Alchemy texts archives - Gnosis and Alchemy

Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 00:13:15 +100
From: Vladimir Georgiev

Hello everyone:

I am a Bulgarian monk and lecturer on research in Hungary. Can somebody
provide information on the relation between ancient Gnosticism and Alchemy
(outside Jung)? Please quote.

Thank you in advance.

Yours,

Date: Tue, 28 Jan 97 09:33:55 UT
From: Mike Dickman

Vlado,

Hi! - If you read French, an interesting place to start might be Jean-François
Gibert, Propos sur le Chrysopée, published by Dervy Livres, 130 bvd.
St-Germain, 75006 Paris, especially the last section.

Hope it helps!

Respectfully,
Mike Dickman

Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 09:38:31 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

>From: Vladimir Georgiev
>I am a Bulgarian monk and lecturer on research in Hungary. Can somebody
>provide information on the relation between ancient Gnosticism and Alchemy
>(outside Jung)? Please quote.

I would imagine anything by Frances Yates might be of help. Do you
want/need specific citations? Do you have access to a major library?

George Leake

From: Vladimir Georgiev

Dear Mike,

> Hi! - If you read French, an interesting place to start might be Jean-Francois
> Gibert, Propos sur le Chrysopee, published by Dervy Livres, 130 bvd.
> St-Germain, 75006 Paris, especially the last section.

Thanks for the valuable information. By the way, when this book was
published, which pages are covered by the last section, what is its
title and is Gibert a modern or ancient author?

Yours,

Vlado.
vladimir Georgiev

From: Vladimir Georgiev
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 21:13:14 +100

> I would imagine anything by Frances Yates might be of help. Do you
> want/need specific citations? Do you have access to a major library?
> George Leake

I would appreciate any information, especially if it is properly
quoted. Budapest libraries are not the most formidable in the world
and their staff is hardly of help because they refuse to speak any foreign
language.

Thank you in advance.

Yours:

Vlado.
vladimir Georgiev

Date: Wed, 29 Jan 97 19:05:10 UT
From: Mike Dickman

Vlado

Hi again!
The book was published in 1995 and the sections dealing directly with gnosis,
gnosticism and alchemy run from p 209 to 269.
Gibert is a modern, and quite aggressive in tone, but he certainly knows what
he is talking about on more than one score... He's also quite FUNNY, which is
a welcome change in a field that often takes itself a little too seriously...

Hope this helps.

Respectfully,

mike

Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 13:07:17 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

>> I would imagine anything by Frances Yates might be of help. Do you
>> want/need specific citations? Do you have access to a major library?
>From: Vladimir Georgiev
>I would appreciate any information, especially if it is properly
>quoted.

Are you proposing one of us transcribe her work here?

>Budapest libraries are not the most formidable in the world
>and their staff is hardly of help because they refuse to speak any foreign
>language.

I certainly understand. So what you're saying is you've searched your
local libraries and bookstores and you cannot find any Frances Yates
material?

George Leake

Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 13:51:39 +0100
From: Michal Pober

>>From: Vladimir Georgiev
>>I would appreciate any information, especially if it is properly
>>quoted.
>>Budapest libraries are not the most formidable in the world
>>and their staff is hardly of help because they refuse to speak any foreign
>>language.

>I certainly understand. So what you're saying is you've searched your
>local libraries and bookstores and you cannot find any Frances Yates
>material?
>George Leake

Excuse me butting in, but perhaps to defuse a cross-cultural
misunderstanding, I'm understanding Vladimir to be asking for what George
is calling the citations, as clearly cited as possible, because the
Budapest librarians are not too hot at tracking foreign language books.

If I've got this wrong and only created greater confusion, please accept my
apologies.

best wishes,
Michal

From: Vladimir Georgiev
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 14:02:35 +100

Dear Michal,

Since I do not think that F. Yates has written whole books on Gnosticism (not
Gnosis which is a term much bandied about nowadays without any relation to
dualism) in alchemy, I would be happy if someone, who has her books,
would tell me simply which pages in which books of hers deal with
that problem. Please quote fully.

