Forshaw Cabala Chymica

Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica

—Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala

Peter J. Forshaw

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and

the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the

Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth

century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth

century. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical

methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting

enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel

combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their

work. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of

Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy

and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation

to chemical medicine. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic

elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the

discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly

consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabba-

lah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the

Kabbala Denudata.

Early historiography of the relations between Kabbalah andAlchemy

The early seventeenth century was witness to various publications that intimatedof links between the laboratory art of alchemy and the mystical Jewish art ofKabbalah. Two of the best-known instances are publications by Paracelsians:Franz Kieser’s Cabala Chymica (1606) and Stephan Michelspacher’s Cabala:Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia (1616). Both include engravings thatimply that Cabala was a necessary part of alchemical theory and practice, onethat related the “supernatural” to the “natural,” the Emerald Tablet’s heavens

ambix, Vol. 60 No. 4, November, 2013, 361–389

© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2013 DOI 10.1179/0002698013Z.00000000039

above to the earth below.1 In truth, neither work displays anything that would berecognised as Kabbalah by a Jewish practitioner. This essay investigates the pro-blematic relationship between alchemy and Cabala and shows that the latter wasdeployed in different ways by a variety of alchemists experimenting with disciplin-ary combinations that fell somewhere between Cabalistic Alchemy and ChymicalCabala (Figures 1 and 2).Historians of science have devoted little attention to the confluence of alchemy

and Kabbalah, as is the case, too, with the broader subject of alchemy and religion.2

Hermann Kopp (1817–1892) briefly touched on Jewish and Mosaic connectionswith alchemy in his Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie (1869–1875).3 Nowheredoes he make any mention of Kabbalah. A decade later, however, with the publi-cation of Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit (1886), he included a sectionon the “Relations between Alchemy and the Kabbalah.”4 Reflecting on how Kabba-lah was put to the service of alchemy, Kopp mentions Ramon Lull’s apparent knowl-edge of Kabbalah and the impact of his Ars Magna on alchemical speculation, suchas the combinatorial figures found in the fourteenth-century pseudo-Lullian Testa-mamentum, but believes that Kabbalah was explicitly brought into contact withalchemy by Paracelsus.5 In Les Origines de l’Alchimie (1885), however, MarcellinBerthelot (1827–1907) argues that “the Jews have an importance of the firstorder in this fusion of the religious and scientific doctrines of the Orient andGreece,” claiming that “the chaldeo-rabbinic work of Kabbalah was linked withalchemy during the Middle Ages”; indeed, “this liaison between Jewish traditionsand alchemy goes far back.”6 Unfortunately, he provides little to support his convic-tion. A few years later, in Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (1887–1888),Berthelot included among the works of Zosimos the Livre véritable de Sophé l’Égyp-tien et du divin seigneur des Hébreux (et) des puissances Sabaoth, which intimates of

1 Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen: Martin Spiessen, 1606). The “Figura Cabalae” (Fig. 1) on sig.)([ivv]depicts a bearded figure holding a geometrical compass and square, standing behind a terrestrial globe surroundedby the seven astrological planets, all radiating their energies onto the earth. The relationship between the planets andearth is described by the words “Supernaturalis” and “Naturalis,” respectively, at the top and bottom of the engrav-ing, and reinforced by the famous “As above, so below”message from the Emerald Tablet at the base of the engrav-ing. For a variation of this figure, minus the line from the Emerald Tablet, see Lazarus Zetzner, comp., Theatrumchemicum (Strasburg: Haeredum Eberhardi Zetzneri, 1661), Vol. 6: 343, prefacing the anonymous Physica NaturalisRotunda Visionis Chemicae Cabalisticae, 344–81. See also Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst undNatur, in Alchymia (Augsburg: David Francken, 1616) (Fig. 2), Plate 2 “Anfang. Exaltation” and “Cabala.”

2 For notable exceptions, see Italo Ronca, “Religious Symbolism in Medieval Islamic and Christian Alchemy,” inWestern Esotericism and the Science of Religion, ed. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leuven: Peeters,1998), 95–117; Chiara Crisciani, Il Papa e l’alchimia: Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e l’elixir (Rome: Viella, 2002);Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York:Columbia University Press, 2009).

3 Hermann Kopp, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie, 2 vols. (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn, 1869), 1: 396–402on Moses; 1: 402–06 on Maria [the Jewess].

4 Hermann Kopp,Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit: Ein Beitrag zu Culturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: CarlWinter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1886), 2: 228–34.

5 Kopp, Die Alchemie, 2: 229.6 Marcellin Berthelot, Les Origines de l’Alchimie (Paris: Georges Steinhell, 1885), 53–54 (Cabale); 16, 54, 60, 108,

348 (Cabalistique).

362 PETER J. FORSHAW

profound links between the “two sciences and two wisdoms” of the Egyptians andthe Jews, but again with no direct discussion of Kabbalah.7 In reality, neither of thesetwo influential early historians of alchemy were correct; as shall be seen, the first

figure 1 “Figure of Cabala” in Franz Kieser, Cabala Chymica (Mulhausen, 1606). (Courtesyof the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)

7 Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des Anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1887–1888), 2: 205ff.

CABALA CHYMICA OR CHEMIA CABALISTICA 363

identifiable combination of alchemy and Kabbalah originates with an Italian priestin the first decades of the sixteenth century.8

The few historians who have considered the confluence of the two disciplines inmore detail have tended to come from backgrounds in religious studies. Gershom

figure 2 Plate 2 “Anfang. Exaltation” and “Cabala” in Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala,Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia (Augsburg, 1616). (Courtesy of the BibliothecaPhilosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)

8 Little has been written by historians of science about the relations between alchemy and Kabbalah. Indicative of thisis the short entry by Karin Figala and Claus Priesner on “Kabbala, Kabbalah, Cabbala” in Alchemie: Lexikon einerHermetischen Wissenschaft, ed. Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998), 187–90. There aresome references in Alan Pritchard, Alchemy: A Bibliography of English-Language Writings (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1980), but mostly to primary sources, some of which turn out to have little relevance to thehistory of alchemy. French scholars, particularly Sylvain Matton and Didier Kahn, have been the most productive,and some of their material is cited below.


Scholem (1897–1982), pioneer in the academic study of the Jewish Kabbalah, con-tributed a short work on Alchemie und Kabbala (1925/1977), in which he displayedgreat erudition in Kabbalah, but less familiarity with alchemy, which he tended tosplit into either gold-making or some form of mystical practice.9 Scholem remarkedthat medieval Hebrew literature included remarkably few alchemical writings, andproblematised the whole relationship between transmutational alchemy that hasgold as its ultimate goal, and Kabbalah, where gold “is not at all a symbol of thehighest status.”10 While he correctly observed that many alchemical books that“flaunt the word Kabbalah on their title pages” actually have little to do with Kab-balah; that there is naturally some overlap of material, given that “the Old Testa-ment was shared equally by Jewish Kabbalists and Christian alchemists”; andthat there is a possible “coincidence of chemical and mystical processes” in Rosicru-cian material, his essential thesis that “alchemy and Kabbalah became widely synon-ymous among the Christian theosophers and alchemists of Europe” oversimplifiesthe issue and cannot be justified. This shall be seen below in the case of HeinrichKhunrath, who, contrary to Scholem’s claim, explicitly does not “argue for thisidentification process.”11

In his ground-breaking Les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (1964), Fran-çois Secret (1911–2003) included a short section on early modern Christian Cabal-ists and occult philosophy, including alchemy, a theme that he developed further inHermétisme et Kabbale (1992).12 Raphael Patai’s The Jewish Alchemists (1994)suggests some instances of overlap between Kabbalah and various kinds of speculat-ive, transmutational, medical, and spiritual alchemy: for instance, the interest shownin chrysopoeia by Hayyim Vital (1543–1620), one of the followers of Isaac Luria(1534–1572), the individual responsible for the great renaissance and reorientationof kabbalistic mysticism in the sixteenth century; but Patai’s claims for links withKabbalah are at times tenuous and somewhat overplayed.13 More recently,

9 Gershom Scholem, “Alchemie und Kabbala,” Eranos Jahrbuch 46 (1977): 1–96; reprint in Judaica 4 (1984): 19–127. This replaces the article of the same title in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums69 (1925): 13–30, 95–110, 371–74. I am using the English translation, Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. KlausOttmann (Putnam, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 2006).

10 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 20.11 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 11, 13, 41, 85, 88.12 François Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964) and Hermétisme et Kabbale

(Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992). See also Secret, “Notes sur quelques alchimistes italiens de la Renaissance,” Rinasci-mento, N.S., 13 (1973): 197–217, and “Palingenesis, Alchemy and Metempsychosis in Renaissance Medicine,”Ambix 26 (1979): 81–92.

13 Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994),340–64 (“Hayyim Vital, Alchemist”). See Gad Freudenthal’s review of The Jewish Alchemists in Isis 86 (1995):318–19, where he criticises Patai’s “historical laxity” and his ignorance of Scholem’s essay “Alchemie undKabbala,” and also questions the criteria by which Patai constituted his corpus, with inclusion of writings that“have nothing Jewish to them.” In his review in the British Journal for the History of Science 29, no. 1 (March1996): 93–94, Ole Peter Grell also points out Patai’s tendency to “overemphasise the significance of their [the alche-mists’] Jewishness.” For additional critical reviews, see Marc Saperstein in The American Historical Review 100, no.5 (December 1995): 1524, and Y. Tzvi Langermann in Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 4 (October–December 1996): 792–93. In The Journal of Religion, 75, no. 4 (October 1995): 596–97, Dov Schwartz praises Pataifor his “trailblazing work in a hitherto untouched area,” but questions some of the material selected.On Vital, see also Gerrit Bos, “Hayyim Vital’s “Practical Kabbalah and alchemy”: A 17th-Century Book of Secrets,”


Andreas Kilcher has revised some of Scholem’s claims and provided extremely usefulinsights into the alchemical material found in the influential Christian publication ofJewish Lurianic material, the Baroque high point of Christian Cabala, the KabbalaDenudata.14 Secret and Kilcher, in particular, are inspiring examples of scholars withan interdisciplinary approach, interested in those intellectually amphibious figureswho crossed disciplinary boundaries and attempted novel combinations of see-mingly disparate sciences and arts. This essay provides some slightly more detailedexamples of such hybrid approaches from early modern sources.

