#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/08/09 -- Alchemy & the Hermetic Tradition

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 41: August 9, 2023

 

 

Alchemy and the Hermetic Tradition

 

“Alchemy: The Precursor of Chemistry”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted and Expanded from Cursus Honorum VI: 7 (February 2006) & IX: 3 (October 2008)

                Students in STEM fields of study usually enroll in at least one chemistry course during their undergraduat years at the University of Illinois. The science of chemistry developed out of the “royal art” of alchemy, whose traditional founder was the ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus (“Thrice-Greatest Hermes”). This legendary personage was modeled on Thoth, the divine patron of wisdom and writing in the Egyptian pantheon.

                Throughout recorded history, alchemical researchers have practiced a philosophy of life known as the Hermetic Tradition, which was based on the so-called “Hermetic writings.” This collection of books (many of which are still extant) was attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, who was thought to have lived in prehistoric times. However, these writings were actually compiled by a group of scholars and sages in Alexandria, Egypt, during the first three centuries CE, and they synthesized a vast amount of multicultural source material to create what would later be recognized as the alchemical worldview.

                The Hermetic tractates preserved ancient Egyp-tian traditions about the origin of the cosmos and hu-mankind’s place within it. In these treatises, Hermes Trismegistus dialogues with his disciples and encourages them to transmit his knowledge to posterity for the benefit of humankind. After their translation from Greek into Latin by the Italian polymath, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Hermetic writings exercised a profound influence upon the Renaissance intellectuals who spearheaded the Scientific Revolution – such as Giordano Bruno and Sir Isaac Newton.

                One of the basic premises of the Hermetic al-chemical tradition was that, by using an arcane substance known as the “Philosopher’s Stone,” ordinary metals could be transmuted into gold. As far as we know, alchemists never accomplished this feat. The real secret of alchemical transmutation, however, had to do with the regeneration of the soul and the transformation of its “dross” into “gold,” as described in the Abrahamic scriptures, and as in the Pavamana Mantra from ancient India:

 

“From the unreal, lead us to the Real;

From the darkness, lead us to the Light;

From death, lead us to immortality.”

(Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad 1.3.28)

 

“Alchemy”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I lift my heart as spring lifts up

A yellow daisy to the rain;

My heart will be a lovely cup

Although it holds but pain.

For I shall learn from flower and leaf

That color every drop they hold,

To change the lifeless wine of grief

To living gold.

 

A 15^th-century floor mosaic from the Roman Catholic cathedral in Siena, Italy, showing Hermes Trismegistus with two of his disciples. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Lines from “Il Penseroso”

By John Milton (1608-1674)

Or let my lamp at midnight hour,

Be seen in some high lonely tow’r,

Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook.

 

“A Triple Trisagion”

(A Prayer from the Hermetic Writings)

Translated by G. R. S. Mead (1863-1933) in The Hymns of Hermes (1905)

                Holy art Thou, O God, the Universals' Father. Holy art Thou, O God, Whose Will perfects itself by means of its own Powers. Holy art Thou, O God, Who willest to be known and art known by Thine own.

                Holy art Thou, Who didst by Word make to consist the things that are. Holy art Thou, of Whom All-nature hath been made an Image. Holy art Thou, Whose Form Nature hath never made.

                Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power. Holy art Thou, transcending all preeminence. Holy art Thou, Thou better than all praise.

                Accept my reason's offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O Thou unutterable, unspeakable, Whose Name naught but the  Silence can express!

                Give ear to me who pray that I may ne'er of Gnosis fail -- Gnosis which is our common being's nature -- and fill me with Thy Power, and with this Grace of Thine, that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren and Thy Sons!

                For this cause I believe, and I bear witness. I go to Life and Light. Blessed art Thou, O Father. Thy Man would holy be as Thou art holy, e'en as Thou gavest him Thy full authority to be.

 

“Hermes Trismegistus”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

Still through Egypt’s desert places

Flows the lordly Nile,

From its banks the great stone faces

Gaze with patient smile.

Still the pyramids imperious

Pierce the cloudless skies,

And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,

Solemn, stony eyes.

 

But where are the old Egyptian

Demi-gods and kings?

Nothing left but an inscription

Graven on stones and rings.

Where are Helios and Hephaestus,

Gods of eldest eld?

Where is Hermes Trismegistus,

Who their secrets held?

 

Where are now the many hundred

Thousand books he wrote?

By the Thaumaturgists plundered,

Lost in lands remote;

In oblivion sunk forever,

As when o’er the land

Blows a storm-wind, in the river

Sinks the scattered sand.

 

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,

Seems this Theurgist,

In deep meditation mostly

Wrapped, as in a mist.

Vague, phantasmal, and unreal

To our thought he seems,

Walking in a world ideal,

In a land of dreams.

 

Was he one, or many, merging

Name and fame in one,

Like a stream, to which, converging

Many streamlets run?

Till, with gathered power proceeding,

Ampler sweep it takes,

Downward the sweet waters leading

From unnumbered lakes.

 

By the Nile I see him wandering,

Pausing now and then,

On the mystic union pondering

Between gods and men;

Half believing, wholly feeling,

With supreme delight,

How the gods, themselves concealing,

Lift men to their height.

 

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,

In the thoroughfare

Breathing, as if consecrated,

A diviner air;

And amid discordant noises,

In the jostling throng,

Hearing far, celestial voices

Of Olympian song.

 

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?

Who has searched or sought

All the unexplored and spacious

Universe of thought?

Who, in his own skill confiding,

Shall with rule and line

Mark the border-land dividing

Human and divine?

 

Trismegistus! Three times greatest!

How thy name sublime

Has descended to this latest

Progeny of time!

Happy they whose written pages

Perish with their lives,

If amid the crumbling ages

Still their name survives!

 

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately

Found I in the vast,

Weed-encumbered somber, stately,

Grave-yard of the Past;

And a presence moved before me

On that gloomy shore,

As a waft of wind, that o’er me

Breathed, and was no more.

 

“[Humankind] will pursue the inmost secrets of Nature even into the heights and will study the motions of the sky. Nor is this enough; when nothing yet remains to be known than the farthest boundary of Earth, they will seek even there the last extremities of Night.”

à Hermes Trismegistus in Heart of the Cosmos (Hermetic Tractate, Early 1^st Millennium CE)

 

This true-color image of the planet Mercury (known to the ancient Greeks as Hermes) was taken by the Messenger probe in 2008. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)