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Panopolis and the Alchemical Tread by Michael Sanborn
W
hen the great Persian philosopher and mystic Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī arrived in the Syrian town of Aleppo in 83 .V., he stayed at the Madrasa Halawiya, a religious school built over the ruins of a Byzantine cathedral founded—according to legend—by St Helena, the mother of Constantine. When Suhrawardī first attended class there, the head professor noted the contrast between the newcomer’s great wisdom and his rough dervish robes. is professor sent his son to present Suhrawardī with a gift of fine clothes and an invitation to attend classes as a member of the faculty. When Suhrawardī heard this, he said nothing for a time. He then handed the boy a ruby the size of a chicken egg—the largest anyone had ever seen—and told him to bring it to the market place and get a price for it, but not to sell it without checking with him first. e professor’s son went, and then returned to tell Suhrawardī that he had been offered 30,000 silver coins for the gem. Hearing this, the sage took another rock, and smashed the ruby to shards. He returned the garments to the boy, and asked him to kiss his father’s hand and tell him, “If I had wanted clothing, I would not have been prevented from getting it.” 1 In this way, Suhrawardī Suhrawardī acquired a reputation as a powerful alchemist. Suhrawardī claimed to be the inheritor of an ancient lineage of initiated wisdom, which he termed “the “the leaven of the Pythagoreans.” One of the earliest figures of the lineage that he described was the Sicilian philosopher-magician Empedocles. 2 One of the last was the pivotal Sufi and Hermeticist, Dhu’lNūn al-Mişrī. ere is a thread that connects these two adepts, running unbroken for at least eight hundred years through the upper Egyptian city of Panopolis, and it is the thread of alchemy. Empedocles Ancient Egypt was famous for its funereal practices, and continued to be so in Roman times. Around 00 .V., a burial was conducted in Panopolis involving papyrus folded into a crown and covered in copper. is crown was rediscovered in 904 (interestingly enough), and the papyrus fragments extracted and stored away in the Imperial Imperial Library in Strasbourg. Strasbou rg. In the early 990s, the fragments were finally recognized. ey were the longest excerpt ever discovered from the writings of a Pre-Socratic philosopher, specifically, a previously unknown passage from the poem of Empedocles known as On Physics.
is was unexpected, to say the least. How did the work of an Italian philosopher (c. 492–432 ...) wind up in an Egyptian burial offering over five hundred years later? e most engaging engag ing scenario was wa s put forth by Peter Kingsley, former Fellow of the Warburg Institute. In his Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition, 3 Kinsley points out that our historical image of Empedocles has been thoroughly distorted by our over-reliance on the accounts of Aristotle. For Aristotle, all previous philosophers were of value only to the extent that they led up to the system of philosophical classification which Aristotle himself outlined. Aristotle Aristotle dismissed Empedocles for the most part as as a showman who attempted to be philosophical but failed. rough a careful examination of the historical evidence, Kingsley restores the image of Empedocles as he was known in the ancient world: Empedocles the magician, the shaman, the messenger from the gods. With his later books, In the Dark Places of Wisdom 4 and Reality,5 Kingsley goes further, joining the ranks of Henry Corbin and Louis Massignon as a historianturned-visionary. He traces a tradition of esoteric teachings from Empedocles and his near-contemporary Parmenides, going back to the region of Phocaea in Asia Minor, and through Persia Persia tied to the shamanic practices of Central Asia. He asserts that this Phocaean tradition (marked particularly by the practice of incubation, or divination through dreams) is at or near the roots of Pythagoreanism, Orphism, and the more speculative of the Platonic doctrines. e teachings of Empedocles, in particular, are seen as informing Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and especially alchemy. Empedocles, after all, is credited with the formulation of the idea of the four roots: earth, air, water, and fire. He further claimed that all things are combinations of these four roots, constantly being transformed by two forces: love and strife. e might of aithêr chases it into the sea, sea spits it out onto solid ground, earth spits it up into rays of the radiant sun and sun hurls it into the whirlpools of aithêr. One receives it from another, then another from another, and they all hate it. is is the way that I too am now going, an exile from the gods and a wanderer, placing my trust in mad Strife.6
Alchemists, both Christian and Muslim, believed Empedocles to have been the originator of their central doctrine of the fire in the center of the earth. Kingsley demonstrates that the surviving fragments of Empedocles’ work fully support this traditional attribution, emerging as they do from the religious culture of Sicily, the area around the volcanic Mt Etna.
