Zosimos of Panopolis
Encyclopedia
Zosimos of Panopolis was an Egyptian or Greek alchemist
and Gnostic mystic
from the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim
in the south of Egypt
, ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which quotations in the Greek language
and translations into Syriac or Arabic
are known. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium
(Constantinople
) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria
is another.
Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom by Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i'
, a Persian
alchemist. Unfortunately, the translations were incomplete and seemingly non-verbatim. The famous index of Arabic books, Kitab al-Fihrist by Ibn Al-Nadim
, mentions earlier translations of four books by Zosimos, however due to inconsistency in transliteration, these texts were attributed to names "Thosimos", "Dosimos" and "Rimos"; also it is possible that two of them are translations of the same book.
In general, Zosimos' understanding of alchemy reflects the influence of Hermetic
and Gnostic spiritualities. He asserted that the fallen angel
s taught the arts of metallurgy to the women they married, an idea also recorded in the Book of Enoch
and later repeated in the Gnostic Apocryphon of John
. In a fragment preserved by Syncellus
, Zosimos wrote:
The external processes of metallic transmutation—the transformations of lead and copper into silver and gold (see the Stockholm papyrus)—had always to mirror an inner process of purification and redemption. Wrote Zosimos in Concerning the true Book of Sophe, the Egyptian, and of the Divine Master of the Hebrews and the Sabaoth Powers:
Greek alchemists used what they called ὕδωρ θεῖον, meaning both divine water, and sulphurous water. For Zosimos, the alchemical vessel was imagined as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapours of mercury and sulphur were likened to the purifying waters of baptism, which perfected and redeemed the Gnostic initiate. Zosimos drew upon the Hermetic image of the krater or mixing bowl, a symbol of the divine mind in which the Hermetic initiate was "baptized" and purified in the course of a visionary ascent through the heavens and into the transcendent realms. Similar ideas of a spiritual baptism in the "waters" of the transcendent Pleroma are characteristic of the Sethian Gnostic texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi
. This image of the alchemical vessel as baptismal font is central to his Visions, discussed below.
(the Sabians
consider him the founder of their religion), who calls himself "the priest of inner sanctuaries, and I submit myself to an unendurable torment." Ion then fights and impales Zosimos with a sword, dismembering him "in accordance with the rule of harmony" (referring to the division into four bodies, natures, or elements), and then pulls the skin off Zosimos' head (a reference to the Apocalypse of Elijah
which mentions those who are cast "into eternal punishment": "their eyes are mixed with blood"; and of the saints who were persecuted by the Anti-Messiah: "he will draw off their skins from their heads"). He takes the pieces of Zosimos to the altar, and "burned (them) upon the fire of the art, till I perceived by the transformation of the body that I had become spirit." From there, Ion cries blood, and horribly melts into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion"—which Carl Jung
perceived as the first concept of the homunculus
in alchemical literature.
Zosimos wakes up, asks himself, "[i]s not this the composition of the waters?" and returns to sleep, beginning the visions again—he constantly wakes up, ponders to himself and returns to sleep during these visions. Returning to the same altar, Zosimos finds a man being boiled alive, yet still alive, who says to him, "[t]he sight that you see is the entrance, and the exit, and the transformation ... Those who seek to obtain the art (or moral perfection) enter here, and become spirits by escaping from the body"—which can be regarded as human distillation
; just as how distilled water purifies it, distilling the body purifies it as well. He then sees a Brazen Man (another homunculus, as Jung believed any man described as being metal is perceived as being a homunculus), a Leaden Man (named Agathodaimon
and also a homunculus). Zosimos also dreams of a "place of punishments" where all who enter immediately burst into flames and "submit theirself to an unendourable torment."
Jung believed these visions to be a sort of Alchemical allegory, with the tormented homunculi personifying transmutations—burning or boiling themselves to become something else. The central image of the visions are the Sacrificial Act, which each Homunculus endures. In alchemy the dyophysite
nature is constantly emphasized, two principles balancing one another, active and passive, masculine and feminine, which constitute the eternal cycle of birth and death. In ancient alchemy this cycle was represented by the symbol of the uroboros, the dragon that bites its own tail. Self-devouring is the same as self-destruction, but the unison of the dragon's tail and mouth was also thought of as self-fertilization. Hence the text of "Tractatus Avicennae" mentions "the dragon slays itself, weds itself, impregnates itself." In the visions, circular thinking appears in the sacrificial priest's identity with his victim and in the idea that the homunculus into whom Ion is changed devours himself—he spews fourth his own flesh and rends himself with his own teeth. The homunculus therefore stands for the uroboros, which devours itself and gives birth to self. Since the homonculus represents the transformation of Ion, it follows that Ion, the uroboros, and the sacrificer are essentially the same.
The complete (as of 1888) "Œuvres de Zosime" were published in French by M. Berthelot in Les alchimistes grecs. English translations remain elusive.
