The Secrets of Alchemy

«My goal is to provide a reliable guide to the various secrets of alchemy. A comprehensive history of the subject not only would run to unreadable length but also would be premature» — se propone como guía, y acota el alcance en la misma frase: una historia comprensiva sería prematura.

«Alchemy’s primary sources present a forbidding tangle of intentional secrecy, bizatre language, obscure ideas, and strange imagery» — la maraña de las fuentes; «bizatre» es lo que imprime la capa de texto, y la lectura restituida —bizarre, forma que el propio libro escribe bien en seis planas— no está cotejada contra el facsímil.

«Alchemy, like other scientific pursuits, is more than a collection of recipes» — la alquimia exige teoría.

«Historians of science customarily divide the history of Western alchemy into three main chronological periods; the Greco-Egyptian, the Arabic, and the Latin European» — la periodización en tres fases NO es suya: la adjudica a la costumbre de los historiadores.

«To these three eras of the standard periodization should be added a fourth, which stretches from the eighteenth century to the present day» — y su aportación es la cuarta era, que añade.

«The exact origin of the Tablet remains obscure. Most evidence indicates that it was written centuries after the bulk of the philosophical or technical Hermetica, and that it is an original Arabic composition dating from the eighth century. No Greek precursor or any earlier Greek citations of it have been located despite exhaustive searches» — la datación de la Tabula Smaragdina, con la cautela con que la fuente la encabeza.

«by the tenth century in the Islamic world, Hermes had grown into the founder of alchemy, a native of Babylon, and the author of a dozen more-or-less alchemical works» — Hermes convertido en fundador.

«Historians of science argued vociferously over whether Geber was really Jabir. Recent scholarship has settled the issue: he was not. Geber was a late thirteenth-century Latin author» — la adjudicación de Geber.

«The author concealed behind the pseudonym of Geber is probably an Italian Franciscan friar and lecturer named Paul of Taranto» — y su identificación probable.

«We owe this identification, and the solution to the “Jabir-Geber” problem, to the painstaking studies of William R. Newman» — de quién es la adjudicación: Principe delega la prueba en William R. Newman.

«The anonymous Arabic author seems to have drawn upon an early third-century book against heresies» — la Turba y su cantera, en modo conjetural.

«Around the year 900, another alchemical classic first appeared, known generally by its Latin title Turba philosophorum» — y su datación.

«several books with this title were produced in the 1400s and 1500s; the earliest of them is attributed (falsely) to Arnald of Villanova» — el Rosarium más antiguo y su atribución falsa.

«even though the real St. Thomas Aquinas was ambivalent or skeptical about alchemy, in the fourteenth century (well after the Angelic Doctor’s death) an allegorical work called The Rising Dawn (Aurora consurgens) was circulated under his name» — la Aurora consurgens bajo el nombre de Tomás de Aquino.

«New alchemical books were likewise written under the names of revered (and safely dead) figures like Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, Catalan philosopher Ramon Lull, and a host of others» — los nombres venerados —y convenientemente muertos— que sirven de percha.

«Pseudonymity both legitimated these writings by attaching them to celebrated names and provided anonymity for their true authors» — y el motivo del pseudoepígrafe: legitimar por un lado, dar anonimato por el otro.

«Soon after Consideration of the Fifth Essence began to circulate, another author—whose identity remains unknown—co-opted large sections of the book, combined them with additional materials, and produced the Book of the Secrets of Nature or of the Quintessence (Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia)» — el mecanismo del pseudoepígrafe luliano: un anónimo se apropia de Rupescissa.

«The book circulated under the name of Ramon Lull or Llull (1232-1315), a Catalan theologian and philosopher of the previous century who actually wrote negatively about alchemy» — y lo pone bajo el nombre de quien había escrito contra la alquimia.

«the author of the Book of the Secrets of Nature co-opted the Testamentum as part of the Lullian corpus he began producing» — el Testamentum es pieza anterior, anexada después al corpus.

«Of course, these prized manuscripts were really Starkey’s own compositions» — Eirenaeus Philalethes es George Starkey.

