg of the philosophers which is not
laid by a bird.384

381

Artephius, The Secret Book,, paragraph 2. http://www.alchemywebsite.com/artephiu.html.

Anonymous, Rosarium Philosophorum, part II, paragraph quoted from Rosinus, in MS Ferguson 210, an
Eighteenth-century English translation http://www.alchemywebsite.com/rosary2.html, of an earlier Latin
work, De Alchemia Opuscula complura veterum philosophorum..., (Frankfurt, 1550).
All text available at: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/rosary0.html.
The series of 20 Emblems can be seen here: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/rosarium.html.
383
Maria Papathanassiou in Magdalino and Mavroudi, 175.
384
Ibid, 178.
382

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When Stephanos students ask for the alchemical recipe, Speak, tell to us the secrets of
the work [of 'the marvellous making of gold'],385 [a]nd how do you render the white
yellow?, his answer is a harbinger of later alchemical thought, as he veils his answer in
cabalistic speech: Ye wisest of men, over-pass the reasoning, this answer is a secret, a
mystic speech and consideration. I will tell you the hidden mystery whence it is
proclaimed above you.386 The Philosophers Stone, as we will see, is a stone yet not a
stone.
In Jewish mysticism The Master of the Divine Name is a the title given to those
who possessed the knowledge of the sacred name of God and who knew how to use the
sacred formulae for mystical and magical purposes. Such people were called Baal Shem,
a term which predated the medieval Kabbalah.387 According to the cabalistic tradition,
the last duty of the chief rabbi was to secure the transmission of the Word to the one next
in rank before his death. However, the tradition goes, with the destruction of Jerusalem
by the Romans, not only were the Temple and the Ark destroyed, but the Word was lost
as well. Medieval alchemists, in search of the lost Word, refer to the Cornerstone the
builders forgot, meaning the forgotten Name of God, the sacred uttering, the Logos. In
Christian doctrine the Logos was incarnated in Jesus, who is the Word made flesh.
Early Modern alchemists claim that their Stone is made by the prototype of the heavenly
Stone Jesus Christ:

385

Linden, 58.
Ibid.
387
Nevill Drury, Dictionary of mysticism and the esoteric traditions, (Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 1992),
207.
386

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This tried, blessed, and heavenly Stone Jesus Christ was longingly expected
from the beginning of the world by the Fathers and Holy Patriarchs; Godenlightened men prayed that they might be accounted worthy to see the promised
Christ in His bodily and visible form In all these respects the Precious, Blessed,
and Heavenly Stone agrees most wonderfully with our earthly, corporal, and
philosophical Stone; and it is, therefore, well worth our while to compare our
Stone with its Heavenly prototype. We shall thus understand that the earthly
philosophical Stone is the true image of the real, spiritual, and heavenly Stone
Jesus Christ If we would find that high and heavenly Stone, we must remember
that, as our earthly Philosophical Stone is to be sought in one thing and two
things, which are met with everywhere, so we must look for Him nowhere but in
the eternal Word of God, and the Holy Scripture (consisting of the Old and New
Testaments) - as God the Father testified at His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor
(Mark ix., Luke ix.), when He said: This is My Beloved Son: hear ye Him. In
the same way Christ, the essential and eternal Word of God, speaks of Himself:
No one comes to the Father, but by Me-according to the Scripture, the infallible
testimony of the Divine Word (Isaiah xxxiv.).388
Another early modern alchemical text, MS Sloane 3630 and attributed to Bernard
Trevisan, notes that to the end that this great Secret might not remain unknown, which is
the Stone,, Philosophers have called this Secret Verbum Dismissum, which is to say, a
word left or concealed.389 Elias Ashmole echoes this same idea when he confesses that
William Backhouse told [him] in Syllables the true matter of the philosophers
stone...390

388

Johann Ambrosius Siebmacher, Wasserstein der Weysen, (Frankfurt, 1619). English translation: The
Sophic Hydrolith or Water Stone of the Wise: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/sophic4.html.
389
Bernard Trevisan, Verbum Dismissum in British Museum Sloane MS.3630, e-book, translated from the
French by Sigismund Bacstrom and transcribed by Robert Nelson.
http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy3/trevisan.htm
Also at: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/trevisanus_verbum_dismissum.html and
http://www.thebookofaquarius.com/books/verbum_dismissum

390

Extract from Ashmole diary: 26th pril 1651: " r. William Backhouse of Swallowfield, in the county of
Berks, caused me to call him father thenceforward." 10th June 1651: "Mr. Backhouse told me I must now
needs be his son, because he had communicated so many secrets to me." 10th March 1652: "This
morning my father Backhouse opened himself very freely, touching the great secret." And finally, under
date 13th May 1653, Ashmole writes: "My father Backhouse lying sick in Fleet Street, over against St.
Dunstan's church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven of the clock told me, in

