ambix, Vol. 60 No. 4, November, 2013, 361–389 Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica —Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala Peter J. Forshaw University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth century. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their work. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation to chemical medicine. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the Kabbala Denudata. Early historiography of the relations between Kabbalah and Alchemy The early seventeenth century was witness to various publications that intimated of links between the laboratory art of alchemy and the mystical Jewish art of Kabbalah. Two of the best-known instances are publications by Paracelsians: Franz Kieser’s Cabala Chymica (1606) and Stephan Michelspacher’s Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia (1616). Both include engravings that imply that Cabala was a necessary part of alchemical theory and practice, one that related the “supernatural” to the “natural,” the Emerald Tablet’s heavens © Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2013 DOI 10.1179/0002698013Z.00000000039 362 PETER J. FORSHAW above to the earth below.1 In truth, neither work displays anything that would be recognised as Kabbalah by a Jewish practitioner. This essay investigates the problematic relationship between alchemy and Cabala and shows that the latter was deployed in different ways by a variety of alchemists experimenting with disciplinary combinations that fell somewhere between Cabalistic Alchemy and Chymical Cabala (Figures 1 and 2). Historians of science have devoted little attention to the confluence of alchemy and Kabbalah, as is the case, too, with the broader subject of alchemy and religion.2 Hermann Kopp (1817–1892) briefly touched on Jewish and Mosaic connections with alchemy in his Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie (1869–1875).3 Nowhere does he make any mention of Kabbalah. A decade later, however, with the publication of Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit (1886), he included a section on the “Relations between Alchemy and the Kabbalah.”4 Reflecting on how Kabbalah was put to the service of alchemy, Kopp mentions Ramon Lull’s apparent knowledge of Kabbalah and the impact of his Ars Magna on alchemical speculation, such as the combinatorial figures found in the fourteenth-century pseudo-Lullian Testamamentum, but believes that Kabbalah was explicitly brought into contact with alchemy by Paracelsus.5 In Les Origines de l’Alchimie (1885), however, Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907) argues that “the Jews have an importance of the first order in this fusion of the religious and scientific doctrines of the Orient and Greece,” claiming that “the chaldeo-rabbinic work of Kabbalah was linked with alchemy during the Middle Ages”; indeed, “this liaison between Jewish traditions and alchemy goes far back.”6 Unfortunately, he provides little to support his conviction. A few years later, in Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (1887–1888), Berthelot included among the works of Zosimos the Livre véritable de Sophé l’Égyptien et du divin seigneur des Hébreux (et) des puissances Sabaoth, which intimates of 1 2 3 4 5 6 Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen: Martin Spiessen, 1606). The “Figura Cabalae” (Fig. 1) on sig.)([ivv] depicts a bearded figure holding a geometrical compass and square, standing behind a terrestrial globe surrounded by the seven astrological planets, all radiating their energies onto the earth. The relationship between the planets and earth is described by the words “Supernaturalis” and “Naturalis,” respectively, at the top and bottom of the engraving, and reinforced by the famous “As above, so below” message from the Emerald Tablet at the base of the engraving. For a variation of this figure, minus the line from the Emerald Tablet, see Lazarus Zetzner, comp., Theatrum chemicum (Strasburg: Haeredum Eberhardi Zetzneri, 1661), Vol. 6: 343, prefacing the anonymous Physica Naturalis Rotunda Visionis Chemicae Cabalisticae, 344–81. See also Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia (Augsburg: David Francken, 1616) (Fig. 2), Plate 2 “Anfang. Exaltation” and “Cabala.” For notable exceptions, see Italo Ronca, “Religious Symbolism in Medieval Islamic and Christian Alchemy,” in Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, ed. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 95–117; Chiara Crisciani, Il Papa e l’alchimia: Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e l’elixir (Rome: Viella, 2002); Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Hermann Kopp, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie, 2 vols. (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn, 1869), 1: 396–402 on Moses; 1: 402–06 on Maria [the Jewess]. Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit: Ein Beitrag zu Culturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1886), 2: 228–34. Kopp, Die Alchemie, 2: 229. Marcellin Berthelot, Les Origines de l’Alchimie (Paris: Georges Steinhell, 1885), 53–54 (Cabale); 16, 54, 60, 108, 348 (Cabalistique). CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 363 figure 1 “Figure of Cabala” in Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen, 1606). (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.) profound links between the “two sciences and two wisdoms” of the Egyptians and the Jews, but again with no direct discussion of Kabbalah.7 In reality, neither of these two influential early historians of alchemy were correct; as shall be seen, the first 7 Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1887–1888), 2: 205ff. 364 PETER J. FORSHAW figure 2 Plate 2 “Anfang. Exaltation” and “Cabala” in Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia (Augsburg, 1616). (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.) identifiable combination of alchemy and Kabbalah originates with an Italian priest in the first decades of the sixteenth century.8 The few historians who have considered the confluence of the two disciplines in more detail have tended to come from backgrounds in religious studies. Gershom 8 Little has been written by historians of science about the relations between alchemy and Kabbalah. Indicative of this is the short entry by Karin Figala and Claus Priesner on “Kabbala, Kabbalah, Cabbala” in Alchemie: Lexikon einer Hermetischen Wissenschaft, ed. Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998), 187–90. There are some references in Alan Pritchard, Alchemy: A Bibliography of English-Language Writings (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), but mostly to primary sources, some of which turn out to have little relevance to the history of alchemy. French scholars, particularly Sylvain Matton and Didier Kahn, have been the most productive, and some of their material is cited below. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 365 Scholem (1897–1982), pioneer in the academic study of the Jewish Kabbalah, contributed a short work on Alchemie und Kabbala (1925/1977), in which he displayed great erudition in Kabbalah, but less familiarity with alchemy, which he tended to split into either gold-making or some form of mystical practice.9 Scholem remarked that medieval Hebrew literature included remarkably few alchemical writings, and problematised the whole relationship between transmutational alchemy that has gold as its ultimate goal, and Kabbalah, where gold “is not at all a symbol of the highest status.”10 While he correctly observed that many alchemical books that “flaunt the word Kabbalah on their title pages” actually have little to do with Kabbalah; that there is naturally some overlap of material, given that “the Old Testament was shared equally by Jewish Kabbalists and Christian alchemists”; and that there is a possible “coincidence of chemical and mystical processes” in Rosicrucian material, his essential thesis that “alchemy and Kabbalah became widely synonymous among the Christian theosophers and alchemists of Europe” oversimplifies the issue and cannot be justified. This shall be seen below in the case of Heinrich Khunrath, who, contrary to Scholem’s claim, explicitly does not “argue for this identification process.”11 In his ground-breaking Les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (1964), François Secret (1911–2003) included a short section on early modern Christian Cabalists and occult philosophy, including alchemy, a theme that he developed further in Hermétisme et Kabbale (1992).12 Raphael Patai’s The Jewish Alchemists (1994) suggests some instances of overlap between Kabbalah and various kinds of speculative, transmutational, medical, and spiritual alchemy: for instance, the interest shown in chrysopoeia by Hayyim Vital (1543–1620), one of the followers of Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the individual responsible for the great renaissance and reorientation of kabbalistic mysticism in the sixteenth century; but Patai’s claims for links with Kabbalah are at times tenuous and somewhat overplayed.13 More recently, 9 10 11 12 13 Gershom Scholem, “Alchemie und Kabbala,” Eranos Jahrbuch 46 (1977): 1–96; reprint in Judaica 4 (1984): 19– 127. This replaces the article of the same title in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 69 (1925): 13–30, 95–110, 371–74. I am using the English translation, Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. Klaus Ottmann (Putnam, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 2006). Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 20. Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 11, 13, 41, 85, 88. François Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964) and Hermétisme et Kabbale (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992). See also Secret, “Notes sur quelques alchimistes italiens de la Renaissance,” Rinascimento, N.S., 13 (1973): 197–217, and “Palingenesis, Alchemy and Metempsychosis in Renaissance Medicine,” Ambix 26 (1979): 81–92. Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 340–64 (“Hayyim Vital, Alchemist”). See Gad Freudenthal’s review of The Jewish Alchemists in Isis 86 (1995): 318–19, where he criticises Patai’s “historical laxity” and his ignorance of Scholem’s essay “Alchemie und Kabbala,” and also questions the criteria by which Patai constituted his corpus, with inclusion of writings that “have nothing Jewish to them.” In his review in the British Journal for the History of Science 29, no. 1 (March 1996): 93–94, Ole Peter Grell also points out Patai’s tendency to “overemphasise the significance of their [the alchemists’] Jewishness.” For additional critical reviews, see Marc Saperstein in The American Historical Review 100, no. 5 (December 1995): 1524, and Y. Tzvi Langermann in Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 4 (October– December 1996): 792–93. In The Journal of Religion, 75, no. 4 (October 1995): 596–97, Dov Schwartz praises Patai for his “trailblazing work in a hitherto untouched area,” but questions some of the material selected. On Vital, see also Gerrit Bos, “Hayyim Vital’s “Practical Kabbalah and alchemy”: A 17th-Century Book of Secrets,” 366 PETER J. FORSHAW Andreas Kilcher has revised some of Scholem’s claims and provided extremely useful insights into the alchemical material found in the influential Christian publication of Jewish Lurianic material, the Baroque high point of Christian Cabala, the Kabbala Denudata.14 Secret and Kilcher, in particular, are inspiring examples of scholars with an interdisciplinary approach, interested in those intellectually amphibious figures who crossed disciplinary boundaries and attempted novel combinations of seemingly disparate sciences and arts. This essay provides some slightly more detailed examples of such hybrid approaches from early modern sources. From Jewish Kabbalah to Christian Cabala: a brief introduction As Jewish Kabbalah and its Christian reformulation may be unfamiliar to some historians of alchemy, let me begin with a brief overview of these traditions. The Hebrew term Kabbalah, which literally translates as “reception” or “tradition,” refers to the Jewish esoteric teaching that emerged in the High Middle Ages in Provence and Northern Spain. Kabbalah is generally presented as having two main preoccupations, related to cosmogony and theosophy respectively: Ma’aseh Bereshit (Work of Creation), based on the exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2; and Ma’aseh Merkavah (Work of the Chariot), visions and reflections concerning the Throne on its Chariot described in the first chapter of Ezekiel.15 These two streams of speculation are seen as complementary, in the belief that “to know the stages of the creative process is also to know the stages of one’s own return to the root of all existence.”16 The earliest extant Hebrew text of speculative thought on cosmology and cosmogony, the pre-kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), dates from sometime between the second and sixth century CE.17 It contains speculation on the characters of the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Creator engraved the Divine Names and fashioned the Universe, each letter corresponding to a different principle of creation with its own distinctive power. The Sefer Yetzirah also explicates the metaphysical principles of the Sefirot (singular Sefirah), generally translated as “enumerations” or “measures”:18 ten principles mediating between God and the universe.19 The twenty-two Hebrew letters plus the ten Sefirot constitute what the Sefer Yetzirah 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Continued Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994): 55–112. On Luria, see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). Andreas B. Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica. Knorrs spekulative Verbindung von Kabbala und Alchemie,” in MorgenGlantz: Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesselschaft 13 (2003): 97–119. For concise introductions to these terms, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian/Penguin, 1978), 10–21, 88f. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 20. Gershom Scholem, “The Problem”, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. Raphael J. Zwi Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 25. Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 72. See the entry on the “Ten Sephirot,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1995; repr. 1999), 839–43. See also Scholem, Kabbalah, 96–116. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 367 calls the “thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom,” by which God created the universe, “with three types of things: with writing and numbers and speech.”20 The earliest extant text of Kabbalah proper is the Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Illumination or Brilliance), dating from the end of the twelfth century.21 It is in the Bahir that we first encounter the image of the sefirot as ten hierarchical emanations, which from the fourteenth century came to be depicted by the ’Etz Hayyim or Tree of Life. This image was to become one of the central features of theosophical Kabbalah, a symbolic configuration of the sefirot arranged in three columns or pillars (Figure 3). From the end of the thirteenth century, the voluminous Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of Splendour) became the authoritative text of Jewish mysticism. Like the Sefer Yetzirah and Bahir, it expounds on the notions of the sefirot, but develops a wider range of themes, beginning with the exegesis of the Mosaic account of creation in Genesis. The Zohar clearly has no intention of providing simply one authoritative interpretation of scripture, but instead emphasises that “all the words of the Torah … can all bear several meanings, and all good, and the whole Torah can be expounded in seventy ways, corresponding to seventy sides and seventy wings.”22 This flexibility allowed space for many kinds of speculation, including, as we shall see, those concerning alchemy.23 At the dawn of the European Renaissance, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) became the first Christian by birth known to have studied authentic kabbalistic texts. Pico developed his own Christian form of Cabala in his famous 900 Conclusiones Philosophicae, Cabalisticae et Theologicae (1486), 119 of which were provocative arguments on the “Science of Cabala” that Pico was the first to introduce into the mainstream of Renaissance thought.24 Pico’s two major influences were the Spanish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia (1240–ca. 1291) and the Italian rabbi Menahem Recanati (1250–1310), who represent two quite different types of Kabbalah: the former ecstatic, the latter theosophical-theurgical. Recanati is mainly concerned with the ten sefirot as divine emanations and engages in a symbolic exegesis of Scripture as the way to unravel their mysteries. The father of prophetic Kabbalah, Abulafia, on the other hand, concentrates on the names (shemot) of God and their permutations as a spiritual contemplative discipline by which man can attain union with the divine.25 The presence of both these traditions is evident in Pico’s first Cabalistic thesis, in which he declares, “Whatever other Cabalists say, in a 20 21 22 23 24 25 A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 59, version C. On the concept of the Sefirot in the Bahir, see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, Chapter 2 “The Book Bahir,” sections 5 to 8. The Zohar, trans. Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon (London & New York: The Soncino Press, 1984), Vol. 1, 171. For Scholem’s thoughts on the influence of alchemy on the Zohar, see Alchemy and Kabbalah, 25–40. On Pico and Kabbalah, see Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, Cap. III; S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998); Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); M. V. Dougherty, ed., Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On Abulafia and Recanati, see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy 1280–1510: A Survey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011). 368 PETER J. FORSHAW figure 3 The first known published representation of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, on the title page of a Latin translation of Joseph Gikatilla’s Portae Lucis (Gates of Light, 1516.) (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.) first division I distinguish the science of Cabala into the science of sefirot and shemot, as it were into practical and speculative science.”26 Though neither detailed nor systematic in his discussion of the Jewish Kabbalah, Pico nevertheless demonstrates an awareness of genuine Jewish kabbalistic literature and familiarity with some of the highly idiosyncratic Jewish techniques of textual interpretation. 26 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 519 (11 > 1). CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 369 Pico’s professed motivation for studying Cabala is to evangelise against heretics and Jews and to demonstrate “powerful confirmation of the Christian religion from the very principles of the Hebrew Sages”; that is, to make use of Kabbalah’s own hermeneutical techniques to prove, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity.27 The significance of Pico’s Cabala should not, however, be restricted simply to Christian polemic and apologetics. One of the many syncretic linkings that Pico made in his Conclusions was his connection of the alphabetaria revolutio (revolution of letters) of speculative Kabbalah with the ars combinandi or combinatorial art of the Catalan mystic Ramon Lull (1225–1315).28 Chaim Wirszubski suggests that the Cabalistic Conclusions “outgrew their original purpose” and that Pico came to view Kabbalah from an entirely new standpoint, as “the first Christian who considered Cabala to be simultaneously a witness for Christianity and an ally of natural magic.”29 Pico’s interest goes far beyond the simple confirmation of Christianity when in his Magical Conclusions he famously (and notoriously) asserts that the divinity of Christ is best demonstrated by the science of magic and Cabala.30 As we shall see, at least some alchemical practitioners familiar with both pseudo-Lullian alchemy and Cabala regarded their laboratory pursuits as part of a programme to demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion, at the same time as they undoubtedly hoped to raise the status of alchemy far beyond a mere manual art into a natural philosophical auxiliary to Christianity. While Pico was active in Florence he was visited by the German scholar Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), universally regarded as one of the key figures of European scholarship and intellectual life at the turn of the sixteenth century. Reuchlin was to write two of the most influential books of Christian Cabala, the De Verbo Mirifico (On the Wonder-Working Word, 1494) and the De Arte Cabalistica (On the Cabalistic Art, 1517), that were to become the favoured textbooks for those interested in the subject for the next hundred and fifty years.31 Reuchlin’s first cabalistic work was important for the contribution it made to the Renaissance debate about language, that is, the occult powers and properties of words and 27 28 29 30 31 Brian P. Copenhaver, “The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy,” in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 56–81, on 75; Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J.W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1998), 29, 32; Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 523. Harvey Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 119. Just as Lull has sometimes been falsely credited with being the first Christian to show an acquaintance with Kabbalah due to the title of a work attributed to him, the Opusculum de auditu Kabbalistico, despite its lack of familiarity with the Jewish tradition, so has he been credited with the authorship of many works on alchemy. On pseudo-Lullian Cabalistic texts that could have inspired Pico to associate the Lullian art with Cabala, see Paola Zambelli, L’aprendista stregone: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico della Mirandola e seguaci (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1995), esp. 55–64. On pseudo-Lullian alchemy, see Michaela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raimond Lull (London: Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 1989). Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, 151, 185. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 497 (9 > 9). On Reuchlin, see Joseph Dan, “The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and its Historical Significance,” in The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and their Christian Interpreters, ed. Joseph Dan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College Library, 1997), 55–95; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Einleitung: Johannes Reuchlin und die Anfänge der christlichen Kabbala,” in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2003), 9–48. 