«But he hid his authorship so well, and apparently told the tales of Philalethes’ exploits so convincingly, that even his friend Boyle never knew the truth» — y hasta dónde llegó el ocultamiento.

«It is reported that Diocletian ordered all “books written by the Egyptians on the cheimeia of silver and gold” to be burned» — el auto de fe de Diocleciano, que la fuente da en modo reportado.

«The source, an account of the martyrdom of Christians during Diocletian’s persecutions, claims that this measure was taken to prevent the Egyptians from amassing enough wealth to rebel again» — y de dónde sale el dato: un martirologio de cristianos, no una persecución de alquimistas.

«Zosimos refers to an early alchemist named Chémés or Chymés, and in another passage claims that the art was initially revealed by an angel in a book titled Chémeu» — la revelación angélica según Zósimo.

«Zosimos undoubtedly drew the germ of this notion from the apocryphal Hebrew Book of Enoch (or 1 Enoch), wherein fallen angels teach the productive arts to mankind» — y de dónde la toma, según Principe.

«Chrysopoetic authors commonly claimed that “all the adepts say one thing,” meaning that regardless of apparent differences of expression, all authentic authors agree on how to make the Philosophers’ Stone» — la premisa que mueve el Index chemicus: la unanimidad declarada de los adeptos.

«It likewise inspired Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), an avid seeker after the secrets of alchemy, to compile his enormous “Index chemicus” in an attempt to piece together the entire secret by collecting and grouping together similar terms and expressions found in over a hundred books» — el Index chemicus de Newton.

«there existed considerable disagreement over the correct material to take in hand» — y su límite, en la frase siguiente: Principe no avala esa unanimidad.

«she and her father had uncovered the true meaning and practice of alchemy that had lain hidden in the secretive writings of former ages» — el giro esotérico decimonónico en Mary Anne Atwood.

«His doctoral dissertation, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena, was based on the séances of his cousin Helly Preiswerk in which he participated» — la disertación de Jung y las sesiones con Helly Preiswerk.

«many historians of science have adopted the practice of using the archaic spelling chymistry to refer to the whole range of practices that nowadays would be classed under chemistry and alchemy. This terminology was suggested both to recognize the undifferentiated domain of “alchemy and chemistry” and to transcend the automatic implications prompted nowadays by the words alchemy and chemistry» — la propuesta de «chymistry»: la adjudica a los historiadores de la ciencia, no a sí mismo.

«Consequently, I will use the term chymistry hereafter where appropriate» — y la acota: donde sea apropiado, no siempre.

«Everything within the ambit of chymistry that was most easily subject to criticism—for example, the Philosophers’ Stone, metallic transmutation, and so forth—was split off and increasingly labeled as alchemy» — cómo se fabricó la frontera: lo criticable se desgajó y se rotuló alquimia.

«became the scapegoat for chymistry’s sins, driven from the respectable quarters where a newly purified chemistry could now reside» — el chivo expiatorio.

«Scratching beneath the surface of the above sketch reveals a considerably messier picture than what first appears» — y el límite que él mismo le pone a ese esquema.

«Alchemy’s public repudiation did not actually eradicate it but merely drove it underground» — la repudiación pública no la erradicó.

«the use of Decknamen, a German term meaning “cover names» — los Decknamen.

«Decknamen serve a dual purpose: they maintain secrecy, but they also allow for discreet communication among those having the knowledge or intelligence to decipher the system. They simultaneously conceal and reveal» — su doble función.

«Zosimos himself tells us that they are allegorical descriptions of practical transmutational processes. In other words, the actors, places, and actions described are personified Decknamen woven into a coherent and extended narrative» — las «Visiones» de Zósimo según su propio autor.

«Some modern writers have read various mystical or psychological meanings into Zosimos’s allegorical accounts, but in so doing they have largely ignored their context» — y la objeción de Principe a las lecturas místicas y psicológicas.