Thnks in advance.

Yours,

Vlado.
vladimir Georgiev

From: Jon Marshall
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:39:50 -0800

Vladimir Georgiev wrote
> I am a Bulgarian monk and lecturer on research in Hungary. Can somebody
> provide information on the relation between ancient Gnosticism and Alchemy
> (outside Jung)? Please quote.

If I can be difficult as well, I'm wondering what you mean by gnosticism?
After all, it seems rather a disparate collection of movements all lumped together
by their enemies with little in the way of doctrinal or theoretical coherence or
even organisational similarities.

Judging by the usual criteria the Church of Scientolgy is a pure gnostic
movement it involves a fall to the earth from an enlightened state, and an
attempt to reascend via knowledge and technique- yet once people have finished
coughing- it obviously has no connection to, say the Valentinian gnosis.

I confess also to being a little less enthusiastic about Yates than George.
She does briefly discuss the relationship of 'the gnosis' to the
hermetica in the Giordiano Bruno book but largely to paraphrase Festugiere (by
her own account, and thus ignoring all the Nag Hamadi stuff which includes
hermetic texts etc), and it is true that we have at least the criteria that a
hermeticist must quote the 'writings or authority of Hermes' but she dismisses
the 'practical hermetica' as beneath notice- though conceeding they are
important to understanding some of the Asclepius (see GB & the HT pp44-). And
hardly discusses alchemy at all despite it being "the hermetic science *par
excellence*" (ibid: 150). she can even mention the emerald tablet only once.
something wierd is happening if the 'practical' is so important that you can
just ignore it.

So there is at least a triple problem
1) is there a thing which names itself as gnosticism?
2) is this connected with ancient hermeticism?
2a) what is the connection of either of these with neo-platonism?
3) are any of these connected to each other and to alchemy or to particular
strands of alchemy?

Ok references that might help

Atwood, a asuggestive enquiry into the hermetic mystery [mainly on
neo-platonism and the 'mysteries']
Faivre, a access to western esotericism, SUNY, 1994 [scattered bits and peices,
usuful bibliography]
Faivre, eternal hermes, phanes 1995, [again fragmentary, but interesting]
Fowden, G. Egyptian hermes, Cambridge UP 1986
Lindsay, J. Origins of alchemy in Graeco roman egypt, mueller 1970 [mainly for
the origins of alchemy and its relation philsophy generally]
Merkur Dan ??????? sorry i can't remember the title, but it does have a chapter
which I havn't read with a suggestive title.
Pagel "Paracelsus and the neoplatonic and gnostic tradition" Ambix 1960 125-66
Pagel "The eightness of adam and related gnostic ideas in the Paracelsian
corpus" Ambix 1969 pp119-39
Sheppard "Gnosticism and alchemy" Ambix 1957 pp86-101 [outdated but essential]
Sheppard "The redemption theme and hellenistic alchemy" Ambix 1959 pp42-6
Sheppard "The ouroboros and the unity of matter" Ambix 1962 pp83-96
Sheppard "Origin of the gnostic -alchemical relatiionship" Scientia 97, 1962
pp146-9
Wellesz "Music in the treatises of Greek gnostics and alchemists" Ambix 1951
pp145-58,

From: Adam McLean
Date: 2 Feb 1997

Dan Merkur. Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions. State University of New York Press. 1993. ISBN 0-7914-1620-8

From: Vladimir Georgiev
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:49:07 +100

Dear Jon,

Many sincere thanks for your posting. I wrote a dissertation on ancient
Gnosticism which I plan to publish in Bulgaria (I am looking for sponsors,
especially from abroad). I can not agree that "it seems rather a disparate
collection of movements all lumped together by their enemies..." It is true
that they did not strive after mechanical organizational coherence but
doctrinally they were quite united around two central ideas - dualism
and God-man identity. You are perfectly right that Scientology is a
modern Gnostis movement. I nearly fainted with laughter when I came
across their prayer book, in whose texts God is never mentioned.
Scientology is, at least to me, half-demythologized Gnosticism, while
existentialism, for instance, goes the full length of this process.
Ancient Hermetism is essentially monist but Gnosticism, which did
have some fringe monistic tendencies, is dualist. Neo-platonism
played an extremely important role in the genesis and development of
Gnosticism, which, I think, appeared not in Greek philosophical circles
but in heretical Jewry of the 1st century. In this respect I support Birger
Pearson.