370 PETER J. FORSHAW names.32 By the time he published De Arte Cabalistica, he was the leading Christian Hebraist of his age.33 In both works Reuchlin promotes a blend of authentic Jewish sources with Neo-Pythagoreanism, claiming that this philosophy, in particular the symbolic numbers, was ultimately derived from the older and more authentic Kabbalah. An important aspect of the new concept of language found in these ‘kabbalistic’ sources was a set of exegetical techniques having no counterpart in the Christian interpretation of scripture. The Jewish kabbalistic method of exegesis was fundamentally different: whereas the Christian exegete unravelled meaning while leaving the text itself intact, the Kabbalist employed interpretative techniques that reshaped and transformed the written text, decomposing or atomizing it into its constitutive elements, the Hebrew letters—indeed, even reducing the letters themselves into their parts, discovering (or inventing) a plethora of new meanings in seemingly familiar material.34 These textual elements were combined and permuted according to three main hermeneutical techniques, most memorably recalled by the acronym of the Jewish kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla (1248–ca. 1305) in his Ginnat Egoz (NutGarden). The three letters of the Hebrew word for “Garden” (GNTh—Ginnat) denote the techniques of Gematria (arithmetical computations), Notarikon/Notariacon (manipulation of letters into acronyms and acrostics, e.g. Ginnat) and Temura or Tseruf (permutation, commutation, or transposition of letters).35 Since every Hebrew letter possesses an inherent numerical value, every letter, word, and phrase in the Torah has a mathematical significance through which correspondences can be found with other words, revealing internal resonances within seemingly disparate sources.36 The thirty-two “wondrous paths of wisdom” with which the Sefer Yetzirah opens, for example, are denoted by the Hebrew letters Lamed (with the value thirty) and Beth (with the value two), which combine to form the Hebrew word “Leb,” meaning “heart.”37 These letters are also the first and last letters of the Torah—the Beth of “Bereshit,” the first word of Genesis 1:1 and the Lamed of “Israel,” the last word of Deuteronomy 34:12. Thus, the five books of Moses constitute the “heart” of the Kabbalah, together with the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet that form all of the shemot or divine names.38 One of the most influential examples of Gematria provided by 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Charles Zika, “Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 104–38. Joseph Leon Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 50; Klaus Reichert, “Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings of Christian Kabbala,” in Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, ed. Karl Erich Grözinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 195–207. On kabbalistic exegesis, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “Number, Shape, and Meaning in Pico’s Christian Cabala: The Upright Tsade, the Closed Mem, and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel,” in Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1999), 25–76. Elke Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 72, 225. Joseph Dan and Ronald C. Kiener, The Early Kabbalah (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), 11. Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir Illumination: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1979), 23, 36. Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 67; Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, 198. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 371 both Pico and Reuchlin relates to the most powerful Jewish name for God, the ineffable Tetragrammaton, YHVH. By cumulatively adding up the values of the groups of letters when they are aligned according to the points of the Pythagorean Tetraktys —that is by adding Yod (ten) to Yod-He (fifteen) to Yod-He-Vau (twenty-one) to Yod-He-Vau-He (twenty-six)—we reach the significant total seventy-two, associated with seventy-two angelic powers.39 Reuchlin provides his readers with further examples of the techniques of speculative kabbalistic exegesis, but is far more interested in the theurgical techniques of practical Kabbalah. He emphasises the performative, ritualistic dimension of Cabala, one that gives the pious practitioner access to the occult properties of nature.40 This movement back and forth between the spiritual and practical dimensions of the Cabalistic art is brought out nicely when Reuchlin’s representative of the Jewish Kabbalah, Simon ben Eleazar, speaks of deification. He illustrates his argument that “life tends upwards by instinct” with a scientific analogy: “Similarly with metals; for the finer metals bubble up to form superior vapors, when drawn out by the art of alchemy.”41 The first “Cabalchemist”: Giovanni Agostino Pantheo If Giovanni Pico della Mirandola can be called the Father of Christian Cabala, then a fellow Italian, the Venetian priest Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, assuredly deserves the title Father of Cabalistic Alchemy or Chymical Cabala, for he is without doubt the first Christian author to have attempted a combination of alchemy and Cabala.42 Pantheo develops a hybrid “Cabala of Metals” (Cabala metallorum) in two works: the Ars transmutationis metallicae (Art of Metallic Transmutation), published in 1519 and The Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Voarchadumia against Alchemy), which appeared in 1530.43 Already in Pantheo’s first work, which appeared just two years after Reuchlin’s On the Cabalistic Art, we find references to the “ars cabalistica” and “truth of metals from the Cabalists” in the prefatory material, alongside mention of Pythagoras and Plato’s ruminations on the “science of numbers” (numerorum scientia), explained as knowledge of how “to add mixtures, and proportions of metals, together with their weights and numbers.”44 The Ars transmutationis includes a circular diagram (Figure 4), with the first eight letters of the Roman 39 40 41 42 43 44 See Farmer, Syncretism, 543 (11 > 56); Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 267. James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 1: 128. See also Zika, “Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico.” Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, 46–47: “Eadem est ratio in metallicis quoque cum id quod generosius est in altiores spiritus ebullit ab alkimia sublimatum, ut puriora semper ea videantur quae sunt sublimiora.” On Pantheo, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), 8: 537–40. Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1519) and Voarchadumia contra Alchimiam: Ars distincta ab Archimia, et Sophia (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1530). See Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567–1625) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), 64. Ioannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1566), sigs. Aiijv and 25v. “ … addere misturas, & proportiones metallorum, una cum eorum ponderibus, & numeris.” 372 PETER J. FORSHAW figure 4 Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice, 1519), unnumbered page, preceding 6r. (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.) alphabet around its circumference, each letter with its own symbolic meaning.45 While not identical to the Lullian wheels found in the Testamentum, this inclusion of a wheel in combination with references to Cabala suggests that Pantheo was aware of Pico’s identification of Cabala with Lullian combinatorial art.46 45 46 Pantheus, Ars transmutationis, 7v. For example, C represents the “First movement” (Primum motum), by which he means the beginning of the alchemy process, Calcination or Putrefaction; the second movement or process is G for “Generatio”; the third H for “Augmentatio”; and the fourth D for “Disiunctio or Separatio.” The same wheel appears in the later Voarchadumia (1550), sig. 35v in a section with the apocalyptic title “Aperio Librum et Septem Signacula.” On the following page there is a marginal reference to pseudo-Lull’s Codicillus seu Vademecum. Chapter IX of the Rouen, 1651 edition of the Codicillus, 25ff, contains a similar discussion of the CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 373 Pantheo is certainly intrigued by the kabbalistic technique of numerically analyzing significant words in enigmatic texts, especially the puzzling Decknamen or cover names in alchemical literature. Indeed, he criticises those who only pay attention to the superficial meanings of words, barely grasping the simple sense of a letter, rather than wisely looking for the kernel inside the shell.47 He introduces a “kabbalistic” system that assigns numbers to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew letters and attempts to show the utility of numerical analysis by taking, for example, the word “Marthek,” a cover name mentioned by Lucas and Rosinus in the Turba Philosophorum,48 and glosses it with identifiable terms from the authoritative biblical languages. Pantheo explains that the first natural principal is matter, or the material cause of earth, water, fire and air, according to God’s will (nutu dei), or Marthek, which in Greek is called neusi theu, and in Hebrew recon heloim, expressed in letters and numbers.49 On the following pages he presents these words in vertical columns, each letter of the word accompanied by its numerical value, depending on the alphabet being used. The Latin word Nutu (Will) and the alchemical term Marthek each produce a total of seventy-two, which immediately endows them with great significance, connecting them with the divine name par excellence, the Tetragrammaton YHVH.50 We then discover that the Tetragrammaton conceals alchemical secrets. Each of its four letters represents one of the four elements: Yod-Air, He-Water, Vav-Fire, and He-Earth.51 Pantheo provides each letter’s value “among cabalistic numbers” (inter chabalisticos numeros), respectively ten, five, six, and five, and explains that these numbers signify the “natural elements, the ingredients in the cabalistic magistery of the archimical art.”52 The values of the letters of the divine name indicate the relative proportions of the elements in different stages of the alchemical process. In the “Generation of the Spirits of Metals,” for example, one should mix ten pounds of “moist” (glossed as “Air”) with five pounds of “dry” (metallic “Earth”),53 in a process that requires three conjunctions of letters/elements: of (1) Yod and Vav 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 Continued principles represented by individual letters of the alphabet in Lullian fashion: “Per B intelligere debes principia materialia, scilicet aurum & argentum … Per G. intelligere debes principia materialia secunda, scilicet elementa, terram, aquam, aerem & ignem,” etc. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis (1566), Letter to Leo X, 5v. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 20r and 22r. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 11v: “Primum ergo principium naturae est materia, seu causa materialis terrae, aquae, ignis & aeris, sub nutu dei, vel Marthek, quae graece neusi theu dicitur, & Hebraicè recon heloim, positis in literis, & numeris.” Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 12r. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 27v. Pantheo uses an extremely idiosyncratic transliteration of YHVH as Iud He Voph He, but to avoid confusion I have stuck to the more standard Yod He Vav He. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28r: “& naturalis sint elementa in chabalisticum archimicae artis magisterium ingredientia.” On Archimia, in the Ars Transmutationis, 27v Pantheo writes “Quoniam archimia ab Archi, & mia Graece derivatur. Et Caldaice Archenouevma adumas dicitur, quae initium unitatis esse perhebetur. Quod initium, seu principium nihil aliud esse videtur, nisi tinctura fixa.” See below for Pantheo’s later distinction of Archimia from other practices. Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28v (De Metallorum Spiritus Generatione). 