From Jewish Kabbalah to Christian Cabala: a brief introduction

As Jewish Kabbalah and its Christian reformulation may be unfamiliar to some his-torians of alchemy, let me begin with a brief overview of these traditions. TheHebrew term Kabbalah, which literally translates as “reception” or “tradition,”refers to the Jewish esoteric teaching that emerged in the High Middle Ages in Prov-ence and Northern Spain. Kabbalah is generally presented as having two main pre-occupations, related to cosmogony and theosophy respectively: Ma’aseh Bereshit(Work of Creation), based on the exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2; and Ma’aseh Merka-vah (Work of the Chariot), visions and reflections concerning the Throne on itsChariot described in the first chapter of Ezekiel.15 These two streams of speculationare seen as complementary, in the belief that “to know the stages of the creativeprocess is also to know the stages of one’s own return to the root of all existence.”16

The earliest extant Hebrew text of speculative thought on cosmology and cosmog-ony, the pre-kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), dates from sometimebetween the second and sixth century CE.17 It contains speculation on the charactersof the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Creator engraved the Divine Names andfashioned the Universe, each letter corresponding to a different principle of creationwith its own distinctive power. The Sefer Yetzirah also explicates the metaphysicalprinciples of the Sefirot (singular Sefirah), generally translated as “enumerations”or “measures”:18 ten principles mediating between God and the universe.19 Thetwenty-two Hebrew letters plus the ten Sefirot constitute what the Sefer Yetzirah

13 ContinuedJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994): 55–112. On Luria, see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul,Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

14 Andreas B. Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica. Knorrs spekulative Verbindung von Kabbala und Alchemie,” in Morgen-Glantz: Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesselschaft 13 (2003): 97–119.

15 For concise introductions to these terms, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian/Penguin, 1978),10–21, 88f.

16 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 20.17 Gershom Scholem, “The Problem”, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. Raphael J. Zwi Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 25.18 Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Prince-

ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 72.19 See the entry on the “Ten Sephirot,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob

Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1995; repr. 1999), 839–43. See also Scholem, Kabbalah, 96–116.


calls the “thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom,” by which God created the uni-verse, “with three types of things: with writing and numbers and speech.”20

The earliest extant text of Kabbalah proper is the Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Illumi-nation or Brilliance), dating from the end of the twelfth century.21 It is in the Bahirthat we first encounter the image of the sefirot as ten hierarchical emanations, whichfrom the fourteenth century came to be depicted by the ’Etz Hayyim or Tree of Life.This image was to become one of the central features of theosophical Kabbalah, asymbolic configuration of the sefirot arranged in three columns or pillars (Figure 3).From the end of the thirteenth century, the voluminous Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of

Splendour) became the authoritative text of Jewish mysticism. Like the Sefer Yet-zirah and Bahir, it expounds on the notions of the sefirot, but develops a widerrange of themes, beginning with the exegesis of the Mosaic account of creation inGenesis. The Zohar clearly has no intention of providing simply one authoritativeinterpretation of scripture, but instead emphasises that “all the words of theTorah… can all bear several meanings, and all good, and the whole Torah can beexpounded in seventy ways, corresponding to seventy sides and seventy wings.”22

This flexibility allowed space for many kinds of speculation, including, as weshall see, those concerning alchemy.23

At the dawn of the European Renaissance, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola(1463–1494) became the first Christian by birth known to have studied authentickabbalistic texts. Pico developed his own Christian form of Cabala in his famous900 Conclusiones Philosophicae, Cabalisticae et Theologicae (1486), 119 ofwhich were provocative arguments on the “Science of Cabala” that Pico was thefirst to introduce into the mainstream of Renaissance thought.24 Pico’s two majorinfluences were the Spanish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia (1240–ca. 1291) and theItalian rabbi Menahem Recanati (1250–1310), who represent two quite differenttypes of Kabbalah: the former ecstatic, the latter theosophical-theurgical. Recanatiis mainly concerned with the ten sefirot as divine emanations and engages in a sym-bolic exegesis of Scripture as the way to unravel their mysteries. The father of pro-phetic Kabbalah, Abulafia, on the other hand, concentrates on the names (shemot)of God and their permutations as a spiritual contemplative discipline by which mancan attain union with the divine.25 The presence of both these traditions is evident inPico’s first Cabalistic thesis, in which he declares, “Whatever other Cabalists say, in a

20 A. Peter Hayman, Sefer Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,2004), 59, version C.

21 On the concept of the Sefirot in the Bahir, see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, Chapter 2 “The Book Bahir,”sections 5 to 8.

22 The Zohar, trans. Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon (London & New York: The Soncino Press, 1984), Vol. 1, 171.23 For Scholem’s thoughts on the influence of alchemy on the Zohar, see Alchemy and Kabbalah, 25–40.24 On Pico and Kabbalah, see Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, Cap. III; S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s

900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval &Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998); Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989);M. V. Dougherty, ed., Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

25 On Abulafia and Recanati, see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy 1280–1510: A Survey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-versity Press, 2011).


first division I distinguish the science of Cabala into the science of sefirot andshemot, as it were into practical and speculative science.”26 Though neither detailednor systematic in his discussion of the Jewish Kabbalah, Pico nevertheless demon-strates an awareness of genuine Jewish kabbalistic literature and familiarity withsome of the highly idiosyncratic Jewish techniques of textual interpretation.

figure 3 The first known published representation of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, on thetitle page of a Latin translation of Joseph Gikatilla’s Portae Lucis (Gates of Light, 1516.)(Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)

26 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 519 (11 > 1).


Pico’s professed motivation for studying Cabala is to evangelise against hereticsand Jews and to demonstrate “powerful confirmation of the Christian religionfrom the very principles of the Hebrew Sages”; that is, to make use of Kabbalah’sown hermeneutical techniques to prove, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity.27

The significance of Pico’s Cabala should not, however, be restricted simply to Chris-tian polemic and apologetics. One of the many syncretic linkings that Pico made inhis Conclusions was his connection of the alphabetaria revolutio (revolution ofletters) of speculative Kabbalah with the ars combinandi or combinatorial art ofthe Catalan mystic Ramon Lull (1225–1315).28 Chaim Wirszubski suggests thatthe Cabalistic Conclusions “outgrew their original purpose” and that Pico cameto view Kabbalah from an entirely new standpoint, as “the first Christian who con-sidered Cabala to be simultaneously a witness for Christianity and an ally of naturalmagic.”29 Pico’s interest goes far beyond the simple confirmation of Christianitywhen in hisMagical Conclusions he famously (and notoriously) asserts that the divi-nity of Christ is best demonstrated by the science of magic and Cabala.30 As we shallsee, at least some alchemical practitioners familiar with both pseudo-Lullianalchemy and Cabala regarded their laboratory pursuits as part of a programme todemonstrate the truth of the Christian religion, at the same time as they undoubtedlyhoped to raise the status of alchemy far beyond a mere manual art into a natural phi-losophical auxiliary to Christianity.While Pico was active in Florence he was visited by the German scholar Johannes

Reuchlin (1455–1522), universally regarded as one of the key figures of Europeanscholarship and intellectual life at the turn of the sixteenth century. Reuchlin wasto write two of the most influential books of Christian Cabala, the De Verbo Mir-ifico (On the Wonder-Working Word, 1494) and the De Arte Cabalistica (On theCabalistic Art, 1517), that were to become the favoured textbooks for those inter-ested in the subject for the next hundred and fifty years.31 Reuchlin’s first cabalisticwork was important for the contribution it made to the Renaissance debateabout language, that is, the occult powers and properties of words and

27 Brian P. Copenhaver, “The Secret of Pico’s Oration: Cabala and Renaissance Philosophy,” in Renaissance and EarlyModern Philosophy, ed. Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 56–81, on 75; Picodella Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J.W. Miller, and Douglas Carmichael(Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1998), 29, 32; Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 523.

28 Harvey Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000),119. Just as Lull has sometimes been falsely credited with being the first Christian to show an acquaintance with Kab-balah due to the title of a work attributed to him, theOpusculum de auditu Kabbalistico, despite its lack of familiaritywith the Jewish tradition, so has he been credited with the authorship of many works on alchemy. On pseudo-LullianCabalistic texts that could have inspired Pico to associate the Lullian art with Cabala, see Paola Zambelli, L’apren-dista stregone: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico della Mirandola e seguaci (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1995),esp. 55–64. On pseudo-Lullian alchemy, see Michaela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raimond Lull(London: Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 1989).

29 Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, 151, 185.30 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 497 (9 > 9).31 On Reuchlin, see Joseph Dan, “The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and its Historical Significance,” in The Christian

Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and their Christian Interpreters, ed. Joseph Dan (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardCollege Library, 1997), 55–95; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Einleitung: Johannes Reuchlin und die Anfängeder christlichen Kabbala,” in Christliche Kabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag,2003), 9–48.


names.32 By the time he published De Arte Cabalistica, he was the leading ChristianHebraist of his age.33 In both works Reuchlin promotes a blend of authentic Jewishsources withNeo-Pythagoreanism, claiming that this philosophy, in particular the sym-bolic numbers, was ultimately derived from the older and more authentic Kabbalah.An important aspect of the new concept of language found in these ‘kabbalistic’

sources was a set of exegetical techniques having no counterpart in the Christianinterpretation of scripture. The Jewish kabbalistic method of exegesis was funda-mentally different: whereas the Christian exegete unravelled meaning whileleaving the text itself intact, the Kabbalist employed interpretative techniques thatreshaped and transformed the written text, decomposing or atomizing it into its con-stitutive elements, the Hebrew letters—indeed, even reducing the letters themselvesinto their parts, discovering (or inventing) a plethora of new meanings in seeminglyfamiliar material.34 These textual elements were combined and permuted accordingto three main hermeneutical techniques, most memorably recalled by the acronym ofthe Jewish kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla (1248–ca. 1305) in his Ginnat Egoz (Nut-Garden). The three letters of the Hebrew word for “Garden” (GNTh—Ginnat)denote the techniques ofGematria (arithmetical computations),Notarikon/Notaria-con (manipulation of letters into acronyms and acrostics, e.g. Ginnat) and Temuraor Tseruf (permutation, commutation, or transposition of letters).35

Since every Hebrew letter possesses an inherent numerical value, every letter,word, and phrase in the Torah has a mathematical significance through which cor-respondences can be found with other words, revealing internal resonances withinseemingly disparate sources.36 The thirty-two “wondrous paths of wisdom” withwhich the Sefer Yetzirah opens, for example, are denoted by the Hebrew lettersLamed (with the value thirty) and Beth (with the value two), which combine toform the Hebrew word “Leb,” meaning “heart.”37 These letters are also the firstand last letters of the Torah—the Beth of “Bereshit,” the first word of Genesis 1:1and the Lamed of “Israel,” the last word of Deuteronomy 34:12. Thus, the fivebooks of Moses constitute the “heart” of the Kabbalah, together with the tensefirot and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet that form all of the shemot ordivine names.38 One of the most influential examples of Gematria provided by

32 Charles Zika, “Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century,” Journal of theWarburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 104–38.

33 Joseph Leon Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1944), 50; Klaus Reichert, “Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings of Christian Kabbala,” in Mysticism,Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, ed. Karl Erich Grözinger and Joseph Dan (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,1995), 195–207.

