Introduction

C I R C U M A M B U L AT I N G
THE ALCHEMICAL MYSTERIUM

Aaron Cheak

‘One is the serpent whose poison is doubly composed’.

—Cleopatra.1

A lchemy may be described, in the words of Baudelaire, as

a process of ‘distilling the eternal from the transient’.2 As the
art of transmutation par excellence, the classical applications
of alchemy have always been twofold: chrysopoeia and apotheosis
(gold-making and god-making)—the perfection of metals and mor-
tals. In seeking to turn ‘poison into wine’, alchemy, like tantra, engages
material existence—oten at its most dissolute or corruptible—in or-
der to transform it into a vehicle of liberation. Like theurgy, it seeks
not only personal liberation—the redemption of the soul from the
cycles of generation and corruption—but also the liberation (or per-
fection) of nature herself through participation in the cosmic demiur-
gy. In its highest sense, therefore, alchemy conforms to what Lurianic
kabbalists would call tikkun, the restoration of the world.
Almost invariably, the earliest alchemical texts describe proce-
dures for creating elixirs of immortality—of extracting transformative
essences from physical substances in order to render metals golden

1
‘Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra’, in Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs
(Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1887), vol. 1., 132, ig. 11.
2
Charles Baudelaire, ‘L’Art romantique’, in Œuvres completes de Charles Baudelaire (Paris:
Calmann Lévy, 1885), vol. 3, 68: ‘de tirer l’éternel du transitoire’.
 introduction 19

and mortals divine. hrough this, the earliest alchemists innovated

physical processes such as distillation and fermentation, extraction
and reinement, and the analysis and synthesis of various chemical
substances. However, it must not be forgotten that the earliest contexts
of ‘material’ alchemy were not proto-scientiic, but ritualistic. Wheth-
er one looks at the Taiqing (Great Clarity) tradition of third-to-sixth
century China, the Siddha traditions of early medieval India, or the
magical and theurgical milieux of Hellenistic Egypt, the most con-
crete alchemical practices were always inseparable from ritual invo-
cations to and supplications of the divinities whose ranks the alche-
mist wished to enter. Moreover, in east and west alike, the alchemical
techniques themselves were allegedly passed down from divinity to
humanity. Alchemy was a divine art; a hieratikē technē.
Whether stemming from the entheogenic properties of physical
elixirs, or developing independently, the desire to encounter the di-
vine directly through inner experience (gnōsis, jnāna) was soon culti-
vated via internal practices of a meditative or metaphysiological char-
acter. Here the elixir began to be generated within the vessels of the
human body in order to transform it into an alchemical body of glory.
hus, the two basic traditions—external and internal alchemy; neidan
and waidan, laboratory and oratory—can, in the inal analysis, be re-
garded as complimentary approaches to the same end: the attainment
of perfection through liberation from conditioned existence.
Despite these generalising remarks, and despite the unusual apt-
ness of Baudelaire’s phrase, it must nevertheless be conceded that the
efort to deine alchemy to everyone’s satisfaction may well be impossi-
ble. On one hand, alchemy needs to be deined in a way that encapsu-
lates the living breadth and depth of the world’s alchemical traditions.
On the other hand, such a deinition must also be internally consistent
with the many speciic, historically contingent (and at times contra-
dictory) expressions of alchemy. Moreover, the very attempt to strike
such a ‘golden mean’ between the universal and particular, between
the ‘synchronic’ and the ‘diachronic’, is something of an alchemical act
in and of itself—the elusive, indeed transformative, point where ‘art’
becomes science and ‘science’, art. In this respect, alchemy may well
be seen to inhere in precisely such ‘nodal points of qualitative change’
(as Jack Linsday called them in his landmark study of Graeco-Egyp-
tian alchemy),3 or in instances of ‘qualitative exaltation’ (as the twen-

3
Jack Lindsay, he Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London: Frederick Muller,
1970), 382-92. Lindsay came very close to encapsulating the ‘essence’ of the alchemical pro-
cess when he said it consisted in ‘the vision of unitary process and nodal points of qualitative
20 al chemical traditions

tieth-century alchemist, René Schwaller de Lubicz, described them

with regards to the ‘teratological proliferations’ of biological species).4
Rather than ofer a single, rigid deinition (which will quickly be-
come restrictive), what I would like to do in this introduction is pres-
ent a series of linguistic, historiographical, and phenomenological
‘circumambulations’ around the alchemical mysterium. In so doing,
I seek to trace some of the more salient contours of the alchemical
landscape, and, if possible, glimpse the presence of its elusive ‘centre’.
One of the merits of approaching alchemy by circumambulation is
that it afords a much wider circumscription of the phenomenon than
the narrowly ixed parameters of disciplinal speciicity usually per-
mit; it therefore allows a more eidetic or phenomenological insight
to develop—an approach that, in German philosophical traditions, is
seen to promote actual understanding (Verstehen) rather mere expla-
nation (Erklären).5 As Hans homas Hakl points out in a recent study
of Julius Evola’s alchemical works, circumambulatio is precisely the ap-
proach taken in order to engender an actual experience of the realities
that allegedly underpin the multiplicity of Hermetic symbols.6 It is,
potentially, a method of ‘knowledge by presence’ rather than simple
‘representational knowledge’. Of course, such approaches, which are
fundamentally morphological in their method, are also ahistorical in
character, and so what must be ofered here is not an exclusively phe-
nomenological approach, but a circumambulation that is also tem-
pered in the ires of historical rigour. Such an approach, in my expe-
rience, is fundamentally more balanced than either of the extremes.

change’. It was this qualitative and unitive element which deined the spirit of alchemy; mod-
ern chemistry, lacking this qualitative spirit, was by contrast ‘not just alchemy without the
nonsense; it was alchemy tamed, reduced wholly to a quantitative level, and thus giving up
its ghost’. Lindsay observes that the methodological precisions of quantitative science were
necessary but the science that emerged developed at the expense of the essential vision of and
relationship with the qualititative aspect of nature that was the unique province of alchemy.
4
See my contribution to part two of the present volume: ‘Agent of all Mutations: Metallurgi-
cal, Biological and Spiritual Evolution in the Alchemy of René Schwaller de Lubicz’.
5
Principally Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger. See in particular
Dilthey, Selected Works, vol. 1 (ed. and trans. Makkreel and Rodi, Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1989), who was in fact reviving a long-standing tradition of textu-
al interpretation rooted in biblical exegesis; and Steven D. Kepnes, ‘Bridging the Gap between
Understanding and Explanation: Approaches to the Study of Religion’, Journal for the Scientif-
ic Study of Religion 25 (1986): 504-12.
6
H. T. Hakl, ‘he Symbology of Hermeticism According to Julius Evola’ in Lux in Tenebris:
he Visual and the Symbolic in Western Esotericism (ed. Peter Forshaw, et al.; forthcoming).
 introduction 21

At the same time, it must be recognised that there is an inher-

ent tension to this balance. his tension requires one to embrace a
Heraclitean ‘harmony of contraries’ between deeply opposed meth-
odologies. In circumambulating a centre, whether as an ‘essentialist’
or ‘relativist’, the ultimate nature of the centre, indeed the substantial
existence of the centre itself, must remain an open question. As the
Dao de Jing remarks, ‘thirty spokes meet in the hub of the wheel, but
the function of the wheel is in the empty part’. Without the concrete
‘spokes’ of empirical-historical data, we may not become aware of the
‘centre’, and yet this centre, which is empty, is precisely the function
(the phenomenological Verstehen) around which the spokes revolve,
giving them their form, their function and thus their meaning. Both
aspects are interdependent, and both must be equally accounted for.
hus, before we open up to any deeper phenomenological percep-
tions, our circumambulations must begin by irst situating alchemy in
its concrete historical-linguistic and historiographic contexts.
al-kīmiyā