374 PETER J. FORSHAW (i.e. ten pounds of Air and six of Fire); (2) the two letters He (i.e. five pounds of Water and five of Earth); and (3) all four letters of the divine name (i.e. all of the four elements).54 Here, then, we have an example of how the numeric values of the letters of the most important divine name of the Jewish Kabbalah can be interpreted as a guide to the relative proportions of elemental substances to be used in the alchemical (or archimical) art. To what extent this is genuinely “religious” is impossible to say, but the implication that God’s most powerful name provides the blueprint for alchemical creation—recalling the Sefer Yetzirah’s account of God carving out the universe with the divine letters—is a powerful statement in support of alchemical interest in Cabala, as well as a tacit claim for the great potential of alchemy as a creative endeavour. In the Voarchadumia, published eleven years later, Pantheo presents his “Cabala of Metals” as a tradition handed down from the “hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron,” Tubal Cain, from Genesis 4:22. Aware of the prohibition of alchemy by the Venetian Council of Ten, Pantheo describes different methods of transmutation and takes pains to distinguish his opusculum concerning “transmutation, purification, multiplication and proportion” from the forbidden alchemy.55 Pantheo delimits the four types of transmutation. The first is the Alchimia in the title of his book, The Voarchadumia against Alchimia, where the term has a negative connotation. By a cabalistic play on a Hebrew transliteration, Pantheo interprets it as “the ferment of vain counsel,” explaining that it is simply a fraudulent colouring of the surface of metals with tinctures.56 The second type of practice is Archimia. This, we learn, is practised by good men who hope to create the Elixir to be projected onto metals in order to accomplish chrysopoetic transmutation. Pantheo glosses it etymologically, “as it were the principle of unity, and of the one true counsel.”57 The third practice is termed Voarchadumia, which Pantheo explains as meaning the art of “the purification of gold of two perfect cementations.”58 Although Voarchadumia is presented as the preferred practice, Pantheo does include a fourth, termed Sophia and associated with the term “Multiplicatio,” which he says is possible but difficult, and brings mediocre returns.59 Only the first method, Alchimia, is rejected outright. Voarchadumia is superior, he claims, since this method allows a greater part of gold to be extracted from matter by cementation, more gold to be purified, and more to be perfected with fewer cementations and less expense. In the most kabbalistic-sounding chapter of the Voarchadumia, concerned with the “Mixture at the roots of the Unity of the seventy-two Voarchadumic elements,” Pantheo turns again to the numerical analysis of a collection of words, each from a 54 55 56 57 58 59 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 29r. Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Paris: Apud Viventium Gaultherotium, 1550), sig. 4r. Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam, sig. 8r: “Alchímiam (ab Alchímo dicta: quæ profectò ex Hebraica dictione interpretata fermentum vani consilij interponitur) vocamus.” Pantheo, Voarchadumia: “Hanc autem metallicam professionem … vocant Archimíam: quasi unitatis, & unius veri consilij Principem.” Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 10v: “purificationis Auri duarum caementationum perfectarum.” Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 9v. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 375 different language, and each connected with alchemical substances.60 The first natural principle, we learn, is Quicksilver. This is coagulated using fire and materials of fire and air, under the names Antybar, Marthek, and Stagno or Risoo (which in Greek is Thélima, and in Hebrew Reçón).61 The last two terms both translate literally as “Will” (as in the “Will of God”), but their alchemico-cabalistic significance lies in the realisation that the Hebrew Reçón can be transformed anagrammatically (i.e. by the exegetical technique of Temura) into Eretz, one of the Hebrew words for “Earth” (as in Genesis 1:1: “God created the Heavens and the Earth”).62 Thelima and Reçón both appear in Pantheo’s list of synonyms for Gold, and it seems likely that he had the equation of “Will” with “Earth” in mind as a kind of Deckname for gold. As gold is the most perfect metal, it is evidently highly significant for Pantheo that the words Risoo and Stagno, like Marthek above, both add up to the divine number seventy-two. In his somewhat opaque way, in addition to promoting a cabalistic reading of alchemical texts, Pantheo also promotes a cabalistic investigation of the secrets of alchemical substances and processes. As he makes few efforts to help his reader follow his thought process, in a sense he perpetuates the enigmatic forms of communication found in many alchemical texts, simply substituting one set of codes for another. Puzzling as his work is, however, Pantheo is a valuable instance of a laboratory practitioner engaging with polyglot traditions in a “cabalistic” spirit, in an attempt to discover the numerical secrets and concordances of elusive alchemical terms. The significance of Pantheo’s work is increased by the interest taken in it by a crowd of later cabalistic alchemists, including Jacques Gohory (1520–1576),63 Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596),64 John Dee (1527–1608/9),65 Andreas Libavius (1555–1616),66 Heinrich Khunrath 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 19r: “Mistio in radicibus unitatis septuagesimi secundi Voarchadúmicorum elementorum.” Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 40v. Nicolas Séd, “L’or enfermé et la poussière d’or selon Moïse ben Shémtobh de Léon (c. 1240–1305),” Chrysopoeia 3, no. 2 (1989): 121–34, on 131. Cf. Paulus Riccius, De Coelesti Agricultura, Lib. IIII, in Johannes Pistorius, Artis Cabalisticae Liber (Basel: Per Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1587), 190: “Razon: id est, voluntatem.” Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium (Paris, 1567; my copy Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568), 185. Gohory mentions Pantheo’s work, together with the alphabetaria revolutio of Ramon Lull; he suggests that the thirteenth-century natural philosopher Roger Bacon is the source for Pantheo’s reflections on the phrase “nutu Dei” (Will of God). Blaise de Vigenère, Traicté du Feu et du Sel (Paris: Chez la veufue Abel l’Angelier, 1618), 121, quotes Pantheus, [Voarchadumia (1550), 17v] on the perfect product of Voarchadumic practice, which remains uncorrupted by fire, cementations, acids, etc; on 129 he refers to Pantheo on “oleum vitri” (oil of glass), i.e. Vitriol. Dee owned and annotated a copy of Pantheo’s Voarchadumia contra Alchimiam (Venice, 1530). British Library shelfmark C.120.b.4.(2.) and refers to it in Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), 7v. See C. H. Josten, “A Translation of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” Ambix 12 (1964): 84–221, on 137: “And if the twenty-first speculation of our Hieroglyphic Monad gave satisfaction to a Voarchadumicus and provided him with Voarh Beth Adumoth as a subject for speculation … ” See also Hilde Norrgrén, “Interpretation and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dee’s Reading of Pantheo’s Voarchadumia,” Ambix 52, no. 3 (2005): 217–45. Andreas Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (Frankfurt: Impensis Petri Kopffij, 1615), 152 (on Pantheus’s rejection of the term Alchymia), 178 (on Pantheus’s use of alchymia, archymia, and Sophia), 230 (on Pantheus’s Ars & Theoria Transmutationis), 232 (on Pantheus as one who graphically portrays false alchemists). See also 76–77 for Libavius’s condemnatory Nota XXXIV. De mysteriis Cabalæ Paracelsicæ. On Libavius’s reservations about Cabala, see Bruce Moran, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007), 117ff. 376 PETER J. FORSHAW (1560–1605),67 Oswald Croll (1563–1608/9),68 Johann Daniel Mylius (1583– 1642),69 David de Planis Campy (1589–1644),70 Martin Ruland (1569– 1611),71 and Jean Vauquelin des Yveteaux (1651–1716).72 Paracelsus and Cabala Pantheo was by no means the only alchemist stimulated by the exegetical possibilities of Cabala. Given his interest in new approaches to alchemy, including his controversial move from metallic transmutation to the preparation of chemical medicines, perhaps it is predictable that the Swiss physician Theophrastus Paracelsus of Hohenheim (1493–1541) would display some interest in this new art. Walter Pagel remarked that Paracelsus’s work displayed an intent “to unravel the occult —“kabbalistic” and symbolical—meaning of phenomena by visualising concordances everywhere.”73 Pagel even suggested that one Rabbinical source, the Shemoth Rabba (a compendium of exegetical material on the book of Exodus), “provides a religious background for the homoeopathic principle, so conspicuously employed by Paracelsus.”74 Allen Debus similarly observed, “Paracelsus frequently uses the terms “Kabbalah” and “kabbalistic,” indicating a general acquaintance with this literature even though specific references to the mystical numerical interpretation of letters are lacking in his work.”75 In his consideration of the relations between alchemy and Kabbalah, Hermann Kopp singled out a passage from On the Tincture of the Physicians, where Paracelsus declares, “If you do not understand the use of the Cabalists and of the old astronomers, you are not born 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 Heinrich Khunrath, Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum (Magdeburg: Johannes Bötcher, 1599), 92: “Aus diesem/ und sonsten keinem andern/ natürlichen grunde gehet VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH der alte[n] Weisen.” See too Khunrath, Lux in Tenebris (N.P., 1614), 23. Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt: Impensis Godefrisi Tampachij, 1608), Admonitory Preface, 7: Those who are the heirs of wisdom, “with Cabalistic eyes, are not ignorant of true Cabala, Magic, and Voarchadumia” (& oculis Cabalisticis, non ignorabunt in vera Cabala, Magia, & Woarchadumia). On Croll and Libavius, see Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). Johann Daniel Mylius, Anatomia Auri sive Tyrocinium Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt, 1628), 233 (on Augustinus Pantheus’s Voarchadumia as one of many authorities on potable gold). David de Planis-Campy, L’Ouverture de L’Escolle de Philosophie Transmutatoire Métallique (Paris: Chez Charles Sevestre, 1633), 52–53: “Car selon Panthee, en son Traicté de l’Art Chimique, la semence principale de l’Elixir, & de tous les Metaux, n’est autre que le Mars, & Mars n’est autre chose que le Feu pour estre un Souphre rouge chaud & sec, & de facile combustion.” Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt: Cura ac sumtibus Zachariae Palthenii, 1612), 145: “Archimia vel Archodunia sophia & sapientia principalis,” 146: “Quidam dicunt mutatum esse ex Archimia vel Archodumia, cum sit ars principalissima.” Vauquelin des Yveteaux, “De l’arbre de vie ou de l’arbre solaire,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 238: “Pantheus Venetus, l’un des meilleurs auteurs qui ait écrit de nostre manne cachée, s’est servi fort souvent de cette innocente façon de compter par les lettres. Il a avec un tres bel artifice marqué les trois premiers jours sans soleil et sans lune de la creation du monde, qui répondent à nos trois premiers mois de preparation des elements, par la valeur des lettres de ces deus mots NVTV DEI.” See Sylvain Matton, “Le Traité de L’Arbre de vie ou de l’arbre solaire et la Tradition Alchimique,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 285–302. See also Jacques Rebotier, “La Musique de Flamel,” in Alchimie, art, histoire et mythes, ed. Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton (Milan: Archè, 1995), 540. Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger, 1958), 44, n. 131. Pagel, Paracelsus, 217, n. 59. Allen G. Debus, “Mathematics and Nature in the Chemical Texts of the Renaissance,” Ambix 15 (1968): 1–28, on 13. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 377 by God for the Spagyric art, or chosen by Nature for Vulcan’s work, or created to open your mouth about the Alchemical Art.”76 Although the Tincture of the Physicians is nowadays considered to be a pseudepigraphic work, it exerted an influence on many later Paracelsians who considered it to be an authentic part of Paracelsus’s literary legacy, offering a potent argument for the combination of alchemy, astrology and Kabbalah in the service of Spagyric medicine.77 Looking through Paracelsus’s genuine and pseudepigraphic works, it is easy to find references to what he variously calls “Cabala,” “Gabala,” or “Gabalia.” Huser’s 1603 multi-volume edition of Paracelsus, for example, contains a wide variety of statements concerning Cabala, from his claim that “the Cabalistic Art had its origin with the old Magi,” rather than Jewish sources, in De Natura Rerum,78 to the Fragmenta Medica, where we learn that “Adam and Moses … searched for that within themselves that is in man and opened it, and it belongs all to Cabala; they knew no strange things from the devil or spirits, but from the light of nature.”79 Heinz Schott comments that such an inward approach to the divine sources of spiritual light recalls the mystical practices of the Kabbalah, with Paracelsus’s Light of Nature evoking the emanations of divine light in the sefirot of the Kabbalah.80 Paracelsus’s Cabala is not simply presented as inner knowledge, however, but as an operative power. In Paracelsus’s genuine cosmological work, the Philosophia sagax, the “Ars Cabalistica” is a potent adjunct to natural magic, through which, Paracelsus claims, the Paracelsian magus can accomplish as much in the maturation of natural substances in a month as Nature can in a year.81 Many more references can be found in the Liber de religione perpetua, the Paragranum, De Vita Longa, and so forth.82 Whatever the depth or shallowness of Paracelsus’s personal knowledge of Cabala, there can be little 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 [Pseudo-] Paracelsus, “De Tinctura Physicorum,” in Aureoli Philippi Theophrasti Bombasts von Hohenheim Paracelsi … Opera … , ed. Johann Huser, 2 vols. (Straßburg: In Verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 923: “Wann du jetzt nicht verstehest/ was der Cabalisten gewonheit/ und der alten Astronomorum brauch ist: So bistu weder von Gott in der Spagyrey geboren/ noch von Natur zu Vulcani Werck erkoren/ oder Mundts eröffnung in die Alchimistisch Kunst geschaffen worden.” Cited by Kopp, Die Alchemie, 229. On the issue of genuine and pseudepigraphic works of Paracelsus, see, in particular, Karl Sudhoff, Versuch einer Kritik der Echtheit der Paracelsischen Schriften, 2 vols. (Berlin: Georg Reimer Verlag, 1894–1899). [Pseudo?-] Paracelsus, “De Natura Rerum,” in Bücher und Schriften, ed. Johann Huser (Straßburg: In Verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 903: “Daher hat die Kunst Caballistica jhren ursprung genommen bey den alten Magis, davon wir in den Büchern der Caballia weitleuffig tractieren.” See Hartmut Rudolph, “Die Kabbala im Werk des Paracelsus,” in Schmidt-Biggemann, ed., Christliche Kabbala, 111. Paracelsus, Fragmenta Medica, in Huser, Bücher und Schriften (Strasburg, 1616), 1:141: “Sich Adam an/Moysen und ander/ die haben das in ihnen gesucht/ das im Menschen war/ und das geöffnet/ und alle Gabalischen/ und haben nichts frembdes kennt/ vom Teuffel/ noch von Geisten/ sondern vom Liecht der Natur.” Heinz Schott, ““Invisible Diseases”—Imagination and Magnetism: Paracelsus and the Consequences,” in Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 309–21, on 313. Paracelsus, Philosophia Sagax, in Huser, ed., Bücher und Schriften, 10: 41 “Unnd in Summa/ was die Natur vermag in einem Jahr zu thun/ das vermag sie in eim Monat/ auch in den Gewechsen deß Erdreichs zu vollbringen. Und diese Species heist mit jrem rechten Nammen Ars Cabalistica.” See Liber de religione perpetua, in Paracelsus, Theologische Werke 1: Vita beata—Vom glückseligen Leben, ed. Urs Leo Gantenbein and Michael Baumann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 314–15; Paracelsus, Das Büch Paragranum (Frankfurt, 1565), 15v (Gabalisticam); 50r (Gabalisticam scientiam; margin: “Gabalia gibt einen waren Astronomum und Medicum”). 378 PETER J. FORSHAW doubt that his usage caught on among many of his followers; indeed an interest in “Cabala chymica” appears to be a particularly Paracelsian phenomenon. Some early Paracelsian definitions of Cabala The French physician and alchemist Jacques Gohory (1520–1576) published a Compendium of Paracelsus’s works in 1608, including the De vita longa (On Long Life) with extensive scholia by Gohory.83 This commentary includes a valuable indication of the significance of the Cabala for at least one of the earliest promoters of Paracelsian philosophy in France.84 In his commentary on Book 1, Chapter 6 of De vita longa, which contains a discussion of the influence of “supernatural bodies” on the attainment of long life, Gohory includes a special section “On Cabala.” According to Gohory, the Cabala is sometimes universal, sometimes particular. Strictly speaking it is the uninterrupted handing down of mysteries by the Jews since Moses received them on Mount Sinai. However, the ars combinandi or their alphabetaria revolutio, as well as the part of magic concerned with the virtues of the “higher supralunar powers,” are also called Cabala by the Jews.85 Gohory is familiar with Pico’s Magical Conclusions, and indeed paraphrases one without giving the source: “we will say that characters belong to magic, numbers to Cabala, and the letters are in someway intermediary between the two.”86 These numbers, Gohory informs us, again from Pico, are both “formal” and “material”: the former being the Ternary and Denary, the latter all of the rest (Unarius, Binarius, and so forth).87 Gohory introduces this into a discussion of the Spagyric extraction of the celestial quintessence, including a comparison between Paracelsus’s De vita longa and the De vita libri tres (1489) of Marsilio Ficino.88 83 84 85 86 87 88 Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium (Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568). On Gohory, see François Secret, “Jacques Gohory et le Paracelsian revival,” Chrysopoeia 5 (1992–1996): 467–70. See also Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, esp. 149–71, 218–32; Allen G. Debus, The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; repr. 2002), 26ff. Gohory, Compendium, 191. Cf. Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 297; Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 167. Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: “characteres proprios esse magiae, numeros vero Cabalae, literas esse quodammodo medias inter utrosque.” Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 502–03 (9 > 25): “Sicut caracteres sunt proprii operi magico, ita numeri sunt proprii operi cabalae, medio existente inter utrosque, et appropriabili per declinationem ad extrema usu litterarum” (“Just as characters are proper to a magical work, so numbers are proper to a work of Cabala, with a medium existing between the two, appropriable by declination between the extremes through the use of letters”). Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: “Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium & denarium sunt materiales, illi sunt formales, & in Arithmetica mystica sunt numeri numerorum.” This is reasserted in a later section, De Cabala numerali (213). Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 502–03 (9 > 23): “Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium et denarium sunt materiales/ in magia; isti formales sunt, et in magica arithmetica sunt numeri numerorum” (“Every number besides the ternarius and denarius are material numbers in magic. Those are formal numbers, and in magical arithmetic are the numbers of numbers”). On the relation between these two works, see Peter J. Forshaw, “Marsilio Ficino and the Chemical Art,” in Laus Platonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees (Leiden, Brill, 2011), 249–71, on 265. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 379 Gohory’s contemporary, the Paracelsian physician Michael Toxites (1514–1581), included what would become an influential definition of Cabala in his Onomastica II (1574).89 In the preface to the second of these two dictionaries, devoted as it was to explaining the many neologisms coined by Paracelsus, Toxites explains that Paracelsus took much “from the art of the Cabalists” (ex Cabalistarum arte), and followed their advice to protect his knowledge from the vulgar by employing existing enigmatic words from the alchemists as well as creating new words from various languages, such as the titles of two of his most influential works, Paragranum and Paramirum.90 In the Onomasticum we read, Cabala, Cabalia, or the Cabalistic Art is a divine science, that reveals to us God’s teaching concerning the Messiah, brings about friendship with the angels for its practitioners, bestows knowledge of all natural things, and, shadows having been driven away, illustrates the mind with divine light. The word is Hebrew and in Latin means reception.91 There is more, but a summary must suffice: Moses received Cabala divinely on Mount Sinai together with the Ten Commandments, but because it was forbidden to write it down or reveal it to the profane, instead it was passed on in a sequence of revelations as if by hereditary law. Reuchlin, Pico, and the Franciscan doctor of philosophy and theology Pietro Galatino (1460–1540) are mentioned by name as prime representatives of a specifically Christian Cabala.92 Toxites informs his readers that Galatino asserts that through the science of Cabala the ancient Jewish rabbis acknowledged the Trinity, and that Christ was the son of God. Toxites also states that Paracelsus wrote much about this “certain and celestial science,” referring his readers to the Philosophia sagax, and mentions Paracelsus’s belief that the Persians were more correct practitioners of Cabala than the Jews, as proved by the fact that the three Magi went to adore Christ in Bethlehem.93 This entry enjoyed some success, for a variant appears in the Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi (Dictionary of Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1583) by another 89 90 91 92 93 On Toxites’ Onomastica, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, “Lex lexiques bilingues philosophiques, scientifiques et notamment alchimiques,” in Lexiques bilingues dans les domaines philosophiques et scientifiques, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse and Danielle Jacquart (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 197–205. On his role in the Paracelsian publishing industry, see Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 23–24. Nummedal also mentions another Paracelsian Onomasticum (1574–83; my copy 1587) by Leonhart Thurneisser zum Thurn. It does not contain an entry for Cabala, but there are entries for “Cabalistic words,” e.g. on 18 (“Abzachochor: Diß ist ein Cabalistischs wort/ und bedeut des Chaos”) and references to Jewish Cabalists, Pico, and Lull’s ars combinandi, 34–35. Toxites, Onomastica II, sig. [alpha] 3r “Theophrastus ex Cabalistarum arte multa accepit: quaedam ex diversis linguis, ut paragranum, paramirum, Carboanthos, & similia nova confinxit: non pauca à Chemistis ficta usurpavit.” Michael Toxites, Onomastica II. I Philosophicum, Medicum, Synonymum ex varijs vulgaribusque linguis. II. Theophrasti Paracelsi: hoc est, earum vocum, quarum in scriptis eius solet usus esse, explicatio (Straßburg: Per Bernhardum Iobinum, 1574), 410–12: “Cabala, Cabalia, sive cabalistica ars, scientia est divina, quae nobis Dei doctrinam de Messia patefacit, cum angelis amicitiam cultoribus suis contrahit: rerumque naturalium omnium cognitionem tradit, ac divino lumine mentem pulsis tenebris illustrat. Vox est Hebraea, Latinis dicitur receptio.” Galatino was a Jewish convert to Christianity, author of De arcanis catholicae veritatis (About the Mysteries of Catholic Truth) (Ortona Mare: Gershom Soncino, 1518), which introduced Christian readers to the Talmud and quickly became an important text of Christian Cabala. On Galatino, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Der Lector Prudens und die Bibliothek des (uralten) Wissens: Pietro Galatino, Anatus Lusitanus und Azaria de’ Rossi,” in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann, 133–42. Toxites, Onomastica II, 411–12. 