34 On kabbalistic exegesis, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “Number, Shape, and Meaning in Pico’s Christian Cabala: TheUpright Tsade, the ClosedMem, and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel,” inNatural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplinesin Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1999), 25–76.

35 Elke Morlok, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 72, 225.36 Joseph Dan and Ronald C. Kiener, The Early Kabbalah (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), 11.37 Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir Illumination: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (York Beach, Maine: Samuel

Weiser, 1979), 23, 36.38 Moshe Idel,Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany, NY: State Univer-

sity of New York Press, 1990), 67; Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, 198.


both Pico and Reuchlin relates to the most powerful Jewish name for God, the inef-fable Tetragrammaton, YHVH. By cumulatively adding up the values of the groupsof letters when they are aligned according to the points of the Pythagorean Tetraktys—that is by adding Yod (ten) to Yod-He (fifteen) to Yod-He-Vau (twenty-one) toYod-He-Vau-He (twenty-six)—we reach the significant total seventy-two, associ-ated with seventy-two angelic powers.39

Reuchlin provides his readers with further examples of the techniques of speculativekabbalistic exegesis, but is far more interested in the theurgical techniques of practicalKabbalah. He emphasises the performative, ritualistic dimension of Cabala, one thatgives the pious practitioner access to the occult properties of nature.40 This movementback and forth between the spiritual and practical dimensions of the Cabalistic art isbrought out nicely when Reuchlin’s representative of the Jewish Kabbalah, Simon benEleazar, speaks of deification. He illustrates his argument that “life tends upwards byinstinct” with a scientific analogy: “Similarly with metals; for the finer metals bubbleup to form superior vapors, when drawn out by the art of alchemy.”41

The first “Cabalchemist”: Giovanni Agostino Pantheo

If Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola can be called the Father of Christian Cabala, then afellow Italian, the Venetian priest Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, assuredly deservesthe title Father of Cabalistic Alchemy or Chymical Cabala, for he is withoutdoubt the first Christian author to have attempted a combination of alchemy andCabala.42 Pantheo develops a hybrid “Cabala of Metals” (Cabala metallorum) intwo works: theArs transmutationis metallicae (Art of Metallic Transmutation), pub-lished in 1519 and The Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Voarchadumia againstAlchemy), which appeared in 1530.43

Already in Pantheo’s first work, which appeared just two years after Reuchlin’sOn the Cabalistic Art, we find references to the “ars cabalistica” and “truth ofmetals from the Cabalists” in the prefatory material, alongside mention ofPythagoras and Plato’s ruminations on the “science of numbers” (numerorumscientia), explained as knowledge of how “to add mixtures, and proportions ofmetals, together with their weights and numbers.”44 The Ars transmutationisincludes a circular diagram (Figure 4), with the first eight letters of the Roman

39 See Farmer, Syncretism, 543 (11 > 56); Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin and SarahGoodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 267.

40 James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science andMedicine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 1: 128. See also Zika, “Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico.”

41 Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, 46–47: “Eadem est ratio in metallicis quoque cum id quod generosius est inaltiores spiritus ebullit ab alkimia sublimatum, ut puriora semper ea videantur quae sunt sublimiora.”

42 On Pantheo, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1923–58), 8: 537–40.

43 Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1519) and Voarchadumiacontra Alchimiam: Ars distincta ab Archimia, et Sophia (Venice: Johannes Tacuinus, 1530). See Didier Kahn, Alchi-mie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567–1625) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), 64.

44 Ioannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1566), sigs.Aiijv and 25v. “… addere misturas, & proportiones metallorum, una cum eorum ponderibus, & numeris.”


alphabet around its circumference, each letter with its own symbolic meaning.45

While not identical to the Lullian wheels found in the Testamentum, this inclusionof a wheel in combination with references to Cabala suggests that Pantheo wasaware of Pico’s identification of Cabala with Lullian combinatorial art.46

figure 4 Giovanni Agostino Pantheo, Ars transmutationis metallicae (Venice, 1519), unnum-bered page, preceding 6r. (Courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.)

45 Pantheus, Ars transmutationis, 7v. For example, C represents the “First movement” (Primum motum), by which hemeans the beginning of the alchemy process, Calcination or Putrefaction; the second movement or process is G for“Generatio”; the third H for “Augmentatio”; and the fourth D for “Disiunctio or Separatio.”

46 The same wheel appears in the later Voarchadumia (1550), sig. 35v in a section with the apocalyptic title “AperioLibrum et Septem Signacula.” On the following page there is a marginal reference to pseudo-Lull’s Codicillus seuVademecum. Chapter IX of the Rouen, 1651 edition of the Codicillus, 25ff, contains a similar discussion of the


Pantheo is certainly intrigued by the kabbalistic technique of numerically analyz-ing significant words in enigmatic texts, especially the puzzlingDecknamen or covernames in alchemical literature. Indeed, he criticises those who only pay attention tothe superficial meanings of words, barely grasping the simple sense of a letter, ratherthan wisely looking for the kernel inside the shell.47 He introduces a “kabbalistic”system that assigns numbers to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew letters and attempts toshow the utility of numerical analysis by taking, for example, the word“Marthek,” a cover name mentioned by Lucas and Rosinus in the Turba Philoso-phorum,48 and glosses it with identifiable terms from the authoritative biblicallanguages. Pantheo explains that

the first natural principal is matter, or the material cause of earth, water, fire and air,according to God’s will (nutu dei), or Marthek, which in Greek is called neusi theu,and in Hebrew recon heloim, expressed in letters and numbers.49

On the following pages he presents these words in vertical columns, each letter ofthe word accompanied by its numerical value, depending on the alphabet beingused. The Latin word Nutu (Will) and the alchemical term Marthek each producea total of seventy-two, which immediately endows them with great significance, con-necting them with the divine name par excellence, the Tetragrammaton YHVH.50

We then discover that the Tetragrammaton conceals alchemical secrets. Each of itsfour letters represents one of the four elements: Yod-Air, He-Water, Vav-Fire, andHe-Earth.51 Pantheo provides each letter’s value “among cabalistic numbers”(inter chabalisticos numeros), respectively ten, five, six, and five, and explains thatthese numbers signify the “natural elements, the ingredients in the cabalistic magis-tery of the archimical art.”52 The values of the letters of the divine name indicate therelative proportions of the elements in different stages of the alchemical process. Inthe “Generation of the Spirits of Metals,” for example, one should mix ten poundsof “moist” (glossed as “Air”) with five pounds of “dry” (metallic “Earth”),53 in aprocess that requires three conjunctions of letters/elements: of (1) Yod and Vav

46 Continuedprinciples represented by individual letters of the alphabet in Lullian fashion: “Per B intelligere debes principia mate-rialia, scilicet aurum & argentum… Per G. intelligere debes principia materialia secunda, scilicet elementa, terram,aquam, aerem & ignem,” etc.

47 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis (1566), Letter to Leo X, 5v.48 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 20r and 22r.49 Pantheo,Ars Transmutationis, 11v: “Primum ergo principium naturae est materia, seu causa materialis terrae, aquae,

ignis & aeris, sub nutu dei, vel Marthek, quae graece neusi theu dicitur, & Hebraicè recon heloim, positis in literis, &numeris.”

50 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 12r.51 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 27v. Pantheo uses an extremely idiosyncratic transliteration of YHVH as Iud He

Voph He, but to avoid confusion I have stuck to the more standard Yod He Vav He.52 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28r: “& naturalis sint elementa in chabalisticum archimicae artis magisterium ingre-

dientia.”On Archimia, in the Ars Transmutationis, 27v Pantheo writes “Quoniam archimia ab Archi, & mia Graecederivatur. Et Caldaice Archenouevma adumas dicitur, quae initium unitatis esse perhebetur. Quod initium, seu prin-cipium nihil aliud esse videtur, nisi tinctura fixa.” See below for Pantheo’s later distinction of Archimia from otherpractices.

53 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 28v (De Metallorum Spiritus Generatione).


(i.e. ten pounds of Air and six of Fire); (2) the two letters He (i.e. five pounds ofWater and five of Earth); and (3) all four letters of the divine name (i.e. all of thefour elements).54 Here, then, we have an example of how the numeric values ofthe letters of the most important divine name of the Jewish Kabbalah can be inter-preted as a guide to the relative proportions of elemental substances to be used in thealchemical (or archimical) art. To what extent this is genuinely “religious” is imposs-ible to say, but the implication that God’s most powerful name provides the blue-print for alchemical creation—recalling the Sefer Yetzirah’s account of Godcarving out the universe with the divine letters—is a powerful statement insupport of alchemical interest in Cabala, as well as a tacit claim for the great poten-tial of alchemy as a creative endeavour.In the Voarchadumia, published eleven years later, Pantheo presents his “Cabala

of Metals” as a tradition handed down from the “hammerer and artificer in everywork of brass and iron,” Tubal Cain, from Genesis 4:22. Aware of the prohibitionof alchemy by the Venetian Council of Ten, Pantheo describes different methods oftransmutation and takes pains to distinguish his opusculum concerning “transmuta-tion, purification, multiplication and proportion” from the forbidden alchemy.55

Pantheo delimits the four types of transmutation. The first is the Alchimia in thetitle of his book, The Voarchadumia against Alchimia, where the term has a negativeconnotation. By a cabalistic play on a Hebrew transliteration, Pantheo interprets itas “the ferment of vain counsel,” explaining that it is simply a fraudulent colouringof the surface of metals with tinctures.56 The second type of practice isArchimia. This,we learn, is practised by good men who hope to create the Elixir to be projected ontometals in order to accomplish chrysopoetic transmutation. Pantheo glosses it etymo-logically, “as it were the principle of unity, and of the one true counsel.”57 The thirdpractice is termed Voarchadumia, which Pantheo explains as meaning the art of “thepurification of gold of two perfect cementations.”58 Although Voarchadumia is pre-sented as the preferred practice, Pantheo does include a fourth, termed Sophia andassociated with the term “Multiplicatio,” which he says is possible but difficult, andbrings mediocre returns.59 Only the first method, Alchimia, is rejected outright.Voarchadumia is superior, he claims, since this method allows a greater part of goldto be extracted from matter by cementation, more gold to be purified, and more tobe perfected with fewer cementations and less expense.In the most kabbalistic-sounding chapter of the Voarchadumia, concerned with

the “Mixture at the roots of the Unity of the seventy-two Voarchadumic elements,”Pantheo turns again to the numerical analysis of a collection of words, each from a

54 Pantheo, Ars Transmutationis, 29r.55 Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (Paris: Apud Viventium Gaultherotium, 1550), sig. 4r.56 Pantheo, Voarchadumia contra alchimiam, sig. 8r: “Alchímiam (ab Alchímo dicta: quæ profectò ex Hebraica dic-

tione interpretata fermentum vani consilij interponitur) vocamus.”57 Pantheo, Voarchadumia: “Hanc autem metallicam professionem… vocant Archimíam: quasi unitatis, & unius veri

consilij Principem.”58 Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 10v: “purificationis Auri duarum caementationum perfectarum.”59 Pantheo, Voarchadumia, sig. 9v.