Etymologies
he historical purview of what came to be called alchemy includes
an undeniable current of inluence stemming from Pharaonic and
Hellenistic Egypt on one hand, and another stemming from ancient
China, medieval India and Tibet on the other―currents that appear
to have cross-fertilised before converging in Arabic alchemy, whence
the term proper: al-kīmiyā.7 Scholars have long known that the word
alchemy points to an Arabic transmission (alkīmiyā becomes Spanish
alquimia, Latin alchimia, French alchimie, German Alchemie, etc.)8
7
Given this interweaving lineage, the term alchemy itself is perhaps intentionally polyvalent,
being intended to evoke not a single linguistic origin, per modern linguistic requirements,
but rather, through the associations of ‘folk’ etymology, to encapsulate something of the mul-
tiplicity of meanings that have adhered to the term over time. Be that as it may, the clearest
notes of etymological resonance have been struck in the Chinese and Graeco-Egyptian lin-
guistic registers.
8
See in particular: F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrittums (Leiden: Brill, 1971), iv,
1-299; M. Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaten im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972),
144-270; Ullmann, ‘al-kīmiyā’ in Encyclopedia of Islam, second edition (Leiden: Brill, 1986),
v, 110-15; Ullmann, ‘al-kīmiyā,’ in Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, 1 (Wies-
baden, 1970-); Z. R. W. M. von Martels, ed., Alchemy Revisited (Leiden: Brill, 1990); Charles
Burnett, ‘he Astrologer’s Assay of the Alchemist: Early References to Alchemy in Arabic
and Latin Texts,’ Ambix 39.3 (1992): 103-9.
22 al chemical traditions

he Arabic deinite article al- points clearly to this, yet the precise or-
igin of the lexeme kīmiyā is far from certain. Academic consensus has
generally favoured Greek sources, notably those published by Mar-
cellin Berthelot,9 suggesting an origin from the term χυμα (chyma,
‘that which is poured out’; ‘lows, luid’; ‘ingot, bar’; metaphorically,
‘confused mass, aggregate, crowd’; ‘materials, constituents’), whence
χυμεια (chymeia, ‘the art of alloying metals’) named from its supposed
inventor, Χυμης (Chymēs).10 As Harris observes in his 1704 Lexicon
Technicum:

Chymisty, is variously deined, but the design of this Art is to sep-

arate usefully the Purer Parts of any mix’d Body from the more
Gross and Impure. It seems probably to be derived from the Greek
word χυμὀς [chymos], which signiies a Juice, or the purer Sub-
stance of a mix’d Body; though some will have it to come from
χέειν [cheein], to melt. It is also called the Spagyrick, Hermetick,
and Pyrotechnick Art, as also by some Alchymy.11

he idea of luid essences, extracts or elixirs is clearly central to the

alchemical purview, and as will be seen throughout this volume, it is
also inherent to the very names for alchemy in Chinese and Indo-Ti-
betan traditions (Chinese dao jindan, Sanskrit rasāyana, Tibetan bcud
len). In addition, the Greek etymology distinctly emphasises the idea
of metallic fusibility, and the idea that metals are fundamentally fus-
ible entities proves central to the alchemical perception. In the Greek
world, metals were regarded as essentially luid or malleable in nature,
the products of fusibility. he word ‘metal’ itself (μεταλλον, metallon,
μεταλλεῖον, metalleion) is homophonous with—and most likely de-
rived from—a whole series of words indicating ‘transformation’, such
as metalloiōsis (μεταλλοίωσις), which is formed from the preposition
meta– (‘between, with, ater; taking a diferent position or state’) and
the substantive alloiōsis (‘alteration’ or ‘change’).12
9
Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1887).
10
LSJ, vide: χυμα; On the Greek metallurgical etymology in refutation of the Egyptian et-
ymology, see H. Diels, Antike Technik: Sechs Vorträge (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914). he Greek
etymology itself goes back at least as far as the turn of the seventeenth century.
11
Cf. John Harris, Lexicon Technicum: or, an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Scienc-
es Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts hemselves (London, 1704), unpaginated.
Note here that Harris adduces chymos, ‘juice’, on which the Chinese and Indian terminology
must be compared (see below: jin i, rasāyana).
12
For further discussion, see the very interesting essay by Procopios D. Zacharias, ‘Chymeu-
tike: he Real Hellenic Chemistry’, Ambix 5 (1956): 117-8. Zacharias draws on the generally
 introduction 23

Whether derived from chyma, chymeia, Chymēs, or chymos, the

term alchemy appears to come to the Latin west from late Greek
sources through the same kinds of channels that preserved Platonic
and Aristotelian texts, in Arabic translation, ater the fall of the Greek
Academy. While the lines of historical transmission are well known,
matters are not quite as simple as they irst appear. Egyptologists and
Sinologists have both brought forward diverging evidence that the or-
igins of alchemy lay not in Greece but in the Ancient Near or Far East.

he Egyptian Etymology

In addition to the Greek etymology, the root kīmiyā has also been
traced to the Egyptian name for Egypt, km.t (Coptic keme, kēmi),
which Plutarch gives as χημια (chēmia), ‘the blackest earth’ (μάλιστα
μελάγγειον, malista melangeion).13 he implications of this etymolo-
gy are explored in detail elsewhere in this volume.14 Suice it to say
for now that a wealth of theological and cosmological signiications
deeply pertinent to alchemy emerge from Plutarch’s identiication of
the name of Egypt with not only the blackness of the soil, but also with
the blackness of the pupil of the eye. On a basic, symbolic level, this
coheres with the fact that the Nilotic black earth, which literally (and
geographically) deined Egypt, was fertile soil—the perfect receptor of
life-giving seed; in the same way, the transparent openness that forms
the pupil of the eye is the perfect receptor of light.
As will be seen, these signiications directly tie the early concep-
tion of alchemy to genuine Egyptian theological conceptions on one
hand, and to the Greek Hermetic corpus on the other, a point that
has already been articulated in some detail by Erik Iversen with re-
gard to the Memphite cosmology of the Shabaka stone and its clear
recapitulation in the Corpus Hermeticum itself.15 Furthermore, as the
late Algis Uždavinys makes abundantly clear, this current of alchemy

neglected work of K. Stephanides, who ‘in fourteen publications between 1903 and 1910, com-
mented on and corrected the work of Berthelot, and by consideration of other sources threw
much light on this obscure and misunderstood aspect of the history of chemistry’ (116).
13
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 33; Frank Cole Babbitt (trans.), Moralia vol. V (Loeb, 1936),
83. he Egyptian thesis (chēmia  chem-) appears to have been irst put forward in modern
times by Hermann Conring, De Hermetica Medicina (1648), 19; though, as Bain suggests
(see discussion in chapter 1, with refs), it appears to have been current in antiquity.
14
Cheak, ‘he Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy’.
15
Erik Iversen, Egyptian and Hermetic Doctrine (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press,
1984), passim.
24 al chemical traditions

cannot be divorced from the numerous morphological continuities

that exist between Egyptian mortuary cult on one hand, and Homeric,
Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic and hieratic Neoplatonic traditions on
the other.16 And as scholars such as Peter Kingsley have shown, these
morphological connections are not merely apparent: they are deeply
rooted in a ine web of mutual historical and geographical interactions
between the initiatic traditions not only of Egypt itself, but those of
southern Italy and Sicily (whence the Pythagorean current that would
retain such a strong presence in the Hermetic tradition down through
the centuries, from Bolus of Mendes to the Turba Philosophorum).17

he Chinese Origin of the Chem- Etymon

Joseph Needham, in the alchemical volumes of his magisterial Science

and Civilisation in China, makes a very plausible case for the Greek
and Arabic borrowing of the Chinese term jin (‘gold’) or jin i (‘gold
juice, gold ferment’), terms explicitly linked to aurifaction, auriiction
and elixirs for perfecting bodies, all of which appears to place kīmiyā
in an original context not only of Taoist metallurgical practices, but
also of traditions of physical immortality (macrobiotics).18 Ater one
of the most lucid and thorough surveys of the existing etymological
evidence for alchemy, Needham, concludes:

16
See Uždavinys’ contribution to the present volume: ‘Telestic Transformation and Philo-
sophical Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism’.
Peter Kingsley, ‘From Pythagoras to the Turba Philosophorum: Egypt and Pythagorean
Tradition’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994): 1-13; Ancient Philosophy,
Mystery, Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1995), 55-
68, 298-9, 317 f, 335-347, 371-91.
Joseph Needham, et al., Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, part 4: Spagyrical Dis-
covery and Invention: Apparatus, heories, Gits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980), 353, citing Mahdihassan: jin i, ‘gold juice, gold liquid’; on ‘gold luid, potable gold’,
cf. further: Wu Lu-ch’iang, and Tenney L. Davis, ‘An Ancient Chinese Alchemical Classic:
Ko Hung on the Gold Medicine and on the Yellow and the White; he Fourth and Sixteenth
Chapters of the Pao-p’u-tzu’, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 70
(1935): 221-84; of jin i, Needham remarks: ‘the ancient pronunciation […] would have been
kiem iak’. Cf. Homer H. Dubs, ‘he Origin of Alchemy’, Ambix 9 (1961): 34: ‘his Chinese
phrase, jin-yi […], was pronounced in T’ang times at the imperial capital as ki[e]m-iök. his
phrase means, literally, ‘the juice (or sperm) of gold’. It was one of the common Chinese
names for the elixir of immortality. Like other alchemical phrases, it disappeared from usage
with the decay of Chinese alchemy’.
 introduction 25

If some have found an inluence of jin (kiem) on chēmeia (chimeia,

chymeia) diicult to accept, there has been less desire to question
its inluence on al-kīmiyā. No Arabic etymologist ever produced a
plausible derivation of the word from Semitic roots, and there is
the further point that both jin i and kīmiyā could and did mean an
actual substance or elixir as well as the art of making elixirs, while
chēmeia does not seem to have been used as a concrete noun of
that kind. We are let with the possibility that the name of the Chi-
nese ‘gold art’, crystallised in the syllable jin (kiem), spread over the
length and breadth of the Old World, evoking irst the Greek terms
for chemistry and then, indirectly or directly, the Arabic one.19

Needham makes it saliently clear that alchemy is not simply a

product of Hellenistic culture. Although it is diicult to accept an ex-
clusively Chinese origin for alchemy, the copious evidence adduced by
Needham and his collaborators over four large volumes irrevocably
transforms (and complicates) the overall picture of the genesis of al-
chemy. In short, not only must one come to terms with the Ancient
Near Eastern inluence upon Hellenistic and Islamicate alchemical
traditions, one must also contend with the Ancient Far Eastern in-
luences upon the intellectual and technical history of alchemy. his
is especially pertinent given the attested lines of cultural exchange
between the Asian, European and African landmasses along the Silk
Road, which were established during the Han Dynasty (206 bce–220
ce).
he most important Chinese term for alchemy was jindan, or
‘golden elixir’, which was conceived in both an external sense (as a
macrobiogen) and an internal sense (as a spiritual embryo).20 Jindan
also referred especially to cinnabar, the red salt of sulphur and mercu-
ry, and the raw ingredient from which mercury was reined. As such,
cinnabar points to one of the most ancient and pervasive mineral the-
ophanies of the world’s alchemical traditions: the marriage of mineral
sulphur and metallic mercury to form a red crystalline stone (mer-
curic sulphide). Around this naturally occurring substance, multiple
layers of historical, cultural and mythological meaning would accrue
not only in Chinese and Indo-Tibetan but also in Islamicate and Eu-
ropean alchemical traditions.
With regard to our previous remarks on metal as a quintessential-
ly luid substance, it may also be added here that in ancient Chinese
19
Needham, 5.4, 355; transliteration modiied.
20
See especially Fabrizio Pregadio, ‘Jindan’, he Encyclopedia of Taoism (ed. Fabrizio Prega-
dio, London: Routledge, 2008), vol. 1, 551-55.
26 al chemical traditions

cosmology, metal (for which jin was also a generic term) was regarded
as one of the ive elements (wu xing); not only was it regarded as the
‘mother’ of the water element, the metal element itself was deined
precisely by its double capacity to melt and to solidify into new form
(as in a mould).21 his ability to revert from a solid form to an amor-
phous or liquid state, and back again, is a very important principle. In
the western alchemical canon it would inhere in the formula: solve et
coagula, ‘dissolve and coagulate’, a formula that possesses deep sym-
bolic value in regards to ontologies of ‘lux’ and ‘permanence’ (point-
ing to a more paradoxical ontology embracing both ‘permanence in
lux’ and ‘lux in permanence’). It also underscores the universal value
almost unanimously given to mercury as the ‘essence’ of metals. For
next to gold and cinnabar, mercury igures as the most universal of all
alchemical substances in eastern and western traditions alike. When
alchemically reined, moreover, it came to be regarded less as a ‘sub-
stance’ per se, and more as the underlying principle of pure sublim-
ity—of absolute volatility—with the unique power to penetrate and
transform all things, especially minerals and metals (the most dense
things).
historio graphical considerations
Due to the very nature of the topic, the study of alchemy has bordered
on a surprisingly large number of disciplines. Generally, and signii-
cantly, it may be said to straddle both the history of science and the
history of religions. Moreover, due to the wide, cross-cultural pur-
view of alchemy, these dual histories have converged in Egyptological,
Sinological, Classical, Islamic, Indo-Tibetan, medieval western, early
modern and modern western contexts.22 More recently, following the
21
Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2: History of Scientiic hought (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 243 f.
22
Notable studies in these ields include M. Berthelot and C. E. Ruelle, Collection des
anciens alchimistes grecs, 3 vols. (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1888–1889); Ruska, Arabische Al-
chimisten (Weisbaden, 1924; reprint 1977); Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der hermetischen Literatur (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1926); Ruska, Turba Phi-
losophorum: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Alchemie (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1931); Ruska,
Das Buch der Alaune und Salze: Ein Grundwerk der spätlateinischen Alchemie (Berlin: Verlag
Chemie, 1935); Ruska, Al-Razes Buch Geheminis der Geheimnisse mit Einleitung und Erläuter-
ungen in deutscher Ubersetzung (Berlin, 1937); Paul Kraus, Jabir ibn Hayyan: Contribution
à l’histoire des idées scientiiques dans l’Islam, 2 vols. (Cairo: 1942-3; Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1986); E. O. von Lippman, Austehung und Verbreitung der Alchemie 3 vols. (Berlin: Springer,
1919, 1931; Weinheim/Bergstrasse: Verlag Chemie, 1954); Joseph Needham, Science and Ci-
 introduction 27

eforts of scholars such as Antoine Faivre, alchemy has become a topos

in the history of western esotericism (i.e. the history of Hermeticism,
gnosis, alchemy and related currents), which has become increasingly
established as an academic discipline.23
As in other areas, scholars have started to speak less of ‘alchemy’
and more of ‘alchemies’, and an increasing efort has been made to
distinguish and contextualise the individual currents or expressions
of alchemy over and against the idea of alchemy as a sweeping, mono-
lithic tradition. With this distinction comes the recognition that the
idea of alchemy as a single, uniied phenomenon is more the product
of an esoteric interpretation of history (e.g. metahistory or hierohis-

vilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954–2008); Mircea Eliade,