380 PETER J. FORSHAW enthusiastic translator and promoter of Paracelsian thought, the Belgian Gerard Dorn (ca. 1530–1584), and then later in the Lexicon Alchemiae (Lexicon of Alchemy, 1612) by the German alchemist and Paracelsian physician Martin Ruland (1569–1611)—much of whose information was lifted verbatim from the preceding works of Toxites and Dorn. Dorn and Ruland slightly modify Toxites’s original text, stating that Cabala is a “most occult science, said to have been divinely transmitted to Moses,” but the essential message remains the same.94 In all three dictionaries, the emphasis is less specifically on combinations and permutations of numbers or letters, but rather on Cabala as an art bestowing knowledge of things natural and the prospect of supernatural revelation, in keeping with the general message of Christian Cabalist authorities. This underlying religious dimension should not be ignored when discussing alchemy in the context of Cabala. It is arguable that the Mosaic basis of Cabala would have appeared far more legitimate as an adjunct to the Paracelsian Christian philosophy of nature than the pagan philosophy of Aristotle and Galen which Paracelsus so famously rejected—particularly given the Christian reorientation being given to the Kabbalah during Paracelsus’s time by Pico, Reuchlin, and others, and the later uptake of Paracelsus’s ideas by Lutheran and Calvinist thinkers eager to find an alternative to the medieval dogmatic theology of the Schools. Heinrich Khunrath’s definitive blending One figure singled out by Scholem for his “definitive blending” of alchemical and cabalistic traditions is the German Lutheran physician Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605), who held both Paracelsus and Reuchlin in high esteem and showed familiarity with the work of Pico and pseudo-Lullian alchemy.95 Khunrath takes up the notion of the symbolism of individual letters in his book Vom hylealischen … Chaos (On Primordial Chaos, 1597). There, he provides an imaginative example of speculative Cabala with his polyglot etymology of the alchemical term Elixir. He glosses the German Elixeir as Fortitudo (Strength), with the explanation that “El” in Hebrew means “Mighty” or “Strong.” In Roman numerals the following two letters “I” and “X” equate to One and Ten, the latter being the symbolic number of total perfection. Finally, the last three letters are held to form the Greek word ἔιρ [eir], translating into Latin as “a bright shining, fire-spark or flash.” EL-I-X-EIR therefore means a “bright shine, flash and spark of the uniquely Mighty and Strong.”96 According to its varied preparations it is called EIR, X-EIR, 94 95 96 Gerard Dorn, Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi (Frankfurt: Christoph Rab, 1583), 25–26: “Cabala vel Cabalia, est occultissima scientia quae divinitus una cum Lege Moysi tradita fuisse fertur.” See too Dorn’s “explicatio,” on 104; Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt, 1612), 108: “Cabala, Cabalia, Ars Cabalistica, est scientia occultissima, quae divinitus una cum lege Mosi tradita fuisse fertur.” Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 88. On Khunrath, see Peter J. Forshaw, “Curious Knowledge and Wonderworking Wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich Khunrath,” in Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and A. Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 107–29. Heinrich Khunrath, Vom hylealischen, Das ist pri-materialischen catholischen oder Algemeinem natürlichen Chaos der Naturgemessen Alchymiae und Alchymisten (Magdeburg: Andreas Genen Erben, 1597), 54: “So wird nun (sage CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 381 I-X-EIR, EL-I-X-EIR, a sequential development calling to mind the progressive emanations of YHVH in the Pythagorean Tetraktys.97 In another of his works, the “Christian Cabalist, Divinely Magical and PhysicoChymical” Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, 1609), baroquely illustrated with its “theosophical” and “hieroglyphical” figures, Khunrath prominently places a Hebrew word in his engraving of an Alchemical Citadel.98 The word in question is Aben, one jointly significant for both Khunrath’s alchemy and his Cabala: any alchemist familiar with Hebrew would understand the primary meaning of ‫[ אבן‬Aben] as “Rock” or “Stone” and would doubtless recognise the Christian-Cabalist unpacking of the word as being formed of the Hebrew words for both Father ‫[ אב‬Ab] and Son ‫[ בן‬Ben].99 Needless to say, this word, Aben, can have had little to do with the Jewish Kabbalah, but it does encapsulate an extremely important message for Khunrath: the analogical relationship between Christ, the Christian Cabalist Son of the Microcosm; and the Philosophers’ Stone—the Alchemical Son of the Macrocosm. Although never explicitly stated, it is also possible that theosophically inclined alchemists, or theoalchemists, like Khunrath, seeking divine inspiration through personal revelation, would not have hesitated to carry out a further permutation of these three letters to discover the word ‫[ נבא‬Nebhä]—the Hebrew root “to Prophesy.” In his Bouquet composé des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Bouquet Composed of the Most Beautiful Chymical Flowers, 1629), David De Planis-Campy locates one of Khunrath’s acquaintances, the Elizabethan magus John Dee (1527–1608/9) among those “most versed in Chymical Cabala” (plus versez en la Caballe Chimique),100 primarily because of the composite alchemical symbol Dee “mathematically, magically, cabbalistically, and anagogically” explained in his Monas Hieroglyphica (Hieroglyphic Monad, 1564).101 Dee’s hieroglyph is formed from the astrological symbols for the seven planets of the Ptolemaic cosmos, which also happen to be the symbols for the seven major metals in alchemy. With this he unites the practices of superior and inferior astronomy, i.e. astrology and alchemy. Khunrath is familiar with the Monas, and in the Amphitheatre he cites Dee’s distinction between his 96 Continued ich) EL-I-X-EIR recht und eigentlich heissen/ splendor fulgureus sivè scintilla perfecta Unici Potentis ac Fortis, Ein heller schein/ Blitz und Fewerfunck des einigen Mechtigen und Starcken.” “Suidas” defines the Greek word ἔιρ as λαμπηδών, i.e., lustre or brilliance, sometimes of lightning. See Suidae Lexicon. ed. Immanuel Bekker (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1854), 333. 97 Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 56. For a similar treatment of “Ir” (Manus seu mancipans), “Xir” (Mercurius fusibilis), “Ixir” (Mercurius præparatus, & separatus), and “Elixir” (Mercurius inceratus), see Consilium Conjugii in Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 2: 259–61. 98 Khunrath’s alchemical citadel can also be found in De arte cabalistica, seu De magisterio magno philosophorum, MS. Codex 114, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 99 Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 282: “ABEN, Hebraicè LAPIS: Pater & Filius in Lapide; AB, in ea lingua Patrem significat; BEN, Filium: Mundus maior hîc notetur, eiusdemque Filius.” Khunrath probably took this unpacking of Aben from Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifico, 79, as most likely did Joachim Frizius [Robert Fludd] in Summum Bonum (Frankfurt: Impensis Wilhelmi Fitzeri, 1629), 17. 100 David de Planis Campy, Bouquet composé des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Paris: Chez Pierre Billaine, 1629), 1002. 101 See Peter J. Forshaw, “The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” Ambix 52 (2005): 247– 69; Michael T. Walton, “John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica: Geometrical Cabala,” Ambix 23 (1976): 116–23. 382 PETER J. FORSHAW “Cabala of the Real” and the “Cabala of the Word.”102 The former relates to the Book of Nature; the latter to the Book of Scripture, where Dee turns from an exclusively “literal” Cabalistic reading of Hebrew letters and printed books to one connected with natural magic and deciphering the hieroglyphs and signatures of the cosmos.103 Dee’s hieroglyphic monad is a significant presence in Khunrath’s engraving of the Alchemical Citadel, where it surmounts the archway into the heart of the citadel. This all-encompassing glyph is also central to another of Khunrath’s Amphitheatre engravings, that of the Rebis or Alchemical Hermaphrodite, which also features the Hebrew terms Esch and Urim, respectively denoting terrestrial and celestial fire. There, Dee’s monad forms the O in the composite word AZOTH on the breast of the equally composite Bird of Hermes, representing the major processes of alchemy, start to finish. In the pseudo-Paracelsian Liber Azoth, published in 1590, just five years before the appearance of the first edition of Khunrath’s Amphitheatre, the reader looking for insights into the three primary constituents or modes of matter is informed that fiery “Sulphur conceals the Cabalistic Unarius in itself,” while “Salt” (Edas) conceals the Cabalistic Binarius, and the mutable, liquid “AZOT Mundi” (i.e. “Mercury of the Wise”) either has or is the Cabalistic Ternarius.104 Furthermore, the term AZOTH, famed as the word on the pommel of Paracelsus’s sword and popularized in the sixteenth-century alchemical works of Basil Valentine, is one of the best-known instances of cabalistic-style letter-play in alchemy, being formed of the first and last letters of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages (A–Z, Alpha and Omega, Aleph, and Tau). As such, it is the ideal word to denote the alchemical materia prima et ultima.105 In Khunrath’s most alchemical engraving, then, we have Dee’s composite hieroglyph at the centre of a composite word, on the breast of a composite bird, hovering above the alchemical Rebis (Two-Thing), the compound or conjunction of the two primary ingredients (Mercury and Sulphur) of the Philosophers’ Stone.106 Although utterly remote from the Jewish Kabbalah, this amalgamation of words and symbols is arguably a prime instance of “kabbalisation” in alchemical material. Khunrath is a strong example of a physico-chymist, interested in both metallic transmutation and chemical medicine, seeking insights into nature and divine 102 Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae: Christiano-Kabalisticum, divino-magicum, nec non physico-chymicum, tertriunum, catholicon (Hanau: Excudebat Guilielmus Antonius, 1609), II: 6. 103 Josten, “A Translation of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” 133–35. See Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 242–43. For some recent work on Dee and Cabala, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, “Beyond Pico della Mirandola: John Dee’s “Formal Numbers” and “Real Cabala,”” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 489–97; Andrew Campbell, “The Reception of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica in Early Modern Italy: The Case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (ca. 1562– 1616),” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 519–29. 104 [Pseudo-] Paracelsus, Liber Azoth, sive, De Ligno et Linea Vitae, in Paracelsus, Opera (Straßburg, 1603), 2: 532. 105 Basil Valentine, Azoth: L’Occulta Opera Aurea dei Filosofi (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1988), 103. 106 For later alchemical speculations on Azoth, including several riddles providing “Cabalistic Reckonings” of Philosophical Mercury and Gold, “out of Greek, Hebrew and Latin,” see Anon, Testamentum Chymicum, in Taeda Trifida Chimica, das ist Dreyfache Chimische-Fackel (Nürnberg: Johann Andreæ und Wolffgang Endters, 1674), 190–284, on 197, 212, 268. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 383 revelation, and adamant that one should not separate Oratory from Laboratory. He believes that the Philosophers’ Stone and other alchemical products can help substantiate religious belief, for instance, in the resurrection of the flesh.107 This can both act as support for personal faith and have evangelical value as a miraculous effect for the conversion not only of elements, but also of unbelievers. Khunrath argues that the Pagans, or Turks, looking on Sacrosanct Scripture (GOD!) as nothing, can be clearly shown the sense and reason of the truth from the book of Nature; and (Divine grace cooperating) be converted to Christianity. And the Jews in the same way.108 As Scholem remarked, Khunrath absolutely insisted that “Kabbalah, magic, and alchemy shall and must be combined and used together.”109 Sometimes, Kabbalah is employed in the service of alchemy, while at other times, alchemy is put to the service of religion. Khunrath, however, would certainly not consent to his labelling as one who “emphatically argues” for the identification of alchemy and Cabala.110 While Khunrath asserts an analogous harmony between the two disciplines, he is careful to distinguish their ends: the goal of Physico-Chymistry is the “Fermentation of our glorious and surpassingly perfect Stone with the Macrocosm,” while the ultimate goal of Cabala is the union of man, the microcosm, with God.111 Perhaps these ends can be regarded as complementary; with Khunrath there is certainly the implication that it is only the pious alchemist, engaged in his Christian Cabala, who has any real chance of achieving the Philosophers’ Stone. However, the two disciplines should be considered not as identical or synonymous, but rather as parallel or analogical processes. A Christian alchemist reads Jewish Kabbalah Although most of the Paracelsians so far mentioned appear to have acquired their knowledge of Kabbalah from Christian Cabalist authors, there is one notable exception. This is the French scholar, Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596), who moves with facility between discussions of alchemy, astrology, and Kabbalah.112 Vigenère’s early attempts to combine these different conceptual systems can be seen in Les images ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate (1578). There, he takes up the thirteenth thesis from Pico’s Conclusions on the Orphic Hymns, where the 107 Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, Preface, Avijr. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, II, 207: “Sic Ethnicus, aut Turca, SS.m Scripturam (DEVS!) nihili aestimans, ex Naturae libro, ad sensum & rationem potest conuinci veritatis, atque (Diuina cooperante gratia) conuerti ad Christianismum. Sic & Judæus.” 109 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 91. See Heinrich Khunrath, De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque secreto externo & visibili (Straßburg: In verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1608), 87: “Kabala, Magia, Alchymia Coniungendae, Sollen und müssen mit und neben einander angewendet werden.” 110 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 88. 111 Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II: 203. 112 On Vigenère, see Sylvain Matton, “Alchimie, Kabbale et Mythologie chez Blaise de Vigenère: l’Exemple de sa Théorie des Elements,” in Cahiers V. L. Saulnier, 11: Blaise de Vigenère, poète et mythographe au temps de Henri III (Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1994), 111–37. 108 384 PETER J. FORSHAW Italian philosopher declares that “Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are the same.”113 Vigenère develops this into a speculation on Paracelsian material: That which Orpheus calls Typhon is with the Cabalists Samael, and to Paracelsus his Archeus, that is, as he interprets it, the heat or virtue of nature acting in the bowels of the earth on universal matter equally suitable for all three animal, vegetable and mineral kinds, all depending on primitive salt.114 In Paracelsus’s conceptualisation of how Nature transforms primal matter into ultimate matter, the primary personification of this process is Vulcan, assisted by two additional principles: the Iliaster, representing the primordial matter-energy of nature (a neologism from the Greek Hyle/Primal Matter and the Latin Astrum/ Star) and the Archeus, the internal workman that impresses the specific and individual attributes upon the elemental material world.115 Here, Vigenère equates the almost demiurgic nature of the Archeus with the two fiery antagonists of heaven in Orphic and Cabalistic mythology. Vigenère takes this analogy further, moreover, by claiming that Paracelsus equates the three divine brothers mentioned by Orpheus in his hymns, i.e. Zeus, Neptune, and Pluto, with Arez (Hebrew for Earth), Iliaster and Archeus, “all according to Cabala” (le tout suivant la Cabale). Vigenère suggests that these three represent the formal principles that act as counterparts to the three Paracelsian material principles of all matter: Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury.116 Here, for Vigenère, Cabala appears primarily to denote an analogical way of thinking, with the implication that all mytho-alchemy—as practised, for example, by the alchemist Michael Maier (1568–1622) in his alchemical interpretations of classical myth—is a form of Cabala.117 If this is an aspect of Vigenère’s conception, however, it is not everything, for elsewhere Vigenère briefly refers to “a manual tradition, which the Jews call Cabala.”118 Although this comparison of Paracelsian formal and material principles with Orphic and Cabalistic figures may seem strange to the modern reader, it was probably not quite so odd for the well-read Paracelsian. One of the foremost promoters of Paracelsian medicine, the Danish physician Peder Sørensen (1542–1602), known in Latin as Petrus Severinus, had already drawn on Pico’s Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion, “Night in Orpheus and Ein-Sof in the Cabala are the same,” to argue that the same rational seeds of Nature are conserved in Orphic Night, Hippocratic Orcus, and Paracelsian Iliaster. Severinus makes it clear that the drawing of such analogies and 113 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 511. Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 297. Blaise de Vigenère, Les images ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate (Paris: Chez Nicolas Chesneau, 1578), 430r: “Ce que doncques Orphee appelle Typhon, est envers les Cabalistiques Zamael; Et à Paracelse son Archee, c’est à dire (comme il l’interprete) la chaleur ou vertu de nature agissante dans les entrailles de la terre, sur la matiere universelle esgallement appropriee à tous les trois genres: mineraux, Vegetaux, animaux, dous dependans du sel primitif.” 115 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Paracelsus: Essential Readings (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1999), 28. 116 Vigenère, Les images et tableaux, 430; Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 298. 117 On mytho-alchemy, see Thomas Reiser, Mythologie und Alchemie in der Lehrepik des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 21ff. 118 Vigenère, Les images et tableaux, 217v: “une tradition manuelle, que les Hebrieux appellent Cabale.” 114 CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 385 the insights gained from them are “understood with difficulty by those who have not drunk from Cabalistic sources and are still blind in Adept Philosophy.”119 The Hebrew term Ein-Sof, translated literally as the “infinite” or “without end,” stands for the “absolute perfection in which there are no distinctions and no differentiations.”120 It is easy to see how an alchemist might see this as a fitting analogy for primal and ultimate matter, but since Ein Sof was usually taken as an image signifying the most abstruse essence of the Godhead, I imagine this identification of the opposite extremes of spirit and matter would have been offensive to Jewish Kabbalists. In a later work, the posthumously published Traité du feu et du sel (Treatise on Fire and Salt, 1618), we gain a clearer idea of Vigenère’s familiarity with authentically Jewish sources of Kabbalah. He quotes directly from the Zohar, for example, when discussing how an ethereal body arises from the destruction of the elements,121 and even anticipates Scholem’s observation that in the Zohar silver is of a superior order to gold.122 He quotes “Kamban Gerundense,” or Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270), known as Ramban, to the effect that through Cabala it is revealed that holy scripture was written with black fire on a white fire, shining with marvels,123 an image surely appealing to the alchemical “artists of fire.” He also cites the Nut-Garden of “Rabi Ioseph Castiglian” (Gikatilla), on the fact that “there is not a form of letter, point or accent that does not concern some mystery.”124 Along with rehearsing material familiar to Christian Cabalists, such as the Sefirot, Vigenère includes less common information, such as how the glory and essence of God, which the Jews call the Shekinah, cannot perceive itself except in the matter of this sensible world.125 Information like this must surely have been included to raise the profile of alchemical investigation into the essence of matter. Alchemy is presented as a divine art, “Cabala’s genuine sister” (soeur germaine de la Caballe),126 and Vigenère frequently draws parallels, demonstrating their shared fascination for fire and light.127 He also makes clear his intention to enlarge, by the same method, the works and progress of nature, for which the key principle is Alchemy, in order to move upwards to the archetype, the Creator, by means of Cabala.128 119 Petrus Severinus, Idea Medicinæ Philosophicæ (Basel: Ex officina Sixti Henricpetri, 1571), 87; 121 “Hae Generationes difficulter ab ijs comprehenduntur qui Cabalisticæ fontes non degustarunt, & in Philosophia Adepta etiamnum caecutiunt.” See Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus: 1540–1602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 174. For other allusions to Pico’s Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion, see Joseph DuChesne, Liber de priscorum philosophorum verae medicinae materia (S. Gervasii: Apud Haeredes Eustathij Vignon, 1603), viir-v; Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II: 74; see also Croll, Basilica Chymica, 54. 120 Scholem, Kabbalah, 88–96. 121 Vigenère, Traité du feu et du sel (Paris, 1618), 14. 122 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 153. 123 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 21. 124 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 150: “il n’ya forme de lettre, poinct, ny accent, qui n’importe quelque mystere; comme il est particulierement specifié au Ghinah Egoz, ou Iardin du noyer de Rabi Ioseph Castiglian.” 125 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 56. 126 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 120. 127 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 119. 128 Vigenère, Traité du feu, 117. 386 PETER J. FORSHAW For the Hebrew-, Chymistry- and Wisdom-loving reader As a final example, let us look at a publication that attempts to ground alchemy more seriously in the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, or Purifying Fire. This was printed in 1677 as part of the Kabbala denudata, seu doctrina Hebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atque Theologica (The Kabbala Unveiled or the Transcendental, Metaphysical, and Theological Doctrine of the Hebrews, 1677–84), a Latin translation of parts of the Zohar together with other kabbalistic treatises and commentaries, including works of the new, sixteenthcentury form of the Jewish Kabbalah promoted by the students of Isaac Luria (1534–1572). It was published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689) and Frans Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1699) and dedicated, notably, “to the Hebrew-, Chymistry-, and Wisdom-loving reader.”129 The title page of the Kabbala Unveiled announces that it contains a “Compendium of the Cabalistical-Chymical Book, called the Aesch Mezareph, concerning the Philosophical Stone.”130 The Aesch Mezareph provides several instances of Cabalistic word-play, including one of Gematria in the service of an alchemical reading of Daniel 7:5: “And behold another beast like a bear stood up on one side: and there were three rows in the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof, and thus they said to it: Arise, devour much flesh.” The explanation is provided that “Let him eat Flesh” should be interpreted as “Let him digest the mineral Stibium,” on the grounds that the Hebrew words Bashar (Flesh) and Puch (Stibium) can both be made to share the same number seven.131 Although antimony is more commonly symbolised by a wolf (sometimes a lion) in European alchemy, the combination of the devouring bear-like beast with the isopsephic equation of “Stibium” and “Flesh” must have seemed particularly apposite for this cabalist-alchemist.132 Although Pico della Mirandola and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) had already drawn correspondences between the planets and the Sefirot on the Tree of Life, the Aesch Mezareph, as far as I know, is the first text to attempt to correlate them with 129 Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, seu doctrina Hebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atque Theologica, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Joannis Davidis Zunneri, 1684), Vol. 1: a2r: “Ad Lectorem Philebraeum, Philochymicum, & Philosophum.” 