different language, and each connected with alchemical substances.60 The firstnatural principle, we learn, is Quicksilver. This is coagulated using fire and materialsof fire and air, under the names Antybar, Marthek, and Stagno or Risoo (which inGreek is Thélima, and in Hebrew Reçón).61 The last two terms both translate lit-erally as “Will” (as in the “Will of God”), but their alchemico-cabalistic significancelies in the realisation that the Hebrew Reçón can be transformed anagrammatically(i.e. by the exegetical technique of Temura) into Eretz, one of the Hebrew words for“Earth” (as in Genesis 1:1: “God created the Heavens and the Earth”).62 Thelimaand Reçón both appear in Pantheo’s list of synonyms for Gold, and it seems likelythat he had the equation of “Will” with “Earth” in mind as a kind of Decknamefor gold. As gold is the most perfect metal, it is evidently highly significant forPantheo that the words Risoo and Stagno, like Marthek above, both add up tothe divine number seventy-two.In his somewhat opaque way, in addition to promoting a cabalistic reading of

alchemical texts, Pantheo also promotes a cabalistic investigation of the secretsof alchemical substances and processes. As he makes few efforts to help hisreader follow his thought process, in a sense he perpetuates the enigmatic formsof communication found in many alchemical texts, simply substituting one setof codes for another. Puzzling as his work is, however, Pantheo is a valuableinstance of a laboratory practitioner engaging with polyglot traditions in a “caba-listic” spirit, in an attempt to discover the numerical secrets and concordances ofelusive alchemical terms. The significance of Pantheo’s work is increased by theinterest taken in it by a crowd of later cabalistic alchemists, including JacquesGohory (1520–1576),63 Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596),64 John Dee(1527–1608/9),65 Andreas Libavius (1555–1616),66 Heinrich Khunrath

60 Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 19r: “Mistio in radicibus unitatis septuagesimi secundi Voarchadúmicorum elementorum.”61 Pantheo, Voarchadumia, 40v.62 Nicolas Séd, “L’or enfermé et la poussière d’or selon Moïse ben Shémtobh de Léon (c. 1240–1305),” Chrysopoeia 3,

no. 2 (1989): 121–34, on 131. Cf. Paulus Riccius, De Coelesti Agricultura, Lib. IIII, in Johannes Pistorius, ArtisCabalisticae Liber (Basel: Per Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1587), 190: “Razon: id est, voluntatem.”

63 Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium(Paris, 1567; my copy Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568), 185. Gohory mentions Pantheo’s work, together with thealphabetaria revolutio of Ramon Lull; he suggests that the thirteenth-century natural philosopher Roger Bacon isthe source for Pantheo’s reflections on the phrase “nutu Dei” (Will of God).

64 Blaise de Vigenère, Traicté du Feu et du Sel (Paris: Chez la veufue Abel l’Angelier, 1618), 121, quotes Pantheus,[Voarchadumia (1550), 17v] on the perfect product of Voarchadumic practice, which remains uncorrupted byfire, cementations, acids, etc; on 129 he refers to Pantheo on “oleum vitri” (oil of glass), i.e. Vitriol.

65 Dee owned and annotated a copy of Pantheo’s Voarchadumia contra Alchimiam (Venice, 1530). British Libraryshelfmark C.120.b.4.(2.) and refers to it in Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), 7v. See C. H. Josten, “A Translation ofJohn Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” Ambix 12 (1964): 84–221, on 137: “And if the twenty-first speculation of ourHieroglyphic Monad gave satisfaction to a Voarchadumicus and provided him with Voarh Beth Adumoth as asubject for speculation…” See also Hilde Norrgrén, “Interpretation and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dee’sReading of Pantheo’s Voarchadumia,” Ambix 52, no. 3 (2005): 217–45.

66 Andreas Libavius, Appendix necessaria Syntagmatis Arcanorum Chymicorum (Frankfurt: Impensis Petri Kopffij,1615), 152 (on Pantheus’s rejection of the term Alchymia), 178 (on Pantheus’s use of alchymia, archymia, andSophia), 230 (on Pantheus’s Ars & Theoria Transmutationis), 232 (on Pantheus as one who graphically portraysfalse alchemists). See also 76–77 for Libavius’s condemnatory Nota XXXIV. De mysteriis Cabalæ Paracelsicæ.On Libavius’s reservations about Cabala, see Bruce Moran, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation ofAlchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications,2007), 117ff.


(1560–1605),67 Oswald Croll (1563–1608/9),68 Johann Daniel Mylius (1583–1642),69 David de Planis Campy (1589–1644),70 Martin Ruland (1569–1611),71 and Jean Vauquelin des Yveteaux (1651–1716).72

Paracelsus and Cabala

Pantheo was by no means the only alchemist stimulated by the exegetical possibili-ties of Cabala. Given his interest in new approaches to alchemy, including his con-troversial move from metallic transmutation to the preparation of chemicalmedicines, perhaps it is predictable that the Swiss physician Theophrastus Paracelsusof Hohenheim (1493–1541) would display some interest in this new art. WalterPagel remarked that Paracelsus’s work displayed an intent “to unravel the occult—“kabbalistic” and symbolical—meaning of phenomena by visualising concor-dances everywhere.”73 Pagel even suggested that one Rabbinical source, theShemoth Rabba (a compendium of exegetical material on the book of Exodus),“provides a religious background for the homoeopathic principle, so conspicuouslyemployed by Paracelsus.”74 Allen Debus similarly observed, “Paracelsus frequentlyuses the terms “Kabbalah” and “kabbalistic,” indicating a general acquaintancewith this literature even though specific references to the mystical numericalinterpretation of letters are lacking in his work.”75 In his consideration of therelations between alchemy and Kabbalah, Hermann Kopp singled out a passagefrom On the Tincture of the Physicians, where Paracelsus declares, “If you do notunderstand the use of the Cabalists and of the old astronomers, you are not born

67 Heinrich Khunrath, Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum (Magdeburg: Johannes Bötcher, 1599), 92: “Aus diesem/und sonsten keinem andern/ natürlichen grunde gehet VOARCH BETH ADAMOTH der alte[n] Weisen.” See tooKhunrath, Lux in Tenebris (N.P., 1614), 23.

68 Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt: Impensis Godefrisi Tampachij, 1608), Admonitory Preface, 7: Thosewho are the heirs of wisdom, “with Cabalistic eyes, are not ignorant of true Cabala, Magic, and Voarchadumia”(& oculis Cabalisticis, non ignorabunt in vera Cabala, Magia, & Woarchadumia). On Croll and Libavius, seeOwen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1975).

69 Johann Daniel Mylius, Anatomia Auri sive Tyrocinium Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt, 1628), 233 (on AugustinusPantheus’s Voarchadumia as one of many authorities on potable gold).

70 David de Planis-Campy, L’Ouverture de L’Escolle de Philosophie Transmutatoire Métallique (Paris: Chez CharlesSevestre, 1633), 52–53: “Car selon Panthee, en son Traicté de l’Art Chimique, la semence principale de l’Elixir, &de tous les Metaux, n’est autre que le Mars, & Mars n’est autre chose que le Feu pour estre un Souphre rougechaud & sec, & de facile combustion.”

71 Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt: Cura ac sumtibus Zachariae Palthenii, 1612), 145: “Archimia velArchodunia sophia & sapientia principalis,” 146: “Quidam dicunt mutatum esse ex Archimia vel Archodumia,cum sit ars principalissima.”

72 Vauquelin des Yveteaux, “De l’arbre de vie ou de l’arbre solaire,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 238: “Pantheus Venetus,l’un des meilleurs auteurs qui ait écrit de nostre manne cachée, s’est servi fort souvent de cette innocente façon decompter par les lettres. Il a avec un tres bel artifice marqué les trois premiers jours sans soleil et sans lune de la creationdu monde, qui répondent à nos trois premiers mois de preparation des elements, par la valeur des lettres de ces deusmots NVTV DEI.” See Sylvain Matton, “Le Traité de L’Arbre de vie ou de l’arbre solaire et la Tradition Alchimique,”Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 285–302. See also Jacques Rebotier, “La Musique de Flamel,” in Alchimie, art, histoire etmythes, ed. Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton (Milan: Archè, 1995), 540.

73 Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger,1958), 44, n. 131.

74 Pagel, Paracelsus, 217, n. 59.75 Allen G. Debus, “Mathematics and Nature in the Chemical Texts of the Renaissance,” Ambix 15 (1968): 1–28, on 13.


by God for the Spagyric art, or chosen by Nature for Vulcan’s work, or created toopen your mouth about the Alchemical Art.”76 Although the Tincture of the Phys-icians is nowadays considered to be a pseudepigraphic work, it exerted an influenceon many later Paracelsians who considered it to be an authentic part of Paracelsus’sliterary legacy, offering a potent argument for the combination of alchemy, astrologyand Kabbalah in the service of Spagyric medicine.77 Looking through Paracelsus’sgenuine and pseudepigraphic works, it is easy to find references to what he variouslycalls “Cabala,” “Gabala,” or “Gabalia.” Huser’s 1603 multi-volume edition ofParacelsus, for example, contains a wide variety of statements concerning Cabala,from his claim that “the Cabalistic Art had its origin with the old Magi,” ratherthan Jewish sources, in De Natura Rerum,78 to the Fragmenta Medica, where welearn that “Adam and Moses… searched for that within themselves that is in manand opened it, and it belongs all to Cabala; they knew no strange things from thedevil or spirits, but from the light of nature.”79 Heinz Schott comments that suchan inward approach to the divine sources of spiritual light recalls the mystical prac-tices of the Kabbalah, with Paracelsus’s Light of Nature evoking the emanations ofdivine light in the sefirot of the Kabbalah.80 Paracelsus’s Cabala is not simply pre-sented as inner knowledge, however, but as an operative power. In Paracelsus’sgenuine cosmological work, the Philosophia sagax, the “Ars Cabalistica” is apotent adjunct to natural magic, through which, Paracelsus claims, the Paracelsianmagus can accomplish as much in the maturation of natural substances in a monthas Nature can in a year.81 Many more references can be found in the Liber de reli-gione perpetua, the Paragranum,De Vita Longa, and so forth.82Whatever the depthor shallowness of Paracelsus’s personal knowledge of Cabala, there can be little

76 [Pseudo-] Paracelsus, “De Tinctura Physicorum,” in Aureoli Philippi Theophrasti Bombasts von Hohenheim Para-celsi…Opera… , ed. Johann Huser, 2 vols. (Straßburg: In Verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 923: “Wann du jetztnicht verstehest/ was der Cabalisten gewonheit/ und der alten Astronomorum brauch ist: So bistu weder von Gott inder Spagyrey geboren/ noch von Natur zu Vulcani Werck erkoren/ oder Mundts eröffnung in die Alchimistisch Kunstgeschaffen worden.” Cited by Kopp, Die Alchemie, 229.

77 On the issue of genuine and pseudepigraphic works of Paracelsus, see, in particular, Karl Sudhoff, Versuch einerKritik der Echtheit der Paracelsischen Schriften, 2 vols. (Berlin: Georg Reimer Verlag, 1894–1899).

78 [Pseudo?-] Paracelsus, “De Natura Rerum,” in Bücher und Schriften, ed. Johann Huser (Straßburg: In VerlegungLazari Zetzners, 1603), 1: 903: “Daher hat die Kunst Caballistica jhren ursprung genommen bey den altenMagis, davon wir in den Büchern der Caballia weitleuffig tractieren.” See Hartmut Rudolph, “Die Kabbala imWerk des Paracelsus,” in Schmidt-Biggemann, ed., Christliche Kabbala, 111.

79 Paracelsus, FragmentaMedica, in Huser, Bücher und Schriften (Strasburg, 1616), 1:141: “Sich Adam an/Moysen undander/ die haben das in ihnen gesucht/ das im Menschen war/ und das geöffnet/ und alle Gabalischen/ und habennichts frembdes kennt/ vom Teuffel/ noch von Geisten/ sondern vom Liecht der Natur.”

80 Heinz Schott, ““Invisible Diseases”—Imagination andMagnetism: Paracelsus and the Consequences,” in Paracelsus:The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 309–21,on 313.

81 Paracelsus, Philosophia Sagax, in Huser, ed., Bücher und Schriften, 10: 41 “Unnd in Summa/ was die Natur vermagin einem Jahr zu thun/ das vermag sie in eimMonat/ auch in den Gewechsen deß Erdreichs zu vollbringen. Und dieseSpecies heist mit jrem rechten Nammen Ars Cabalistica.”

82 See Liber de religione perpetua, in Paracelsus, Theologische Werke 1: Vita beata—Vom glückseligen Leben, ed. UrsLeo Gantenbein and Michael Baumann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 314–15; Paracelsus, Das Büch Paragra-num (Frankfurt, 1565), 15v (Gabalisticam); 50r (Gabalisticam scientiam; margin: “Gabalia gibt einen waren Astron-omum und Medicum”).


doubt that his usage caught on among many of his followers; indeed an interest in“Cabala chymica” appears to be a particularly Paracelsian phenomenon.

Some early Paracelsian definitions of Cabala

The French physician and alchemist Jacques Gohory (1520–1576) published aCom-pendium of Paracelsus’s works in 1608, including the De vita longa (On Long Life)with extensive scholia by Gohory.83 This commentary includes a valuable indicationof the significance of the Cabala for at least one of the earliest promoters ofParacelsian philosophy in France.84 In his commentary on Book 1, Chapter 6 ofDe vita longa, which contains a discussion of the influence of “supernaturalbodies” on the attainment of long life, Gohory includes a special section “OnCabala.” According to Gohory, the Cabala is sometimes universal, sometimesparticular. Strictly speaking it is the uninterrupted handing down of mysteries bythe Jews since Moses received them on Mount Sinai. However, the ars combinandior their alphabetaria revolutio, as well as the part of magic concerned with thevirtues of the “higher supralunar powers,” are also called Cabala by the Jews.85

Gohory is familiar with Pico’s Magical Conclusions, and indeed paraphrases onewithout giving the source: “we will say that characters belong to magic, numbersto Cabala, and the letters are in someway intermediary between the two.”86

These numbers, Gohory informs us, again from Pico, are both “formal” and“material”: the former being the Ternary and Denary, the latter all of the rest(Unarius, Binarius, and so forth).87 Gohory introduces this into a discussion ofthe Spagyric extraction of the celestial quintessence, including a comparisonbetween Paracelsus’s De vita longa and the De vita libri tres (1489) of MarsilioFicino.88

83 Leo Suavius [Jacques Gohory], Theophrasti Paracelsi Philosophiae et medicinae utriusque universae compendium(Basel: Per Petrum Pernam, 1568).

84 On Gohory, see François Secret, “Jacques Gohory et le Paracelsian revival,” Chrysopoeia 5 (1992–1996): 467–70.See also Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, esp. 149–71, 218–32; Allen G. Debus, The French Paracelsians: TheChemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991; repr. 2002), 26ff.

85 Gohory, Compendium, 191. Cf. Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 297; Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 167.86 Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: “characteres proprios esse magiae, numeros vero Cabalae, literas

esse quodammodo medias inter utrosque.” Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 502–03 (9 > 25): “Sicut caracteressunt proprii operi magico, ita numeri sunt proprii operi cabalae, medio existente inter utrosque, et appropriabiliper declinationem ad extrema usu litterarum” (“Just as characters are proper to a magical work, so numbers areproper to a work of Cabala, with a medium existing between the two, appropriable by declination between theextremes through the use of letters”).

87 Gohory, Compendium, 194 [mispaginated as 195]: “Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium & denarium sunt materi-ales, illi sunt formales, & in Arithmetica mystica sunt numeri numerorum.” This is reasserted in a later section, DeCabala numerali (213). Cf. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 502–03 (9 > 23): “Quilibet numerus praeter ternarium etdenarium sunt materiales/ in magia; isti formales sunt, et in magica arithmetica sunt numeri numerorum” (“Everynumber besides the ternarius and denarius are material numbers in magic. Those are formal numbers, and inmagical arithmetic are the numbers of numbers”).

88 On the relation between these two works, see Peter J. Forshaw, “Marsilio Ficino and the Chemical Art,” in LausPlatonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees(Leiden, Brill, 2011), 249–71, on 265.


Gohory’s contemporary, the Paracelsian physician Michael Toxites (1514–1581),included what would become an influential definition of Cabala in his OnomasticaII (1574).89 In the preface to the second of these two dictionaries, devoted as it wasto explaining the many neologisms coined by Paracelsus, Toxites explains that Para-celsus took much “from the art of the Cabalists” (ex Cabalistarum arte), and fol-lowed their advice to protect his knowledge from the vulgar by employingexisting enigmatic words from the alchemists as well as creating new words fromvarious languages, such as the titles of two of his most influential works, Paragra-num and Paramirum.90 In the Onomasticum we read,

Cabala, Cabalia, or the Cabalistic Art is a divine science, that reveals to us God’s teach-ing concerning the Messiah, brings about friendship with the angels for its practitioners,bestows knowledge of all natural things, and, shadows having been driven away, illus-trates the mind with divine light. The word is Hebrew and in Latin means reception.91

There is more, but a summary must suffice: Moses received Cabala divinely onMount Sinai together with the Ten Commandments, but because it was forbiddento write it down or reveal it to the profane, instead it was passed on in a sequenceof revelations as if by hereditary law. Reuchlin, Pico, and the Franciscan doctor ofphilosophy and theology Pietro Galatino (1460–1540) are mentioned by name asprime representatives of a specifically Christian Cabala.92 Toxites informs hisreaders that Galatino asserts that through the science of Cabala the ancientJewish rabbis acknowledged the Trinity, and that Christ was the son of God.Toxites also states that Paracelsus wrote much about this “certain and celestialscience,” referring his readers to the Philosophia sagax, and mentions Paracelsus’sbelief that the Persians were more correct practitioners of Cabala than the Jews,as proved by the fact that the three Magi went to adore Christ in Bethlehem.93

This entry enjoyed some success, for a variant appears in the DictionariumTheophrasti Paracelsi (Dictionary of Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1583) by another

89 On Toxites’ Onomastica, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, “Lex lexiques bilingues philosophiques, scientifiques et notam-ment alchimiques,” in Lexiques bilingues dans les domaines philosophiques et scientifiques, ed. Jacqueline Hamesseand Danielle Jacquart (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 197–205. On his role in the Paracelsian publishing industry, seeTara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2007), 23–24. Nummedal also mentions another Paracelsian Onomasticum (1574–83; my copy 1587) by LeonhartThurneisser zum Thurn. It does not contain an entry for Cabala, but there are entries for “Cabalistic words,” e.g. on18 (“Abzachochor: Diß ist ein Cabalistischs wort/ und bedeut des Chaos”) and references to Jewish Cabalists, Pico,and Lull’s ars combinandi, 34–35.

90 Toxites, Onomastica II, sig. [alpha] 3r “Theophrastus ex Cabalistarum arte multa accepit: quaedam ex diversislinguis, ut paragranum, paramirum, Carboanthos, & similia nova confinxit: non pauca à Chemistis ficta usurpavit.”

91 Michael Toxites, Onomastica II. I Philosophicum, Medicum, Synonymum ex varijs vulgaribusque linguis. II. Theo-phrasti Paracelsi: hoc est, earum vocum, quarum in scriptis eius solet usus esse, explicatio (Straßburg: Per Bernhar-dum Iobinum, 1574), 410–12: “Cabala, Cabalia, sive cabalistica ars, scientia est divina, quae nobis Dei doctrinam deMessia patefacit, cum angelis amicitiam cultoribus suis contrahit: rerumque naturalium omnium cognitionem tradit,ac divino lumine mentem pulsis tenebris illustrat. Vox est Hebraea, Latinis dicitur receptio.”

92 Galatino was a Jewish convert to Christianity, author of De arcanis catholicae veritatis (About the Mysteries ofCatholic Truth) (Ortona Mare: Gershom Soncino, 1518), which introduced Christian readers to the Talmud andquickly became an important text of Christian Cabala. On Galatino, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Der Lector Prudensund die Bibliothek des (uralten) Wissens: Pietro Galatino, Anatus Lusitanus und Azaria de’ Rossi,” in ChristlicheKabbala, ed. Schmidt-Biggemann, 133–42.

93 Toxites, Onomastica II, 411–12.


enthusiastic translator and promoter of Paracelsian thought, the Belgian GerardDorn (ca. 1530–1584), and then later in the Lexicon Alchemiae (Lexicon ofAlchemy, 1612) by the German alchemist and Paracelsian physician MartinRuland (1569–1611)—much of whose information was lifted verbatim from thepreceding works of Toxites and Dorn. Dorn and Ruland slightly modify Toxites’soriginal text, stating that Cabala is a “most occult science, said to have been divi-nely transmitted to Moses,” but the essential message remains the same.94 In allthree dictionaries, the emphasis is less specifically on combinations and permu-tations of numbers or letters, but rather on Cabala as an art bestowing knowledgeof things natural and the prospect of supernatural revelation, in keeping with thegeneral message of Christian Cabalist authorities. This underlying religious dimen-sion should not be ignored when discussing alchemy in the context of Cabala. It isarguable that the Mosaic basis of Cabala would have appeared far more legitimateas an adjunct to the Paracelsian Christian philosophy of nature than the paganphilosophy of Aristotle and Galen which Paracelsus so famously rejected—particu-larly given the Christian reorientation being given to the Kabbalah during Paracel-sus’s time by Pico, Reuchlin, and others, and the later uptake of Paracelsus’s ideasby Lutheran and Calvinist thinkers eager to find an alternative to the medieval dog-matic theology of the Schools.