134
Robert Boyle also mentions the cornerstones of the Invisible College,391 when referring
to his membership in the Rosicrucian Invisible College.392 Another member, Henry
Adamson, makes extraordinary claims in his alchemical poem published in 1638, The
Muses Threnodie: For what we do presage is riot in grosse,/For we are brethren of the
Rosie Crosse; /We have the Mason Word and second sight, / Things for to come we can
foretell aright.393 John Wallis also describes his visits to the same freemasonic
congregation, gives London as the location and dates meetings to 1645.394 Moreover, the
twentieth-century mystic and freemason Manly Hall, writes, in his work The Lost Key of
Masonry, his definition of what a Mason should be and in passing refers to the lost Word:
[The Mason] is a man who in his heart has been duly and truly prepared, has
been found worthy and well qualified, has been admitted to fraternity and
builders, been invested with certain passwords and signs by which he may be
abled to work and receive wages as a Master Mason, and travel in foreign lands in
search of that which has been lost The Word. Down to the misty vistas of the
ages rings a clarion declaration and although the very heavens echo to the
reverberations, but few hear and fewer understand: In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Here is the eternal
paradox. The Word is lost yet it is ever with us.395

syllables, the true matter of the Philosopher's Stone, which he bequeathed to me as a

legacy." http://www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/wbackhouse.html.
391
Robert Lomas, The invisible college: The Royal Society, freemasonry and the birth of modern science,
(London: Headline, 2002),
392
Sarah Irving, Natural science and the origins of the British Empire. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008,
16.
393
Henry Adamson, T e
ses Threnodie, or, Mirthfull Mournings, on the death of Master Gall.
Co
g v e e of p e s
po c
esc p o s w
e os e
k e
q es of Sco
,
especially at Perth. Perth, (Perth, 1638), in A. Dodd & Shakespeare, W., The secret history of Francis Bacon
(our Shake-speare) the son of Queen Elizabeth, as revealed by the Sonnets arranged in the correct
numerical and chronological order, (London: C.W. Daniel Co. 1942), 39.
394
H. G. Lyons, The Royal Society, 1660-1940, a history of its administration under its charters, (Cambridge
[Eng.]: The University Press, 1944).
395
Manly P. Hall, The Lost Key of Masonry, pdf-book, 2.
http://www.rgle.org.uk/The%20Lost%20Keys%20of%20Freemasonry.pdf
Also see Manly P. Hall, The lost keys of Freemasonry. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.

135
Hints about the vocal nature of the Stone are found in many alchemical texts, as
well as in the confessions, diaries, and personal correspondence among alchemists. It is
highly probable that the following excerpts from alchemical texts refer to the sound
feature of the Stone, a secret divine Word, an encryption in letter-form of the
mathematical formula, which was found everywhere in nature and through which the
Universe was created. One alchemical text instructs: Out of this speech and sentences it
is manifest, that this art may bee taught with all its Secretes in a few words.396 It is
probable then that alchemical texts reveal certain hints to facets of the Stone overlooked
by historians: the Sound and the Word. The same alchemist refers to the use of gesture
and sound, perhaps reverberations unlocking the sought-after secret: one should show it
to the other with hand and mouth and reveal'd and open'd all to him.397 When speaking
about the Stone, alchemists often repeat a phrase found in the famous text Tabula
Smaragdina: the wind carries in its womb, again suggesting reverberations (and
incantations?) as tools of discovery.398
Alchemists, then, associate the special Holy Name or divine Creational formula
and generically know it as The Philosophers Stone. The idea that the philosophical
stone is not a stone could often be heard in alchemical circles, and referred to both words
and substance:399

396

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1415, pp.130-146, transcribed by Hereward Tilton. Featured title: A
Chymicall treatise of the Ancient and highly illuminated Philosopher, Devine and Physitian, Arnoldus de
Nova Villa who lived 400 years agoe, never seene in print before, but now by a Lover of the Spagyrick art
made publick for the use of Learners, printed in the year 1611.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/arnaldus_treatise.html
397
Ibid.
398
Linden, 28.
399
Examples: Our Stone is a stone, and not a stone in paragraph xix. PYTH GOR S, as well as t is a
stone, and not a stone, viz., the eagle stone, in paragraph xlvi. ROS R S, in part 3 in the treatise

136
It is a Stony, and not a stone in the sense of having the nature of any one stone; it
is fire, yet it has not the appearance, or properties, of fire; it is air, yet neither has
it the appearance, or properties, of air; it is water, but has no resemblance, or
affinity, to the nature of water. It is earth, though it has not the nature, or
appearance, of earth, seeing that it is a thing by itself.400
The sacred Word, a kind of creational password, would be uttered as a magical
chant or prayer over the substance within an alembic, replicating the sacred tradition of
the creation of the World through the uttering of the Word. We see here a clear joining
of the esoteric and exoteric aspects of alchemy, and cabala offers the interpretive key. As
Roob puts it: In the Cabala, the work of creation unfolds according to a similar pattern,
in four steps starting with the letters of the tetragrammaton, the unpronounceable divine
name: in alchemy too this fourfold step, the axiom of Maria Prophetissa, plays a leading
part.401 The seventeenth-century Christian cabalist and alchemist Athanasius Kircher
presents in Oedipus Aegyptiacus a drawing depicting a cipher for the sacred Word. Here
we see the name of God in 72 languages inscribed upon the petals of a symbolic flower.
Above a circle are presented the 72 powers of God according to the Hebrew Kabbalah.
Below are two trees, on the left bearing the symbols of the planets and on the right the
signs of the zodiac and the names of the tribes of Israel.402

Gloria Mundi sonsten Paradeiss Taffel, published in German first in Frankfurt, 1620, and later republished
by Lucas Jennis in the compendium Musaeum Hermeticum in 1625. Latin editions followed in 1678 and
1749.
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/glory3.html
400
Ibid, part 1 http://www.alchemywebsite.com/glory1.html
401
Roob, 90.
402
http://www.stanford.edu/group/kircher/cgi-bin/site/?attachment_id=765