Forgerons et alchimistes (Paris: Flammarion, 1956) = he Forge and the Crucible (New York:
Harper, 1962); Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (London: Rider
& Co., 1960); Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1968); Jack Lindsay, he Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Lon-
don: Frederick Muller, 1970); Martin Plessner, Vorsokratische Philosophie und griechische
Alchemie in arabisch-lateinischer Überlieferung (Weisbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH,
1975); Edward Todd Fenner, Rasayana Siddhi: Medicine and Alchemy in the Buddhist Tantras
(PhD dissertation: University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1979); Robert Halleu, Les Textes al-
chimiques: Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental (Turnhout-Belgium: Brepols, 1979);
François Daumas, ‘L’Alchimie a-t-elle une origine égyptienne?’, in Das römisch-byzantinische
Ägypten: Akten des internationalen Symposions 26.–30. September 1978 in Trier (Mainz:
Philipp von Zabern, 1983); Henry Corbin, Alchimie comme art hiératique (ed. Pierre Lory,
Paris: L’Herne, 1986); Phillipe Derchaine, ‘L’Atelier des Orfèvres à Dendara et les origines
de l’alchimie’, Chronique d’Égypte 129 (1990): 219–42; David Gordon White, he Alchemical
Body: Sidha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); B. D.
Haage, Alchemie im Mittelalter: Ideen und Bilder—von Zosimos bis Paracelsus (Munich: Ar-
temis & Winkler, 1996); William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in
the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 2002), to name but a few.
23
Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994); ‘Questions of Terminology Proper to the Study of Esoteric Currents in Modern and
Contemporary Europe’, in Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion: Selected Papers
Presented at the 17th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Mex-
ico City, 1995, eds. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters,
1998), 1–10; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Empirical Method in the Study of Esotericism’, Method
and heory in the Study of Religion (1995): 99–129; ‘he Birth of a Discipline’, in Western Eso-
tericism and the Science of Religion, vii-xvii; ‘On the Construction of ‘Esoteric Traditions’’, in
Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, 11–61; ‘Beyond the Yates Paradigm: he Study
of Western Esotericism between Counterculture and New Complexity’, Aries 1, 1 (2001): 5–37.
28 al chemical traditions

tory) rather than a strictly empirical description of historical phe-

nomena. he idea of a Hermetic or alchemical ‘tradition’ thus says
as much about the formulation of esoteric identity as it does about
the complex historical and social vicissitudes of the phenomenon in
question;24 and yet, as Kingsley has noted, the idea of Hermeticism
itself is bound precisely to a tradition of interpretation and transla-
tion (hermēneus) between traditions.25 Moreover, as Faivre has not-
ed, alchemy, like magic and astrology, evinces a strong cross-cultural
character. With these considerations in mind, it is important to speak
of alchemical traditions in the plural to emphasise the diversity and
uniqueness of the diferent historical expressions of alchemy; this is
not to preclude the possibility that broader unities may be discerned
among them, but simply to ensure that they do not displace the in-
dividual care and attention that each current or tradition requires in
order to be understood on its own terms. At the same time, grand,
unifying perspectives, oten unpopular in the post-modern academy,
should not be abandoned, for they provide important heuristic tools
that help elucidate and coordinate deeper thematic and morphologi-
cal integrities.
Because a large part of the historiography of alchemy has typically
been formulated within the context of the history of science, and be-
cause a virulent polemic against alchemy was pivotal to the establish-
ment of a rationalised science, this has resulted in an overwhelmingly
positivist and dualistic intellectual heritage in the study of alchemy.
In the one-sided criticism advanced by positivist histories of science,
alchemy is summarily dismissed as merely erroneous proto-chemis-
try. Fortunately, much of the efort in the historiography of alchemy
over the past ity years has been successful in slowly dismantling this
lingering attitude so that more balanced perspectives have been able
to prevail.26

24
Cf. Kocku von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge (Lon-
don: Equinox, 2005), 6–11, who makes the distinction between a religious or esoteric ‘tra-
dition’ and a religious or esoteric ‘ield of discourse’; he also discusses the importance of
recognising the complexity of esoteric identities.
25
See Kingsley, ‘Poimandres: he Etymology of the Name and the Origins of the Hermetica’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 1-24.
26
Signiicant studies in this respect include the work of J. R. Partington, A History of Chem-
istry, 4 vols. (London, MacMillan. 1961–1970); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to
Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: Karger, 1982); Allen G. Debus, he
English Paracelsians (Oldbourne Press: History of science library, 1965); Debus, he Chemical
Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1977,
 introduction 29

Misconceptions in the historiography of alchemy from the per-

spective of science are, of course, matched by those advanced from the
perspective of religion and spirituality. With the turn of the scientiic
revolution towards the end of the seventeenth century, alchemy and
chemistry, previously synonymous under the term chymistry, were vo-
ciferously diferentiated and, although the esoteric rhetoric of alche-
my continued, its operative aspect was largely (though by no means
entirely) abandoned.27 By the Victorian era, this current culminated in
the works of Mary Anne Atwood and the airmation of an exclusively
spiritual alchemy in which the operative element would be dismissed
entirely.28 ‘here is no evidence’, remarks Principe, ‘that a majority,
or even a signiicant fraction of pre-18th century European alchem-
ical writers and practitioners saw their work as anything other than
natural philosophical in character, as even the proliic occult writer,
A. E. Waite (1857–1942) was forced to admit toward the end of his
career in 1926’.29 Such remarks are useful for establishing broad lines
of development, and while on the large accurate, must also be taken
with a grain of salt, especially in light of statements by pre-eighteenth
century alchemists such as Stephanos of Alexandria (seventh centu-
ry), who explicitly emphasises intellectual and theological aims, most
notably in his admonition: ‘Put away the material theory so that you
may be deemed worthy to see with your intellectual eyes the hidden
mystery’.30 (his counter-example is important, for Stephanos’ work is
explicitly linked to the Byzantine and Arabic traditions that form the
2002); A. G. Debus and M. T. Walton, eds., Reading the Book of Nature: he Other Side of
the Scientiic Revolution (Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies) (homas Jeferson University
Press, 1998); Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1954–2008); Mircea Eliade, Forgerons et alchimistes (Paris: Flammarion,
1956); Henry Corbin, Alchimie comme art hiératique (ed. Pierre Lory, Paris: L’Herne, 1986);
William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle,
and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), amongst
others.
27
On the term chymistry, see William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Alchemy
vs. Chemistry: he Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake’, Early Science and
Medicine, 3, 1 (1998): 32–65.
28
Cf. in particular Mary Anne Atwood, A Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
(Belfast: William Tait, 1918).
29
Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Alchemy I: Introduction’, in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Es-
otericism, ed. W. Hanegraaf (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 13.
30
See F. Sherwood Taylor, ‘he Alchemical Works of Stephanos of Alexandria: Translation
and Commentary, Part I’, Ambix 1 (1937): 116–39; ‘he Alchemical Works of Stephanos of Al-
exandria: Translation and Commentary, Part II’, Ambix 1 (1937): 39–49. Quotation modiied.
30 al chemical traditions

foundations of European alchemy).

Despite such nuances, many scholars remain increasingly criti-
cal of not only the spiritual interpretations of alchemy popular in the
nineteenth century, but also the psychological interpretations of al-
chemy that emerged in the twentieth. he scholarly discontent with
these interpretations appears to derive from the fact that they strong-
ly colour many people’s assumptions about alchemy. hese scholars
therefore see themselves as undertaking the ‘continuous dismantling
of erroneous views of alchemy promulgated since the Enlightenment
which have, despite their dubious qualiications and origins, deeply
tinctured a major part of the literature on alchemy written during
the 19th and 20th centuries’.31 Such attitudes are particularly directed
against the very inluential work of Carl Jung, for whom processes in
the alchemical vessel are a screen for the archetypal projections of the
psyche.32 Not surprisingly, Jung has come under increasing historical
criticism in this regard; Lawrence M. Principe, for instance, has sug-
gested that the work of Jung is merely an extension of the ‘deleterious
outgrowth’ of Victorian occultism.33 Principe, whose own area of spe-
cialty is early modern European alchemy, is particularly critical of the
occult-spiritual and psychological interpretations as he inds them in
especial contrast to his indings in the works of early modern chy-
mists, such as Starkey, Philalethes, Boyle, and Newton, among others.
While the excesses of the spiritualist and psychological interpre-
tations are recognisable when circumscribed to their proper contexts,
this by no means precludes more nuanced approaches to the question
of psychological and spiritual alchemies. In this respect, in the early
modern period alone, some of Principe and Newman’s own oversim-
pliications have been countered by the more nuanced studies of the
spiritual dimension in early modern alchemy profered by scholars
such as Hereward Tilton, who observes: ‘he historiography proposed
by Principe and Newman can only be upheld by portraying early mod-
ern laboratory alchemy as purely ‘chemical’ research (conceived in
crypto-positivist terms), and by erasing from history the development
of alchemical thought subsequent to the seventeenth century. For re-
searchers in the history of western esotericism, this modus operandi

