Thomas Willard

Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult

Sciences

A Historical and Conceptual Background

I. The term “occult sciences” was applied in the late Middle Ages to a group of
disciplines dating back to antiquity. Chief among these were alchemy and as-
trology, which were construed respectively to include all things below the moon
in the sublunary or elemental world and all things above the moon in the super-
lunary or heavenly world. Linking these two worlds were the esoteric mathe-
matics and geometry of Pythagoras and Plato (Friedländer 1969, 246–60), both of
which found a popular form in numerology. These practices were sometimes
connected with one another as intellectual magic, chiefly divination from the
stars (astromancy) and the four elements. Pyromancy, aeromancy, geomancy,
and hydromancy sought knowledge of fire, air, earth, and water. Because this
kind of “natural magic” could be hard to distinguish from necromancy or the
other “black arts” a separate entry is devoted to magic.
The term “occult science” was first used in English in the seventeenth century
and owed its early popularity to Cornelius Agrippa’s (1486–1535) De Occulta
Philosophia Libri Tres (“Three Books of Occult Philosophy”), first printed in 1531
but written at least a decade earlier. In these books, Agrippa included knowledge
of the elemental, heavenly, and angelic worlds, adding Jewish Kabbalah to
Christian angelology. A fourth book of demonology was attributed to Agrippa, but
almost certainly spurious. Agrippa used the word “occult” as the opposite of
“manifest,” that is, representing knowledge that was not readily available to the
five senses. Physicians still speak of “occult bleeding” and of “occult diseases”
which require special tests. In the late Middle Ages, before such inventions as the
microscope and telescope, the number of hidden things was vastly greater.
Since antiquity, science was understood to be a part of philosophy, known as
natural philosophy, and the scientist to be a philosopher. In Byzantium, through
which much of the knowledge of the ancients passed into late medieval Europe,
scientists liked to call themselves philosophoi, while avoiding the stigma asso-
ciated with magoi (Magdalino and Mavroudi 2006, 13). Scholars who study
alchemy, astrology, and other forms of natural knowledge in the Byzantine
Empire have found it useful to use the term “occult sciences” as an overarching
term. The same can be applied to these arts in the Islamic world and in the
Middle Ages generally. Like “esotericism,” the term is used now to describe a

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 Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences 103

wide range of approaches to the unknown (Alexandrian 1983; Corsetti 1992;

Faivre 1992, 33–42).
The twentieth century saw considerable scholarly debate about the extent to
which science, especially astronomy, underwent a “paradigm shift” during the
early modern period and the extent to which developments like those in medic-
inal chemistry grew directly out of medieval science (Powrie 2010). Although
there is much to be said on each side of the argument, it should be noted that
astrology and alchemy were not labelled pseudosciences until the nineteenth
century, and were not clearly separated from astronomy and chemistry, respec-
tively, until the late seventeenth century. Throughout the late Middle Ages, the
terms chemia and alchemia were largely synonymous, along with such variants as
alchemystica, which adds the element of mysticism; while almost all serious
astronomers also practiced astrology.

II. A general account of the occult sciences in the Middle Ages must deal with two
“chains”: the chain of being which links God the Creator to the rest of the
creation, stretching from the stars and planets to the minerals underground, and
the chain of tradition linking writers and thinkers to their sources in antiquity and
throughout the ages. The first of these was sometimes identified as the chain of
Homer (catena Homeri) on the basis of a passage at the beginning of book 8 in the
Iliad: Zeus looks down on the squabbling creation and tells the other gods he can
haul them and everything else back into his grasp. The second was sometimes
associated with the “rings” of Plato (annuli Platonici), as Socrates described them
in the Ion (536a–d). There was a kind of magnetic pull that held the rings together
as they reached from the inspired writer back through the poets and muses to the
source of inspiration. It was also known as Kabbalah, in the word’s etymological
sense of “reception” or as “tradition” in the etymological sense of being “handed
down” from one generation to the next. One classic study called it the “secret
tradition” on the premise that knowledge was withheld from the masses and
communicated orally from adept to initiate (Waite 1926). Such knowledge was
“traditional,” although there were different traditions for the different occult
sciences and writers could draw on more than one tradition at a time.
Behind both of these chains, as they were concatenated in the late medieval
mind, was the principle of original revelation. Surely the secret was so great, the
science so powerful, that no mere human could have dreamed it up. Surely it
must have been revealed by God—no doubt to Adam, to help him survive after the
expulsion from Eden, and by Adam to his son Seth, and so on down to Thoth and
to Moses, who was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7: 22). Given
the medieval respect for auctoritas (“authority”), genealogies of knowledge ap-
peared in many books of alchemy and other occult sciences. They had the effect

