Roger Bacon opens his Excellent Discourse of the Admirable Force and Efficacie of Art and Nature by asserting that “Art using Nature for an instrument, is more powerfull then naturall vertue” (from The Mirror of Alchimy, ed. Stanton J. Linden, 49). Through viewing Art and Nature as complementary and potentially cooperative forces – rather than as sharply opposing ones – Bacon opened the way for envisioning a host of futuristic technological inventions: large ships and chariots that steered themselves, flying machines, underwater craft, and powerful optical instruments. Bacon's fertile scientific imagination, the products of which anticipate the “miracles” Francis Bacon foresaw in Salomon's House in the New Atlantis four centuries later, also resulted in unfounded accusations of witchcraft and black magic, charges that survived into the Renaissance through, to cite but one channel, his portrayal in Robert Greene's comedy Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (composed ca. 1589).

The Franciscan friar's education and subsequent lectureships at Oxford and the University of Paris reveal keen interest and proficiency in scholarly languages, mathematics, and natural philosophy; and his principal writings, the Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium (ca. 1267-68), range over these as well as Aristotelian philosophy, astrology, alchemy, and optics. Scientific experimentation and means of achieving educational reform are also frequent themes; however, the size and originality of Bacon's contributions to these subjects is still open to debate.

John French, holder of degrees from Oxford University (BA 1637, MA 1640), was a Paracelsian physician who practiced his profession with the Parliamentary army during the Civil War. He wrote the popular Art of Distillation; or, a treatise of the choicest spagyricall preparations that appeared in several editions beginning in 1651, and another treatise on medicinal spas in Yorkshire. Besides espousing Paracelsian iatrochemistry, French's works often reveal a strong mystical and millenarian emphasis, along with a bias against the “tyranny” of Aristotle and Galen. French was also a notable translator of alchemical and medical works; we have already seen that A New Light of Alchymie, the Sendivogian work included in this collection, was “faithfully translated out of the Latin into the English tongue. By J. F. M. D.”

Further confirmation of French's belief in the truth of alchemy appears in his brief address “To the Reader,” prefixed to the first edition of John Everard's English translation of The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, published in 1650. He categorically affirms the authenticity of the translation's original, which can “justly challenge the first place for antiquity, from all the Books in the World, being written some hundreds of yeers before Moses his time.” French's assertion appeared nearly forty years after Isaac Casaubon's correct dating of the Hermetic writings. The text of French's preface is from the 1650 edition of The Divine Pymander.

Although answers to many questions about the life, writings, travels, places of residence – even the birth date – of Albertus Magnus are uncertain, his preeminence in medieval Latin European culture is beyond dispute. In the words of Lynn Thorndike, Albertus was “the most prolific of its writers, the most influential of its teachers, the dean of its scholars, the one learned man of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to be called ‘the Great’” (HMES 2:521). Born in Swabia in Germany, Albertus achieved distinction as a member of the Dominican order and holder of high ecclesiastical offices, such as the bishopric of Ratisbon, 1260-62. His greatest fame, however, resulted from studies in most of the known fields of learning, which, following the plan of his master Aristotle, included physics, psychology, celestial phenomena, geography, botany, zoology, minerals, medicine, and optics, as well as theology. Only in the last of these was he exceeded by his pupil, Thomas Aquinas.

Albertus's writings on the “occult” arts of alchemy, astrology, and magic are often regarded as spurious, and it is difficult to separate the genuine from the false. The Libellus de Alchimia, from which the following selections are taken, is as likely to be authentic as any of the alchemical attributions and provides an excellent overview of the art in the early medieval period. It is also remarkable for its avoidance of the obscure rhetoric that plagues so much medieval and early modern alchemical writing. For these reasons, the brief tract enjoyed wide circulation in manuscript.