Heinrich Khunrath’s definitive blending

One figure singled out by Scholem for his “definitive blending” of alchemicaland cabalistic traditions is the German Lutheran physician Heinrich Khunrath(1560–1605), who held both Paracelsus and Reuchlin in high esteem and showedfamiliarity with the work of Pico and pseudo-Lullian alchemy.95 Khunrath takesup the notion of the symbolism of individual letters in his book Vom hylealischen…Chaos (On Primordial Chaos, 1597). There, he provides an imaginativeexample of speculative Cabala with his polyglot etymology of the alchemical termElixir. He glosses the German Elixeir as Fortitudo (Strength), with the explanationthat “El” in Hebrew means “Mighty” or “Strong.” In Roman numerals the follow-ing two letters “I” and “X” equate to One and Ten, the latter being the symbolicnumber of total perfection. Finally, the last three letters are held to form theGreek word ἔιρ [eir], translating into Latin as “a bright shining, fire-spark orflash.” EL-I-X-EIR therefore means a “bright shine, flash and spark of the uniquelyMighty and Strong.”96 According to its varied preparations it is called EIR, X-EIR,

94 Gerard Dorn, Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi (Frankfurt: Christoph Rab, 1583), 25–26: “Cabala vel Cabalia,est occultissima scientia quae divinitus una cum Lege Moysi tradita fuisse fertur.” See too Dorn’s “explicatio,” on104; Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae (Frankfurt, 1612), 108: “Cabala, Cabalia, Ars Cabalistica, est scientiaoccultissima, quae divinitus una cum lege Mosi tradita fuisse fertur.”

95 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 88. On Khunrath, see Peter J. Forshaw, “Curious Knowledge and Wonder-working Wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich Khunrath,” in Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance tothe Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and A. Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 107–29.

96 Heinrich Khunrath, Vom hylealischen, Das ist pri-materialischen catholischen oder Algemeinem natürlichen Chaosder Naturgemessen Alchymiae und Alchymisten (Magdeburg: Andreas Genen Erben, 1597), 54: “So wird nun (sage


I-X-EIR, EL-I-X-EIR, a sequential development calling to mind the progressive ema-nations of YHVH in the Pythagorean Tetraktys.97

In another of his works, the “Christian Cabalist, Divinely Magical and Physico-Chymical” Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Amphitheatre of EternalWisdom, 1609), baroquely illustrated with its “theosophical” and “hieroglyphical”figures, Khunrath prominently places a Hebrewword in his engraving of an Alchem-ical Citadel.98 The word in question is Aben, one jointly significant for both Khun-rath’s alchemy and his Cabala: any alchemist familiar with Hebrew wouldunderstand the primary meaning of ןבא [Aben] as “Rock” or “Stone” and woulddoubtless recognise the Christian-Cabalist unpacking of the word as being formedof the Hebrew words for both Father בא [Ab] and Son ןב [Ben].99 Needless to say,this word, Aben, can have had little to do with the Jewish Kabbalah, but it doesencapsulate an extremely important message for Khunrath: the analogical relation-ship between Christ, the Christian Cabalist Son of the Microcosm; and the Philoso-phers’ Stone—the Alchemical Son of the Macrocosm. Although never explicitlystated, it is also possible that theosophically inclined alchemists, or theoalchemists,like Khunrath, seeking divine inspiration through personal revelation, would nothave hesitated to carry out a further permutation of these three letters to discoverthe word אבנ [Nebhä]—the Hebrew root “to Prophesy.”In his Bouquet composé des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Bouquet Composed of

the Most Beautiful Chymical Flowers, 1629), David De Planis-Campy locates one ofKhunrath’s acquaintances, the Elizabethan magus John Dee (1527–1608/9) amongthose “most versed in Chymical Cabala” (plus versez en la Caballe Chimique),100

primarily because of the composite alchemical symbol Dee “mathematically, magi-cally, cabbalistically, and anagogically” explained in his Monas Hieroglyphica(Hieroglyphic Monad, 1564).101 Dee’s hieroglyph is formed from the astrologicalsymbols for the seven planets of the Ptolemaic cosmos, which also happen to bethe symbols for the seven major metals in alchemy. With this he unites the practicesof superior and inferior astronomy, i.e. astrology and alchemy. Khunrath is familiarwith the Monas, and in the Amphitheatre he cites Dee’s distinction between his

96 Continuedich) EL-I-X-EIR recht und eigentlich heissen/ splendor fulgureus sivè scintilla perfecta Unici Potentis ac Fortis, Einheller schein/ Blitz und Fewerfunck des einigen Mechtigen und Starcken.” “Suidas” defines the Greek word ἔιρ asλαμπηδών, i.e., lustre or brilliance, sometimes of lightning. See Suidae Lexicon. ed. Immanuel Bekker (Berlin:Georg Reimer, 1854), 333.

97 Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 56. For a similar treatment of “Ir” (Manus seu mancipans), “Xir” (Mercuriusfusibilis), “Ixir” (Mercurius præparatus, & separatus), and “Elixir” (Mercurius inceratus), seeConsilium Conjugii inManget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 2: 259–61.

98 Khunrath’s alchemical citadel can also be found inDe arte cabalistica, seu De magisterio magno philosophorum, MS.Codex 114, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

99 Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, 282: “ABEN, Hebraicè LAPIS: Pater & Filius in Lapide; AB, in ea lingua Patremsignificat; BEN, Filium: Mundus maior hîc notetur, eiusdemque Filius.” Khunrath probably took this unpacking ofAben from Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifico, 79, as most likely did Joachim Frizius [Robert Fludd] in Summum Bonum(Frankfurt: Impensis Wilhelmi Fitzeri, 1629), 17.

100David de Planis Campy, Bouquet composé des plus belles fleurs chymiques (Paris: Chez Pierre Billaine, 1629), 1002.101 See Peter J. Forshaw, “The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’sMonas Hieroglyphica,”Ambix 52 (2005): 247–

69; Michael T. Walton, “John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica: Geometrical Cabala,” Ambix 23 (1976): 116–23.


“Cabala of the Real” and the “Cabala of the Word.”102 The former relates to theBook of Nature; the latter to the Book of Scripture, where Dee turns from an exclu-sively “literal” Cabalistic reading of Hebrew letters and printed books to one con-nected with natural magic and deciphering the hieroglyphs and signatures of thecosmos.103

Dee’s hieroglyphic monad is a significant presence in Khunrath’s engraving of theAlchemical Citadel, where it surmounts the archway into the heart of the citadel.This all-encompassing glyph is also central to another of Khunrath’s Amphitheatreengravings, that of the Rebis or Alchemical Hermaphrodite, which also features theHebrew terms Esch and Urim, respectively denoting terrestrial and celestial fire.There, Dee’s monad forms the O in the composite word AZOTH on the breast ofthe equally composite Bird of Hermes, representing the major processes ofalchemy, start to finish. In the pseudo-Paracelsian Liber Azoth, published in 1590,just five years before the appearance of the first edition of Khunrath’s Amphitheatre,the reader looking for insights into the three primary constituents or modes ofmatter is informed that fiery “Sulphur conceals the Cabalistic Unarius in itself,”while “Salt” (Edas) conceals the Cabalistic Binarius, and the mutable, liquid“AZOT Mundi” (i.e. “Mercury of the Wise”) either has or is the Cabalistic Ternar-ius.104 Furthermore, the term AZOTH, famed as the word on the pommel of Para-celsus’s sword and popularized in the sixteenth-century alchemical works of BasilValentine, is one of the best-known instances of cabalistic-style letter-play inalchemy, being formed of the first and last letters of the Latin, Greek and Hebrewlanguages (A–Z, Alpha and Omega, Aleph, and Tau). As such, it is the ideal wordto denote the alchemical materia prima et ultima.105 In Khunrath’s most alchemicalengraving, then, we have Dee’s composite hieroglyph at the centre of a compositeword, on the breast of a composite bird, hovering above the alchemical Rebis(Two-Thing), the compound or conjunction of the two primary ingredients(Mercury and Sulphur) of the Philosophers’ Stone.106 Although utterly remotefrom the Jewish Kabbalah, this amalgamation of words and symbols is arguablya prime instance of “kabbalisation” in alchemical material.Khunrath is a strong example of a physico-chymist, interested in both metallic

transmutation and chemical medicine, seeking insights into nature and divine

102Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae: Christiano-Kabalisticum, divino-magicum, necnon physico-chymicum, tertriunum, catholicon (Hanau: Excudebat Guilielmus Antonius, 1609), II: 6.

103 Josten, “A Translation of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” 133–35. See Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word:Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 242–43. For some recent workon Dee and Cabala, see Jean-Marc Mandosio, “Beyond Pico della Mirandola: John Dee’s “Formal Numbers” and“Real Cabala,”” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 489–97; Andrew Campbell, “The Recep-tion of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica in Early Modern Italy: The Case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (ca. 1562–1616),” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 519–29.

104 [Pseudo-] Paracelsus, Liber Azoth, sive, De Ligno et Linea Vitae, in Paracelsus, Opera (Straßburg, 1603), 2: 532.105 Basil Valentine, Azoth: L’Occulta Opera Aurea dei Filosofi (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1988), 103.106 For later alchemical speculations on Azoth, including several riddles providing “Cabalistic Reckonings” of Philoso-

phical Mercury and Gold, “out of Greek, Hebrew and Latin,” see Anon, Testamentum Chymicum, in Taeda TrifidaChimica, das ist Dreyfache Chimische-Fackel (Nürnberg: Johann Andreæ und Wolffgang Endters, 1674), 190–284,on 197, 212, 268.


revelation, and adamant that one should not separate Oratory from Laboratory. Hebelieves that the Philosophers’ Stone and other alchemical products can help sub-stantiate religious belief, for instance, in the resurrection of the flesh.107 This canboth act as support for personal faith and have evangelical value as a miraculouseffect for the conversion not only of elements, but also of unbelievers. Khunrathargues that the

Pagans, or Turks, looking on Sacrosanct Scripture (GOD!) as nothing, can be clearlyshown the sense and reason of the truth from the book of Nature; and (Divine gracecooperating) be converted to Christianity. And the Jews in the same way.108

As Scholem remarked, Khunrath absolutely insisted that “Kabbalah, magic, andalchemy shall and must be combined and used together.”109 Sometimes, Kabbalah isemployed in the service of alchemy, while at other times, alchemy is put to the serviceof religion. Khunrath, however, would certainly not consent to his labelling as onewho “emphatically argues” for the identification of alchemy and Cabala.110 WhileKhunrath asserts an analogous harmony between the two disciplines, he is careful todistinguish their ends: the goal of Physico-Chymistry is the “Fermentation of ourglorious and surpassingly perfect Stone with the Macrocosm,” while the ultimategoal of Cabala is the union of man, the microcosm, with God.111 Perhaps theseends can be regarded as complementary; with Khunrath there is certainly the impli-cation that it is only the pious alchemist, engaged in his Christian Cabala, who hasany real chance of achieving the Philosophers’ Stone. However, the two disciplinesshould be considered not as identical or synonymous, but rather as parallel or ana-logical processes.

