CHYMIA.

Science and Nature in Early Modern Europe (1450-1750)

International Conference. El Escorial (Madrid), 7-12 September 2008

The meaning of the symbols in alchemic literature

from the beginning of the XVII century

Dr. Raimon Arola

(Universitat de Barcelona)

In this paper, we will try to demonstrate how, in alchemic literature from the beginning
of the XVII century, the word symbol was converted into a useful concept to express
one of the most profound intentions of its authors: the attempt at joining empirical
science with spiritual life, or, to be more precise, being able to argue the foundation of
their Christian faith by means of their knowledge of chemistry. This was something, as
we all know, was never achieved in practice. However, we are convinced that this
intention continues to be latent in the hearts of humanity, awaiting the day that may be
contemplated without prejudices.
Words having a Greek origin that have endured in Western Latin provide a lesson in
their own historical transformation, especially those that in the classical world were
incorporated to Latin directly from Greek. Among them one can find the word symbol.
(1)
Its permanence and strength in the Romance languages is primarily due to the fact that
it was used to express the compendium of fundamental beliefs in which Christianity was
based. This compendium was named the Symbol of the Apostles, and currently it is also
known as the Creed. It dealt with the unwritten “sign of recognition” of the primitive
Christians, orally transmitted from the Apostles.
Although our intention is not to delve too deeply in this direction, perhaps it should
be taken into account in order to understand how, in the beginning of the XVII century
in alchemic circles, the word symbol became a term that designated part of the contents
of this art.
To discover the meaning of the Spanish words utilized during that time, there is no
better tool than the famous Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (“Treasure of the
Castillian or Spanish Language”) by Sebastián de Covarrubias (1539-1613), Felipe II’s
chaplain and an extraordinary scholar. The first edition of this work dates back to 1611
and it is fundamental to understanding the sense that the authors of that era wanted to
give to their writings.
Covarrubias was familiar with the alchemic language and was skeptical of it. As an
example, we can see that in the word Gold, he describes the Aurum potabile (“Potable
Gold”) and says that it is: “... a certain invention of the alchemists, who were convinced
that they could liquefy this metal in such a way so that it could flow just like water; I
don’t believe any of this”. In the word Alchemy, he uses the etymologies of Father
Martín del Río and Diego Urrea and ends up writing: “... it’s the same than quantity,
because alchemy is multiplied by the virtue of the philosophical stone or of
augmentation”. He also refers to alchemy in the word Fable, where he writes the
following in reference to the Greco-Roman gods:

They attributed those transformations, which were called metamorphosis, to the

corruption of certain things and the generation of others, and all the causes and natural
effects were explained away by these inventions; as to this day we are told about the feats of
the alchemists, whose language cannot be understood except by means of the special
knowledge and counter cipher that only they possess.

In relation to the word Symbol which we are dealing with, Covarrubias explains that
it meant a sign of recognition among the Greek soldiers and from this action the word
originated. Afterwards, he refers to the Symbol of the Apostles too, and finally he writes:
“Symbolic locutions are those that are intrinsically obscure, and are spoken by means of
similitudes and metaphors like Pythagoras’s sentences, which were commonly called
symbols”.
The inherent obscurity of the symbolic language is related to the “counter cipher”
that, according to Covarrubias, was used by the alchemists to understand the changes of
the natural phenomena taught by the ancient fables. However, here we must ask: With
what intention did the alchemists use languages that were purposefully secretive or
symbolic? In Covarrubias’s own definition with respect to the word symbol the answer
appears, that is to say, that his understanding of the world was composed of and
expressed by “similitudes and metaphors”. In this way, the alchemists of the XVII
century followed Pythagoras’s teachings, compiled essentially in Iamblichus's work, De
vita pythagorica. This author wrote the following there with respect to teaching by
means of similitudes or symbols:

The way of teaching by means of symbols was especially important in his

[Pythagoras's] school […] and how much of accuracy and truth symbols contained. If
they could emerge from their envelopes, they were released from their enigmatic way
and were adapted, by means of a simple and unadorned tradition, to the noble nature of
these philosophers, whose holiness exceeded human thought. (2)