One of the best known alchemical medicines formulated by physicians and apothecaries of the Paracelsian persuasion was aurum potabile, i.e., potable (or drinkable) gold. Its underlying theory reasoned that since gold was the most perfect metal, medicines so derived would be unusually salutary, dispatching their virtues in the curing of all diseases. Thus solutions consisting of finely powdered gold dissolved in wine or vinegar came to be regarded as universal medicines. The London empiric and unlicensed physician Francis Anthony achieved great success and notoriety by dispensing medications based on the following chemical prescription; however, it also resulted in much professional difficulty for Anthony, including prosecution by the Royal College of Physicians, the conservative medical governing organization that continued to advocate ancient Galenic herbal cures.

Following is the complete text of Aurum-Potabile: or the Receit of Dr. Fr. Antonie. Shewing, His Way and Method, how he made and prepared that most Excellent Medicine for the Body of Man, in Collectanea Chymica: a collection of Ten Several Treatises in Chymistry (London, 1684), edited and printed by William Cooper. Additional readings: Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (New York: Franklin Watts, 1966), 142-45; DNB, s.v. “Antony, Francis.”

Take Block-tinn, and burn it in an Iron Pan (making the Pan red-hot before you put it in) and keeping a continual Fire under it, and stirring it always till it be like unto Ashes, some will look red, it will be burning a day, or half a day at the least, it must be stirred with an Iron Cole-rake, a little one, the handle two Foot long.

The following selections represent the practical or “exoteric” side of alchemical writing with its exclusive concern for the physical and technical processes required to produce an object or substance or to improve that which is “natural” by means of artifice. Thus the recipes illustrate the close connections between early chemistry and metallurgy, dyeing, jewelry making, writing techniques, and various other crafts. The style is clear, simple, and methodical, vastly different from the highly imagistic allegories of the Dialogue of Cleopatra and the Philosophers and the Visions of Zosimos of Panopolis. If one ignores the persistent uncertainties about substances, measures, and durations of processes, it might be said that here are reasonable examples of technical writing – overlooking, of course, the rather common emphasis on fraud and deception.

Leyden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus, which bear the names of the cities in which they are deposited, are written in Greek – probably by the same writer – and date from the end of the third century AD. They are, in the words of Earle R. Caley, the translator, “by far the earliest original historical evidence that we have in our possession concerning the nature and the extent of ancient chemical knowledge” (1149). Leyden Papyrus X includes 111 recipes, often written in an “abbreviated, incomplete form such as workers, more or less familiar with the nature of the process, would use” (1150).

Robert Steele, its translator, asserts that On Things Natural and Mystical is the “earliest known chemical treatise” (88); however, its date of composition and authorship remain highly uncertain. He attributes this work to followers of Democritus of Abdera (ca. 460-357 BC), the Greek philosopher best known for his atomistic theories, stating that it dates “certainly not later than the first centuries” AD. Matters of authorship and time of composition are complicated by the fact that pseudo-Democritean writings proliferated in the ancient world, as in the case of the Egyptian Bolos of Mendes (or Bolos the Democritean) who seems to have flourished ca. 200 BC and is known to have collected chemical and metallurgical recipes of the sort included in the present treatise. However, during this time, Democritus's reputation was not only that of a philosopher and scientist; in Pliny's Natural History (bk. 30:1), for example, he is deplored as a pupil of Ostanes and popularizer of magic: “Democritus especially instilled into men's minds the sweets of magic” (Loeb edn., 8:285). Thus, attribution of On Things Natural and Mystical to him is at least plausible and may even be correct. In any case, the variety of recipes and formulae included is great, as is the range of experimental procedures described. One finds glimmerings of “proto-scientific” methodology – as in statements of objectives, technical vocabulary, close attention to the appearances of substances, and concern with practical (if sometimes deceptive) outcomes – along with frequent and enthusiastic rhapsodies on the power and glory of Nature.

