A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2) / During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era

by Lynn Thorndike

Character of Arabic alchemy.

A number of treatises on alchemy in Arabic have reached us but they, like the Byzantine, chiefly continue the fantastic mysticism and obscurity, the astrology and magic, of the ancient Greek alchemists. Thus in the Book of Crates we have a virgin priestess of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, and the snake Ouroburos, also a vision of the seven heavens of the planets. The Book of Alhabib invokes Hermes Trismegistus and says that the sages have not revealed the secret of transmutation for fear of the anger of the demons. The Book of Ostanes, in which Andalusia is mentioned, has eighty-four different names for the philosopher’s stone, and a fantastic dream concerning seven doors and three inscriptions in Egyptian, concerning the Persian Magi, and a citation from an Indian sage concerning the healing virtues of the urine of a white elephant. The Book of Like Weights of Geber states that the sage can discern the mixture of the four elements in animals, plants, and stones by astrology and many other signs involving varied superstition. His Book of Sympathy again emphasizes the seven planets as the key to alchemy and has much about the spirit in matter. His Book on Quicksilver, although it promises clarity, is the most mystic and incomprehensible of all. In it we read of raising the dead and of use of such liquids as “a divine water” and the milk of an uncorrupted virgin.[3031]

Different character of our Latin treatises.

Our Latin treatises are as free from mysticism and obscurity, from dreams and visions, as they are from theoretical discussion. They are collections of recipes and directions which are supposed at least to be practical and which are written in a simple and straightforward style. They are not, however, taken together, by any means entirely free from astrological directions or belief in occult virtue or yet other superstition, and they include recipes for making gold. Of this there is least in the first treatise we have to consider.

Compositiones ad tingenda.

The Compositiones ad tingenda,[3032] a treatise or collection of notes and recipes preserved in a manuscript dating from the time of Charlemagne, throws some light on the technical processes preserved in the Latin west in the early middle ages and on the amount of knowledge of natural phenomena preserved in connection with the arts,—applied science in other words. It tells how to color glass and make mosaics, and describes a glass furnace; how to dye skins and make parchment; how to make gold-leaf, gold-thread, silver-leaf and tin-leaf; how to give copper the color of gold; it gives various directions and preparations for painting and gilding; and a description of various minerals and herbs employed in the above processes. Much is repeated that is found already in Pliny and Dioscorides, or in Aristotle and the Greek alchemists. But several things are mentioned, at least so far as we know, for the first time, although Berthelot believed that the compiler of the Compositiones ad tingenda had copied them from earlier works, very probably Byzantine or late Roman, and not invented them himself. We find here the first mention of vitriol and of “bronze,”—a word apparently derived from Brundisium. Amor aquae is used for the first time for the scum formed on waters containing iron salts and other metals, and we also meet the first instance of the preparation of cinnabar by means of sulphur and mercury. The work contains very little superstition with the exception of one passage which Berthelot has already noted.[3033] Once a stone is spoken of as having solar virtue; lead is distinguished as masculine and feminine; the gall of a tortoise is used in a composition for writing golden letters, and pig’s blood is employed in another connection. But these are trifling signs of occult science.

Mappe Clavicula.

More alchemistic in character is the Mappe Clavicula,[3034] which, in its fuller twelfth century form, embodies the Compositiones ad tingenda in a different order,[3035] and adds about twice as many more recipes for making gold, making colors, writing with gold, glues and various other matters, including building directions. Berthelot regarded two items instructing how to make images of the gods as signs of an ancient pagan origin for the work.[3036] One of these items occurs in the twelfth century text, the other in the tenth century table of contents. On the other hand Berthelot believed that the twelfth century version contained the oldest directions for the distillation of alcohol.[3037] The Mappe Clavicula adds a good deal that is of a superstitious character to the Compositiones ad tingenda which it includes, and at the same time lays considerable stress upon experimental method.

Some of its recipes.

It opens with a recipe “for making the best gold,” the first of a long series. One of the ingredients in this case is “a bit of moon-earth, which the Greeks call Affroselinum.” The third recipe advises one to experiment at first with only a little of the compound in question, until one learns the process more thoroughly.[3038] The ingredients for gold-making in the sixth recipe include the gall of a goat and of a bull, and saffron from Lycia or Arabia, which is to be pounded in a Theban mortar in the sun in dog-days. At the close of the fourteenth recipe, into which the gall of a bull again enters we have one of the injunctions to secrecy so dear to the alchemist: “Hide the sacred secret which should be transmitted to no one, nor give to anyone the prophetic.”[3039] It is also implied that alchemy is a religious or divine art in the twentieth recipe where it is said that operators should concede all things to divine works. But such mystic allusions are infrequent as well as brief. In the same twentieth item gold is supposed to be made from a mixture of iron rust, magnet, foreign alum, myrrh, gold, and wine. It is also stated that those who will not credit the great utility that there is in humors are those who do not make demonstration for themselves, another instance of the experimental character of the work. The forty-first recipe states that gold may be dissolved in order to write with it by dipping it in the blood of an Indian dragon, placing it in a glass vessel, and surrounding it with coals. In the sixty-ninth item the blood of a dragon or of a cock is mixed with urine and the stone celidonius. The gall of a bull and the blood of a pig are used again in recipes sixty-eight and one hundred and twenty-eight.