I have got Dan Merkur's book which tries to prove that ancient Gnosticism
was a religion of visions and revelations in the spirit of Kabala and
Sufism. This strains credulity. Real Gnostics were and are 'knowers'
(gnosis means 'knowledge') and hardly bothered about the Merkabah
experiences which Merkur ascribes to them.

Would you or someone else please provide full names and titles for
the Atwood and Faivre works which you quoted?

Thanks again.

Vlado.

Vladimir Georgiev

Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 00:11:16 +0100
From: Michal Pober

>From: Vladimir Georgiev
>Since I do not think that F. Yates has written whole books on Gnosticism (not
>Gnosis which is a term much bandied about nowadays without any relation to
>dualism) in alchemy, I would be happy if someone, who has her books,
>would tell me simply which pages in which books of hers deal with
>that problem. Please quote fully.

Dear Vladimir,
Perhaps I have unwittingly added to the confusion; I live in Prague, so my
access to English language texts is probably as restricted as yours. My
hope was to help to make your needs clearer to those who are in a stronger
position to help you directly.
However I do also wonder, as does Jon Marshall, whether Frances Yates is
very relevant to your enquiry, though I have great admiration for her work.
it seems that he has come up with a number of good citations for you.

best regards,
michal

Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:21:05 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

>From: Michal Pober
>Excuse me butting in, but perhaps to defuse a cross-cultural
>misunderstanding, I'm understanding Vladimir to be asking for what George
>is calling the citations, as clearly cited as possible, because the
>Budapest librarians are not too hot at tracking foreign language books.

Maybe so. Here's some basic citations of relevant works from the UT Online
Catalogue:

AUTHOR: Yates, Frances Amelia.
TITLE: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition.
PUBLISHED: (Chicago) University of Chicago Press (1964)

AUTHOR: Yates, Frances Amelia.
TITLE: Lull and Bruno : collected essays.
PUBLISHED: London ; Boston : Routledge & K. Paul, 1982-

AUTHOR: Yates, Frances Amelia.
TITLE: The occult philosophy in the Elizabethan age / Frances A.
Yates.
PUBLISHED: London ; Boston : Routledge & K. Paul, 1979.

George Leake

Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:27:08 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

>From: Vladimir Georgiev
>Since I do not think that F. Yates has written whole books on Gnosticism (not
>Gnosis which is a term much bandied about nowadays without any relation to
>dualism) in alchemy, I would be happy if someone, who has her books,
>would tell me simply which pages in which books of hers deal with
>that problem. Please quote fully.

Perhaps you should have been more specific. I had thought you meant
"Gnosis" the phenomenom of inner spiritual knowledge. As opposed to the
specific religious movement spoken of in the Nag Hammadi & other documents,
and what evolved, some assert, into Manichaeism. Personally, I think the
issue of inner spiritual knowledge, aka Gnosis, is at the core of alchemy.
Which of course in and of itself says nothing specifically about dualism.

George Leake

Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:37:46 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

>From: Jon Marshall
>If I can be difficult as well, I'm wondering what you mean by gnosticism?
>After all, it seems rather a disparate collection of movements all lumped
>together by their enemies with little in the way of doctrinal or theoretical
>coherence or even organisational similarities.

Once again, I revisit the concept of gnosis as inner spiritual knowledge.
Might I suggest there a strong link to the concept theurgia?
As opposed to the specific movement, gnosticism, which many say evolved
into various movements including Manichaesim

>Judging by the usual criteria the Church of Scientolgy is a pure gnostic
>movement it involves a fall to the earth from an enlightened state, and an
>attempt to reascend via knowledge and technique- yet once people have
>finished coughing- it obviously has no connection to, say the Valentinian
>gnosis.