Stephanos of Alexandria was a philosopher and public lecturer who flourished in Constantinople under the Byzantine emperor Herakleios (610–41 AD). His subjects included Plato, Aristotle (upon whom there is extant a commentary bearing Stephanos’ name), as well as mathematics, astronomy, and music. Although attribution of the Great and Sacred Art of the Making of Gold to Stephanos is at times disputed for stylistic reasons, it is accepted as authentic by the translator, F. Sherwood Taylor, on the grounds that its Neoplatonism and numerous scientific allusions would have been familiar to him. This work, known also as De chrysopoeia, the Greek word for gold-making, was much copied and widely cited by Byzantine alchemists. If its highly rhetorical, enthusiastic style jars with that of Stephanos’ scientific works, this may result, according to Taylor, from the fact that “a declamatory and rhetorical style may have been thought appropriate to lectures upon a subject of arcane character” (116). Such stylistic excesses may also be explained by the fact that the Great and Sacred Art consists of nine lectures, undoubtedly presented orally to their original audiences. It should be noted that early Greek scientific and alchemical treatises – such as those of Pseudo-Democritus and Cleopatra included in this collection – frequently employ ornate rhetoric. Whatever the reasons, Lecture I, in particular, is an unadulterated example of the author's rhapsodizing on the glory, beauty, and power of Nature and God.

Although many details of the life of Michael Sendivogius are obscure, there is no question as to his importance and influence on alchemical thought in the seventeenth century. Until recently, it was believed that the life of this Polish alchemist was closely entwined with that of the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton, who was reputed to have performed successful transmutations at several European courts early in the seventeenth century. Late in 1603, at the court of Christian II, Elector of Saxony, Seton suffered a fate common to adepts who fell into the hands of avaricious monarchs; he was tortured and imprisoned for refusing to give Christian the secret of his transmuting powder. There upon Sendivogius entered the melodrama, helped the enfeebled Seton escape from Christian's prison, was rewarded with a portion of the remaining powder, and – following Seton's death in 1603 or 1604 – married his widow. Sendivogius then embarked on a career that was every bit as romantic and adventurous as that of Seton, eventually arriving in Prague at the court of Emperor Rudolf II, the “German Hermes.” Alternately enjoying courtly triumph and suffering squalid imprisonment, Sendivogius at last declined into the living embodiment of the alchemist of literary satire, dying in poverty in Warsaw at the age of eighty. Such, at least, is the legend that Sendivogius was thought to have lived until late twentieth-century researchers vindicated his name from the seamier aspects of alchemical charlatanism and emphasized his noble background and education, his contributions to chemistry, and the honors received from royal patrons.

Writing nearly seventy years ago about the then-emerging academic interest in alchemy stimulated by Marcellin Berthelot's translation and editing of ancient Graeco-Egyptian texts, Arthur John Hopkins drew attention to certain problems in the study of alchemy that remain largely unresolved today: “A comprehensive explanation [is] still lacking,” Hopkins noted, “such a theory as would coordinate the whole and make clear to the modern mind what was the purpose and underlying conception of the alchemist.” Subsequent years have witnessed growing interest, research, and scholarly activity devoted to alchemy, hermeticism, and related fields, none more than at the present time with its steady flow of new editions of primary texts, new critical books and articles, and the appearance of new journals and specialized conferences and colloquia devoted to these subjects. Furthermore, a visit to virtually any bookshop reveals that there continues to be a large – and steadily increasing – popular and semi-popular market for these diverse materials.

Two related characteristics mark the academic, research-oriented side of this burgeoning enterprise: its interdisciplinary nature and its tendency to reassess and reinterpret, often radically, the authors, works, and ideas that are its focus, often with the result of discovering a high level of alchemical and hermetic interest where previously it had not been suspected or at least readily admitted. This is seen, for example, in the continuing reevaluation of the role of alchemy in the scientific thought of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, which has demonstrated conclusively that, much more than an early or casual interest, alchemy was at the heart of the thought and method of each of these pioneers of modern science.

