The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton (review)

The past generation has witnessed remarkable advances in our historical understanding of alchemy. A subject previously dismissed as mere pseudo-science, or obscure esoterica, has now been shown to have made important intellectual and practical contributions to the development of modern science, and to have had wide-ranging influence in fields from theater and medicine to fine art and literature. But alchemy's change of fortune has come about only through the careful researches of dozens of scholars who continue gradually and laboriously to correct widespread erroneous assumptions about alchemy with accurate historical studies. There is no question that alchemy is a demanding subject of inquiry: its texts are frequently obscure, and secretive, if not simply corrupt; its authors are frequently anonymous or pseudonymous; and its meaning has been subjected to a host of untenable and highly misleading interpretations since the Enlightenment. Now, however, scholarly labors are replacing corrupt texts with critical editions, clearing away erroneous interpretations, and displacing long-standing fictions or nescience about important authors with sound biographical material. Much has been achieved, and much remains to be done.

Stanton Linden here presents a selection of alchemical texts to readers, and no doubt responds to the growing interest in alchemy. Linden is known for his studies of alchemy's relationship to English literature, expressed most notably in his fine Darke Heiroglyphicks (1996). The twenty-seven excerpts chosen for the Alchemy Reader extend widely through time and place. Early selections include sections from Aristotle and Plato that proved influential to later alchemical theories; these are followed by late antique, Arabic, and Latin medieval texts, and finally by early modern items. Each text is prefaced with biographical material about its author, brief notice of the text's importance, and suggestions for additional reading. Given the current interest in alchemy, a reader of this sort should be considered a welcome addition and valuable resource for a variety of purposes. Unfortunately, however, it falls far short of the mark.

Many of the texts are reprints of seventeenth-century or other unscholarly editions, and as such are frequently corrupt or poorly translated. Worse still, no fewer than seven are attributed to the wrong author, and frequently to the wrong century, despite the publications of twentieth-century historians that resolve these very issues. For example, the excerpt attributed to Kha\lid ibn-Yazī\d was shown not to be his by Julius Ruska in 1924. Likewise, the Libellus is not by Albert the Great, nor is the Radix mundi by Roger Bacon. The "Key" is here said to be "now generally accepted as" Isaac Newton's (p. 243), but even though Betty Jo Dobbs thought it was Newton's in 1975, its authorship was immediately questioned by Karin Figala, and in 1988 William Newman conclusively proved it to be a composition by George Starkey; this fact has been repeated in a dozen publications since, and no scholar now thinks the "Key" is Newton's.

Even when the editor reveals an awareness of the scholarly studies of the texts he presents, he either fails to cite them, or speaks of them so tentatively that their force is obscured. For example, Linden does note that "scholarly opinion" now "favors" (p. 123) the view that the medieval Parisian scrivener Nicolas Flamel was not the author of the alchemical works that later appeared under his name, yet he still lists the piece under the heading "Nicholas Flamel (1330?–1417?)" and nowhere cites the foundational studies of this subject by Robert Halleux and others. Similarly, he acknowledges the historical conflation of the ninth-century Ja\bir ibn H≥ayya\n with the thirteenth-century pseudonymous Geber, yet without noting that the selections he presents are unambiguously those of the latter, and without a reference to the fundamental work of either Paul Kraus or Newman. It is as if the editor were unwilling to recognize that the...