31
Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Alchemy’, DGWE, 12.
32
Carl Gustav Jung, Psychologie und Alchemie (Zurich, 1944); Jung, Mysterium coniunctio-
nis: Untersuchungen über die Trennung und Zusammensetzung der seelischen Gegensatze in
der alchemie (Zurich, 1955); Jung, ‘Studien über alchemistische Vorstellungen’, C. G. Jung Ge-
sammelte Werke, vol. 13 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter-Verlag, 1978).
33
Principe, ‘Alchemy’, DGWE, 14.
 introduction 31

is entirely inadequate’.34 Indeed, too rigid an insistence on an overtly

or exclusively operative alchemy cannot be sustained nor extended
beyond its proper contexts, any more than can an exclusively spiritual
alchemy; this becomes especially evident once one steps outside the
relatively narrow period of early modern and modern western Eu-
rope, whereupon the picture changes drastically. he broader picture
ofered by the history of religions opens up a far deeper perspective
on the relationship between operative and spiritual alchemies. David
Gordon White’s magisterial study of rasāyana siddha traditions in
Medieval India, for instance, lays bare a blatantly alchemical world in
which the transmutation of the mortal human body into an immor-
tal, divine body was explicitly homologised with metallurgical trans-
mutations according to the formula: ‘as in metals, so in the body’.35
Here, the whole elixir tradition takes centre stage, the origins of which
take us back to the deeply Taoist alchemy of ancient China, which, per
the work of Needham, Sivin and Pregadio, shows no contradiction at
all between the inner (neidan) and outer (waidan) elixirs.36 he case
becomes even more explicit in the Tibetan Buddhist alchemy of the
Kālacakra Tantra, in which metallurgical, medicinal, and metaphysi-
cal aims are thoroughly intertwined; here, metallurgical and botanical
processes are used in the creation of iatrochemical elixirs designed to
prolong life not for its own sake, but in order to ‘buy time’ to achieve
liberation in life (jivanmukti) through the actualisation of the initi-
ate’s Buddha Nature (buddha-dhātu, tathāgatagarbha).37 Elsewhere,

34
Hereward Tilton, he Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the
Work of Count Michael Maier (1569–1622) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 256, with 9–18,
235–6, 253–6.
35
Rasārnava 17. 164–5: yathā lohe tathā dehe kartavhah sūtakah sadā/ samānam kurute devi
pravishan dehalohayoh/ pūrvam lohe parīksheta tato dehe prayojayet; David Gordon White,
he Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1996), 315 with 446 n. 21, and passim.
36
Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 1968); Sivin, ‘Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time’, Isis 67, no. 4 (1976):
513–26; Sivin, ‘he heoretical Background of Elixir Alchemy’, in Joseph Needham et al.,
Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), vol. 5.4,
210–305; Fabrizio Pregadio, Awakening to Reality: he ‘Regulated Verses’ of the Wuzhen pian,
a Taoist Classic of Internal Alchemy (Golden Elixir Press, 2009); Pregadio, he Seal of the
Unity of the hree, vol. 1: A Study and Translation of the Cantong qi, the Source of the Taoist
Way of the Golden Elixir (Golden Elixir Press, 2011).
37
See especially Kim Lai’s ground-breaking contribution to the present volume: ‘Iatrochem-
istry, Metaphysiology, Gnosis: Tibetan Alchemy in the Kālacakra Tantra’.
32 al chemical traditions

the work of Henry Corbin on the Persian alchemist Jaldakī shows the
deep insistence that was placed in Islamicate tradition on alchemy as
an ars hieratica, and the distinct relationship that was seen to exist
between the metallurgical process, the animation of statues, and the
creation of a resurrection body.38
he deep relationship that emerges here between metallurgical
and physiological processes all pertain strongly to the hidden conti-
nuity between all bodies, from the mineral to the divine. herefore,
inasmuch as general statements about alchemy are to be advanced
cautiously, if at all, the fact that alchemy has traditionally been studied
from the twin vantages of the history of science and the history of
religions appears to relect a strong tendency in alchemy toward the
uniication of the material and the spiritual.

alchemy as nondual pro cess

A child of metallurgy and the traditional crats, alchemy cannot be

separated from the concrete aspect of existence any more than it can
be separated from the transcendent. Indeed, both become interfus-
ible, interdependent and interchangeable. If alchemy appears elusive,
it is precisely because it cuts across categories ordinarily seen as mu-
tually exclusive. For this reason, alchemy may be better approached
not so much as a ixed domain of activity, but as a nondual process.
Indeed, its sphere of operation is better comprehended as existing be-
tween domains, or better yet, as the medium in which more ‘ixed’
domains proceed. Like the fusible nature of metals, this medium may
be regarded as the ‘substance’ from which ixed forms ‘solidify’, and
into which they ‘dissolve’. As such, it is the conditio sine qua non for
transmutation and dissolution, for converting one form into another,
and for dissolving and abrogating the familiar boundaries or borders
between apparently ixed states.
One explicit example of this is the fact that the key object of the
western alchemical quest itself—the philosopher’s stone or ‘univer-
sal medicine’ (the perfecting agent par excellence)— is also, literally, a
universal poison. In the Greek alchemical manuscripts, the expression
is given as katholikon pharmakon (καθολικόν φαρμακόν). he word
katholikon means ‘universal, whole’, while pharmakon, a very ambig-
uous word, means not only ‘medicine’, but also ‘poison’, and ‘magical
philtre’. According to the mercurial Jacques Derrida (who perhaps un-
derstood ambivalence better than anyone), this medicine or philter
38
Corbin, ‘Le « Livre des sept Statues » d’Apollonios de Tyane, commenté par Jaldakī’, Al-
chimie comme art hiératique, ed. Pierre Lory (Paris: L’Herne, 1986), 63-4, 71-3.
 introduction 33

‘acts as both remedy and poison’ and ‘already introduces itself into
the body of the discourse with all its ambivalence’; ‘this charm, this
spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination, can be—alternately or
simultaneously—beneicent or maleicent’.39 ‘If the pharmakon is am-
bivalent’ continues Derrida, ‘it is because it constitutes the medium in
which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links
them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over
into the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside, memory/forget-
fulness, speech/writing, etc.)’40 hus, in conjunction with its ability
for transformation, the (universal) pharmakon is also a medium for
cosmic enantiodromia.
his capacity for luid interweaving between diferent states of ex-
istence is perhaps most eloquently expressed within alchemical tra-
dition proper by Maria Prophetissa: ‘if you do not render corporeal
substances incorporeal, and incorporeal substances corporeal, and
if the two are not made one, nothing will be achieved’.41 he seven-
teenth century Sui, Muhzin Fayz Kāshānī describes an equivalent
process in which ‘spirits are corporealised and bodies spiritualised’,
a process that, according to Henry Corbin, takes place in an ontolog-
ically real, yet liminal, zone—the mundus imaginalis—which Corbin
deined precisely as a juncture between the eternal and the transient,
the intelligible and the sensible: the intermonde or intermediary realm
par excellence.42 Importantly, Corbin’s phraseology is not only drawn
from Persian and Arabic mystical texts (which deeply tinctured the
alchemy of the time), it is also consonant with other, earlier Islamicate
alchemical sources, such as the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar (Latin: Secretum
secretorum), whose Tabula smaragdina (Emerald Tablet) famously
states: ‘that which is above is like that which is below, and that which
is below is like that which is above, to perform the miracles of the one
thing’.43 his formula, which is further ascribed to [pseudo] Apollo-
nius of Tyana’s Book of the Secret of Creation, or Book of Causes (Kitāb
Sirr al-ḫalīqa, or Kitāb al-῾ilal), bears a still deeper identity to the hi-
eratic art (hieratikē technē) as practiced by the Neoplatonic theurgists.