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This process of magical uttering of the esoteric Philosophers Stone (the Word) would
transform the exoteric Philiosophers Stone (the substance in the alembic). Alchemists
clearly believed that this transmutation was possible even if the change caused in the
matter would be subtle and not easily perceived with naked eye. The similarity between
this alchemical transmutation with Christian transubstantiation during the sacramental
ritual of the Mass can hardly be missed. Just as the priest uttered specific words that
transformed the bread and wine into Christs body and blood, so the alchemist transmuted
substance by invoking specific words. Moreover, this power to transform in both priest
and alchemist was reserved to the initiate, the priest through the sacrament of ordination
and the alchemist through the acquisition of secret knowledge from membership in a
community of adepts. In both cases, holy words transform substance.
Imagery of alchemists kneeling, prostrating, praying, chanting and meditating in
order to assist alchemical processes in their laboratory work is often depicted in
alchemical works. Texts and drawings, engravings, woodcuts, paintings and plates depict
such activity, instructing alchemist-readers that praying and uttering the sacred Word is
crucial to transforming the substance in the alembic. One famous example comes from
the seventeenth-century alchemical work Mutus Liber (Lat. The Silent Book).403 Here
on Plate 8 a male and a female alchemist pray and invoke divine help in front of an
alembic hidden inside of an athanor (Fig 64).404

403

Seventeenth-century famous anonymous treatise Mutus Liber (Lat. Silent Book), of fifteen emblems,
first edition, La Rochelle, published in 1677. Attributed to Isaac Baulot by J. Flouret, propos de lauteur
du Mutus Liber, ev e f se s o e
v e 11, (April-June, 1976): 206-211. A reproduction
(copyright Adam McLean 1999-2010) of all plates can be seen here:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/prints_series_mutus.html
404
Ibid. Also Plate 8 in Roob, 306, 312, 315. It can also be seen here:
http://true-color-of-mind.blogspot.com/2012/01/symbols-alchemy.html

138
Above this laboratory of mundane space, there is the lofty realm of the deity who has
been invoked through the holy Name, and where two angels appear and hover above the
alchemists, to assist their praying for the completion of the Philosopher Stone. This
above realm is suggestive of the alchemical dictum as above, so below405 meaning that
there should be a match between the esoteric above and the exoteric below. The
Silent Book Plate 14 also has a revelatory caption (Fig. 65). It reads: Pray, read, read,
read again and you will find.406 This plate features the same two alchemists seen in Plate
8, who now suggestively point with one hand to the angels above. The alchemists point
with the other hand at their mouths to show the importance of sound, the praying and
rhythmic chanting of the Divine Name, understood by alchemists and cabalists as a secret
Password of Creation which God uttered when the Universe came into being. In the same
image, next to the heads of both alchemists, we see an alembic floating in the air. The
vessel is encasing the Philosopher Stone finally realized. This Stone, moreover, is here
depicted as the famous cabalistic hieroglyph of John Dee, the Monad.
Alchemist-authors instructing fellow alchemists how to join the esoteric (word)
with the exoteric (laboratory work) is a common theme in alchemy. Sometimes the author
may emphasize the importance of the word by depicting alchemists praying, as in Mutus
Liber, or in the engraving The Oratory and Laboratory from Khunrath's
Amphitheatrum of 1609.407

405

Tabula Smaragdina, in Linden, 28.

Plate 14 in Roob, 318.
407
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amphitheatrum_sapientiae_aeternae__Alchemist%27s_Laboratory.jpg.
Also in Roob, 271. Also here: http://alchemicalpsychology.com/new/6.htm
406

139
In this famous work, the alchemist kneels and prays in an oratory which faces a
laboratory equipped with ovens. Nearby we see a table loaded with musical instruments,
suggestive of the esoteric Stone (sound) in preparing the exoteric Stone (ingredient). In
various other works the alchemist author may opt for a more encrypted version when
secretively instructing about the importance of sound. One such beautifully executed
example is a hybrid creature playing a violin and a bird playing a trumpet, found in the
fifteenth-century anonymous manuscript, Aurora consurgens.408
Advice and teachings concerning meditation and prayer in alchemical practices
are not confined to images, but can be found in alchemical texts as well. Instructions on
the importance of the esoteric work abound. One salient example can be found in another
famous alchemical work, The Triumphal Chariot of Basil Valentine, first published in
Leipsig in 1604. In an annotated version by Theodore Kirkringus, published later in 1678,
the commentator is adamant about the role of prayer in chemistry:
Prayer; by which Celestial Gifts are obtained of GOD the giver of all good
things; our Author wills, that unto him the mind by lifted up, even in the midstof
the Operations of Chymistry full of labour and toilThis unfolding of the Riddle
opens to you the mystery of all great things, and shews how available Prayer is
for the obtainment of things Spiritual and Eternal, as well as Corporal and
perishing goods: and when Prayer is made with a Heart not feigned, but sincere;
you will see that there is nothing more fit for the acquiring of what you desire. Let
these suffice to be spoken of Prayer, which Basilius and all Philosophers with him
do not vainly require, as an Introduction to Chymistry. For Piety is profitable for
all Works, especially for Great Undertakings.409

good resolution with zooming option of the Emblem Oratory and Laboratory from Khunrath's
Amphitheatrum, 1609, can be seen at: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/Emblem_art/alchemy02.html
Same and other emblems by same author however, in small resolution, can be seen at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/prints_series_khunrath.html
408
Versions are found in Glasgow University Library MS. Ferguson 6. Also in Roob, 169.
For the image and details see: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/auror-2.html
409
Later editions followed in German 1611, 1624, 1676 and 1757, in Latin in 1646, and in English in 1660.
See the version with annotations by Theodore Kirkringus published in 1678 at:

140

After this annotation, both the original text and more glossing continue in a similar tone.
The instructions of the original author prescribe prayer and contemplation:410
Next in order after Prayer is Contemplation, by which I understand an accurate
attention to the business it self, under which fall these considerations first to be
noted. As, what are the Circumstances of any thing, what the Matter, what
the Form, whence its operations proceed, whence it is infused and implanted, how
generated by the Stars, conformed by the Elements, produced and perfected by the
three Principles. Also how the body of every thing may be dissolved, that is,
resolved into the first Matter, or first Essence (of which I have already made
mention in other of my writings) viz. how the last Matter may be changed into the
first, and the first into the last.*
*What are here set down, touching the true Theory of Philosophy, are
compendiums of those things, which Philosophers have in os many Books (writ
about the same business) revealed, shall I say, or concealed. Attend to the words
of the Author, and you will see, that he perfectly knew that Spirit penetrating all
things, which presides or bears rule in all things, yet is involved and absconded
matter and defilements on every side;
Now, whosoever desires to become a Disciple of Antimony, he must, after Prayer,
and an earnest Invocation of GOD, betake himself to the School of Vulcan; for he
is the Master and Revealer of all Secrets
But, my Reader, you must diligently mind this, viz. that the Tincture
of Antimony prepared fixed and solid, or the Stone of Fire (as I name it) is a
certain pure, penetrative spiritual and fiery Essence, which is reduced into a
coagulated Matter, like the Salamander, which in Fire is not consumed, but
purified and conserved. Yet the Stone of Fire tingeth not universally, as the
Stone* of Philosophers, which is made of the Essence of Gold itself.411

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/antimony.html or here: http://www.sacredtexts.com/alc/antimony.htm.

410
In this primary source, the italic font seem to represent the annotations by Theodore Kirkringus, while
the non-italic pertains to the original.
411
Triumphal Chariot of Basil Valentine, first published in Leipsig, 1604. (Later editions followed in German
1611, 1624, 1676 and 1757, in Latin in 1646, and in English in 1660. See the version with annotations by
Theodore Kirkringus published in 1678 at: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/antimony.html or here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/antimony.htm.

141
To conclude, understanding the nature of the Philosophers Stone has eluded
historians for centuries. How to make sense of the notion that it is a stone yet not a
stone? If we note the importance of cabala to early modern alchemists, and trust that as a
key to unlocking the union of the esoteric and exoteric aspects of alchemy, then the
nature of the stone becomes explicable. It is both utterance and substance. Paralleling
the Christian practice of the Mass, invocation of certain holy words (the esoteric) during
laboratory work (the exoteric) was believed by practicing alchemists to transform the
substance in the alembic into the sought after accomplished Philosophers Stone.

Fig.53 [The dark celestial Waters from above, or the fiery

Waters of heavens, symbol of the Cosmic Chaos. Phase two in ASC. I his laboratory
work, in order to create, the alchemist has first to kill the matter, to create chaos in his
alembic, to reduce matter to its basic components, the four elements. To create, one first
needs to un-create, and then to re-create. To do, one first has to undo, or bring matter to
its potential state before creation: Chaos]. Source caption: Engraving from Michel de
Marolles, Tableaux du temple des muses, Paris, 1655.412

412

Reproduction of the original by Adam McLean, cataloged as image A003 at:

http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amclglr1.html

142

Fig.54 [Cabalistic alchemy: the first Light generated and hovering

above the dark Waters of Chaos. It then descends to unite with and stir the humid chaos,
to create. Phase two in ASC during trances] Source caption: Robert Fludd's picture of
the creation of the Primum mobile, from Philosophia sacra, Frankfurt, 1626.413

Fig. 55
[Cabalistic alchemy: letter A in the middle of Chaos (the Beginning of Creation, a
microcosm pattern needed to be replicated by Nature as well as the alchemist in order to
create anything, including the Philosopher Stone) and the formation of circle around the
first uttering of God, first dot of light, first number, first letter. Phase one in ASC].
Source caption: A. Kircher, Mundus Subterreaneus, Amsterdam, 1682.414

413

This is a reproduction of the original, by Adam McLean, and can be seen as image A269 at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amclglr14.html
414
Roob, 163.

143

Fig. 56 [Alchemy, Cabala, Religion (Genesis): the first light

emerging from Chaos. Phases one and two in ASC]. Source caption: Emblem 2 Chaos,
Coenders van Helpen, Escalier des Sages, 1689.415

Fig. 57 [Pythagorean: the first dot or point (light, number,

sound) coming out of Nothingness; division into the above and the below of the Waters
or Chaos; cf. as above, so below. Phase one in ASC.] Work of Angela C. Ghionea.

Fig. 58 [Cabalistic alchemy: the Waters from

below. Creation from Chaos through the multiplication from one point of light to two and
then many. Phases one and two in ASC] Source caption: A. Kircher, Mundus
Subterreaneus, Amsterdam, 1682.416

415

This is a reproduction of the original, by Adam McLean, and can be seen as image CH02 at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/prints_series_vanhelpen.html. The original can be seen in Roob, 159.
416
Ibid, 162. It can also be seen at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/kircher/cgibin/site/?attachment_id=593.

144

Fig.59 [Cabala: A pattern of Creation: the first dot A,

number 1, or monad comes out of Emptiness; the first center A multiplies into becoming
the twin dot or point, letter B; division is followed by the establishing the boundaries
against chaos by encircling the centers A and B, or one and two; the intersection of
circles continues the multiplication to achieve later the seed of life pattern.] Work of
Angela C. Ghionea.

Fig. 60 [monad, dyad, triad, and multiplication]

Source caption: Painting Rajasthan, v. 18th century.417

Fig. 61 [Cabalistic alchemy: recurrent geometric pattern in esoteric

teachings, commonly found from ancient Egyptian temples, Jewish manuscripts, Greek
cabala and alchemy. Known in alchemy as Seed of Life and Flower of Life.]418 Life of
Riley, 2008.

417

Ibid, 91.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flower-of-Life-small.svg.

418

145

Fig. 62 [Cabalistic Alchemy: duality, unity, Tetractys, etc.]

Source caption: M. Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, Oppenheim, 1618.419

Fig.63 [Cabalistic Alchemy: dyad, oneness, Tetractys, etc.]

Source caption: D. Stolcius von Stolcenberg, Viridarium Chymicum, Frankfurt, 1624.420

Fig. 64 [Alchemical: Two alchemists, man and

woman, praying at the athanor (alchemical oven), invoking the Name of God to make the
Philosopher Stone.] Caption Source: The Philosopher's Stone.421
419
420

Ibid, 378.
Ibid, 379.

146

Fig. 65 [Alchemical: Two alchemists, man and woman,

invoking the Name of God at the athanor (alchemical oven), to make the Philosopher
Stone.] Caption Source: The three ovens signify the three different fires in the work: the
inner spiritual fire, the secret, salt fire and the dark, material fire that stimulates the other
two. This final phase is called womens work and childs play, being concerned with
constant cooking. It must last for three days until the philosophical silver has been
attained (left), and three more, thorough to the philosophical gold, the son of the sun
(right). Pray, read, read, read again and you will find, the couple advise the man
clinging to the heels of Mercury.422

421

Seventeenth-century famous treatise Mutus Liber (Lat. Silent Book), of fifteen emblems, first edition, La
Rochelle, published in 1677. A reproduction (copyright Adam McLean 1999-2010) of all plates can be
seen here: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/prints_series_mutus.html
http://true-color-of-mind.blogspot.com/2012/01/symbols-alchemy.html
Also as Plate 8 in Roob, 306, 312, 315.
422
Plate 14 in Roob, 318.

147

Fig. 66 [Alchemist praying next to his alembic, uttering and

invoking the Sacred Word during laboratory work at the athanor.]
Source caption: 'Ora et labora' woodcut from Medicinisch-chymisch- und alchemistische
Oraculum, Ulm 1755.423

Fig. 67: [Cabalistic Alchemy: The importance of the

sound in alchemy. Cf. Pythagorean divine proportions and harmony, music of the
spheres.] Caption source: The Divine monochord Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617 by
Robert Fludd.424

423

Reproduction of the original, by Adam McLean, and can be seen as image A061 at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amclglr4.html
424
Reproduction of the original, by Adam McLean, and can be seen as image A072 at:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/amclglr4.html

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CONCLUSION

The challenge is to develop a sufficiently broad analytical framework to cope with the
complexity of experience.425

This study attempted to shed light on the highly symbolic and seemingly
unintelligible nature of alchemical writings. The main thrust of the dissertation is the
thesis that the recurring sets of symbols used in alchemical texts share the same cognitive
foundation, and that foundation reveals mental patterns also reported during altered states
of consciousness. A tentative claim is made that, since substance-induced meditative
trances were not uncommon in alchemical practice, a large number of alchemical
symbols may have been informed by visions and narratives experienced by adepts during
ASC.
This study argues that the practice of meditative trances may have been borrowed
into alchemy from Cabala. It is illustrated that alchemists known as Master-adepts had
been initiated into esoteric cabalistic mysteries and hence were familiar with cabalistic
ritual trance practices.

425

Charles Stewart, Fields in Dreams: nxiety, Experience, and the Limits of Social Constructionism in
odern Greek Dream Narratives, American Ethnologist 24, no. 4 (Nov., 1997): 877-894.

149
Alchemical writings contain numerous descriptions of dreams or visions of
geometric patterns, chaos, light, tunnels, bee humming and powerful sounds, flying,
drowning, and hybrid creatures. Many of such accounts are accompanied by instructional
narratives educating new adepts on the nature of alchemy.
The study then exposes two factors that may have contributed to the remarkable
consistency of alchemical symbols across centuries. The first factor has to do with the
cognitive foundation of alchemical meditative practices. As cognitive studies show, the
structure of ASC tends to evoke universal patterns of experience, commonly clustered
into three phases. Each new phase adds specificity and complexity to visions and
sensations. The study focused on each stage of ASC, describing prominent patterns of
experience, typical visions, and resulting narratives and symbols. The third stage of ASC
may feature highly complex narratives and visions, which were often recorded in writing.
The second factor is the peculiar interpretation of the universality of cognitive patterns in
alchemy. The similarity of meditative experiences, visions and symbols first recorded in
the earliest writings and later experienced by new adept alchemists only reinforced their
significance as divine knowledge. This similarity would also provide the justification for
practices and rituals and cement the body of alchemical knowledge. Sets of images and
symbols embedded in narratives became the building blocks of alchemical discourse and
were passed down through generations of alchemists.