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
and Gnostic mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
from the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim
Akhmim
Akhmim is a city in the Sohag Governorate of Upper Egypt. Referred to by the ancient Greeks as Khemmis, Chemmis and Panopolis, it is located on the east bank of the Nile, 4 miles to the northeast of Sohag.- History :Akhmim was known in Ancient Egypt as Ipu, Apu or Khent-min...
in the south of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which quotations in the Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and translations into Syriac or Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
are known. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
(Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria
Stephen of Alexandria
Stephen of Alexandria was a 7th century Byzantine philosopher, astronomer and teacher. He was a public lecturer in the court of Heraclius . In the manuscripts he is called the Universal Philosopher.He taught on Plato and Aristotle, and on Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music.- Works :1...
is another.
Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom by Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i'
Al-Tughrai
Mu'ayyad al-Din Abu Isma‘il al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Tughra'i was an 11th–12th century Persian physician.Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Tughra'i, was born in Isfahan in 1061CE, and was an important alchemist, poet, and administrative secretary...
, a Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
alchemist. Unfortunately, the translations were incomplete and seemingly non-verbatim. The famous index of Arabic books, Kitab al-Fihrist by Ibn Al-Nadim
Ibn al-Nadim
Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim , whose father was known as al-Warrāq was a Shia Muslim scholar and bibliographer. Some scholars regard him as a Persian, but this is not certain. He is famous as the author of the Kitāb al-Fihrist...
, mentions earlier translations of four books by Zosimos, however due to inconsistency in transliteration, these texts were attributed to names "Thosimos", "Dosimos" and "Rimos"; also it is possible that two of them are translations of the same book.
Alchemy
In about 300 AD, Zosimos provided one of the first definitions of alchemy:- Alchemy (330) – the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies.
In general, Zosimos' understanding of alchemy reflects the influence of Hermetic
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...
and Gnostic spiritualities. He asserted that the fallen angel
Fallen angel
Fallen angel is a concept developed in Jewish mythology from interpretation of the Book of Enoch. The actual term fallen angel is not found in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Christians adopted the concept of fallen angels mainly based on their interpretations of the Book of...
s taught the arts of metallurgy to the women they married, an idea also recorded in the Book of Enoch
Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel...
and later repeated in the Gnostic Apocryphon of John
Apocryphon of John
The Secret Book of John is a 2nd-century AD Sethian Gnostic text of secret teachings. Since it was known to the church father Irenaeus, it must have been written before around AD 180. It describes Jesus Christ appearing and giving secret knowledge to the apostle John...
. In a fragment preserved by Syncellus
George Syncellus
George Syncellus was a Byzantine chronicler and ecclesiastic. He had lived many years in Palestine as a monk, before coming to Constantinople, where he was appointed syncellus to Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople...
, Zosimos wrote:
The external processes of metallic transmutation—the transformations of lead and copper into silver and gold (see the Stockholm papyrus)—had always to mirror an inner process of purification and redemption. Wrote Zosimos in Concerning the true Book of Sophe, the Egyptian, and of the Divine Master of the Hebrews and the Sabaoth Powers:
Greek alchemists used what they called ὕδωρ θεῖον, meaning both divine water, and sulphurous water. For Zosimos, the alchemical vessel was imagined as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapours of mercury and sulphur were likened to the purifying waters of baptism, which perfected and redeemed the Gnostic initiate. Zosimos drew upon the Hermetic image of the krater or mixing bowl, a symbol of the divine mind in which the Hermetic initiate was "baptized" and purified in the course of a visionary ascent through the heavens and into the transcendent realms. Similar ideas of a spiritual baptism in the "waters" of the transcendent Pleroma are characteristic of the Sethian Gnostic texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi
Nag Hammâdi
Nag Hammadi , is a city in Upper Egypt. Nag Hammadi was known as Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, meaning "geese grazing grounds". It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor....
. This image of the alchemical vessel as baptismal font is central to his Visions, discussed below.
Visions of Zosimos
One of Zosimos' texts is about a sequence of dreams related to Alchemy, and presents the proto-science as a much more religious experience. In his dream he first comes to an altar and meets IonIon
An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. The name was given by physicist Michael Faraday for the substances that allow a current to pass between electrodes in a...
(the Sabians
Sabians
The Sabians of Middle Eastern tradition were a monotheistic Abrahamic religious group mentioned three times in the Quran: "the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians." In the Hadith they are nothing but converts to Islam, while their identity in later Islamic literature became a matter of...
consider him the founder of their religion), who calls himself "the priest of inner sanctuaries, and I submit myself to an unendurable torment." Ion then fights and impales Zosimos with a sword, dismembering him "in accordance with the rule of harmony" (referring to the division into four bodies, natures, or elements), and then pulls the skin off Zosimos' head (a reference to the Apocalypse of Elijah
Apocalypse of Elijah
The Apocalypse of Elijah is an anonymous apocryphal work presenting itself as a revelation given by an angel. Two versions are known today, a Coptic Christian fragmentary version and a Hebrew Jewish version...
which mentions those who are cast "into eternal punishment": "their eyes are mixed with blood"; and of the saints who were persecuted by the Anti-Messiah: "he will draw off their skins from their heads"). He takes the pieces of Zosimos to the altar, and "burned (them) upon the fire of the art, till I perceived by the transformation of the body that I had become spirit." From there, Ion cries blood, and horribly melts into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion"—which Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
perceived as the first concept of the homunculus
Homunculus
Homunculus is a term used, generally, in various fields of study to refer to any representation of a human being. Historically, it referred specifically to the concept of a miniature though fully formed human body, for example, in the studies of alchemy and preformationism...
in alchemical literature.
Zosimos wakes up, asks himself, "[i]s not this the composition of the waters?" and returns to sleep, beginning the visions again—he constantly wakes up, ponders to himself and returns to sleep during these visions. Returning to the same altar, Zosimos finds a man being boiled alive, yet still alive, who says to him, "[t]he sight that you see is the entrance, and the exit, and the transformation ... Those who seek to obtain the art (or moral perfection) enter here, and become spirits by escaping from the body"—which can be regarded as human distillation
Distillation
Distillation is a method of separating mixtures based on differences in volatilities of components in a boiling liquid mixture. Distillation is a unit operation, or a physical separation process, and not a chemical reaction....
; just as how distilled water purifies it, distilling the body purifies it as well. He then sees a Brazen Man (another homunculus, as Jung believed any man described as being metal is perceived as being a homunculus), a Leaden Man (named Agathodaimon
Agathodaimon
Agathodaimon was an alchemist in late Roman Egypt, known only from fragments of medieval alchemical treatises, chiefly the Anepigraphos, which refer to works of his believed to be from the 3rd century...
and also a homunculus). Zosimos also dreams of a "place of punishments" where all who enter immediately burst into flames and "submit theirself to an unendourable torment."
Jung believed these visions to be a sort of Alchemical allegory, with the tormented homunculi personifying transmutations—burning or boiling themselves to become something else. The central image of the visions are the Sacrificial Act, which each Homunculus endures. In alchemy the dyophysite
Dyophysite
Dyophysite is a theological term used in understanding how the divine and human are related in the person of Jesus Christ, an area of study known as Christology...
nature is constantly emphasized, two principles balancing one another, active and passive, masculine and feminine, which constitute the eternal cycle of birth and death. In ancient alchemy this cycle was represented by the symbol of the uroboros, the dragon that bites its own tail. Self-devouring is the same as self-destruction, but the unison of the dragon's tail and mouth was also thought of as self-fertilization. Hence the text of "Tractatus Avicennae" mentions "the dragon slays itself, weds itself, impregnates itself." In the visions, circular thinking appears in the sacrificial priest's identity with his victim and in the idea that the homunculus into whom Ion is changed devours himself—he spews fourth his own flesh and rends himself with his own teeth. The homunculus therefore stands for the uroboros, which devours itself and gives birth to self. Since the homonculus represents the transformation of Ion, it follows that Ion, the uroboros, and the sacrificer are essentially the same.
Works
- Authentic Memoirs
- The Book of Pictures (Muṣḥaf aṣ-ṣuwar)
- Concerning the true Book of Sophe, the Egyptian, and of the Divine Master of the Hebrews and the Sabaoth Powers (French translation)
- The Final Quittance (French translation)
- On the Evaporation of the Divine Water that fixes Mercury (French translation http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/alchimie/alchimieIII.htm#VIII http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/alchimie/alchimieIII.htm#IX http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/alchimie/alchimieIII.htm#X http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/alchimie/alchimieIII.htm#XXVI)
- On the Letter Omega (English excerpt translated by G.R.S. Mead; French translation)
- Treatise on Instruments and Furnaces (French translation)
- The Visions of Zosimos (English translation)
The complete (as of 1888) "Œuvres de Zosime" were published in French by M. Berthelot in Les alchimistes grecs. English translations remain elusive.
Fragments
- Vol. I (introduction) p. 119, 127—174, 209, 250; vol. II (Greek text) p. 28, 117—120; Vol. III (trans.) p. 117—242.
- p. 1—49: I = Sur la lettre oméga; V = Sur l'eau divine; VI = Diagramme (ouroboros); VII = Sur les appareils et fourneaux
Studies
- Vol. I (introduction) p. 119, 127—174, 209, 250.
- Vol. II, p. 203—266; Vol. III, p. 28, 30, 41.
See also
- History of alchemy
- Alchemy and chemistry in medieval IslamAlchemy and chemistry in medieval IslamAlchemy and chemistry in Islam refers to the study of both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry by scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word كيمياء or kīmīāʾ...