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104 Thomas Willard

of showing that the science was not demonic and should not be considered
illegal. A late example of this thinking is the treatise De Jure Artis Alchemicae (“On
the lawfulness of the art of alchemy”), written by the Basel lawyer Johannes
Chrysippus Fanianus, a younger contemporary of Agrippa, and included in
several early anthologies of alchemy (Fanianus 1576). One consequence of this
thinking was that occult texts were often misattributed to writers of known
authority. When alchemical texts were known to have been composed by people
with the names of Democritus or Miriam, readers leapt to the conclusions that
they must be the work of the ancient atomist and the sister of Moses, respectively.
Popular medieval texts of alchemy were thus attributed to Plato and Aristotle as
well as to later authorities like Albertus Magnus (ca. 1206–1280) and Thomas
Aquinas (1225–1274; Aquinas 1966). Such attributions were not necessarily frau-
dulent, but often reflected the author’s sense of tradition (Burkhardt 1960).
Also behind the chains was the principle of the unity of knowledge. Alchemy
did not contradict astrology; rather it was astronomia inferiora (the lower astron-
omy). Numerology helped to explain the stages of the alchemical procedure, as
geometrical arrangements helped to explain conjunctions of the planets. As
Michel Foucault suggested, in a close reading of a late medieval text, the world
was legendary in the etymological sense of being there “to be read”—full of
hidden significations (Foucault 1970, 17–45). The Bible supported this view. After
all, “The Heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19: 1); and “As for the earth,
out of it cometh bread … and it hath dust of gold” (Job 28: 5–6). The whole Bible
was taken to conceal secrets of science (Willard 1982).
A final principle, not named until the early modern period but dating back to
antiquity, was that of hylozoism: the principle that all matter is alive. Plato
maintained that the world was a “living creature” (Plato 1961, Timaeus 30c).
Moreover, just as the earth had a soul and intelligence of its own, so did the
heavens (Plato 1961, Timaeus 37a). The planets were “living creatures” (Plato
1961, Timaeus 38e). Like earth, the planets were also globes, which Plato consid-
ered the perfect form, and thanks to a robust mythology that no doubt predated
Plato they had personalities of their own: saturnine, jovial, martial, etc. The
planets became way stations on the soul’s journey to God, as taught in various
mystery religions (Godwin 1981). The Greek mysteries fed into the Judaeo-Chris-
tian tradition through Gnosticism, adding another dimension to thoughts about
the heavens. In learning about the movements of the heavenly bodies, and read-
ing what was “written in the stars,” one learned about the divine aspects of a
creator who made man in his own image. Some Christian astrologers proposed
renaming the zodiac signs after the apostles of Christ, and some Muslim astrol-
ogers suggested doing so after the prophets of Allah. Tradition held, however, and
the ascent to God became associated with the shedding of qualities more often

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 Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences 105

associated with pagan deities than with prophets and apostles. As Dante ascends
from the Mount of Purgatory, he passes the heavens of the Mercury, Venus, and so
forth, and at each junction meets souls of people who had problems associated the
pagan deity, such as mercurial pride and venereal desires (Paradiso, cantos 6, 8).
Whether humans first tried to understand fire on earth or stars in the sky is a
matter of debate. But because all animals experience the difference between day
and night, we shall start with the stars.

B Astrology
“Astrology” is the older word, signifying knowledge of the stars. “Astronomy,”
literally “star-arranging,” was coined in later antiquity, probably to indicate the
mapping of stars as opposed to telling tales about the stars and their influences.
The most famous astrologer and astronomer of the ancient world was Claudius
Ptolemy, a Roman citizen who lived in Alexandria, and wrote in Greek, during the
second century C.E. Ptolemy wrote three treatises, of which the first and most
famous was on astronomy. It concerned the structure of the universe—a structure
which is still referred to as the Ptolemaic universe, with the earth at the center, the
constellations at the circumference, and the sun, moon, and five visible planets in
concentric circles around the earth. The second treatise was on the geography of
the known world, and the third was on astrology, reconciling the techniques of
casting horoscopes with the principles of Aristotelian natural philosophy. The first
book, Ho Megala Syntaxis (“The Great Treatise”), was translated into Arabic as the
Almagest and under that title became known in a Latin translation from the
Arabic. The others followed, though with less influence, and the pattern of
transmission from Greek through Arabic to Latin became the norm for transmis-
sion of many scientific and technical works written in late antiquity.
The Ptolemaic world-picture, with its geocentric perspective, was in many
ways better suited to the occult sciences than the Copernican heliocentric model
that later won out. It squared with ordinary human experience, in which the sun
appears to rise in the east and set in the west while the earth stands still and the
heavenly bodies revolve about it. The geocentric model placed the sun at the
center of the universe, midway between the three smaller heavenly bodies (the
moon, Mercury, and Venus) and the three larger ones (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).
In Classical tradition, it allowed philosophers and poets to describe the earth as a
great globe or orb (Plato 1961, Timaeus 33b; Ovid 1977, Metamorphoses, book 1,
line 35). Pythagoreans indeed took the view that the earth revolved around a
central fire (Aristotle 1984, On the Heavens, 2.13; 293a), while others maintained
that there was an infinite number of worlds (Aristotle, Physics, 8.1; 250b). How-