150
Based on primary sources, data from prehistory to antiquity to Early Modern
Europe, and cognitive accounts of meditative practices, the study provides rich evidence
of similar visions, symbols and narratives across religious traditions and in European and
Middle Eastern (Babylonian, Egyptian, Hellenistic, Jewish, Byzantine, and Arabic)
alchemical sources.

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151

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VITA

167

VITA

Education

PhD in History
Department of History, Purdue University, College of Liberal Arts, West
Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
Major: European History. Advisor: Prof. James Farr.
Dissertation: Alchemical Patterns in European Thought and the Occult Origins
of Scientific Discoveries from the Carolingians to the Early Modern Period.
Committee: Professors James Farr and Myrdene Anderson from Purdue
University, and Anthony Grafton, Princeton University, Visiting Fellow at Merton
College Oxford.

Masters in International Relations and European Integration, 2004

The National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest,
Romania
GPA: 10/10 with honors (A+)

Bachelors, 2001
School of Political and Administrative Science, University of
Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania 1997-2001, GPA: 9/10, Specialty: Political
Science (all courses and exams in English)
Thesis: Anti-Semitism and Theories of Nationalism in Romania in the 1918-1938
Period

Bachelors, 2003
Law School, Titu Maiorescu" University, Bucharest, Romania
1997-2003, Thesis ranked 10/10: The Reform proposed by the Nice Treaty
regarding the European Parliament

168

Publications

Pending publications
o Book under contract:
Chief-editor, co-author:
Medicine, Alchemy, Science and the Occult in European Thought,
(2013) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Alchemical Patterns in Western European Thought: The
Origins and Evolution of Alchemical Symbols in Medicine, Science
and Hermetic Texts
Conclusions
o Proceedings Volume under contract:
Chief-editor, co-author:
Science and the Occult from Antiquity through the Early Modern
Period, (2013) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK.
Chapter 8: The Divine Word and the Power of Sound in Alchemical
Recipes

Published
o abstract:
Medieval Technology, Science and Art AVISTA Forum Journal
Vol. 20, No. 1/2, 2010, page 110.
The Non-Rational in the Rational: the Occult Origins of Science
from Carolingians to Enlightenment

Professional Development

Main organizer of events:

o International Conference: Science and the Occult from Antiquity through
the Early Modern Period, April 20, 2012, support of History Dept and
Puskas-Bilsland Fellowship, Purdue Univ.
http://www.catalinaghionea.net/conference2012.html
o Symposium: Science and the Occult in European History, Oct 1, 2010,
support of History Dept and Puskas-Bilsland Fellowship, Purdue University.
My tasks: organizer, chair (session 1), and presenter (session 2).
http://catalinaghionea.net/Symposium.html

169

Pending Conferences:
o Annual Conference of the German Society for 18th-Century Studies
9-11 Sept 2013, DGEJ, Herzog August Library, Wolfenbttel, Germany
Topic: Presence and Evidence of Unfamiliar Things in 18th-Century Europe
Paper: German Alchemical Collections in Eighteenth-century Europe

Papers presented at Conferences:

o

Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference of German Studies Association

October 4-7, 2012 GSA, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Session: The German Occult: Representations of Magic and Witchcraft
Paper: Decoding The Book with Seven Seals, an Anonymous Alchemical
Manuscript
https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current.html
Science and the Occult from Antiquity through the Early Modern Period
April 20, 2012 Purdue University
Panel: Alchemy and Science
Paper: The Divine Word and the Power of Sound in Alchemical Recipes
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/history/scienceandtheoccult

o 46th International Congress in Medieval Studies

May 12-15, 2011 Western Michigan University
Session: Alchemy and the History of Science (sponsored by Societas
Alchimica)
Paper: Shamanic Methods in Western European Alchemy
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/Schedule11.pdf
o Science and Magic: Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance
April 29-30, 2011 Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Session: Alchemy beyond the Laboratory
Paper: Alchemical Patterns and Symbols in European Thought (XVI-XVIII
centuries)
http://www.princeton.edu/renaissance/events/waysofknowing/
o Science and the Occult in European History
October 1, 2010 Purdue University, History Dept.
Session: Magic and the Occult in Europe from Antiquity to Early Modernity
Organizer and Chair: Angela C. Ghionea (with support of Bilsland-Puskas)
Fellowship)
Paper: Origins of Alchemical Patterns in European Thought
http://catalinaghionea.net/Symposium.html

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o 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies

May 710, 2010 Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University
Session: Magic and the Occult from Antiquity to Early Modernity
Organizer: Paul White
Paper: The Non-Rational in the Rational: the Occult Origins of Science
from Carolingians to Enlightenment
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/Schedule10.pdf
o MARS Workshops
November 16, 2009 Indiana: Purdue University
Session: European Renaissance
Organizer: Michael Ryan
Paper: Occult Origins of Science
Program: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/mars/events/marsmondays.html
o 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 710, 2009 Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University
Session: Alchemy
Organizer: Nancy L. Turner
Paper: Voynich has a Meaning: Alchemy and Exotic Plants in the Most
Mysterious Manuscript in the World
Program:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/Schedule09.pdf
o

MARS Workshops
April 6, 2009 Indiana: Purdue University
Session: European Renaissance
Organizer: Michael Ryan
Paper: New Herbs from Americas and their Use in the Renaissance Italian
Medicine
Program: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/mars/events/marsmondays.html

o CSAS 2009 Conference

April 2-5, 2009 Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois campus
Session:"Body, Culture and Society"
Organizer: Myrdene Anderson
Paper: The Role of Human Prints and Divine Traces in Persuasive Rituals
Program:
http://courses.missouristate.edu/mbuckner/CSAS09PrelimProgram.htm
Abstract:http://courses.missouristate.edu/mbuckner/CSAS%2009%20Paper%20A
bstracts.htm