A Christian alchemist reads Jewish Kabbalah

Although most of the Paracelsians so far mentioned appear to have acquired theirknowledge of Kabbalah from Christian Cabalist authors, there is one notable excep-tion. This is the French scholar, Blaise de Vigenère (1523–1596), who moves withfacility between discussions of alchemy, astrology, and Kabbalah.112 Vigenère’searly attempts to combine these different conceptual systems can be seen in Lesimages ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate (1578). There, he takes upthe thirteenth thesis from Pico’s Conclusions on the Orphic Hymns, where the

107Khunrath, Vom hylealischen Chaos, Preface, Avijr.108Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, II, 207: “Sic Ethnicus, aut Turca, SS.m Scripturam (DEVS!) nihili aesti-

mans, ex Naturae libro, ad sensum & rationem potest conuinci veritatis, atque (Diuina cooperante gratia) conuertiad Christianismum. Sic & Judæus.”

109 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 91. See Heinrich Khunrath,De Igne Magorum Philosophorumque secreto externo& visibili (Straßburg: In verlegung Lazari Zetzners, 1608), 87: “Kabala, Magia, Alchymia Coniungendae, Sollen undmüssen mit und neben einander angewendet werden.”

110 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 88.111Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II: 203.112On Vigenère, see SylvainMatton, “Alchimie, Kabbale etMythologie chez Blaise de Vigenère: l’Exemple de sa Théorie

des Elements,” in Cahiers V. L. Saulnier, 11: Blaise de Vigenère, poète et mythographe au temps de Henri III (Paris:Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1994), 111–37.


Italian philosopher declares that “Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala arethe same.”113 Vigenère develops this into a speculation on Paracelsian material:

That which Orpheus calls Typhon is with the Cabalists Samael, and to Paracelsus hisArcheus, that is, as he interprets it, the heat or virtue of nature acting in the bowels ofthe earth on universal matter equally suitable for all three animal, vegetable andmineral kinds, all depending on primitive salt.114

In Paracelsus’s conceptualisation of how Nature transforms primal matter intoultimate matter, the primary personification of this process is Vulcan, assisted bytwo additional principles: the Iliaster, representing the primordial matter-energy ofnature (a neologism from the Greek Hyle/Primal Matter and the Latin Astrum/Star) and the Archeus, the internal workman that impresses the specific and individ-ual attributes upon the elemental material world.115 Here, Vigenère equates thealmost demiurgic nature of the Archeus with the two fiery antagonists of heavenin Orphic and Cabalistic mythology. Vigenère takes this analogy further, moreover,by claiming that Paracelsus equates the three divine brothers mentioned by Orpheusin his hymns, i.e. Zeus, Neptune, and Pluto, with Arez (Hebrew for Earth), Iliasterand Archeus, “all according to Cabala” (le tout suivant la Cabale). Vigenèresuggests that these three represent the formal principles that act as counterparts tothe three Paracelsian material principles of all matter: Salt, Sulphur, andMercury.116 Here, for Vigenère, Cabala appears primarily to denote an analogicalway of thinking, with the implication that all mytho-alchemy—as practised, forexample, by the alchemist Michael Maier (1568–1622) in his alchemical interpret-ations of classical myth—is a form of Cabala.117 If this is an aspect of Vigenère’s con-ception, however, it is not everything, for elsewhere Vigenère briefly refers to “amanual tradition, which the Jews call Cabala.”118

Although this comparison of Paracelsian formal and material principles withOrphic and Cabalistic figures may seem strange to the modern reader, it was probablynot quite so odd for the well-read Paracelsian. One of the foremost promoters ofParacelsian medicine, the Danish physician Peder Sørensen (1542–1602), known inLatin as Petrus Severinus, had already drawn on Pico’s Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion,“Night in Orpheus and Ein-Sof in the Cabala are the same,” to argue that the samerational seeds of Nature are conserved in Orphic Night, Hippocratic Orcus, andParacelsian Iliaster. Severinus makes it clear that the drawing of such analogies and

113 Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 511.114 Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 297. Blaise de Vigenère, Les images ou tableaux de Platte-Peinture de Philostrate

(Paris: Chez Nicolas Chesneau, 1578), 430r: “Ce que doncques Orphee appelle Typhon, est envers les CabalistiquesZamael; Et à Paracelse son Archee, c’est à dire (comme il l’interprete) la chaleur ou vertu de nature agissante dans lesentrailles de la terre, sur la matiere universelle esgallement appropriee à tous les trois genres: mineraux, Vegetaux,animaux, dous dependans du sel primitif.”

115Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Paracelsus: Essential Readings (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1999), 28.116Vigenère, Les images et tableaux, 430; Secret, Les kabbalistes chrétiens, 298.117On mytho-alchemy, see Thomas Reiser, Mythologie und Alchemie in der Lehrepik des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts

(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 21ff.118Vigenère, Les images et tableaux, 217v: “une tradition manuelle, que les Hebrieux appellent Cabale.”


the insights gained from them are “understood with difficulty by those who have notdrunk from Cabalistic sources and are still blind in Adept Philosophy.”119 TheHebrew term Ein-Sof, translated literally as the “infinite” or “without end,” standsfor the “absolute perfection in which there are no distinctions and no differen-tiations.”120 It is easy to see how an alchemist might see this as a fitting analogy forprimal and ultimate matter, but since Ein Sofwas usually taken as an image signifyingthe most abstruse essence of the Godhead, I imagine this identification of the oppositeextremes of spirit and matter would have been offensive to Jewish Kabbalists.In a later work, the posthumously published Traité du feu et du sel (Treatise on

Fire and Salt, 1618), we gain a clearer idea of Vigenère’s familiarity with authenti-cally Jewish sources of Kabbalah. He quotes directly from the Zohar, forexample, when discussing how an ethereal body arises from the destruction of theelements,121 and even anticipates Scholem’s observation that in the Zohar silver isof a superior order to gold.122 He quotes “Kamban Gerundense,” or RabbiMoses ben Nahman (1194–1270), known as Ramban, to the effect that throughCabala it is revealed that holy scripture was written with black fire on a whitefire, shining with marvels,123 an image surely appealing to the alchemical “artistsof fire.” He also cites the Nut-Garden of “Rabi Ioseph Castiglian” (Gikatilla), onthe fact that “there is not a form of letter, point or accent that does not concernsome mystery.”124

Along with rehearsing material familiar to Christian Cabalists, such as the Sefirot,Vigenère includes less common information, such as how the glory and essence ofGod, which the Jews call the Shekinah, cannot perceive itself except in the matterof this sensible world.125 Information like this must surely have been included toraise the profile of alchemical investigation into the essence of matter. Alchemy is pre-sented as a divine art, “Cabala’s genuine sister” (soeur germaine de la Caballe),126 andVigenère frequently draws parallels, demonstrating their shared fascination for fireand light.127 He also makes clear his intention to enlarge, by the same method, theworks and progress of nature, for which the key principle is Alchemy, in order tomove upwards to the archetype, the Creator, by means of Cabala.128

119 Petrus Severinus, Idea Medicinæ Philosophicæ (Basel: Ex officina Sixti Henricpetri, 1571), 87; 121 “Hae Genera-tiones difficulter ab ijs comprehenduntur qui Cabalisticæ fontes non degustarunt, & in Philosophia Adepta etiam-num caecutiunt.” See Jole Shackelford, A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, IntellectualContext, and Influence of Petrus Severinus: 1540–1602 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 174.For other allusions to Pico’s Fifteenth Orphic Conclusion, see Joseph DuChesne, Liber de priscorum philosophorumverae medicinae materia (S. Gervasii: Apud Haeredes Eustathij Vignon, 1603), viir-v; Khunrath, Amphitheatrum, II:74; see also Croll, Basilica Chymica, 54.

120 Scholem, Kabbalah, 88–96.121Vigenère, Traité du feu et du sel (Paris, 1618), 14.122Vigenère, Traité du feu, 153.123Vigenère, Traité du feu, 21.124Vigenère, Traité du feu, 150: “il n’ya forme de lettre, poinct, ny accent, qui n’importe quelque mystere; comme il est

particulierement specifié au Ghinah Egoz, ou Iardin du noyer de Rabi Ioseph Castiglian.”125Vigenère, Traité du feu, 56.126Vigenère, Traité du feu, 120.127Vigenère, Traité du feu, 119.128Vigenère, Traité du feu, 117.


For the Hebrew-, Chymistry- and Wisdom-loving reader

As a final example, let us look at a publication that attempts to ground alchemymore seriously in the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, or Pur-ifying Fire. This was printed in 1677 as part of the Kabbala denudata, seu doctrinaHebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atque Theologica (The KabbalaUnveiled or the Transcendental, Metaphysical, and Theological Doctrine of theHebrews, 1677–84), a Latin translation of parts of the Zohar together with otherkabbalistic treatises and commentaries, including works of the new, sixteenth-century form of the Jewish Kabbalah promoted by the students of Isaac Luria(1534–1572). It was published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689)and Frans Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1699) and dedicated, notably, “to theHebrew-, Chymistry-, and Wisdom-loving reader.”129

The title page of the Kabbala Unveiled announces that it contains a “Compen-dium of the Cabalistical-Chymical Book, called the Aesch Mezareph, concerningthe Philosophical Stone.”130 The Aesch Mezareph provides several instances ofCabalistic word-play, including one of Gematria in the service of an alchemicalreading of Daniel 7:5: “And behold another beast like a bear stood up on oneside: and there were three rows in the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof, andthus they said to it: Arise, devour much flesh.” The explanation is provided that“Let him eat Flesh” should be interpreted as “Let him digest the mineralStibium,” on the grounds that the Hebrew words Bashar (Flesh) and Puch(Stibium) can both be made to share the same number seven.131 Although antimonyis more commonly symbolised by a wolf (sometimes a lion) in European alchemy,the combination of the devouring bear-like beast with the isopsephic equation of“Stibium” and “Flesh” must have seemed particularly apposite for thiscabalist-alchemist.132

Although Pico della Mirandola and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) had alreadydrawn correspondences between the planets and the Sefirot on the Tree of Life, theAesch Mezareph, as far as I know, is the first text to attempt to correlate them with

129Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, seu doctrina Hebraeorum transcendentalis et metaphysica atqueTheologica, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Joannis Davidis Zunneri, 1684), Vol. 1: a2r: “Ad Lectorem Philebraeum,Philochymicum, & Philosophum.”