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106 Thomas Willard

ever, Aristotle argued that the logical choice was the model that confirmed what
we see, and astrologers have clung to his view, with only a few concessions to
post-Newtonian cosmology (Grant 2007).
Over time observers realized that it was necessary to make certain adjust-
ments, notably in the dates of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, which seemed
to appear at an earlier date every few centuries. The so-called precession of the
equinox, caused by a gravitational shift of the earth’s axis, has the effect of
making the so-called fixed stars appear to rotate about the earth like the planets
(a name derived from the Greek word meaning ‘wanderers’). Ancient astronomers
calculated that the stars would make a complete rotation once every 36,000 years.
The interval was often associated—wrongly, it turned out—with Plato’s “perfect
year” (Plato 1961, Timaeus 39d). That period, the time that it took the planets to
return to their original alignment, was closer to 26,000 years (Santillana and
Dechend 1969). In either event, the movements meant job security for astrologers,
who had to calculate the positions of the planets on any given day as well as the
slowly changing positions of the constellations. Although Aristotle and other
Greek philosophers taught that the universe was eternal (Aristotle 1984, Physics,
8.1; 250a–252b) and the earth as well (Aristotle 1984, Meteorology, 1.14; 353a),
there was widespread popular belief that it passed through different ages, and
these were easily associated with the twelve signs of the Zodiac. When they came
to power, Christians liked to note that the world had entered the age of Pisces
(Latin “fishes”) with Jesus symbolized by the sign of the fish. Icthus, the Greek
word for “fish,” was taken to be an acronym for Iesus Christos theou uios sotor
(Jesus Christ, son of God, savior). The words became a mantra for Christians
committed to the practice of constant prayer (1 Thessalonians 5: 17).
Although ancient astronomy and astrology reached a kind of culmination in
Alexandria, which became the center of learning in the late Classical world, the
first systematic observations were probably made farther east, in ancient Babylo-
nia. The first star maps were made there in the first two millennia B.C.E., but
historians disagree whether it was there or only in Egypt, and only with the aid of
Greek mathematics, that our duodecimal system began, with its basic divisions of
the heavens into 360 degrees, the year into approximately 360 days, and the day
into twelve 60-minute hours. The first horoscopes were most likely made in
Babylon, with surviving examples at least 300 years older than any written in
Greek. Even then the first Greek horoscopes show the influence of astrologers who
came to the Mediterranean from Babylon and Persia, following the conquests of
Alexander the Great.
Greek astrology reached Rome in the second century B.C.E. During the
political wars in the first century B.C.E., it was used to plan and predict the
assassination of Julius Caesar—made memorable for English audiences in the

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 Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences 107

words of Shakespeare’s soothsayer: “Beware the ides of March” (Shakespeare

1974, Julius Caesar 1.2.23)—and to support the claims of the emperor Augustus,
who used his horoscope to show that he was destined to rule. There was wide-
spread popular belief, but also many skeptics; Cicero, for example, questioned
the utility of horoscopes in his treatise De Divinatione (Cicero 1920–23, book 2,
section 44). Perceived as a potentially destabilizing force, astrologers were peri-
odically expelled from Rome, and their rights to predict deaths and other major
events curtailed (Smoller 2000). There was, then, a deeply divided attitude
toward predictive astrology by the time that Christianity became the state reli-
gion, under the Edict of Thessalonica (380 C.E.).
The Hebrew Scriptures took strong exception to divination in general, and in
particular to “the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators” of
Babylon, who “could not deliver themselves from the power of the flame” that
God would unleash on them (Isaiah 47: 13–14). The Book of Daniel scorned
astrologers in particular, showing through a quasi-historical example that all true
foreknowledge is from God. However, the Christian Scriptures shed a positive
light on the “wise men [Greek magoi] from the east” who foretold the birth of
Jesus, the “King of the Jews” (Matthew 2: 1–2). Because it supported their claims,
this story of a star (which may have been Halley’s comet) gave some legitimacy to
astrology. However, such predictions were also linked to the mystery religions
with which Christianity had some similarities, especially Mithraism. Saint Paul
insisted that the Christian’s battle was not really “against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6: 12). These
principalities (archas) seemed to be the Archons of Gnosticism, which were
identified with the planets and which had some influence on both Judaism and
Christianity in New Testament times as well as on the mystery cults that Paul
faced in Ephesus. With the condemnation of Gnosticism, notably by Bishop
Irenaeus of Lyons in Adversus Haereses (“Against Heresies,” ca. 180 C.E.), as-
trology was officially rejected along with other systems of prediction. It was
regarded as both unnecessary, because Christianity provided a unique system of
prophecy, and heretical, because it challenged the Christian belief in the free will
of the individual believer. It remained for Augustine (354–430) to recall Cicero’s
scorn of auguries (Augustine 1972, 4.30) and to go beyond Cicero in asserting
man’s free will (5.9). By the middle of the sixth century, Christians in Europe were
explicitly forbidden the use of horoscopes (Smoller 2000). There was a steadier
interest in astrology among Christians in the Eastern Church, where there was
readier access to technical manuals from antiquity and, later, to new manuals
produced in the Islamic world. These included texts from pre-Islamic Persia, some
of which carried astrological ideas from India.

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108 Thomas Willard

Of all the Islamic astrologers, Abu Maʿshar al Balkli (ca. 805–ca. 885) was
probably the greatest, and certainly the most influential in the West (Turner
1997). In addition to popularizing the work of Ptolemy, whom he mistook to be a
member of Egypt’s ruling family, he composed influential treatises of his own,
including an introductory account translated into Latin by Adelard of Bath (ca.
1080–ca. 1151) and a treatise on planetary conjunctions and their affects on the
world’s great religions and dynasties (Abu Ma’shar 1994; Albumasar 1489). Alber-
tus Magnus was among the first to make extensive use of Adelard’s translation.
For Albertus, as for his student Thomas Aquinas, the question was how to
reconcile astral influences with human free will. Aquinas addressed the question
in his Summa Theologica (Aquinas 1911, Part 1, Question 95, Article 5) and con-
cluded that divination by the stars cannot be held illicit or inaccurate because
humans lack free will when they let themselves be governed by the passions
rather than their reason. Abu Ma'shar also wrote a popular history of astrology
and its role in predicting the course of history, Kitab al-milal wa-‘l-duwal (“The
Book of Religions and Dynasties”), which was read and cited by scholars like
Roger Bacon (1214–1294) (Abu Ma’shar 2000). In Persia itself and in countries to
its east, Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) was arguably more influential than Abu
Ma'shar, on whose work he built. Though he is known in the West for his poetic
quatrains, or Rubaiyat, notably in the English translation by Edward Fitzgerald,
he is also known as the person who reformed the Iranian calendar, as it is still
used, and who presented proofs for the heliocentric view of the universe five
hundred years before Galileo.
Astrologers, like poets, depended on the patronage of noble or royal masters,
and they faced the same occupational hazard. If they said what the saw, rather
than what their patrons wanted them to see, they risked banishment or worse.
Omar Khayyam lost his position as royal astrologer when one ruler died and was
succeeded by a man who did not like his forecasts. Similarly kings often collected
whole bands of astrologers about them, such as Daniel encountered at the court
of Nebuchadnezzar. They were especially taken to the practice of casting nativ-
ities, that is, charts based on the hour and place of one’s birth (Abu Ali Al-Khyyat
1988). One notably large and productive group of astrologers was in Toledo,
during the reign of Alfonso X (1221–1284), variously known as El Sabio and El
Astrológo (“the wise” and “the astrologer”). Alfonso is credited with the so-called
Tablas Alfonsíes, credit he of course shared with the Islamic astrologers and
Jewish translators working for him. These tables were widely used in calculating
the position of the sun and moon relative to the five known planets. Another large
group was gathered in the court of Charles V of France (1337–1380), who, like
Alfonso, commissioned translations of astrological works and amassed a large
library of books on the subject. Astrological calculations even played a role in

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 Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences 109

Church polemics during the Reformation, as Catholics and Protestants interpreted

the same astronomical events to support their different causes.
Although astrology had much of the popular appeal in the Middle Ages that it
has for readers of tabloids today, the people who made the calculations and made
the predictions were of a more serious bent altogether. Many were faithful
observers of the heavens, carefully trained in calculations. Indeed, astrologers
were often called mathematicians (mathematici). Even the most scientific of them
were expected to prepare horoscopes and determine auspicious times for impor-
tant events like coronations. Just as their brothers at court, the alchemists, were
usually interested in more than trying to make gold from lesser metals, astrolo-
gers had reason to think there were greater secrets in the heavens than the
outcome of a battle.

C Alchemy
In the same way that the word “astrology” became the ill-reputed accomplice
of the younger word “astronomy,” “alchemy” has come to be known as the
dark past out of which modern chemistry emerged. In fact, the Latin words
alchemia and chemia were practically interchangeable in the Middle Ages,
much as was true of astrologia and astronomia. The word “alchemy” simply
adds the Arabic definite article al to the Greek word khemia. When the distinc-
tion began to take hold, in the seventeenth century, chemistry was understood
to focus on the chemicals themselves, while alchemy was regarded as a cosmic
science, concerned with the relations between chemicals and other orders of
being, whether in the sublunary world or the superlunary one. Chemistry
sought increasingly scientific language, of elements and formulas, while al-
chemy was always a matter of enigmas, depending on metaphoric language and
archetypal imagery.
Like astrology, alchemy has a long history. It was practiced in Babylon
(Eliade 1937), and was brought to Egypt, where it too reached its ancient apogee.
From there it passed into the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, where it was refined
during the first millennium B.C.E. It reached Europe only in the twelfth century,
when the first texts were translated from Arabic. There was a great deal of
confusion over names, for some Arabic texts like the Turba Philosophorum (Gath-
ering of philosophers) put chemical ideas and teachings in the mouths of people
with the names of ancient Greek philosophers like Aristo (i.e., Aristotle) (The
Turba Philosophorum 1896; Plessner 1975). Meanwhile, writings published under
the name Geber included theories found nowhere in the authentic writings of the
alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān (ca. 731–ca. 815)—statements so hard to decipher that

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110 Thomas Willard

the name Geber was said, wrongly though suggestively, to have been the source
of the English word “gibberish.”
Most students of alchemy in the Middle Ages also studied astrology, con-
vinced that there was a vital correspondence between the planets and metals.
They referred to their opus magnum or “great work” as the operatio solis or
“operation of the sun.” Many of them began the work when the sun was in
Aries, and not a few consulted an ephemerides if not an astrologer to determine
the optimal date on which to begin. They believed that the spirit of Mercury or
Venus was present in the metal of that name as well as in the planet. Indeed,
they seem to have entered into dialogue with the substances they hoped to
create—most notably the lapis philosophorum or “philosophers’ stone,” which
could transmute metals and produce powerful elixirs. For alchemical texts
sometimes used the rhetorical device of prosopopoeia, in which the alchemical
philosopher spoke for the stone or another substance, as though it was speaking
to him and revealing its secrets. Alchemists also appealed to the spirits of the
elements or elementals, widely known in medieval folklore: the salamanders
who lived in fire, the sylphs who lived in air, the nymphs or undines who lived
in water, and the gnomes or pygmies who lived in earth. The names were not
standardized until the sixteenth century, with Paracelsus (1493–1542) and Agrip-
pa, but the concepts were present long before.
One major difference between astrology and alchemy in the Middle Ages was
in the relative ease of measuring change. It was easier to measure distances
between heavenly objects, using the naked eye or the astrolabe, first made in
Classical Greece but used extensively in the Islamic world and in medieval
Europe. It was harder to measure changes in metals and other substances as they
were heated and cooled, for one could only observe changes in color or transi-
tions from solid to liquid to gas. The first instrument to measure changes of
temperature in any kind of systematic way, the thermoscope, was invented by
Galileo in the late sixteenth century, and the modern thermometer was invented
by Daniel Fahrenheit in the eighteenth century. Before that, classification barely
went past what Aristotle, who described four qualities of things: hot, cold, moist,
and dry. From these conditions came four elements: fire, which was hot and dry;
air, which was hot and moist; water, which was cold and moist; and earth, which
was cold and dry (Meteorology, 1.3; 399a–341a). It followed that one thing could
be turned into another by altering the qualities, for Aristotle held that all material
things were of a single substance. In the eighth century, Jabir modified Aristotle’s
position by positing the principles of sulphur and mercury as the basis of trans-
mutation (Jābir ibn Hayyān 1923; Kraus 1986, 305–16). However, it remained for
Robert Boyle to propose a sound theory of “mixed bodies” in the late seventeenth
century.

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 Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences 111

From the beginnings of their art into the seventeenth century, alchemists took
to discussing the realm of metals by analogy to the vegetable and animal king-
doms. Like vegetables, metals were alive, producing seeds that could be culti-
vated (Eliade 1962, 169–78). Like animals, they could mate and reproduce. From
earliest times, some metals were considered male, others female. Babylonian
metallurgists based the distinctions on color (Eliade 1937). Their Greek and
Egyptian counterparts may have used other criteria. In any event, the classifica-
tions brought the metals into a harmonious, homologous world picture, which
the Middle Ages inherited as a set of cosmic correspondences between the seven
pure metals (gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin, and lead) and the seven
planets in the Ptolemaic system (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn). The associations extended to the deities whose names were attached to
the true planets, while Apollo was identified with the Sun and Diana with the
Moon. Alchemy was thus a cosmological science from the beginning, associated
with astrology and other arts. Because the human being was considered the
epitome of creation, the Microcosm that contained the Macrocosm in miniature,
there were further correspondences between the heavenly bodies and the human
body, which became important to medieval medicine. Moreover, there were
correspondences between the planets or metals and the different parts of the
human body and the parts of the hand, developed in the popular art of palmistry,
also known as cheiromancy. There were even correspondences with the seven
notes on the heptatonic scale in music.
Once metals were considered to be living substances, they were subject to
torture and even sacrifice at the hands of chemists, followed by death and some-
times by rebirth in new bodies (Eliade 2007; Newman 2004). Sometimes they
would be reduced to waste substances, known in the Middle Ages as the caput
mortuum (“dead head”; Abraham 1998, 31). This anthropomorphic view of metals
led to a good deal of mythologizing. Because mercury volatilized when heated, it
really was mercuric, as though it had the powers of Mercury, the gods’ messenger.
Christian alchemists regarded the ascent to heaven as a sign that mercury or the
substance made from it was a sort of chemical Christ (Jung 1968, 345–431). The
medieval penchant for allegory—literally “another way of speaking” about some-
thing, employed even in Christian Scripture (Galatians 2: 24)—prompted alche-
mists to seek clues in all they read. There were thus alchemical interpretations of
Classical authors like Virgil and Ovid (Willard 2006), and extensive use of myths
such as the labors of Hercules and the Argonauts’ quest of the Golden Fleece
(Faivre 1990). Inclusion of the Bible alongside the pagan myths led Church
officials to denounce alchemy as a heresy. Such charges made the “sages” all the
more likely to obfuscate. As a result, alchemy developed an especially elaborate
system of symbolic correspondences (Abraham 1998).

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112 Thomas Willard

The first important texts of Western alchemy are on papyri discovered in

Alexandria in the early nineteenth century and known collectively as the Leiden
Papyri (Berthelot 1885; Caley 1926). Written in demotic Greek and compiled in
Egypt during the sixth century C.E. and perhaps earlier, the texts cover a wide
range of occult practices, including magical rites, but show considerable knowl-
edge of metallurgy and distillation and the equipment involved. A Jewish woman
named Miriam and later called Maria Prophetissima may well be the first chemist
known by name. She is said to have lived in Alexandria, to have taught younger
chemists, and to have invented such apparatus as the still and the water bath
(known as the bain-marie from the Latin balneum Mariae; Abraham 1998, 15). She
is attributed with a number of cryptic sayings—for example, “Join the male to the
female and you will find what is sought.” She is mentioned in the writings of
Zosimos of Panopolis (present day Akhmim), the most advanced of the Byzantine
alchemists (Patai 1994, 81–91). Zosimos, who probably wrote in the fourth century
C.E., described chemical processes in detail, while using analogies from mythol-
ogy and mystery religions, and achieved a memorable style (Lendle 1992).
Arabic alchemy began with the writings of Jābir (Latinized as Geber) in the
late eighth century. Many Arabic texts under his name seem to be the work of an
Islamic sect known as the Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), who gathered in
Basra in the tenth century (Newman 1991). The Jabirist teachings about the
composition of metals from principles known as sulfur and mercury persisted into
modern times, with sulfur giving metals their color, smell, and flammability while
mercury gave them weight and fusibility. The two-principle theory was based
ultimately on the teaching of Aristotle about vapors arising from the earth
(Aristotle 1984, Meteorology, 2.4; 360a–b), and was eventually supplemented by
Paracelsus with the third principle of salt, representing embodiment itself. It must
be understood that these were principles rather than the modern chemicals
known by these names and represented by the symbols Hg, S, and NaCl. They
were to be found in every substance to one degree or another, and the Arabic
alchemists made many advances in the study of metals and liquids. It must also
be understood that there was intellectual commerce throughout the Islamic
world, and that discoveries from Persia and perhaps points farther east flowed
through Arabia and the Maghrib into Spain and Western Europe. Similarly,
Jabirist texts were studied in Persia, especially by Sufi scholars interested in the
spiritual body and the spiritual world (Corbin 1986).
In 1144, an Englishman who had been translating works of Arabic mathe-
matics and astrology into Latin translated two Arabic treatises on alchemy. They
contained teachings attributed to a Christian hermit who had studied with Ste-
phanos of Alexandria, a philosopher in the court of Heraclius (610–641), to whom
works of Greek alchemy were attributed (Linden 2003, 54–60). According to one

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text, Morienus came to Damascus at the request of Khalid ibn Yazid ibn Muawiyya
(661–704), a prince of the Umayyad Caliphate and the putative founder of Arabic
alchemy (Stavenhagen 1974; Linden 2003, 71–80). Jabir was said to have con-
sulted translations that Khalid made or commissioned. In turn, the translations
that brought the ideas of Morienus to a European audience created a demand for
further texts of what became known as alchemy (literally, the chemistry). These
included treatises by the Arabic alchemist Zadith Senior (Muhammed ibn Umail
al-Tamimi, ca. 900–ca. 960) and the Persian physicians and alchemists known as
Rhazes (Abu-Bakr Muhammed ibn Zakariya Al-Razi, ca. 845–ca. 930) and Avicen-
na (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina, ca. 980–ca. 1037; Linden 2003, 95–
98). A collection of sayings attributed to ancient philosophers like Aristotle and
Demoncritus was translated as Turba Philosophorum (“The Crowd of Philoso-
phers”) and became one of the most influential books of alchemy (Ruska 1924;
Plessner 1975).
However, it was Jābir, under the Latin name Geber, who became the most
representative of Arabic alchemists for readers in the West. Many empirical texts
were written attributed to him, either by translators or by writers of new works he
inspired. The followers became known as “Geber’s cooks.” Paul of Taranto, a
Franciscan friar, compiled a group of Jabirist texts under the title Theoria et
Practica (“Theory and practice”), several of which he may have composed him-
self. Attributions to Geber by Western alchemists, like those to Jabir by Brethren
of Purity and others in the East, were not made to conceal the authors’ identity as
to reveal their affiliations and express indebtedness (Burkhardt 1960).
Texts of Latin alchemy tended to include the balance of theory and practice
found in the Theoria et Practica (Ganzenmüller 1938). The theory was usually
much the same, grounded on the principles of Arabic alchemy and, behind those,
the sources in Greek alchemy and philosophy (Principe 2000). The practice,
however, took two different directions. Some writers focused on small discov-
eries: on the apparatus or the process or an alloy or a tincture or, increasingly, a
medicament. Others focused on what they saw as the goal of the art: on metamor-
phosis and the transmutation of metals, including but not limited to the making
of gold and the production of the essential agent of change, variously called their
stone or powder or elixir (the last word from the Arabic al-iksir). Still others
focused on the religious aspect of alchemy as the donum dei (“gift of God”): a
secret revealed only to the most pious. Many of the most celebrated treatises
touched on all of these.
Alchemical texts began to circulate in the names of Great European writers—
Albertus Magnus and Ramon Llull (ca. 1235–ca. 1315) were among the more promi-
nent. Some texts took on explicitly Christian themes, such as the Margarita Pretiosa
Novella (“New pearl of great price”) of Petrus Bonnus (14th century), which drew

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from a parable of Jesus (Matthew 13: 45–46). They sometimes told personal stories
of long quests for the secret of alchemy, such as that of Nicolas Flamel (1330–1418),
a Paris scrivener who took years to discover the secrets in a manuscript he found at
a flea market (Linden 2003, 123–35); or Bernardus Trevisanus (1406–1490), who
spent his whole inheritance and most of his life in search of the philosophers’ stone
(Linden 2003, 136–40). The hard truth was that no alchemist provided simple step-
by-step directions. Working on the premise that God would enlighten the deserving
person, they wrote riddles and gave misdirections that only the most persistent
student, guided by the most learned elder, could possibly decipher (Coudert 1980).
As a consequence, their prose was ridiculously obscure, but their poetry purported
to contain truths hidden by the veils of allegory. Notable among such poets were
Jean de Meun (ca. 1240–ca. 1305), who continued the dream-vision Roman de la
rose (“Romance of the rose”) originally composed by Guillaume de Lorris in ca.
1230/1240, and the English cleric George Ripley (1415–1490), who wrote a long
poem on the twelve stages or “gates” of alchemy (Ripley 1591).
Ripley’s name became attached to a famous scroll combining verses and
illustrations and reproduced in several countries during the sixteenth century.
Alchemical illustration had begun to flourish during the fourteenth century
(Obrist 1982; Roberts 1994; Roob 2000; Battistini 2004), providing clues about
colors of metals and shapes of equipment in the alchemical laboratory while
developing mythic motifs (Evola 1948; Klossowski de Rola 1973).

D Other Occult Sciences

I. Hermeticism. When the Islamic texts of astrology and alchemy passed into
Europe, during the high Middle Ages, they brought with them the ancient myth of
the Egyptian Hermes, a teacher of great antiquity whose basic message was
summed up in the words of an emerald tablet found atop his miraculously
preserved corpse. The first line of the inscription is commonly summarized in the
words “As above so below” (Ruska 1926; Plessner 1954; Linden 2003, 27–28). The
message was applied to a large body of writing known as the Corpus Hermeticum
(“Hermetic corpus”), recorded only in the early Christian centuries but claiming
great antiquity (Fowden 1986). Indeed, because Hermetic thought was largely a
revelation, passed on from initiatic father to initiated son son, a traditio mystica
soon developed in which every father was Hermes (Egyptian Thoth) addressing
his son That (Sint 1960, 60–61). Before long, Hermes was putative founder of
Egyptian astrology, alchemy, and magic (Festugière 1967; Luck, 1985, 36–37;
61–64; Faivre 1985–1988). The major Hermetic writings reached Europe in 1484 in
the Latin translation by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), providing fuel for the Hu-

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manism of the Italian Renaissance; however, the name of Hermes Trismegistus,

the thrice-great teacher also known as Thoth the ibis-headed scribe of the Egyp-
tian gods, appeared frequently in both Arabic and Latin texts of alchemy. He was
sometimes called Idris in the Arabic texts—i.e., the Islamic counterpart of Enoch
in Genesis 5: 24—and thus identified with a prophet in the Quran (19.57, 21.85).
Arab writers on alchemy gave special veneration to him (Plessner 1954).
The major texts in the Corpus Hermeticum did not reach Western Europe until
the late fifteenth century. However, the Latin Aesclepius was available throughout
the Middle Ages (Hermetica 1992). St. Augustine in his City of God discussed it at
length, claiming that it revealed the truth of divine revelation while exposing the
falseness of the Egyptian religion and of pagan idols generally (Augustine 1972,
8.22–23). The text is cast as a dialogue in which the semi-divine Hermes enlight-
ens Aesclepius and three other students about the nature of the universe and the
place of man within it. The overall message is positive and remarkably close to
what is found in the Bible, including the New Testament. As in the Psalms, God
has made man a little lower than the angels (8: 5) and has made the heavens to
declare His glory (19: 1); as in the Epistles, He has made it possible for man to
know the invisible truths of creation through the things that are made (Romans 1:
20). All this seemed quite remarkable to medieval readers, who thought that
Hermes was almost as old as Moses if not older. It was not until the seventeenth
century that the Hermetic writings were dated to the fourth or fifth centuries
(Yates 1964). Details known only in Byzantium during the Middle Ages were
collected by Macedonian scholar Joannes Stobaeus in the fifth century. The truth
of the matter probably lies somewhere in between, as the writings may well
contain knowledge that was once passed down through oral tradition, from the
adept to the initiate.

II. Kabbalah. The word “Kabbalah,” variously spelt, has the basic meaning of
“reception” or “tradition.” It refers to an oral tradition in Judaism—a tradition
dating back to the Old Testament Apocrypha and the tradition that Ezra hid
seventy books of divinely inspired wisdom for which humans were not ready
(2 Esdras 14: 36–48). Such wisdom was said to form an oral Torah (“instruction”)
that was passed down by enlightened rabbis and that formed a mystical counter-
part to the scriptural commentary in Talmud. The major texts of Kabbalah were
written in Spain during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries—the very time
at which the major texts of Arabic astrology and alchemy were being translated
into Latin, often with the assistance of Jewish scholars whose knowledge of
Aramaic gave them a distinct advantage. However, some of the concepts found in
the earliest of these texts also appear in documents dating back to the sixth
century.

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116 Thomas Willard

Perhaps the most basic concept is that of emanation. The early Sefer
Yetzirah (“Book of Formation”) describes the whole creation as having ema-
nated from a single point in the mind of God (Matt 1994), through a process
which modern rabbis have likened to the Big Bang theory in cosmology. The ten
emanations (sephira) represent the major qualities of God; however, they are
also the qualities of humanity, for they are arranged to form the body of the
primordial man, Adam Kadmon. They also form the tree of life, and the lines
between one emanation (sephiroth) represent the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
in which the Torah is written. The world is thus a physical expression of God’s
Word (dabar) as it was conceived before He said, “Let there be light.” Much of
the work in later books of Kabbalah, such as the Zohar (“Splendor”) attributed
to Moses of Leon (ca. 1250–1305), attempted to work out the connections
between the written Torah and the mystical teachings of God through his
emanations (Zohar 1949).
The possibility of a connection between Scripture and nature had a strong
appeal to Christians, who had long celebrated the parallels between the books of
God and nature (Curtius 1948, 311–326). Christians developed their own Kabbalah
in the later Middle Ages and began studying Hebrew, convinced that they would
then be able to convert the Jews or at least better understand the Hebrew
Scriptures (McGinn 1995). Kabbalistic ideas also appealed to Muslims. In Cordo-
ba, the Sufi mystic Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240) envisioned three concentric spheres
beyond the fixed stars. He identified the first as starless sky and the others as the
pedestal and throne of God. From these higher spheres, qualities like the Kabba-
listic sephira flowed through the visible heavens, conveying a different divine
name and quality to each of the seven planetary bodies; and from there they
flowed to the earth below. The totality of qualities, as shaped by the planets and
changing through the phases of the moon, made up the complete or cosmic man
(Burkhardt 1950). Meanwhile, realizing that the constellations were moving
through the zodiac signs, as a result of the precession of the equinox, he
estimated the length of each zodiacal age, ranging from 1000 years for Pisces to
12,000 for Aries, or a total of 78,000. More practically, he calculated the length of
the reciprocal positions of the sun and moon, which, he said, repeated themselves
every eighteen years.
Meanwhile, Kabbalism promoted new interest in astrology and especially
alchemy among Jewish scholars (Patai 1994; Scholem 1974 and 2006). For alche-
mists, the ten sephira contained the elements of fire, air, and water; for astrolo-
gers, they contained the four cardinal directions as well as what was above and
below; and for both they contained the concept of the cosmic center. Kabbalism
also sparked new interest in numbers.

