The Secrets of Alchemy Quotes

“The author concealed behind the pseudonym of Geber is probably an Italian Franciscan friar and lecturer named Paul of Taranto.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“Analyzing the name of a thing can thus reveal something about the thing itself. The same thinking forms the basis of that branch of Jewish Kabbalah known as gematria, and its Christian versions that were explored in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt! That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one thing. As all things were from one. Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon. The Earth carried it in her belly, and the wind nourished it in her belly, as Earth which shall become fire. Feed the Earth from that which is subtle, with the greatest power. It ascends from the Earth to the heaven and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“But the word more likely has a Greek origin, given that Greek was the language both of the earliest alchemical texts and of literate Greco-Roman Egypt. The “chem” of alchemy and chemistry very probably derives from the Greek cheō, which means “to melt or fuse.” Cheō also gives rise to the Greek word chuma, which signifies an ingot of metal.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“One of the most prominent authorities is named Maria—sometimes called Maria Judaea or Mary the Jew—and Zosimos credits her with the development of a broad range of apparatus and techniques. Maria’s techniques include a method of gentle, even heating using a bath of hot water rather than an open flame. This simple but useful invention preserved the legacy of Maria the ancient alchemist, not only for the rest of alchemy’s history, but even down to the present day. It is her name that remains attached to the bain-marie or bagno maria of French and Italian cookery.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“Indeed, an entire generation became acquainted with the stone and one of its supposed possessors, the medieval Parisian notary Nicolas Flamel, by means of the first of J. K. Rowling’s wildly successful books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. (Regrettably, American publishers corrupted the substance’s ancient name into the meaningless “Sorcerer’s Stone.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy

“The same concern about the coming of the Antichrist lay behind much of what Roger Bacon—also a Franciscan friar—wrote to the pope about sixty years earlier: the church will need mathematical, scientific, technological, medical, and other knowledge to resist and survive the assault of the Antichrist.”
― Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy