Tobias ChurtonThe First Alchemists
The Spiritual and Practical Origins of the Noble and Holy Art
Tobias Churton scholar, lecturer, composer, and religious TV director, is author of 27 published books, including biographies of William Blake, Aleister Crowley, G. I. Gurdjieff, and Elias Ashmole. A theology graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, he was appointed Honorary Fellow in 2005 to lecture in Western Esotericism at Exeter University and is Britain’s leading scholar in the field, specializing in Gnostic, Hermetic, Rosicrucian, biblical, and Masonic studies. Invited to join Professor Boccaccini’s Enoch Seminar in 2019, his most recent books include Aleister Crowley in Paris and The Lost Pillars of Enoch.
FOREWORD
by Frank van Lamoen
Introduction
ONE
Ancient Recipes for Gold— and Other Things
Discoveries at Thebes
A Theban Magical Library?
The Leiden Papyrus
Papyrus V
Papyrus W
Papyrus X
The Stockholm Papyrus
Pseudo-Democritus
TWO
The Origins of Alchemy in Roman Egypt
Akkadian Origin of Chēmeu?
Heat and Glass
THREE
The Pioneers of Graeco-Egyptian- Jewish Alchemy
Cleopatra
Jewish Chemistry
Mary the “Prophetess”
FOUR
Zosimos I
Clearing the Decks
Was Zosimos an Egyptian Priest?
FIVE
Zosimos II
Alchemical Yoga
Practical Dreaming
SIX
Zosimos III
From Omega to the Final Quittance
On Destiny, Fate, Worldly Thought, and Noetic Understanding
The First Book of Zosimos the Theban’s Final Account
SEVEN
What Did the First Alchemists Do?
Making Talismans?
EIGHT
How Did They Do It?
Sulfur Water; Divine Water
Apparatus
Putting the First Alchemists to the Test
NINE
Where Did They Do It?
A Hermetic “Lodge”?
A Guild for Theosebeia?
Laboratories?
TEN
The Myth of Transmutation
Philosophical Background
The Stone
The Tome of Images
Myth and Reality
ELEVEN
Forbidden Knowledge
TWELVE
A Strange Relation
Alchemy and Gnosis
Mercury and Christ
THIRTEEN
Legacy
Arabic Alchemy
The Inheritance
“Good Health!”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
