The Alexandrian alchemists, as philosophers of nature steeped in Greco-Egyptian thinking, define the properties of metals as living bodies. Substances change and flow, shrink and expand and take in nourishment. They grow and consume each other.
The death of one metal is needed to create another. Once a metal departs from its recognized state of uniqueness unto itself it has died or ceased to exist as the metal it was. Then what has become of it? It cannot return to its present state but can be purified or combined with another.
Greek philosophy purveys the four elements of Empedocles, promoted by Aristotle. Water, earth, air and fire compose all things. Matter can be broken down to its base components. Yet something is missing. Aristotle adds aether, but the philosophers are not satisfied.
The Greeks continue to puzzle out the things the world is made of, the prima materia or Prime Matter. Someone suggests quicksilver. What early philosophers mention in passing grows to a vital movement in later centuries, when their philosophies are reborn.
When alchemy develops in Greco-Roman Egypt on the foundations of Greek philosophy, it brings along the concept of prima materia as a core tenet. It also carries the enigma of a mystic stone. A stone may or may not be a metal but it is with metals made.
For instance, mercury (Hg) is a major component of cinnabar (HgS). When cinnabar is heated mercury appears like beads of sweat upon the rock.
In c. 5th century BCE the strange stone is mentioned by Greek philosopher Democritus. Again he gives it life-like qualities, as in gathering:
" ... The stone is not formed until it has gathered all the colors that exist in the universe, and until it has been colored with all the simple and complex colors."
The stone aids in its own creation but needs the wisdom or work of the alchemist to become complete, formed as the perfect being, essence, powder, plant, rock or vapor. Needless to say this stone evolves greatly as time goes by. The prima materia remains a central theme.
In the 13th century Arnaldus de Villa Nova describes prima materia as if a living being:
"That there abides in nature a certain pure matter, which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies that it touches."
Descriptions of the prima materia change through history and by the 16th century it's known by many names including the Angel of Violet Light, the Dragon, Mercury, and Dung. Although the prima materia is not the mystic stone, it is sometimes called the stone, to some confusion.
While the Islamic alchemists reject the premise in c. 1025, the stone remains central to Western alchemical thought. Alchemists seek the purest of substances, the highest and most divine. This is gold, for gold doesn't rust or corrode. It doesn't change color when it gets old.
Quicksilver, the caustic metal, consumes gold. It's called argenturn vivurn or “alive silver” until after the 4th century, when it becomes known as mercury. Alchemists of old see things in a very holistic way.
Before the periodic table (1863), before the definition of base and noble metals (14th century), anthropomorphic qualities explain the behavior of metals, rocks and all components of creation.
For instance in the 16th century, Swiss alchemist Paracelsus attributes gnomic qualities to the causes of rumbling and shaking of the earth. These industrious gnomes can now be found in gardens throughout the world.
During medieval times metals are thought to form in the earth as base, and mature into precious metals. This seems to be confirmed by ore miners who find copper near silver and gold, as well as a mischievous German imp Nickel (little Nick), who corrupts the copper.
In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo writes,
Maria or Mary the Jewess of c. 100 AD attributes genders to the metals. Thus quicksilver is feminine, fluid, mutable. Sulfur is hard, hot, combustible. "Join the male and female," Mary is fond of saying, "and you will find what is sought."
She first corresponds metals and metallurgy to the human body:
"Just as human is composed of four elements, likewise is copper; and just as human results [from the association of] liquids, of solids, and of the spirit, so does copper."
Fifteen hundred years later, during the Renaissance, Mary's writings have traveled through the Islamic Golden Age to great awe and are eagerly read in Europe. As none of her original works seem to survive these are probably translations.
Mary emphasizes the union of the "white Gumm" and "red Gumm" (resins) in an alchemical marriage. This later becomes the unity of opposites and the symbolic marriage of the White Queen and Red King.
From the union of the Red King and White Queen is born the Rebis, Divine Hermaphrodite, child of Hermes and Aphrodite. The Rebis is the resolution of opposites and represents the divine work or Magnus Opus of the Alchemist.
Red and white are color themes resounding from the depths of time and onward into the future. Black, white and red are the first three shades of color an infant sees, with red being the first true color.
Sometimes the god Mercury is pictured as the Divine Hermaphrodite. Like Hermes, Mercury is a bisexual god so contains the seeds of the male principle and female principle, the perfect joining and creation, already within.
The birth of the Rebis or Mercury / Rebis constitutes the red or rubedo stage of the alchemical process, the reddening or iosis, the final phase as the alchemist nears the Magnum Opus. But within it are the seeds of destruction, for the process of iosis contains the root ios, rust.
Like all living things, the metal returns to the earth. Only the pure and uncorrupted gold remains pristine forever. In ancient Egypt, silver is the bones of the gods, and gold is their flesh.
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