Ibn Abī Uşaybi‘a, ‘Uyūn al-Anbā’ fi Ţabaqāt al-Aţibbā, ed. A. Müller. Königsberg (884), 2:68–69, cited by John Walbridge, e Leaven of the Ancients (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), p. 52–53. 2 e fifth-century b.c.e. Empedocles was considered by Islamic historians of the middle ages to have been a predecessor of Pythagoras cit., p. 45. (sixth century ...). Walbridge, op. cit.,
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Oxford: Clarendon Press, 995. Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 999. 5 Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 2004. 6 Kingsley (2004), pp. 430–43. 4
June 2004, .. in ♊, IVxii, A.N. e crown discovered in upper Egypt, then, was not filled with the speculations of some academic philosopher, but with the profound utterances of a divinely inspired magician (reminiscent of the burial practices of the Orphics). is marks the earliest evidence of the initiated tradition at Panopolis. Zosimos Some 200 years later lived one of the earliest alchemists of whom we have a sure historical record, Zosimos of Panopolis. Although little is known about his life, enough of his writings have survived to present a general idea of his teachings. He described alchemy as the “Mithraic Mysteries,” and in one place outlines a series of seven grades of spiritual purification, much as is found in Mithraism. He was greatly influenced by Hermeticism, mentioning by name two of the Hermetic tracts that are still known to us, Poimandres and Krater.7 In his treatise, e Final Quittance, he made clear that the purpose of alchemy is the purification of the soul, and not merely the preparation of metals. ere are two facets of his work that are especially interesting in this context. e first is that he made frequent use of visionary dreams for guidance, just as the magicians of Phocaea and southern Italy were known to do. And the second is that he made reference to “the place of punishments” (which to Greek-speakers of the time was thought of as being below the surface of the earth) as a realm of transforming fire, a notion that has obvious parallels to the writings of Empedocles. Gnosticism In the next few centuries after Zosimos, the Pachomian monks of upper Egypt and the “philosophers” of Panopolis engaged in a noted feud. Yet it was those same monks, or ones closely related, who concealed the Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi, preserving it for rediscovery in 945. Nag Hammadi lies close to Panopolis. In fact, the Berlin Codex 8502, dated around 400 .V. and published alongside the thirteen codices found at Nag Hammadi, was discovered at Panopolis (modern-day Akhmīm). e relationship between the teachings of Empedocles and that of the Gnostics is still under investigation, but Kingsley observes that a meaningful parallel to Empedocles’ idea of all water as the tears of Persephone is provided by the Gnostic image of “all watery substance” (πἃσα ἓνυγρος οὐσία) as the tears shed by Sophia: a parallel which assumes additional significance when we bear in mind the extensive resemblances between Empedocles and Gnostic ideas. e Gnostics had their fall of the soul into an alien and frightening world, their lived ideal of the magician-liberator, their cosmic mixture, separation and “roots,” and their mythological traditions of oriental origin.8 7
Garth Fowden hints that the Hermetica may well have been written in Panopolis, see e Egyptian Hermes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 993), pp. 73–75. 8 Kingsley (995), p. 355.
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Islamic Legends Hermes was a frequent figure of fascination for early Islamic philosophers and historians. According to Abū Ma‘shar, there had been many individuals called Hermes. e first was known as Enoch to the Hebrews and Idrīs to the Arabs, and lived before the time of Noah’s flood. Hermes was the first poet, the first astrologer, the first practitioner of magic, and the first to build temples. In particular, he foresaw the coming flood, and in order to prevent the destruction of all human knowledge, he created the great temple at Panopolis, on the walls of which he inscribed all of the secrets of the sciences and the arts. is temple was described in detail by several Arab geographers, and two of the pillars of the Kaabah at Mecca9 are said to have been taken from the Temple of Hermes at Panopolis around 780 .V. Dhu’l-Nūn al-Mişrī is brings us to the other of Suhrawardī’s influences, mentioned earlier. Dhu’l-Nūn al-Mişrī (c. 79-860 .V.) is believed to be the first to present Sufism in a systematic way, founding the sect known as “e Builders,” considered to be one inspiration for the Freemasons. e name “al-Mişrī” (related to “Mizraim”) means “the Egyptian,” and indeed Dhu’l-Nūn is thought to have been an ethnic Egyptian, rather than one of the Greek or Arab immigrants common at the time. More particularly, he was from Panopolis. His name has been associated with Hermeticism and alchemy since at least the ninth century, and although some commentators have dismissed such claims, Kingsley asserts that “their historical nature can be—and since the start of this century has been— established.”0 Doubt has also been cast on the legend that Dhu’lNūn could read Egyptian hieroglyphs. But earlier this year, egyptologist Okasha El Daly verified that a manuscript of Dhu’l-Nūn’s shows him to be partially correct in translating hieroglyphs, many centuries after knowledge of them was thought to have died out. Dhu’l-Nūn provided the original definition of gnosis within Islamic mysticism, describing gnostics as “those who exist in God and contemplate His face within their hearts, so that He reveals Himself to them in a way not accorded to others.” He is also credited with being the first within Sufism to speak of the stages of the soul’s path to God, depicting seven steps reminiscent of the seven steps of Zosimos. e origin of the notion of the Qtub, the mystic guide of humanity considered 9
Described by Richard Burton as “one red granite column, and one of fine-grained red porphyry,” Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, appendix II. 10 Kingsley (995), p. 389. 11 Reuters, “Scholar: Muslims had insights into hieroglyphs” (22 February 2004).