Like Sir Isaac Newton whose work concludes this collection, the alchemical interests and writings of Robert Boyle have undergone major reevaluation in recent years. For more than two and a half centuries following his death in 1691, Boyle's alchemical pursuits were conveniently overlooked by scientists and historians alike, who preferred to see him in a more rational, progressive, “mechanistic” light that precluded attention to such antiquated “occult” thought systems as alchemy. Consequently, beginning with the eighteenth century, little serious concern was shown for the Sceptical Chymist (1661) and the work included here, An Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold (1678), which were deemed unsuitable pastimes for the “Father of Modern Chemistry.”

This stereotypical portrait of a “Newtonized,” “Enlightenment” Boyle began to evaporate in the last decades of the twentieth century through the efforts of a new generation of scholars and editors, led by Michael Hunter and Lawrence M. Principe. The thesis of Principe's recent book, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest, for example, is that Boyle's alchemical interests “were serious and persistent, constituting a significant and influential dimension of his life, thought, and works” (12). Moreover, his alchemy was of a distinctly traditional type, grounded in chrysopoeia or gold-making through use of the philosopher's stone. In short, Boyle the alchemist writes as an “adept,” including use of secret codes, and – most remarkable of all – he displays keen interest in connections between alchemy and the supernatural world (Principe 188-213).

Beginning in the eighth century, Islamic alchemy was strongly influenced by writings that passed under the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan (ca. 721–ca. 800): “Geber” as he came later to be known in the Latin West. Like Khalid, Jabir was instrumental in preserving alchemy's Greek heritage and transmitting it to Islamic culture; he is also believed to have written texts in Arabic on a wide range of subjects: mathematics and geometry, magic squares, astrology, medicine, military science, as well as alchemy. Problems of attribution, however, are especially acute in the case of Jabir, and it is now accepted that many works once regarded as his were actually fathered upon him by writers of the Isma'ilite sect in the tenth century (Plessner, Jabir, DSB; Holmyard 72–3). It is also common practice to distinguish between this earlier, Greek-inspired Arabic body of writings, the Corpus Jabirianum, and the highly influential body of Latin writings that appeared falsely under the name of “Geber” in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This latter group includes such well-known works as the Summa perfectionis magisterii, Liber de investigatione perfectionis, Liber de inventione veritatis, Liber fornacum, and the Testamentum Geberi. Selections presented in this collection are drawn from the Latin writings and treat topics for which “Geber” achieved fame among medieval and Renaissance alchemists: the sulphur-mercury theory; the major processes in the preparation of the Stone (sublimation, descension, distillation, calcination, solution, coagulation, fixation, and ceration); furnaces and the “degrees” of fire; and other types of laboratory equipment.

Like Plato, Aristotle exerted a long and profound influence on alchemical thought through both his genuine works and the many pseudonymous writings attributed to him. Among the latter, the Secreta Secretorum purported to be a treatise written by Aristotle to his pupil Alexander the Great, but was in fact compiled from Syriac sources in the eighth century, then translated into Arabic, then into Latin in the thirteenth century by Philip of Paris, and from Latin into the modern languages of western Europe. The work's popularity – its diverse topics included the importance of religion, the proper appearance of a king, the principles of wise governing, the means to good health, astronomy, and alchemy – was such that Elias Ashmole included a version of its alchemical content in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum of 1652, entitled “John Lydgate Monke of St. Edmunds Bury, In his Translation of the second Epistle that King Alexander sent to his Master Aristotle.”

Among the genuine writings, Aristotle's Meteorology, despite its title, included important material on the “natural” subterranean formation of metals and minerals, and since alchemists believed that their Art imitated Nature, this treatise also became an established text on the artificial production of metals and related matters. In the following selection, Aristotle begins familiarly with the four elements, their “principles” (coldness, moistness, hotness, and dryness), and interconvertibility.