In his words, Iamblichus depicts a tradition in which the symbols were of divine
origin, and for this reason, these explanations were tied to his considerations about the
theurgia (a Greek word combining theos,“god” and ergon “work”), a concept that
during the Renaissance became a synonym for the philosophical magic and would be
used by the humanist thinkers to distance themselves from witchcraft and other vulgar
magic.
Theurgia was based on the science of similitudes, which until the XVI century
played an important role in the thinking of Western culture. According to Michel
Foucault, it was the science of similitudes that guided the exegesis of the texts,
permitting the knowledge of both visible and invisible matter and the art of expressing
them, especially by means of four systems: convenientia, aemulatio, analogía and
sympathia. Each one of the parts of the creation would be interrelated with the others
and the knowledge of them would arise from magic as affirmed by Foucault himself:
“Magic was inherent to the paths of knowledge.” (3)
However, in the spirit of the Renaissance men, philosophical magic was much more
than a means of understanding reality. It was the manifestation of all that was
considered important: demonstrating the divinity of Jesus Christ with attestations
coming from other traditions, like, for example, the Pythagorean. This desire has been
often confused with a secretive, imprecise and inconsistent philosophy, and has been
referred to as “esoteric nuisance”, “occultist syncretism”, etc.
In one of the key texts of the emergence of the Italian Renaissance, Pico della
Mirandola wrote: “There is no science that certifies the divinity of Christ the way that
Magic and the Cabala do”. (4) Therefore, one could say that the science of similitudes
should be able to explain that God is Christ.
In the same vein, and perhaps developing Pico’s thesis, Paracelsus insisted that: “...
it would be necessary and positive if the theologists knew something about it [Magic],
and learned what it essentially is, so as not to call it unjustly and unjustifiably
Witchcraft”. (5)
However, and despite the warnings from Paracelsus and other Renaissance
philosophers, at the turn of the XVII century and even nowadays, the attacks on
Philosophical Magic, which theoretically explained the divinity of Christ, were included
in the ones on Witchcraft. It was as if Agostino Steuco’s Philosophia Perennis was an
ends in itself, when its only purpose was to be a means to develop the truth of the
Christian faith.
Continuing with the previously mentioned citation, Pico della Mirandola wrote the
following: “Performing magic is nothing other than joining the worlds (quam maritare
mundum)”. (6) This conclusion cannot be separated from the phrase which opens the
Tabula smaragdina, attributed to Hermes Trismegist, that affirms: “...whatever is below
is similar to that which is above. Through these, the marvels of the work of one only
thing (unius rei) are procured and perfected”. There is no possibility of the union
between the worlds if not for something that is similar, which in the end is joined into a
solitary, one only thing.
If we refer back to Covarrubias’s definition of the word symbol, we can understand the
inherent darkness in the symbols used in the Tabula, since they talk with and about
similitudes. The world of similitudes is not distinct from the magic or the theurgia
proposed by Pico, Paracelsus, and other Renaissance thinkers. However, what we would
like to demonstrate here is that in the Alchemic literature from the beginning of the
XVII century, the language of symbols and magic was not based on a series of more or
less syncretic or esoteric correspondences, but instead it had to do with an
epistemology. That is to say: the knowledge of how was united or is unified the spiritual
world with the material world and, at the same time, divinity with humanity.
Therefore, based on the development of teúrgic ideas, there was an attempt to revisit
the message that is indicative of monotheism: that of a one and only God. And this does
not refer to an isolated God, but instead refers to a United God or a Unified God.
It is also necessary to remember that in the environments where the alchemic texts
of the XVII century appear, Hebrew is well known –Covarrubias came from a family
that converted– and he knew how to translate the Jewish prayer Shema correctly:
“Listen Israel, The Lord is our God, The Lord is One” (Dt 6, 4). According to what
experts explain about the Christian Cabala: “This does not mean that God is a single
entity, but instead of this, it is as if He had said: Let the other nations worship an
inaccessible God in Heaven or be prostrated in front of an impotent Earthly idol. Your
God, Israel, is the union of the Heaven and the Earth; for that reason God is one,
because He is reunified”. (7)
As we have already pointed out, this fundamental idea is not extraneous to the
Tabula Smaragdina, so: “Whatever is below is similar to that which is above”, and both
are one. The continuation of the Tabula Smaragdina is along the same line: “Through
these, the marvels of the work of one only thing (unius rei) are procured and perfected.
Also, as all things are made from one, by the consideration of one, so all things were
made from this one, by conjunction”.
One does not exist except “by conjunction”, in the continuous dialectics about the
union of that which is above with that which is below; that is to say, in the symbolic act.