130 See also Raphael Patai, “Esh M’saref: A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Treatise,” in The Jewish Alchemists, 322–35;Nicolas Séd, “L’alchimie et la science sacrée des lettres: notes sur l’alchimie juive à propos de l’Ésh mesareph,” inKahn and Matton, Alchimie, art, histoire et myths, 547–649.

131Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 206–07 (the values of the letters forming Puch add up to 106 [80 + 20 + 6]; those ofBashar to 502 [2 + 300 + 200]; both reducible to 7).

132 For the wolf, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012),146; for the lion as crude antimony, see William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, anAmerican Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. With a New Foreword (Chicago, Ill.: University of ChicagoPress, 2003; first printed 1994), 131. See also R. Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes Chymisches Werk (Erfurt: VerlegtsAugustinus Crusius, 1735; rept. Leipzig, 1760), 29, 37, 46. See also Part II, Samuel Baruch’s Donum Dei, 53.This book also discusses the Hebrew word Puk, identifying it, however, not as common stibium but as magnesia,bismuth, or black lead (Plumbum nigrum). A reader familiar with the hieroglyphic figures of Nicolas Flamelwould immediately recognize some of the engravings used in the Uraltes Chymisches Werk. See Patai, Jewish Alche-mists, 238, where Eleazar’s book is described as “the most Jewish alchemical book in existence.”


the alchemical metals.133 The author provides two models for this. One has the firstSefira, Kether (Crown) related to the “root of metals” (i.e. prima materia); while thesecond Sefira, Chochmah (Wisdom) is Lead; the third, Binah (Understanding)Tin, and so forth.134 This is curious as the higher Sefirot—those at the top of theTree—are generally regarded as more subtle, whereas the metals are here presentedin the inverse sequence, from the crudest, lead, down to the noblest, gold. Thismakes more sense if we think of the topmost Sefira Kether as the source of thelower emanations, just as primal matter is the source of all metals.135 The secondmodel is particularly intriguing in that it has the first three Sefirot correspondingrespectively to “thick water” (i.e. Mercury), Salt, and Sulfur.136 Having startedthis essay with Paracelsians drawing inspiration from the Cabala, do we perhapshave here a case of a Jewish Cabalist drawing inspiration from Paracelsianalchemy? Both Scholem and Kilcher agree that this must be the case, nor is it excep-tional, for Scholem also discusses the sixteenth-century Rabbi and alchemist Morde-chai de Nello, who was known to be a follower of Paracelsus.137

The Aesch Mezareph generated interest in the alchemical community. JohannHannemann’sOvum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum (Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistan Egg, 1694) contains references, and an English translation of theChymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, Æsch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire waspublished in London in 1714.138 One of the Aesch Mezareph’s most famousreaders is Isaac Newton (1642–1727), one of whose chymical manuscripts containsthe note that “In the Cabala of the Jews [the second Sefira on the Tree of Life]Chochmah is the degree of lead or of primordial salt, in which lies hidden thelead of the wise.”139 It is worth noting that even though Scholem points out thatRosenroth describes the Aesch Mezareph as an example of Kabbala naturalis (aterm not found in Jewish sources),140 suggesting that the Kabbalah was being putto the service of material alchemy, Scholem also believes that in the dedicatoryverses of the Kabbala Denudata, Rosenroth alludes to the Kabbalah functioningas a kind of mystical alchemy, with the claim that his Kabbalah Unveiled

133 For Pico, see Farmer, Syncretism in the West, 541; for Kircher’s famous Tree of Life engraving, see Oedipus Aegyp-tiacus (1652), Vol. 2, between pages 290 and 291.

134Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1: 117–18.135 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 68–69, expresses his own reservations about these sefirotic attributions.136Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, 1:118.137 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 58f.138 Johann Ludovicus Hannemann, Ovum Hermetico-Paracelsico-Trismegistum, i.e., Commentarius-Philosophico-

Chemico-Medicus (Frankfurt: Impensis Friderici Knochii, 1694), 165, 390; A Short Enquiry concerning the Herme-tick Art… by a Lover of Philalethes. To which is Annexed, A Collection from Kabbala Denudata, and Translation ofthe Chymical-Cabbalistical Treatise, Intituled, Æsch-Mezareph; or, Purifying Fire (London, 1714).

139Keynes MS 30a, King’s College Library, Cambridge, “Index Chemicus,” fol. 17r: “In Judaeorum Cabala Cochma estgradus plumbi vel salis primordialis in quo latet plumbum sapientum. Lexicon Zohar.” Cf. Knorr von Rosenroth,Kabbala denudata, 1: 345: “In doctrina metallica Chochmah est gradus Plumbi; vel salis primordialis, in quo latetplumbum sapientum.”

140 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 70. See Kabbala Denudata, 1: 449. Scholem suspects that the source for this termlies with Paracelsus, though it could have been influenced by Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome: ExTypographia Vitalis Mascardi, 1652), 2: 338 “Caput X. De Cabala Naturali, quam Bereschith siue fabricaeappellant.”


“changes the abstruse course of the minerals in the heart.”141 Kilcher proposes thatthe Aesch Mezareph should not be seen as an alchemical text that appears to flauntthe name Kabbalah in its title, as do so many works, like Franz Kieser’s CabalaChymica (1606) or Stefan Michelspacher’s Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Naturin Alchymia (1616), but rather as a kabbalistic text with an alchemical orien-tation.142 He convincingly argues that the Aesch Mezareph plays a key role in thepublication of the Kabbala Denudata, for it enhances the function of the Kabbalahfor the natural philosophical projects of Rosenroth and Van Helmont. For him, their“Cabalistical-Chymical Book” exemplifies a kind of meta-discipline between scienceand theology, a “spekulative Zentraldisziplin” that applies the theology of the Kab-balah “scientifically” and supports alchemical science by means of Kabbalah.143

Conclusion

In conclusion, what can be said about these textual encounters between Cabala andalchemy, between the “secretiores theologi” and “secretiories philosophi,” the moresecret theologians and philosophers?144 Christian Cabala and, to a lesser extent,Jewish Kabbalah did apparently have some impact on transmutational and medic-inal alchemy, appearing in texts which also included practical discussions of labora-tory practice and alchemical recipes. Save for the Aesch Mezareph, little of thiscabalistic alchemy seems particularly Jewish: indeed, Scholem suggests that thevery “deformation or transformation, if not transmutation” of the Jewish Kabbalahinto Christian Cabala was necessary in order to make it accessible for alchemicalinterpretation.145 The first experiments in what we might call “Cabalchemy” bythe Venetian Priest, Giovanni Pantheo, in the early sixteenth century enjoyedsome success, for the Voarchadumia was reprinted in 1550,146 and then laterincluded in the second volume of the most famous compendium of alchemicaltexts, Lazarus Zetzner’s Theatrum Chemicum (1602, 1659), which also includedDee’s Monas Hieroglyphica and Kieser’s Cabala Chymica (1606).147 Althoughmodern scholars may express their doubts about the depth of Paracelsus’s knowl-edge of Kabbalah, this was certainly not the message transmitted by four of hismost influential disciples. Despite their personal disagreements, Gohory, Toxites,Dorn, and Ruland all include Cabala as an important theme in their presentationof Paracelsian knowledge.

141 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 80. On the Bahir as a possible foundation for kabbalistic spiritual alchemy, seeNicolas Séd, “Le Symbolisme de l’Or selon le Livre Bahir,” Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 162–80.

142Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica,” 101.143Kilcher, “Cabbala chymica,” 108.144Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 64.145 Scholem, Alchemy and Kabbalah, 97.146 Joannes Augustinus Pantheus, Ars et theoria transmvtationis metallicae cum Voarchadúmia, proportionibus,

numeris, et iconibus rei accommodis illustrata (Paris: Apud Vivantium Gautherotium, 1550). There also appearsto be another copy available with 1556 on the title page and 1550 in the colophon.

147Zetzner, comp., Theatrum chemicum (Oberursel: Ex Officina Cornelij Sutorij, sumtibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1602), 2:528–630.


What should be evident by now is that there is little real indication in any of theworks discussed above of alchemists practising a transcendentally mystical form ofspiritual alchemy, or engaging in any supernatural forms of alchemical practice,though there is no denying the fundamental piety of many of the practitioners.Some alchemists strove hard to integrate cabalist notions, though it is difficult tosay what might have been their criteria for success. Pico and Reuchlin’s promotionof the value of Cabala for exegetical purposes certainly attracted the interest of somealchemists who applied it heuristically in calculating the values of alchemical words,and seeking insights into quantitative aspects of laboratory practice, and the weightsand relative proportions of mixtures. Some combined mathematics with philologyand engaged in elaborate polyglot etymologies, or constructed and deconstructedacronyms with the aim of discovering or disguising the true identity of substances;yet others anatomized words to discover new terms concealed within them, or com-posed Cabalistic Enigmas to stimulate the imagination of their readers. Some, likeDee, generated and permutated glyphs, either in order to intuit new connectionsbetween elements, or to create a systematic new semiotics for chymistry. Theresults bear little semblance to Jewish Kabbalah, but were inspired by cabalistic tech-niques. And, finally, some explicitly attempted to draw correlations between the twointellectual systems, such as the identification of the HebrewMother letters with theParacelsian principles, or the mapping of alchemical substances onto the kabbalisticTree of Life. In these works, the Hebrew language and cabalistic words were calledas witnesses to the great antiquity of the alchemical art.148 The impact Cabalaundoubtedly had on Paracelsian forms of alchemy is evident in the entries thatcan be found in the dictionaries of Toxites, Dorn, Ruland, and Thurneisser, andthe works of figures like Khunrath and Vigenère. For these writers at least, the com-bination of the two arts helped to strengthen and uphold their faith and invigorate,perhaps, both science and religion, as a way of discovering a deeper, more profoundunderstanding of God’s two books of nature and scripture.

Notes on contributor

Peter J. Forshaw is Senior Lecturer in History of Western Esotericism in the EarlyModern Period at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Cur-rents, University of Amsterdam. He researches the intellectual and cultural history oflearned magic and its relation to religion, science, and medicine in early modernEurope. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism.Address: Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, Univer-sity of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 147, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands.E-mail: [email protected]

148Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme, 67; Jean-Pierre Brach, “Remarques sur le Symbolisme des Nombres en Alchimie,”Chrysopoeia 1 (1987): 303–10, on 307.


mailto:[email protected]




Forshaw Cabala Chymica

Documents

cabalistic alchemy

history of alchemy

service of alchemy

exegeticalmethods of

kabbalah andalchemythe

mention of kabbalah

laboratory art of alchemy

broader subject of alchemy