39
Jacques Derrida, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, in Dissemination (trans. Barbara Johnson, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981), 70.
40
Derrida, Dissemination, 127.
41
CAAG, 2.4, 40 (irst to third centuries c e ) .
42
Kalimāt maknūna (Sayings Kept Secret), ch. xxx (Teheran, 1801), 68-70; (Bombay,
1296/1878), 69-72; trans. Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, 177.
43
In Latin: Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quod est superius est sicut quod est
inferius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius.
34 al chemical traditions

According to Proclus,

the theurgists established their sacred knowledge ater observing

that all things were in all things from the sympathy that exists be-
tween all phenomena and between them and their invisible causes,
and being amazed by that they saw the lowest things in the highest
and the highest in the lowest.44

In the alchemical purview, the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ aspects of ex-

istence are ultimately reciprocal and interdependent expressions of a
deeper, more inclusive reality. hus, to separate alchemy into a purely
material and a purely spiritual aspect in a mutually exclusive fashion,
without recognising their fundamental complementarity, is to miss
the greater lux between the volatile and the ixed with which alchemy
is almost invariably concerned. As a hieratic art, the alchemical vision
of reality encompasses all levels of existence within the holarchical
monad, and as such engages the world—including the world of duality
subsumed in the greater whole—as a nondual reality: a simultaneous-
ly abstract and concrete integrum.
In speaking of alchemy as a nondual process it is important to
understand just what is meant when the term ‘nondual’ is used. he
word itself is a formal translation of the Sanskrit word advaita (a- +
dvaita, ‘not dual’),45 and is used to indicate an epistemology in which
both ‘seer’ and ‘seen’ are experienced not as separate entities but as
a unity, a single act of being in which both the subject and object of
experience become agent and patient of one divine act. While non-
dualism forms the basis of three of the broadest currents in eastern
metaphysics (Buddhism, Taoism and Vedānta), it is also expressed
explicitly or implicitly in the western philosophical canon by igures
such as Plotinus, Eckhart, Böhme, Blake, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel,
Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead and Bohm, to name but a few. De-
spite this, the idea of nondualism has not been readily understood
or accepted in the west, and this is because western constructions of
reality, especially ater Decartes and Kant, are based precisely upon
a strict airmation of mind-matter or subject-object dualism. At the
root of the matter lie two fundamentally diferent ways of experienc-
ing the world. One is the ‘everyday’ experience available to everyone;
the other proceeds from a metaphysical experience theoretically avail-
44
Proclus, Hier. Art., 148, cited in Uždavinys, ed., he Golden Chain: An Anthology of Py-
thagorean and Platonic Philosophy (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2004), 300.
45
Here the a- as alpha privativum indicates not simply ‘negation of ’ but ‘freedom from’ du-
ality.
 introduction 35

able to, but not necessarily attained by, everyone. Although dualism
and nondualism describe two diferent experiences of the world, it is
not simply a recapitulation of the materialist-idealist divide (which is
simply another dualism). As David Loy remarks:

none of these three [Buddhism, Taoism, Vedānta] denies the du-

alistic ‘relative’ world that we are familiar with and presuppose as
‘common sense’: the world as a collection of discrete objects, inter-
acting causally in space and time. heir claim is rather than there is
another, nondual way of experiencing the world, and that this other
mode of experience is actually more veridical and superior to the
dualistic mode we usually take for granted. he diference between
such nondualistic approaches and the contemporary Western one
(which, given its global inluence, can hardly be labelled Western
any more) is that the latter has constructed its metaphysics on the
basis of dualistic experience only, whereas the former acknowledg-
es the deep signiicance of nondual experience by constructing its
metaphysical categories according to what it reveals.46

What is proposed, therefore, is to begin to understand certain

forms of alchemy as an expression of a nondual experience of (and
engagement with) the world, not only with regard to the dualities
of spirit and matter, but also their corollaries: subjective experience
and objective experiment. As Prussian poet and Kulturphilosoph Jean
Gebser observes with regard to the structures of consciousness that
underpin entire modalities of civilisation, nondualistic or aperspec-
tival epistemologies do not exclude but integrate more perspectiv-
ally-bound epistemologies within a diaphanous whole.47 What this
means is that apparent dualities are not ultimate; rather, they are rel-
ative expressions of a deeper reality that is ultimately free from the
limitations of dualism and opposition. It means that one can see all
things in the ‘ultimate’ reality, and reciprocally, the ‘ultimate’ reality
in all things. It is to see, with Blake, ‘a World in a Grain of Sand’ and

46
David Loy, Nondualism: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New Haven, Conn: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 3.
47
Gebser’s seminal work, Ursprung und Gegenwart, is contained in his Gesamtausgabe, vols.
2-4 (ed. Hämmerli, Schahausen: Novalis, 1999); cf. he Ever-Present Origin (trans. Noel
Barstad and Algis Mickunas, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985). What Gebser describes
requires an efort to place the entire basis of rational epistemology within a deeper, more
complex, and ultimately more integral process—one that incorporates, but is not exclusively
reduced to, the ontologies of its component ‘parts’.
36 al chemical traditions

‘Eternity in an hour’.48 According to this view, one eventually fails to

distinguish between the ultimate and the relative in a rigidly dualistic
way, abandoning the attribution of any inherent ontological prima-
cy to one or the other. Because there is no longer any essential con-
tradiction or opposition perceived to exist between them, so-called
‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ realities become co-present, interdependent
expressions of a deeper, ‘existentiating’ ield of being.49 What is more,
according to the ancient epistemology ‘like knows like’, the nondual,
aperspectival or integral nature of reality, in both its relative and ul-
timate expressions, can only be known by the nondual, aperspectival
or integral consciousness. It is in this sense that alchemy, in its more
profound sense, necessitates a metaphysics of perception.
agent & patient of one divine act
To illustrate the dynamics of this process and to conclude our cir-
cumabulations, let us have a look at a series of interrelated alchemi-
cal formulæ from Persian and Graeco-Egyptian antiquity—a series of
formulas that not only persist in various permutations throughout the
Graeco-Egyptian, Islamicate and European alchemical corpora, but
which are also mirrored in the alchemical symbolism of the far east.
As will be seen, these formulas all revolve around the image of the
ouroboros: the beginningless serpent that swallows its own tail.
he image of the ouroboros itself can be traced as far back as the
Egyptian mehen serpent (circa 1500 bce). he complex historical or-
igins of the ouroboric formulas, however (which are replete through-
out the Graeco-Egyptian alchemical canon), are linked to a mysterious
Persian magos named Ostanes, who allegedly passed the knowledge of
his science on to the Greek philosopher, Democritus.50 he tradition
linking Ostanes to Democritus was transmitted, some say invented,
by the Hellenistic alchemist Bolus of Mendes (c. 200 bce), who tells
48
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, he Ballads (or Pickering) Manuscript, c. 1801–3:
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand’ / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Ininity in the
palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour’.
49
Just as alchemy straddles the history of science and religion, so too may this ‘ground’ or
‘ield’ of being be understood from both scientiic and spiritual perspectives, e.g. via David
Bohm’s ‘implicate’ versus ‘explicate’ orders of existence in quantum cosmology, or via the
concept of āśraya, the ‘primordial ground of being’ in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Bud-
dhism. Such layers, though, must be understood as kataphatic attempts at explicating what in
the inal analysis remains apophatic.
50
For discussion, see especially Kevin Van Bladel, he Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to
Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 48-54.
 introduction 37

us that Ostanes was summoned from Hades in a rite of necroman-

cy to divulge the secrets of his alchemical science. According to the
text, Physika kai mystika, Ostanes directed his necromantic inquirer
to the temple, where Democritus reportedly found the lost texts inside
a pillar (stēlē).51 Intimating the explicitly self-relexive nature of the al-
chemical process, the science of Ostanes preserved in these texts was
distilled in the following formula:

nature delights in nature; nature overcomes nature; nature rules

nature (hē physis tē physei terpetai, hē physis tēs physin nika, hē phy-
sis tēn physin kratei).52