We translate the text of the Tabula smaragdina in the same way that it appears in an
apocryphal treatise of 1599, attributed to Basilius Valentinus, and known as Azoth, siue
Aureliae occultae philosophorum. (8) We are going to use that treatise as a basis in
order to try to unite Christology with the sense of the symbol in the alchemic literature
from the beginning of the XVII century.
The second part of the Azoth is divided into short sections accompanied by small
xylographies, as if it was dealing with emblems or hieroglyphics, which are as
important as the actual text. As far as the relation between the text and the images are
concerned, the author uses the word symbol with the intention of summing up in it the
aggregate of his obscure teachings. These images were reproduced and reinterpreted
posteriorly on numerous occasions. The most interesting are the engravings which
appear in Johann Daniel Mylius’s Philosophia reformata, and which were later used by
Daniel Stolcius in the Viridarium chymicum.
This second part begins, in the manner of a prologue, with an engraving of Atlas and
with the words pronounced by this titan: “I am carrying the Heaven and the Earth and I
can observe them precisely”, and he finishes with the affirmation that, in order to the
hidden Gold, it is necessary to: “Take lunar-water or silver-water, containing the Sun’s
rays”.
Afterwards, the author reproduces exactly the beginning of The Divine Pymander
from the Corpus Hermeticum, when Pymander appears to Hermes while he is dozing
off, and offers to teach him all that he has always wanted to learn. Hermes then
comments: “...while [Pymander] was saying these things something happened, suddenly
everything was revealed to me in an instance”. After this surprising affirmation and in
the following section, the author transcribes the beginning of the Tabula Smaragdina:
“It is true and without lying, etc.”.
Here, we would like to point out something that for us seems to be relevant, which
is that the alleged monk naturally joined The Divine Pymander with the Tabula
Smaragdina. We believe that Basilius, perhaps following the teachings of Paracelsus,
wanted to show that the philosophy about the light of grace, explained in the Pymander,
is complimentary to the philosophy about the light of nature, transmitted in the Tabula
Smaragdina.
At the end of the transcription of the Tabula smaragdina, Basilius writes: “These
words are superior to all the others that have referred to this material. Also
Theophrastus [Paracelsus] has left some sentences in relation to this art. His principal
saying consists of the following: Take the Moon from the firmament...”, and the
fragment ends with the description of various operations that are specified posteriorly.
The Azoth’s section that follows is entitled: Symbolum Frater Basilii Valentini, and
with it we are going to close the circle of our thoughts, because Basilius uses here the
word symbol to summarize his philosophy. In this fragment, the author constructs a
complicated discourse that does not seem to make any sense and which ends with the
following words: “The same as the soul, the body and the spirit consists of two things,
of which all things are one, and this one brings together the fixed and the volatile […].
The philosopher said: all of this is nothing but double Mercury, its name is hidden and it
must be looked for diligently and assiduously”.
The text of the Tabula smaragdina and that of the Symbolum Frater Basilii
Valentini come accompanied by the same symbolic image (figure 1). In a feature of the
upper part, we can contemplate a cup which receives the rays from the Sun and the
Moon and is situated above the sign of Mercury. As we have just finished reading, the
symbol proposed by Basilius concludes with: “all of this is nothing but double
Mercury”.
Figure 1. Theatrum chemicum, Strasbourg, 1602; IV, 497.
 The cup receiving the rays from the Sun and the Moon transmits to us the
Cosmopolite’s celebrated fragment known as the Aenigma philosophorum. And this
relation is not only thematic, as in both, the Theatrum chemicum and the Bibliotheca
chemica curiosa, the compilers begin the section in which Basilius’s text is included
with a complete transcription of the Aenigma philosophorum of the Cosmopolite, the
twelfth adept.
As everybody know, the story of the Cosmopolite is narrated in first person and
describes a trip that ends in a paradisal land, which, however, lacks water, the only
potable source being: “the water extracted from rays of the Sun or the Moon, which
only very few people could accomplish”. Afterwards, using different narrative tools, the
protagonist slowly discovers the virtues of this kind of water. The solar tree, the
salamander, and, definitively, all pure life is generated by it. The secret is in the fact that
the water “is extracted from the rays of the Sun or the Moon, by means of the power of
a magnet”.
The Cosmopolite, like Basilius Valentinus, describes two things that are one. We
propose the reading of this fragment, comparing it with that of the alchemic symbol: the
conjunction into one that which is in Heaven (the Sun and the Moon) with something
hidden in the Earth (the magnet). This conjunction can only happen as long as both are
similar, like two parts of the same unit that want to find themselves such as they were in
the beginning. We should remember that this is the original meaning of the word symbol
in Greek.
 Figure 2. Theatrum chemicum, Strasbourg, 1602; IV, 499.