«For an edition, translation, and historical contextualization of the Summa, see Newman’s The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber» — William R. Newman, edición y contextualización de la Summa.

«Plessner’s work extends and corrects the foundational, and still valuable, work on the text by Julius Ruska, Turba philosophorum: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Alchemie (Berlin: Springer, 1931)» — Martin Plessner extiende y corrige a Julius Ruska sobre la Turba.

«Note, however, that Holmyard’s historical claims in this article about the origin and dating of the Tabula have since been shown to be wrong» — y la objeción nombrada a E. J. Holmyard sobre el origen y la datación de la Tabula.

«Martelli (pp. 99-114) also disposes of the earlier notion, frequently repeated in the literature, that the Physika kai mystika was written by one Bolos of Mende, a Greco-Egyptian author of the third and second centuries BC» — Matteo Martelli y el descarte de Bolos de Mende como autor del Physika kai mystika.

«authenticity of the work as a translation from Arabic rather than as an original Latin composition was denied by Julius Ruska, Arabische Alchemisten I, pp. 33-35, but partial Arabic versions have since been found: Ullmann, Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, pp. 192-93, and al-Hassan, “The Arabic Original.”» — el pleito sobre el De compositione alchemiae: Ruska lo negó, Ullmann y al-Hassan hallaron versiones árabes parciales.

«into question, including by Stavenhagen (pp. 52-60), but has been reaffirmed convincingly by Richard Lemay, “L’authenticité de la Préface de Robert de Chester a sa traduction du Morienus,” Chrysopoeia 4 (1990-91): 3-32; see also Didier Kahn, “Note sur deux manuscrits du Prologue attribué» — y el del prólogo de Roberto de Chester, reafirmado por Richard Lemay y Didier Kahn.

«On Flamel and his legend, see Robert Halleux, “Le mythe de Nicolas Flamel, ou les méchanismes de la pseudépigraphie alchimique,” Archives internationales de l'histoire des sciences 33 (1983): 234-55» — Robert Halleux sobre el mito de Flamel y los mecanismos de la pseudepigrafía alquímica.

«On Dee and angels, see Deborah Harkness, fohn Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)» — Deborah Harkness, invocada como fuente para Dee y los ángeles: es la obra que esta misma base ficha aparte.

«This term and an archivally rich study of “contractual alchemy” and the construction of the category the “false alchemist” are presented in Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)» — Tara Nummedal, invocada por su estudio de la alquimia contractual y de la construcción del «falso alquimista».

«No historical Abbot Cremer has ever been identified; an alchemical treatise purporting to be his and that tells the Lull legend appeared in the seventeenth century: Testamentum Cremeri, published by Michael Maier in his Tripus aureus (Frankfurt, 1618)» — la adjudicación del abad Cremer, figura sin identificar histórica.

«alchemical writers “call a single thing by many names while they call many things by a single name» — Zósimo sobre el uso alquímico de los nombres.

«These writers, after they have frequently called their reader their son and made solemn professions... that they will disclose to him their secrets ... put him off with riddles instead of instructions» — y el estallido de Robert Boyle ante los textos alquímicos tardíos.

«my method is to present knowledge by cutting it up and dispersing it into many places» — Jabir declarando el método de la dispersión del saber.

«I am the shade of Capocchio, who falsified metals with alchemy. And you should remember ... how I was a good ape of nature» — el alquimista que Dante pone en el octavo círculo.

«Receive the gift of God under a sacred seal,” while the student responds, “I will keep the secrets of holy alchemy secretly» — y el intercambio maestro-discípulo que ilustra Thomas Norton.

«the Sulfur is like the substance of the paternal seed, and the Mercury like the menstrual blood which is coagulated into the substance of embryos» — y la analogía embriológica que Principe cita de Alberto Magno.

«Man is the true laboratory of the Hermetic Art; his life the subject, the grand distillatory, the thing distilling and the thing distilled» — y la formulación de Atwood que Principe cita.

«Eirenaeus Philalethes [George Starkey], Ripley Reviv'd (London, 1678» — la identificación en el aparato de notas.