In support of this tradition, Synesius informs us that Democritus

was ‘initiated into the mysteries by the great Ostanes in the temple of
Memphis along with all the priests of Egypt’, while the Greek chron-
icler George Syncellus not only corroborates the presence of Ostanes
in Egypt, but informs us that he was sent there to preside over the
Egyptian priests.53 he motif appears to be further corroborated by
the correspondence preserved in a water-damaged Syriac manuscript
between a Persian magos called ‘Ostron’ (probably from āsrōn, ‘priest’)
and an Egyptian philosopher by the name of Pebechius.54 Pebechius
announces to Ostron that he has discovered the books of Ostanes,
written in Persian, in Egypt, and he asks for Ostron’s assistance in
translating them. he texts contain distinct alchemical references, in-
cluding a series of inscriptions on ‘seven sacred stelæ [or tablets] of
Hermes’ (foreshadowing the famous Tabula smaragdina of Hermes
Trismegistus), which are hidden behind seven portals, each associat-
ed with the seven planetary metals. Ater a lacuna in the manuscript,
mention is made of a ‘dragon that eats its tail’, alongside ‘other works
of art of a symbolic character’.55
According to the formula of Ostanes, nature enjoys, conquers and
rules herself like an ouroboric serpent. In order to understand what
this formula means, we must comprehend its double character. his is
51
Berthelot, CAAG, 1.2.1.
52
Berthelot, CAAG, 1.2.1: ‘La nature jouit de la nature; la nature triomphe de la nature; la
nature maîtrise la nature’.
53
Berthelot, CAAG, 2.3; George Syncellus, 297.23–25 (§471); Alden A. Mosshammer, ed.,
Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica (Leipzig: Teubner, 1984).
54
Berthelot, La Chimie au moyen age, ‘Lettres de Pébéchius’, vol. 2, 309-12; Kevin Van
Bladel, he Arabic Hermes, 48-50.
55
‘Lettres de Pébéchius’, in Berthelot, La Chimie au moyen age, vol. 2, 312: ‘il retraça un
dragon qui mange sa queue … des images, œuvres d’art d’un caractère symbolique’.
38 al chemical traditions

most evocatively signalled in the quote from Cleopatra’s Chrysopoeia

that we placed at the beginning of this chapter: ‘One is the serpent,
which has its poison according to two compositions’. Cleopatra’s for-
mula comes from a fascinating illustrated Greek manuscript depict-
ing the dual-natured, self-returning serpent. Here, two inscriptions
nested in concentric circles form a stylised ouroboros. he outer coil
reads: ‘One [is] the all (hēn to pan), the source of all, and the culmi-
nation of all; if the all did not contain the all, it would be nothing’. he
inner coil reads: ‘One is the serpent (ophis), which has its poison (ion)
according to two compositions (synthēmata)’.56 At the centre of the
circle are the Hellenistic symbols for sun, moon and mercury.

Figure 1. Stylised ouroboros from pseudo-Cleopatra’s Chryso-

poeia (Aurifaction; Gold-making). he outer coil reads: ‘One
[is] the all, the source of all, and the culmination of all; if the
all did not contain the all, it would be nothing’. he inner coil
reads: ‘One is the serpent, which has its poison according to
two compositions’. Let-to-right, the symbols at the centre are
the Hellenistic signs for moon, mercury and sun.

he line is an elaboration of the root formula, hēn to pan, ‘one [is]

the all’, expressing the self-contained, self-relexive, thus ‘Hermetically
sealed’ character of the alchemical process. Perhaps the most reveal-
ing key to this formula is provided by the Egyptian alchemist, Zosi-
mos of Panopolis—one of the earliest and most important igures of

56
Berthelot, CAAG, 1.1. Synthemata is a technical term in theurgy; it can be translated as
‘synthemes, symbols, signatures, talismans’.
 introduction 39

the western alchemical canon. In a text entitled ‘On the Divine/Sul-

phurous Water’ (Peri tou theiou hydatos), Zosimos prefaces a version
of the ancient Democritian formula by saying that the divine water
possesses ‘two natures’ but ‘one essence’ (dyo physeis, mia ousia): ‘It is
the all, and from it the all [comes], and by it all [exists]’.57
he theme of two alchemical natures as complimentary expres-
sions of one underlying pan-unity would dominate alchemical sym-
bolism right down to the early modern period. According to the over-
arching schematic of the alchemical perception, reality unfolds from a
single essence that polarises itself into two natures: one that separates,
and one that unites. he struggle and interplay of these two natures
embody the twin processes active in the constitution of reality. hus
conceived, reality as such evolves from one primordial nature or ‘sub-
stance’, which polarises itself, acts upon itself, and reacts to its own
activity to create the multiplicity of phenomena in which we are situ-
ated. Reality, according to this ouroboric perception, consists of one
nature acting upon itself, dividing itself, multiplying itself, and inally
returning to itself.
In the eastern alchemies, this same ‘double natured single essence’
is expressed in the simultaneous bi-unity and bi-polarity of mascu-
line and feminine principles (Chinese yang-yin, Sanskrit shiva-shakti,
Tibetan yab-yum, etc.), where the two gendered polarities represent
the complementary aspects of an active-passive, mutually interpene-
trating and inter-receiving integrum.58 Dual natures were thus seen to
inform the dynamic of a unitary reality, a conception readily seen in
the Taoist taijitu (‘chart of the supreme ultimate’) through the harmo-
nious interplay of dark and light (yin-yang). In accordance with this
symbolism, images of ancient Chinese tail-eating dragons are attested
as early as the Zhou dynasty (ninth to sixth centuries, bce).59 hey
signify the processes of duality and multiplicity emerging from and
returning to its primordial unicity (the dao) through the separation
and uniication of opposites.
One notable example, dated to the Shang-Zhou dynasty (c. 1150-
950 bce) and preserved in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum,
is fashioned from jade and coloured with cinnabar. he minerals are
alchemically signiicant. Jade represents the principle of celestial im-

57
Zosimos, ‘Peri tou theiou hydatos’; Berthelot, CAAG, 3.9.
58
Needless to say, this commonplace of comparative mythography also applies to the sun-
moon or sulphur-mercury dyads of the Graeco-Egyptian, Islamicate and European alchem-
ical traditions.
59
Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5.4, 382-3.
40 al chemical traditions

mortality, while cinnabar (sulphur and mercury, components of the

elixir) represent the two natures or polarities (yang-yin) that emerge
from the primordial ground of being, and which must be reined and
united in order to realise celestial immortality. he ouroboric form
itself, moreover, is best understood as an augmentation of the ex-
ceedingly ancient bi discs (lat discs of jade with a hole in the centre).
Dating back to Neolithic times, the bi discs possess a cosmological
signiicance that remained inluential down to the Warring States and
Han periods. Speciically, they represent the idea of a heavenly cover-
ing (gaitian) revolving upon a central axis.60 he Chinese ouroboros
is thus assimilated to the primordial, eternally circumambulating ce-
lestial unity, and like its Hellenistic counterpart, is imbued with two
‘poisons’ or natures.

Figure 2. Jade ouroboric dragon coloured with cinnabar.

Shang-Zhou Dynasty, c. 1150-950 b ce. Victoria and Albert
Museum, London. Photo: Cheak, 2005.