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o Congreso Internacional Chymia. Ciencia y Naturaleza en la Europea

Moderna (1450-1750) September 2008, El Escorial, Madrid (attended)
o HGSA 2008 Conference, Purdue. Paper: "Voynich Manuscript and its Genuine
Alphabet" (12 April 2008)
o OAH 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, (Hilton Hotel). Paper:
"Understanding the "Voynich", the Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World.
American Shamanism and Exotic Plants" (29 March 2008)
o MARS Conference (Medieval and Renaissance Society, Purdue) Paper: "New
Contributions to Voynich Manuscript's Mystery" (24 March 2008)
o Purdue students workshop Paper: "Voynich Manuscript is not a Hoax.
Uncovering New Evidence" (29 January 2008)

Other accepted papers:

o Paper: The Alchemical Playground During Early Modern Scientific
Experiments
Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association Annual Conference
2011,Philadelphia, PA
o Paper: The Power of the Occult and Alchemy during Carolingians
Third Annual Graduate Student Conference on Power and Struggle,
2011 U. of Alabama
http://bama.ua.edu/~gha/conference.html
o Paper: Handprints, Footprints and Representations of Human Body in
Magical Rituals
North Central Sociological Association 2009 Conference; 2009 Michigan
Session on "Body, Culture and Society"
http://www.ncsanet.org/meetings/index.html
o Paper: Products of American Arid and Semi-arid Lands in European
Renaissance: Trading Medicine knowledge, Herbs, and Drugs
SCR (Congrs de la Socit Canadienne d'tudes de la Renaissance);
2009 Ottawa Session: De Fabrica Artis Medicinae: the parts of medicine in
Early Modern Times. http://www.crrs.ca/csrs-scer/conferences/cong-09.pdf
o Paper: The Role of Irrational in the Rationality of Early Modern Europe
SCSC 2009 (The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference);
2009 Switzerland: Geneva
Session: The Supernatural in Early Modern European Society
http://www.sixteenthcentury.org/2009GenevaProgramv2.pdf
o Paper: Products of American Arid and Semi-arid Lands in the Italian
Renaissance: Trading Knowledge, Herbs, Food, and Drugs
Collecting East and West, 2009 Italy, Florence Univ. of Arts & British
Institute of Florence
Session: The West: New Worlds of Knowledge

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Funding and Awards

Bilsland-Puskas Fellowship: Sole recipient in university wide competition (won

twice):
Aug. 2011 July 2012.
Aug. 2009 - July 2010.
Paul and Reed Benhamou Graduate Grant (2012-2013)
Teaching Assistantships, Purdue University:
o History Dept Jan. 2008 May 2009 and Aug. 2010 May 2011;
o French Dept. Aug. 2006 Dec. 2007;
o Italian Dept. teaching offer for 2008-2009, replaced by History funding.
Honorary Award (October 2003 February 2004, merit-based, for outstanding
students) granted by Romanias Ministry of Education, through The National
School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.
Awarded free tuition, Masters Program in International Relations and European
Integration, The National School of Political Studies and Public Administration,
Bucharest, Romania, (Fall 2002 - February 2004), daily courses.

Teaching
Online:
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2014, Purdue.

Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2013, Purdue.

Hist. 103 Introduction to Medieval Europe

Hist. 103 Introduction to Medieval Europe

Classroom:

Adjunct Faculty

Hist. 103 Introduction to Medieval Europe

Summer 2013, Purdue.

Instructor

Hist. 302 History of Alchemy

Spring 2013, Purdue.
teaching my proposed course.

Instructor

Hist. 103 Introduction to Medieval Europe

Fall 2012, Purdue.

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Adjunct Faculty

H114 History of Western Civilization II

Spring 2012, IUN,
Department of History, Philosophy, Political Science and
Religious Studies, Indiana University Northwestern,
o I taught two courses (2 classes) on same topic and level, H114, focused on
European and World History from Renaissance to the present.

Instructor

Hist. 302 History of Alchemy

Fall 2011, Purdue.
o I taught my proposed course.

Instructor

Hist. 302 Occult Origins of Science

Spring 2010, Purdue.

o Taught and organized entirely my proposed course for advanced

undergraduate level.
o Audience: undergraduate and some graduate students.
o Tasks: lecturing, review sessions, office hours, proctoring multiple exams,
grading, and creating entirely an original course material given the lack of
such textbook on the market:

Compiling a course textbook, in electronic format, by

carefully selecting 81 texts such as significant articles
and chapters from academic books in the field. All
material has been scanned, converted and made
available on the course webpage.

creation of PowerPoint lectures; selection of audiovisual materials.

creation of all exams and homeworks content.

creating the website for the course (on Purdue

Blackboard)
o Methodology: class participation and assignments (homework, quizzes,
finals, and extra-credit assignments).
o Offering support to students who expressed interest in participating with
paper presentations for a symposium on the History of Science and the
Occult at Purdue.
o Skills: critical thinking, analysis of primary sources, comprehending and
recognizing alchemical symbols in texts and art, short essays writing.

Instructor

Hist.104 Intro to Modern World

Summer 2009, Purdue.

o Taught the entire intensive/concentrated course.

o Audience: undergraduate students.