From the start, George Starkey's career has been marked by controversy and uncertainty. Born in Bermuda and holder of BA and MA degrees from Harvard College, Starkey (or Stirk) practiced medicine for a time in America before relocating to London about 1650; there he became active in the scientific circle of Samuel Hartlib and an associate of Robert Boyle. At some point, probably before his arrival in England, he began to promote the work of a mysterious adept who wrote under the pseudonym “Eirenaeus Philalethes,” with whom Starkey is usually, but not universally, identified. He published prolifically under both names until the time of his death, which perhaps resulted from exposure during the Great Plague of London. Publications continued to be issued under his name even after his death, and his influence on the development of chemistry is reflected in positive references by both Boyle and Newton.

Starkey's orientation toward healing and the formulation of new medicines is Paracelsian and iatrochemical (he often styles himself a “Philosopher by Fire”), and he was thus deeply engaged in disputes that were part of the politics of medicine in the seventeenth century. For example, an argumentative edge is often present even in the titles of his works, as in Pyrotechny Asserted and Illustrated, to be the surest and safest means for Arts Triumph over Natures Infirmities (1658). In the Admirable Efficacy … of true Oyl, reprinted below, Starkey argues for his own special formulation of this chemical medicine, in opposition to the false claims of his competitors.

Like the somewhat older Robert Fludd (1574-1637), the close contemporary Robert Boyle (1627-91), and the slightly younger Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Elias Ashmole's interests and achievements bridge the often invisible boundaries of seventeenth-century English magic and science. While Ashmole's genius did not lead him in the more specialized paths taken by these contemporaries, his accomplishments in many fields are noteworthy. He is best known, of course, as an antiquarian and collector whose remarkable assemblage of curiosities, bequeathed to him by John Tradescant the son (1608-63), was given to Oxford University and became the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum; likewise, his papers became central to the Bodleian Library's manuscript collection. Ashmole wrote The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter (1672). He was a member of both the Royal Society and the Learned Society of Astrologers, thus finding a place amongst the champions of the “New Philosophy” and with London's leading astrologers, including William Lilly. Ashmole was himself a notable practitioner of astrology and a student of Rosicrucianism. Most, if not all, of these interests are reflected in the “Prolegomena” to the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum.

As its full title suggests, the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, Containing Severall Poeticall Pieces of our Famous English Philosophers, who have written the Hermetique Mysteries in their owne Ancient Language is Ashmole's major contribution to the preservation of early English alchemical texts written in poetic form. It is a monument to Ashmole's interest in alchemy and an expression of his nationalistic fervor: a means of paying tribute to Thomas Norton, George Ripley, Chaucer, John Dastin, Edward Kelly and John Dee – more than thirty identified and anonymous pieces in all – that have their Englishness in common.

George Ripley is the best known English alchemist and alchemical author of the late medieval period. Although a canon regular of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington in Yorkshire, he travelled extensively on the Continent in search of alchemical knowledge (“Great secrets … in farre countries I did learne,” Epistle, st. 3) and supposedly laid the foundations for attainment of the philosopher's stone while studying in Italy. That Ripley was reputed to be successful is evident from the widely circulated account of his stay on the island of Rhodes where he was a guest of and a lavish contributor to the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

A vast amount of Ripley material exists in manuscript, indicating that he was prolific and that his works were widely disseminated and highly regarded; in addition, his writings appeared in printed editions into the eighteenth century. Chief among his works is The Compund of Alchymy, a long alchemical poem written in rhyme royal and dedicated to King Edward IV. In it, Ripley purports to reveal the process for making the philosopher's stone through detailed discussion of each of its twelve stages or “gates.” This work was first printed in 1591, 120 years after its composition, and also reprinted in Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652). Ripley's importance was recognized throughout the seventeenth century, as he is frequently cited by Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, and the Compound received detailed commentary in Eirenaeus Philalethes’ (i. e. George Starkey's) Ripley Reviv'd (1678).