WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY
Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)
Vol. 1, No. 42: August 17, 2022
Alchemy
and the Hermetic Tradition
“Alchemy: The Precursor of
Chemistry”
By Rob Chappell, M.A., Assistant
to the Honors Dean
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 Uni-versity 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.
Alchemical
researchers 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.
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. Except in fairy tales, alchemists never accomplished this
feat, but we now know that with the proper high-tech equipment, such a marvel
can be performed in the lab by adding or subtracting protons to the nucleus of
an atom. In effect, particle physicists who transform the atoms of one element
into another have made the alchemical dream of transmutation into a reality!
Such scientific advancements were perhaps foreseen by one of the Hermetic philosophers
of ancient Egypt:
“[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 1st
Millennium CE)
This drawing of an “Alchemist’s
Laboratory” by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–1604) shows Dr. Heinrich Khun-rath (1560-1605),
a German alchemist and physician, in his lab. (Image Credit: Public Domain)
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.
“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.
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)
“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.