The second part of Basilius’s Azoth continues with another symbol called:
Symbolum Novum (figure 2), where the author recounts the battle between the Lion and
the Eagle, which represent the Sun and the Moon. Basilius finishes this section
reaffirming the importance of Jesus Christ, or the Word, in everything he describes.
According to him, what the Symbolum Novum represents is: “The oldest mystery,
subsisting since the beginning of the world, since the creation of Adam. The science of
nature, inspired by the generous and great God, by means of his Word”.
The section which follows the preceding one explains what the First Matter is and
the different operations for obtaining the elixir. The second part of the Azoth ends with
another symbol: Symbolum Saturni. This is a really surprising fragment where the
downfall of Adam and Eve and their redemption by means of their death is described as
follows: “after their death, they engender a child of a supreme essence”, that also would
die and be resuscitated for the salvation of his imperfect and weak siblings.
These are, very summarized, the symbols proposed by the author of the Azoth, about
them we would like to point out, once again, the intention of explaining the mysteries of
the faith by means of chemical operations. Realizing them and obtaining the
Philosopher’s Stone means re-finding the eternal life of Jesus Christ, not only as
spiritual faith, but also as experimental knowledge capable of uniting Heaven with
Earth. In other words, this means joining the lowest with the highest into one: that is to
say, Christ.
In this way, the word symbol became a very appropriate way of expressing its
authors’ intentions: that of joining science with the spiritual life in its search for the
renewal of Christianity.
It is evident that the effort of Valentinus and the others Paracelsian alchemists, did
not succeed and that the universal medicine extracted from the Stone had nothing or
little to do with the fundamental principles of the Christian faith. However, those who
tried deserve our consideration and the fact of presenting them as failures who impeded
historical development would be, at least, an overly simplistic approach.
In that era, Europe was submerged in a religious debate of incomprehensible
dimensions. As far as we know, this conflict led to the the 30 Years’ War, which started
in 1618. One of the principal motives of this war was the religious disputes during that
time. In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed and Europe separated religious
themes from politics, as well as from science, the arts, philosophy, etc.
Each discipline advanced independently of the others. Religion was limited to
individual beliefs and strict morals, science progressed by fundamentally being based
on positivism, the arts ended up in the most absolute subjectivism, philosophy
disassociated the definition of Being with any idea about God... However, history has
not ended, and perhaps the XXI century will demand a new encounter of the different
disciplines.

[NOTES]
(1) From the word symbolon, cf. R. Arola, Alquimia y religión. Los símbolos herméticos del s. XVII,
Siruela, Madrid, 2008; 43-50.
(2) Vida pitagórica, Etnos, Madrid 1991; 75.
(3) Les Mots et les Choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Gallimard, Paris, 1966; 47.
(4) “Conclusiones Magice numero XXVI secundum opinionem propriam”, n. 9.
(5) “Curar y regenerar”, in Revista ArsGravis, n. 3: www.arsgravis.com/revdetall.php?id=3&art=97
(6) “Conclusiones Magice numero XXVI secundum opinionem propriam”, n. 13.
(7) Cf. E. d’Hooghvorst, Le Fil de Pénélope, La Table d’Émeraude, Paris, 1996; 145-146.
(8) In Theatrum chemicum, Strasbourg, 1602; v. IV, 417. Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, Genova, 1702; v.
II, 198.