130 See also Raphael Patai, “Esh M’saref: A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Treatise,” in The Jewish Alchemists, 322–35; Nicolas Séd, “L’alchimie et la science sacrée des lettres: notes sur l’alchimie juive à propos de l’Ésh mesareph,” in Kahn and Matton, Alchimie, art, histoire et myths, 547–649. 131 Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 206–07 (the values of the letters forming Puch add up to 106 [80 + 20 + 6]; those of Bashar to 502 [2 + 300 + 200]; both reducible to 7). 132 For the wolf, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 146; for the lion as crude antimony, see William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. With a New Foreword (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2003; first printed 1994), 131. See also R. Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes Chymisches Werk (Erfurt: Verlegts Augustinus Crusius, 1735; rept. Leipzig, 1760), 29, 37, 46. See also Part II, Samuel Baruch’s Donum Dei, 53. This book also discusses the Hebrew word Puk, identifying it, however, not as common stibium but as magnesia, bismuth, or black lead (Plumbum nigrum). A reader familiar with the hieroglyphic figures of Nicolas Flamel would immediately recognize some of the engravings used in the Uraltes Chymisches Werk. See Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 238, where Eleazar’s book is described as “the most Jewish alchemical book in existence.” CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 387 the alchemical metals.133 The author provides two models for this. One has the first Sefira, Kether (Crown) related to the “root of metals” (i.e. prima materia); while the second Sefira, Chochmah (Wisdom) is Lead; the third, Binah (Understanding) Tin, and so forth.134 This is curious as the higher Sefirot—those at the top of the Tree—are generally regarded as more subtle, whereas the metals are here presented in the inverse sequence, from the crudest, lead, down to the noblest, gold. This makes more sense if we think of the topmost Sefira Kether as the source of the lower emanations, just as primal matter is the source of all metals.135 The second model is particularly intriguing in that it has the first three Sefirot corresponding respectively to “thick water” (i.e. Mercury), Salt, and Sulfur.136 Having started this essay with Paracelsians drawing inspiration from the Cabala, do we perhaps have here a case of a Jewish Cabalist drawing inspiration from Paracelsian alchemy? Both Scholem and Kilcher agree that this must be the case, nor is it exceptional, for Scholem also discusses the sixteenth-century Rabbi and alchemist Mordechai de Nello, who was known to be a follower of Paracelsus.137 The Aesch Mezareph generated interest in the alchemical community. Johann Hannemann’s Ovum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum (Hermetico-ParacelsicoTrismegistan Egg, 1694) contains references, and an English translation of the Chymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, Æsch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire was published in London in 1714.138 One of the Aesch Mezareph’s most famous readers is Isaac Newton (1642–1727), one of whose chymical manuscripts contains the note that “In the Cabala of the Jews [the second Sefira on the Tree of Life] Chochmah is the degree of lead or of primordial salt, in which lies hidden the lead of the wise.”139 It is worth noting that even though Scholem points out that Rosenroth describes the Aesch Mezareph as an example of Kabbala naturalis (a term not found in Jewish sources),140 suggesting that the Kabbalah was being put to the service of material alchemy, Scholem also believes that in the dedicatory verses of the Kabbala Denudata, Rosenroth alludes to the Kabbalah functioning as a kind of mystical alchemy, with the claim that his Kabbalah Unveiled 133 For Pico, see Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 541; for Kircher’s famous Tree of Life engraving, see Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652), Vol. 2, between pages 290 and 291. 134 Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 117–18. 135 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 68–69, expresses his own reservations about these sefirotic attributions. 136 Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1:118. 137 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 58f. 138 Johann Ludovicus Hannemann, Ovum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum, i.e., Commentarius-PhilosophicoChemico-Medicus (Frankfurt: Impensis Friderici Knochii, 1694), 165, 390; A Short Enquiry concerning the Hermetick Art … by a Lover of Philalethes. To which is Annexed, A Collection from Kabbala Denudata, and Translation of the Chymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, Æsch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire (London, 1714). 139 Keynes MS 30a, King’s College Library, Cambridge, “Index Chemicus,” fol. 17r: “In Judaeorum Cabala Cochma est gradus plumbi vel salis primordialis in quo latet plumbum sapientum. Lexicon Zohar.” Cf. Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 345: “In doctrina metallica Chochmah est gradus Plumbi; vel salis primordialis, in quo latet plumbum sapientum.” 140 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 70. See Kabbala Denudata, 1: 449. Scholem suspects that the source for this term lies with Paracelsus, though it could have been influenced by Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome: Ex Typographia Vitalis Mascardi, 1652), 2: 338 “Caput X. De Cabala Naturali, quam Bereschith siue fabricae appellant.” 388 PETER J. FORSHAW “changes the abstruse course of the minerals in the heart.”141 Kilcher proposes that the Aesch Mezareph should not be seen as an alchemical text that appears to flaunt the name Kabbalah in its title, as do so many works, like Franz Kieser’s Cabala Chymica (1606) or Stefan Michelspacher’s Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia (1616), but rather as a kabbalistic text with an alchemical orientation.142 He convincingly argues that the Aesch Mezareph plays a key role in the publication of the Kabbala Denudata, for it enhances the function of the Kabbalah for the natural philosophical projects of Rosenroth and Van Helmont. For him, their “Cabalistical-Chymical Book” exemplifies a kind of meta-discipline between science and theology, a “spekulative Zentraldisziplin” that applies the theology of the Kabbalah “scientifically” and supports alchemical science by means of Kabbalah.143 Conclusion In conclusion, what can be said about these textual encounters between Cabala and alchemy, between the “secretiores theologi” and “secretiories philosophi,” the more secret theologians and philosophers?144 Christian Cabala and, to a lesser extent, Jewish Kabbalah did apparently have some impact on transmutational and medicinal alchemy, appearing in texts which also included practical discussions of laboratory practice and alchemical recipes. Save for the Aesch Mezareph, little of this cabalistic alchemy seems particularly Jewish: indeed, Scholem suggests that the very “deformation or transformation, if not transmutation” of the Jewish Kabbalah into Christian Cabala was necessary in order to make it accessible for alchemical interpretation.145 The first experiments in what we might call “Cabalchemy” by the Venetian Priest, Giovanni Pantheo, in the early sixteenth century enjoyed some success, for the Voarchadumia was reprinted in 1550,146 and then later included in the second volume of the most famous compendium of alchemical texts, Lazarus Zetzner’s Theatrum Chemicum (1602, 1659), which also included Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica and Kieser’s Cabala Chymica (1606).147 Although modern scholars may express their doubts about the depth of Paracelsus’s knowledge of Kabbalah, this was certainly not the message transmitted by four of his most influential disciples. Despite their personal disagreements, Gohory, Toxites, Dorn, and Ruland all include Cabala as an important theme in their presentation of Paracelsian knowledge. 141 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 80. On the Bahir as a possible foundation for kabbalistic spiritual alchemy, see Nicolas Séd, “Le Symbolisme de l’Or selon le Livre Bahir,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 162–80. 142 Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica,” 101. 143 Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica,” 108. 144 Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 64. 145 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 97. 146 Joannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars et theoria transmvtationis metallicae cum Voarchadúmia, proportionibus, numeris, et iconibus rei accommodis illustrata (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1550). There also appears to be another copy available with 1556 on the title page and 1550 in the colophon. 147 Zetzner, comp., Theatrum chemicum (Oberursel: Ex Officina Cornelij Sutorij, sumtibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1602), 2: 528–630. CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 389 What should be evident by now is that there is little real indication in any of the works discussed above of alchemists practising a transcendentally mystical form of spiritual alchemy, or engaging in any supernatural forms of alchemical practice, though there is no denying the fundamental piety of many of the practitioners. Some alchemists strove hard to integrate cabalist notions, though it is difficult to say what might have been their criteria for success. Pico and Reuchlin’s promotion of the value of Cabala for exegetical purposes certainly attracted the interest of some alchemists who applied it heuristically in calculating the values of alchemical words, and seeking insights into quantitative aspects of laboratory practice, and the weights and relative proportions of mixtures. Some combined mathematics with philology and engaged in elaborate polyglot etymologies, or constructed and deconstructed acronyms with the aim of discovering or disguising the true identity of substances; yet others anatomized words to discover new terms concealed within them, or composed Cabalistic Enigmas to stimulate the imagination of their readers. Some, like Dee, generated and permutated glyphs, either in order to intuit new connections between elements, or to create a systematic new semiotics for chymistry. The results bear little semblance to Jewish Kabbalah, but were inspired by cabalistic techniques. And, finally, some explicitly attempted to draw correlations between the two intellectual systems, such as the identification of the Hebrew Mother letters with the Paracelsian principles, or the mapping of alchemical substances onto the kabbalistic Tree of Life. In these works, the Hebrew language and cabalistic words were called as witnesses to the great antiquity of the alchemical art.148 The impact Cabala undoubtedly had on Paracelsian forms of alchemy is evident in the entries that can be found in the dictionaries of Toxites, Dorn, Ruland, and Thurneisser, and the works of figures like Khunrath and Vigenère. For these writers at least, the combination of the two arts helped to strengthen and uphold their faith and invigorate, perhaps, both science and religion, as a way of discovering a deeper, more profound understanding of God’s two books of nature and scripture. Notes on contributor Peter J. Forshaw is Senior Lecturer in History of Western Esotericism in the Early Modern Period at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam. He researches the intellectual and cultural history of learned magic and its relation to religion, science, and medicine in early modern Europe. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. Address: Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 147, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: p.j.forshaw@uva.nl 148 Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 67; Jean-Pierre Brach, “Remarques sur le Symbolisme des Nombres en Alchimie,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 303–10, on 307.