Just as polarity emerges from the primordial ouroboric eternity,

so too is it swallowed up by this eternity. he two alchemical phases,
the cosmogonic emergence and its reabsorption, thus form two arcs
of one cycle. Taoist alchemy proceeds precisely by the reversal of the
cosmogony.61 he return from multiplicity to the primordial dao thus
60
Teng Shu-P’Ing, ‘he Original Signiicance of Bi Discs: Insights Based on Liangzhu Jade Bi
with Incised Symbolic Motifs’, Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 2.1-2 (2000): 165-194.
61
he path of cosmogenesis is epitomised in the Daodejing as follows: ‘he Tao produced
One; One produced Two; Two produced hree; hree produced All things’; Daodejing § 42,
trans. James Legge; Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39; ed. Max Müller, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
 introduction 41

constitutes the alchemical path.62

hese two arcs or orientations—one creative and the other de-cre-
ative—are pivotal for comprehending the seemingly opposing aims
of alchemy across traditions. In some currents of alchemy, the art is
explicitly connected with participation in the divine demiurgy and
thus the catalysis of the cosmogonic process,63 whereas in other cur-
rents of alchemy it is precisely the reversal of the cosmogony and the
reabsorption of creation into the primordial, pre-creative substratum
that is sought. It is why practicing, laboratory alchemists begin with
reincrudation (the reversion of a metal to its primordial, living state);
it is what Sui alchemists call ta’wil (the process of ‘interpretation’ by
which a phenomenon is taken back to its creative source); and what
Taoists alchemists call reversal (ni) or inversion (huan) of the normal
order by which things come into existence (i.e. the reversal of the tao
or ‘way’ by which the cosmogonic process instantiates itself). he two
orientations go a long way to explaining the respective material and
mystical emphases of alchemy, and when both arcs are understood as
interrelated phases within a greater ouroboric cycle, the antinomy be-
tween the two can be resolved. he snake must destroy itself to create
itself.
hrough a luid process of constant creation and dissolution to-
wards an ever-present, primordial perfection, one encounters a series
of polarities that, when engaged, transmuted and reined, lead back to
the principle from which they originated. Like the fertile black earth,
and like the god Osiris, the ouroboros represents the principle of re-
generative death underpinning embodied existence. At the same time,
however, it is also the principle of celestial deathlessness that tran-
scends all earthly generation and corruption. While on one level, the
divergent approaches may be understood as two phases within a single
cycle, on another level they are actively and simultaneously conlict-
ing. Indeed, it is precisely the tension between them that is of interest,
for it forms a ‘harmony of contraries’ in which opposition is actually
integral to the greater constitution. Indeed, more than anything else, it
is the Heraclitean principle of ‘counterstretched harmony’ (palintonos
harmoniē), that provides the most convincing Ariadne’s thread out of
the alchemical labyrinth.

sity Press, 1891.

62
he Daodejing’s formula of cosmogonic processio and its alchemical reversal is mirrored
by the axiom of Maria Prophetissa, a Hellenistic Jewish alchemist from the irst centures c e :
‘One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth’.
63
Cf. especially Eliade , Forgerons et alchimistes (Paris: Flammarion, 1956), passim.
42 al chemical traditions

he Hermetically sealed, ‘henadic’ ontology is both agent and pa-

tient of its own transmutation, which is efected precisely through the
act of dismemberment (separation) and reuniication (reintegration)
according to what Zosimos calls ‘the rigour of harmony’ (systasin har-
monias).64 Here, alchemical processes are not ‘operations with natures
alien one from the other’; they are ‘one thing’, that is to say, ‘one nature,
acting upon itself ’:65

One nature transforms itself. For all things are woven together and
all things are taken apart and all things are mingled and all things
combined and all things mixed and all things separated and all
things are moistened and all things are dried and all things bud
and all things blossom in the altar shaped like a bowl. For each,
by method and by weight of the four elements, the interlacing and
separation of the whole is accomplished for no bond can be made
without method. he method is natural, breathing in and breathing
out, keeping the orders of the method, increasing and decreasing.
And all things by division and union come together in a harmony,
the method not being neglected, the Nature is transformed. For the
Nature, turning on itself, is changed. And the Nature is both the
nature of the virtue and the bond of the world.66

hese ‘rigours of harmony’—in which all things are ‘mixed’ and

‘separated’, ‘woven together’ and ‘taken apart’, and which ‘by division
and union come together in a harmony’—pertain to the most quint-
essential methods in the alchemical path to perfection. Generally
speaking, transmutation towards perfection proceeds by means of
separation (puriication) and uniication (reintegration), or in Empe-
doclean terms, ‘Love’ and ‘Strife’. his is as true of eastern as well as
western alchemies, both of which proceed by separating and puri-
fying the primordial polarities (the two poisons or natures, whether
sun-moon, sulphur-mercury, yang-yin, and their many symbolic ho-
mologues) before recombining them in their puriied forms (the co-
habation or ‘chymical wedding’ in European alchemy; the formation
of the ‘golden embryo’ in Taoist alchemy; the ‘union of wisdom and
method’ in Tibetan alchemy, etc.) However in doing this, it is imper-
ative to realise that alchemy is not creating something ‘new’; rather,
it is ultimately seeking to render the pristine ontology—the nondual
64
CAAG, 3.1,: ‘règles de la combinaison’. English translation: F. Sherwood Taylor, ‘he Vi-
sions of Zosimos’, Ambix 1.1 (1937), 88-92.
65
CAAG, 3.1; Taylor, ‘he Visions of Zosimos’, 88-92.
66
Berthelot, CAAG, 3.1; Taylor, ‘he Visions of Zosimos’, 88-92.
 introduction 43

ground of being—present to living perception. his underscores a sig-

niicant point, for in understanding the goal of alchemy as ‘perfection’,
it must be realised that the perfection in question is not teleological,
but perennial. hat is to say, the originary or primordial nature does
not exist in the future, nor should it be confused with the past; it is, in
the words of Gebser, ever-present and ever-originating:
Origin is ever-present. It is not a beginning, since all beginning is
linked with time. And the present is not just the ‘now’, today, the
moment or a unit of time. It is ever-originating, an achievement of
full integration and continuous renewal. Anyone able to ‘concret-
ize’, i.e., to realize and efect the reality of origin and the present in
its entirety, supersedes ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ and the mere here and
now.67
Whether this ever-present origin is cast in terms of the Taoist
golden elixir (jindan), the Buddha-element of Tibetan alchemy (bud-
dha-dhātu), or, in western alchemical cosmologies, as the logos or
potential cosmos subsisting as both initium and telos in the originary
chaos, many of the world’s alchemical traditions cohere in viewing
the ‘goal’ of alchemy not as the creation of some future perfection,
but as the rendering present of a pre-existent, eternal incorruptibility.
Whether alchemy proceeds by ‘progress’ or ‘reversal’, the core of the
process must not be understood as reversion or advancement in a rig-
idly temporal sense, but rather as a process of ‘polishing the mirror’.
It is a puriication of temporal accretions in order to let the boundless
existentiating Urgrund shine forth in an unobstructed, uninhibited
manner according to its innate, diaphanous nature.

67
Gebser, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, 15: ‘Der Ursprung ist immer gegenwärtig. Er ist kein An-
fang, denn aller Anfang ist zeitgebunden. Und die Gegenwart ist nicht das bloße Jetzt, das
Heute, oder der Augenblick. Sie ist nicht ein Zeitteil, sondern eine ganzheitliche Leistung
und damit auch immer ursprünglich. Wer es vermag, Ursprung und Gegenwart als Ganzheit
zu Wirkung und Wirklichkeit zu bringen, sie zu konkretisieren, der überwindet Anfang und
Ende und die bloß heutige Zeit’. Gebser, he Ever-Present Origin (trans. Noel Barstad and
Algis Mickunas, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985), xxvii.