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III. Numerology. In their scriptural exegesis, Kabbalists often relied on gematria,

a term that may have derived from Greek geometria. Gematria assigned numerical
values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and Kabbalists used these numbers
to calculate the meanings of words. If two words with distinct denotations had
the same numerical value, then there was a kind of equivalence between them.
Through Kabbalah, rabbis determined that the “three men” who visited Abraham
in Genesis 18: 2 were in fact the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. There was
a similar system in ancient Greek, which, for example, used the first ten letters of
the alphabet to represent the numbers 1–10 and the next nine letters to represent
the numbers 20–100. Christian theologians knew about gematria from the “num-
ber of the beast” (Revelation 13: 18); they calculated the number 666 to represent
KAISER NERON (Emperor Nero), using the values of the letters when they were
transposed into Hebrew.
Most numerology was far simpler. The number 1 represented unity; 2, duality;
3, the Trinity or spiritual order; 4, the cardinal directions or physical order; and so
forth. There were six days of creation and seven days of the week, including the
Sabbath. There were ten commandments and twelve tribes of Israel or disciples of
Jesus, the number 12 being the product of 3x4. Medieval numerology was largely
the legacy of Pythagoras and Plato (Hopper 1938), though it had been popularized
in writings by the Church Fathers. Augustine, for example, wrote that the creation
occurred in six days because 6 is the first perfect number (1+2+3). The study of
number dominated the medieval education in the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geo-
metry, music, and astronomy), the counterpart of the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric,
and logic), and even in the verbal arts numbers figured in such areas as prosody
or versification, which constituted the fourth part of grammar. Astrologers
learned numerology from late Classical works like the commentary on Cicero’s
Somnium Scipionis (“Dream of Scipio”), written by Macrobius in the fourth century
C.E. Their prognostications often relied on numerological associations (Lucas
2003). Alchemists, meanwhile, took clues from the magic square of Jabir al
Hayyam (Laszlo 1996, 30–32). They also drew upon geomancy (Skinner 1980), a
form of divination based on random arrangements on the ground, and not unlike
Chinese feng shui. Here too number was important, as in the weights and quan-
tities of substances they used in their laboratories.

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118 Thomas Willard

E Conclusion
With the advent of printing in the 1450s, texts became more available than ever
before. Within a century, classic texts of astrology were available as well as new
almanacs and ephemerides to assist the makers of horoscopes. Similarly, classic
works of alchemy were issued in Latin followed by texts in the vernacular
languages. Perhaps the first vernacular text of alchemy, the Rosarium Philoso-
phorum (“Philosophers’ Rose Garden”), written in German with Latin sayings
after the model of the Turba Philosophorum, was published in 1550 (Rosarium
Philosophorum 1992). Soon afterwards, anthologies of alchemical texts began to
appear, first in Latin during the sixteenth century, and then in English, French,
and German in the centuries following. Meanwhile, large general studies of
“natural magic,” such as Cornelius Agrippa’s, drew together information from a
wide range of occult sciences, including numerology and divination.
The term “occult sciences” is useful as a reminder that practices as distinct
as alchemy and astrology were ultimately parts of a larger cosmological science
or outlook. This sort of science is often termed pseudoscience today because it
does not display—indeed often flaunts—the criteria of the scientific method,
such as communicable procedures and reproducible results. Alternately, it is
called pre-science because it led the way toward modern scientific methodology
and knowledge. Historians of science have long approached medieval alchemy
and astrology, along with related studies, from the outside, emphasizing what
made them different from the modern counterparts in chemistry, astronomy, etc.
However, the last century has seen increasing efforts to understand them from
inside and thus to recognize how they were explained and taught in times past
and what they did aim to achieve, as well as what they happened to discover
(Powrie 2010).
Meanwhile, some historians of science and technology have challenged the
conventional dating of the Middle Ages. One leading authority has argued that
medieval ideas about magic and experimental science did not die out in the
fourteenth or fifteenth century but persisted up to the Enlightenment in the
seventeenth century and the industrial revolution in the eighteenth (Thorndike
1958). The concept of occult or hidden sciences is not unique to the Middle Ages; it
would persist through later centuries up to the present, just as as it has been traced
back to the beginnings of recorded history. Nevertheless, the sciences of alchemy
especially and astrology to a lesser extent became defined during the late Middle
Ages in ways that have remained fundamentally unchanged in subsequent cen-
turies. In the language of alchemy, the ideas and observations of the ancient world
and the Islamic world may be said to have been tried in the fire of European
experimenters, and to have been transmuted in the alembic of their writing.

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Select Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas, Aurora Consurgens, ed. Mariel-Louise von Franz, trans. R. F. C. Hull and
A. S. B. Gliover (New York 1966).
Corsetti, Jean-Paul, L’histoire de ésotérisme et des sciences occultes (Paris 1992).
Coudert, Allison P., Alchemy: The Philosopher’s Stone (Boulder, CO, 1980).
Ferngren, Gary, ed., The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia
(New York and London 2000).
Klossowski de Rola, Stanislaus, Alchemy (London 1973).
Turner, Howard R., Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction (Austin, TX, 1997).

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