#zosimos of panopolis

[alephskoteinos]

I love finding this at the same time as I'm writing notes on theurgy again. Zosimos comes up throughout my notes when I bring up alchemy and fallen angels. This ought to be good.

[therhetoricofmagic]

The Philosophers of Fire

One of the central concepts in alchemy was the idea of the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire, which were believed to be the basic constituents of all matter. Among the alchemists, there were those who specialized in the element of fire, and they were known as the philosophers of fire. These alchemists believed that fire was the primary agent of change and transformation, and that it had…

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[forbidden-sorcery]

The attempt to become a god is the Great Work of magic and alchemy. The belief that man can attain the divine while still in the body, with the parallel between this process and the transmutation of base metals to gold, was grafted on to the metalworking techniques of the ancient world by Gnostic Graeco-Egyptian alchemists. One of them, Zosimos of Panopolis in Egypt, writing about A.D. 300, describes a dream in which he saw a priest sacrificing at a dome-shaped altar at the top of fifteen steps. He heard the voice of the priest saying, 'I have accomplished the action of descending the fifteen steps toward the darkness, and the action of ascending the steps toward the light. The sacrifice renews me, rejecting the dense nature of the body. Thus consecrated by necessity, I become a spirit.' The priest said he had suffered unbearable violence. He had been dismembered with a sword. His bones had been mixed with his flesh and 'burned in the fire of the treatment' and so, through the transformation of the body, he had become a spirit...        Later in the same dream, Zosimos saw a crowd of people immersed in boiling water on the altar, burned and wailing. He saw a man of copper holding a tablet of lead. A spectator told him that 'the men who wish to obtain virtue enter here and become spirits after having escaped from the body'. Waking from the dream, Zosimos tells the reader to build a temple 'as of white lead, as of alabaster, having neither commencement nor end in its construction. Let it have in its interior a spring of pure water, sparkling like the sun...' Then take a sword and find the narrow opening which is the entrance to the temple. A serpent lies at the entrance. Seize the serpent, kill him, flay him and use his body as a step to the entrance. You will find what you seek. The man of copper has become a man of silver and if you wish will become a man of gold.

Richard Cavendish - The Black Arts : A Concise History of Witchcraft, Demonology, Astrology, and Other Mystical Practices Throughout the Ages

[pathofregeneration]

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Magician (or: A Scholar in His Study) — 1650-54

* * *

“Let your body rest, calm your passions, resist desire, pleasure, anger, sorrow, and the dozen fatalities of death. In thus conducting yourself you will call to you the divine being, and the divine being will come to you, he who is everywhere and nowhere.  . . . Operating in this manner you will obtain the proper, authentic, and natural tinctures. Make these things until you become perfect in your soul. But, when you recognize that you have arrived at perfection, then beware of the natural elements of the material: descending toward the Shepherd, and plunging into meditation, you will thus re-ascend to your origin.”

— Zosimos of Panopolis

[frimleyblogger]

Fool’s Gold

From the 4th century AD Zosimos of Panopolis onwards people have been fascinated with the concept of chrysopeia, turning everyday metals into gold. Known as alchemists they believed that base metals were impure stages that would eventually ripen into the purest form of all, gold, but if the process was left to nature alone it might never happen. The hunt was on for a way to accelerate the…

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[whenwewerecool]

[whenwewerecool]

[hermesblog]

Zosimos of Panopolis

Zosimos of Panopolis (Greek: Ζώσιμος; also known by the Latin name Zosimus Alchemista, i.e. “Zosimus the Alchemist”) was a Greek alchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim in the south of Egypt, and flourished ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which quotations in the Greek…

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