Yeah, though I think that's a very odd one. A "gnostic movement" seems to
suggest something more to do with society or groups of people rather than
the individual

>I confess also to being a little less enthusiastic about Yates than George.

It all depends on what one considers "Gnosis". In the sense I've defined,
certainly Qabbalah (and Yates details some of the variations) and
Hermeticism would qualify as philosophies Gnostic in character. What
about the Corpus Hermeticum? Is there not a strong link here?

>She does briefly discuss the relationship of 'the gnosis' to the
>hermetica in the Giordiano Bruno book but largely to paraphrase Festugiere
>(by her own account, and thus ignoring all the Nag Hamadi stuff which
>includes hermetic texts etc), and it is true that we have at least the criteria
>that a hermeticist must quote the 'writings or authority of Hermes' but she
>dismisses the 'practical hermetica' as beneath notice- though conceeding
>they are important to understanding some of the Asclepius (see GB & the
>HT pp44-).

I'll double check my copy at home, but if I recall correctly, she's
dismissing a specific brand of "practical hermetica"...

>1) is there a thing which names itself as gnosticism?
>2) is this connected with ancient hermeticism?
>2a) what is the connection of either of these with neo-platonism?
>3) are any of these connected to each other and to alchemy or to particular
>strands of alchemy?

I think some of these questions raise others, but in terms of Gnosis as
another word for Theurgy, or what some might call Divine Union, certainly I
see some connections.

Jon. Nice references, btw.

George Leake

Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 11:02:30 -0600 (CST)
From: George Leake

Two other possible sources I think not mentioned:

AUTHOR: Holmyard, Eric John, 1891-1959.
TITLE: Alchemy.
PUBLISHED: Baltimore, Penguin Books (1968)

If I recall correctly this looks at Arabic sources--perhaps some allusions
to gnosticism the movement might creep up here

AUTHOR: Berthelot, M. (Marcellin), 1827-1907
TITLE: ORIGINES DE L'ALCHIMIE
PUBLISHED: 1885

This has a bit speculating on sources--egyptian, hellenistic, gnostic--for
early alchemy...

George Leake

From: Jon Marshall
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 10:25:26 -0800

On Feb 2, Vladimir Georgiev wrote:

> Many sincere thanks for your posting. I wrote a dissertation on ancient
> Gnosticism which I plan to publish in Bulgaria (I am looking for sponsors,
> especially from abroad). I can not agree that "it seems rather a disparate
> collection of movements all lumped together by their enemies..." It is true
> that they did not strive after mechanical organizational coherence but
> doctrinally they were quite united around two central ideas - dualism
> and God-man identity.

I am not really capable of disputing well with you as it is probably 15 or so
years since I was familiar with Gnostic texts, or the writings about them (and
I'm sure things have changed in that time) and I'm not sure the alchemy forum is
the right place, but I am surprised to read that *all* Gnostics were dualists.
Dualism is a somewhat wide category - after all you could argue that
Christianity on occasions seems to be dualist, either because of occasional
focuses on the 'powers of darkness', the 'prince of this world', (I believe Paul
uses the term 'archon'?), or because of the distinction between the 'City of
God' and the 'City of Rome', or because of the kind of disavowal of the senses
and valorisation of the 'spirit' found in say Origen. And I assume we agree that
'mainstream' Christianity (whatever its varients) is not 'gnostic'.

You will have to excuse my memory, which undoubtedly is imperfect, but I cannot
remember much that is overtly dualist in say the gospel of Thomas, or even in
the collection known as the Pistis Sophia, and at least Pagels argues that the
Valentinian gnosis was in favour of One god. She also says Clement of Alexandria
refers to a 'monadic' gnosis (Gnostic gospels 1979:31).

As for the god/man identity in the pistis sophia, it seems to me that Mead is
accurate in his old edition, as describing Jesus as the "Saviour and First
Mystery... pre-existent from eternity" (page xl), and after all Jesus is
recorded as saying "ye shall be as gods"

> Ancient Hermetism is essentially monist but Gnosticism, which did
> have some fringe monistic tendencies, is dualist. Neo-platonism
> played an extremely important role in the genesis and development of
> Gnosticism, which, I think, appeared not in Greek philosophical circles
> but in heretical Jewry of the 1st century. In this respect I support Birger
> Pearson.

Unfortunatly I can't remember the title or author of the book that convinced me
gnosticism was pre-christian and primarily Hellenic (i.e. a product of the
confluence of east and west in Alexandria) though as you will be aware some
writers have argued that Christianity itself was influenced by the same stream
through Paul. The antiquity of Hermeticism is a similar problem, but I found GRS
Mead's arguements in Thrice Greatest Hermes surprisingly persuasive.

Anyway to a certain extent chronology is not important, the problem is mutual
influence or mutual origins/generation. Whether they originated as Jewish Heresy
or Alexandrian speculation, is almost irrelevant to the question of their
connections with alchemy, and they certainly flourished in the Alexandrian
environment.

> I have got Dan Merkur's book which tries to prove that ancient Gnosticism
> was a religion of visions and revelations in the spirit of Kabala and
> Sufism. This strains credulity. Real Gnostics were and are 'knowers'
> (gnosis means 'knowledge') and hardly bothered about the Merkabah
> experiences which Merkur ascribes to them.

Not having read Merkur I would hardly like to agree with him, but surely some of
the texts describe 'visions' and seem to expect that the gnostic will have
similar visions on their ascension?
And that the vision, the apperception, is a form of 'knowing' which can be
distinguished from textual or theoretical knowing- which I vaguely remember the
'gnostics' were supposed to condemn.
>
> Would you or someone else please provide full names and titles for
> the Atwood and Faivre works which you quoted?
>

The obtainable edition of the atwood was published by William Tait in Belfast in
1918, the edition people can actually find is republished by "yogi publication
society no place no date. there are other editions.
This is a text in the tradition of adeptism, and personally i don't find its
arguement that the secret of alchemy is the same as the secret of the classical
mysteries persuasive, but it is the only text I know which goes into alchemy and
neo-platonism in any depth.

Faivre access etc. is State University Press of New York, New York 1994
Eternal Hermes is Phanes Press, Grand Rapids, 1995

Another book I haven't seen

Segal, Robert Alan 'The Poimandres as myth: scholarly theory and Gnostic
meaning' de Gruyter, Berlin, 1986

Another article which may be relevant

Granger, Frank 'The poemander of Hermes Trismegistus' Journal of Theological
Studies vol 5, 1904 pp 395-412
is about the connection between the hermetica, the gospel of the Egyptians and
the Naassenes

From: Jon Marshall
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 09:58:58 -0800

Yet more essays, *perhaps* useful for your study of alchemy and gnosticism:

All three are in

Ingrid Merkel & Allen Debus 'Hermeticism and the renaissance: intellectual
History and the occult in early modern Europe', Folger Books, Associated
University Presses Incorporated, New Jersey? 1988

Scarborough, John 'Hermetic and related texts in classical antiquity' pp19-44,
Grese, William "Magic in Hellenistic hermeticism" pp45-58
Idel, Moshe "Hermeticism and Judaism" pp59-76.

It is possible that the article by Copenhaver "Hermes trismegistus, Proclus and
the questio of a philosophy of magic in the renaissance" might be of interest as
well.

There is also an introduction to the problem, largely using secondary sources in
Robert Schuler's unpublished Phd thesis 'Hermetic and alchemical traditions of
the english renaissance and seventeenth century, with an essay on their relation
to alchemical poetry, as illustrated by an edition of Blomfild's Blossoms...'
Department of English, University of Colarado 1971

Interestingly he mentions that Michael Psellos is the first writer of alchemical
tracts to posses the corpus hermeticum as we have it today...

jon