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o Tasks: lecturing, review sessions, office hours, proctoring exams, grading,

organizing and creating some of the course material:
o creating the website for the course (on Purdue
Blackboard)
o selected primary sources (available on the course
webpage.)
o creation of PowerPoint lectures; selection of audiovisual materials on World History.
o creation of all exams and homeworks content.
o Methodology: in class participation and assignments (daily homework,
weekly quizzes, midterm, final, and extra-credit assignments), in class
showing artistic movie.
o Skills: critical thinking in history, short essays writing.

TA

History courses
February 2008-May 2011, Purdue.

o Supportive role involving grading, review sessions, proctoring exams, office

hours, and course preparations:
Course list
History 103
Spring 2011
History 104
Fall 2010
History 104
Spring 2009
History 104
Fall 2008
History 103
Spring 2008

Lecturer

/Title
/ Introduction to Medieval Europe (taught the recitation)
/ Introduction to Modern World
/ Introduction to Modern World
/ Introduction to Modern World
/ Introduction to Medieval Europe

French
Spring 2006-Fall 2007, Purdue.

o Taught entirely several intensive introductory level courses.

o Audience: undergraduate and some graduate students.
o Tasks: lecturing, partial creation of course material (PowerPoint and audio),
proctoring multiple exams, grading, review sessions, labs, office hours and
preparing lesson plans.
o Methodology: class participation, demonstration, role-game, assignments
(homework, quizzes, midterm, finals, in class showing artistic movie, and
extra-credit assignments).

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o Skills: reading comprehension, speaking, listening comprehension, writing

skills.
French courses
Course
French 101
2007
French 101
2007
French 103
2007
French 103
2006
French 103
2006

/ section
/2

Fall

/4

Fall

/ 401

Spring

/ 201

Fall

/ 301

Fall

Guest lecturer:
o History lectures at Purdue:
Communism in Romania, 1947-1989 (invited guest lecturer for Hist.
302 Nationalism & Socialism in East Central Europe)
"The Perception of the Other during the Medieval Crusades" (Hist.103,
Spring 2008)
Napoleonic Wars (Hist. 104-1, Fall 2008)
Metternichs Diplomacy (Hist. 104-1, Fall 2008)
The Age of Religious European Wars (Hist. 104-2, Spring 2009)
Spain: Golden Age, Decline and Fall (Hist. 104-2, Spring 2009)
Bismarck, Unification of Germany and Italy (Hist. 104-2, Spring 2009)
o French:
201, for Replacement Teaching occasions
Invited to teach multiple culture sessions in French, levels 101-103,
among them: Latin origins of French language, Purdue.
o Other:
Taught a session on Latin language (Latin 101), Fall 2007, Purdue.
Taught a session on Romanian Revolution for undergraduate level,
International Relations class, Spring 2006, Purdue.
Taught several sessions on Italian Culture and Policy for Prof. Dr.
Aurora Martin, (Professor of International Relations, in the School of
Political Sciences, University of Bucharest, Romania).
Taught several sessions on European Crusades in Middle East for Prof.
Aurora Martin (Professor of International Relations, School of Political
Sciences, University of Bucharest, Romania).

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Teaching demonstrations: taught numerous sessions during each of the

following courses:
o Seminar in Teaching (POL 603): grade A+
o Teaching College French (FR 519): grade: A+
Attended Center for Instructional Excellence Workshops and Seminars, fall
2005-2009.
Certified to conduct research using human subjects at Purdue University, by The
Committee on the Use of Human Research Subjects (commonly known as IRB),
after the completion of Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) Course, 2005.

Teaching Interests
Medieval Europe
Early Modern History
World History

History of Alchemy
History of Science
History of Romania

Professional Memberships and Other Activities

Participated in various student conferences sessions (Bucharest, 1998-2005),

where I presented research papers in the following fields: History of Political
Ideas History of Diplomacy, International Relations Theories, European Union
History, Political Culture, International Law and some Philology.
Internship at Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry, Bucharest, Summer 1999.
Lawyer, Bucharest Bar (2003-2005).
Affiliations and Journals subscriptions:
o HSS (History of Science Society) Isis; Osiris
o SHAC (Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry) Ambix
o SASM (Society for Academic Study of Magic) Preternatural: Critical
and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
o SA (Societas Alchimica)
o SEHA (Sociedad Espaniola de Historia de la Alquimia) Azogue
o RSA (Renaissance Society of America) Renaissance Quarterly
o SM (Societas Magica) Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
o AIA (Archaeological Institute of America) American Journal
of Archaeology
o OAH (Organization of American Historians) Journal of
American History
o AHA (American Historical Association) American Historical Review
o MARS (Medieval And Renaissance Studies)
o HGSA (History Graduate Students Association)
o GSA (German Studies Association) German Studies Review

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Other Journals subscriptions:

o Early Science and Medicine
o History of Religions
o Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism

Languages

Romanian: native
English, French (near native)
Spanish, Italian (fluent)
Hebrew, Latin, German (good reading ability)
Egyptian Hieroglyphs (good working knowledge), Classic Greek, Russian, Arabic
(beginner)

References:

Anthony Grafton
Department of History
126 Dickinson Hall
Princeton University
NJ 08544-1017

grafton@Princeton.EDU;
609-258-4182

James R. Farr, Professor

Department of History
Purdue University
University Hall, 672 Oval Drive
W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2087

jrfarr@purdue.edu
765-494-4126

Myrdene Anderson, Professor

STONE HALL 356,
Department of Anthropology and Linguistics,
700 W. State St.
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907

myanders@purdue.edu
765-496-7400

updated April 2013