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as the pole of the heavens, is popularly ascribed to Dhu’l-Nūn. He is also believed to have been the editor of the commentary on the Koran written by Ja‘far al-Şādiq, the sixth Imam, himself rumored to have been involved with Hermeticism and alchemy. Suhrawardī mentions one other individual from whom the “leaven of the Pythagoreans” proceeded to the Islamic world: Sahl al-Tustarī, another crucial figure in the history of Sufism. He is not known to have been involved in alchemy. But he was the student of Dhu’l-Nūn. He taught a doctrine of the four elements. And he was the teacher of the noted Sufi martyr, Hallāj. ‘Uthmān Ibn Suwaid A generation after Dhu’l-Nūn, Ibn Suwaid wrote the Mushaf al-jamā‘a (“Tome of the Gathering”). Mere fragments exist of the original, but a Latin translation not only exists in full, it is famous as one of the central documents of Western alchemy: the Turba Philosophorum (“Gathering of the Philosophers”). In it, Empedocles plays a prominent role, comparing the Earth to an egg. Elemental earth itself is the egg-shell, water is the egg-white, the fire underneath the water is the egg-yolk, and the sun is the chick, the point at the middle of the yolk. Kingsley points out that this Arabic depiction of the doctrines of Empedocles turns out to have accorded far more accurately with the historical record than the Aristotelian philosophical histories of the West. And that is not all. Ibn Suwaid, the Arabic author of the epochal Western alchemical tract, lived in Panopolis. A list of his published works includes the “Book of Refutation of the Accusation Against Dhu’l-Nūn al-Mişrī.” Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī e lineage of Suhrawardī, then, reveals great mysteries. e more historical evidence is gathered, the more his claims of an unbroken tradition with the wisdom of the ancients are supported. But who was he? What use did he make of the alchemical thread running through Panopolis? Suhrawardī was the founder of the Illuminationist school of Islamic mysticism, and arguably the greatest of the Persian philosophers. He claimed to have united the streams of the initiated traditions of the East and West, so convincingly that the Zoroastrians partially reinvented their own history to conform to his doctrines. His philosophy remains influential in Iran and India to this day. Illuminationism is centered upon the idea of knowledge by presence. at which is present gains direct knowledge of the sensible though the senses, and gains direct knowledge of the supersensible through intuition, in both cases without the mediation of reason or thought. Everything is derived from light. Multiplicity is due to the creative expression of the Light of Lights, or God, and darkness (which includes all corporeal bodies) is an accident deriving from the multiplicity of lights. It
can be inferred that presence and light, for the Illuminationists, are co-emergent. e Illuminationist work is enlightenment through the soul’s exposure to the divine lights. Suhrawardī developed a sophisticated emanationist metaphysics to this end, and a streamlined reformation of Aristotelian logic to support it. Besides his association with alchemy due to the story of his mysterious ruby, Suhrawardī also practiced astrology and Arabic letter-magic. But to the modern initiate, the most interesting aspect of Suhrawardī’s writings concerns a doctrine found in Arabic Hermeticism. Do not imagine that the lord of a species is a body or bodily or that it has a head or two feet. You have found that Hermes said, “A spiritual essence gave me knowledge, so I asked it, ‘Who are you?’ It replied, ‘I am your Perfect Nature.’” 12
What Suhrawardī means by Perfect Nature can be explained through a passage from the Ghāyat al-Hakīm (translated into Latin as the Picatrix): e first thing you have to do in relation to yourself, is to meditate attentively on the spiritual entity ( rūhānīyato-ka, “your angel”) which rules you and which is associated with your star—namely, your Perfect Nature…13
In his psalm to Perfect Nature, Suhrawardī indicates, as beautifully as anyone before or since, the shape of what the Pythagorean leaven gives rise to: ou, my lord and prince, my most holy angel, my precious spiritual being, ou art the Spirit who gave birth to me, and ou art the Child to whom my spirit gives birth… ou who art clothed in the most brilliant of divine Lights… may ou manifest yself to me in the most beautiful (or in the highest) of epiphanies, show me the light of y dazzling face, be for me the mediator… lift the veils of darkness from my heart…14
While we may never know whether there could have been any connection between Suhrawardī’s teachings and the Holy Guardian Angel of Abramelin magick, the recollection that Abramelin himself was a resident of Egypt suggests that they may have both been tributaries of the initiated tradition of Panopolis.
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Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, Mashāri‘, para. 93, in Majmū‘a, vol. :463–64, cited by Walbridge, e Wisdom of the Mystic East (Albany: SUNY Press, 200), p. 49. 13 Pseudo-Majrītī, Das Ziel des Weisen [Ghāyat al-Hakīm], ed. Helmut Ritter, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XII (Leipzig, 933), p. 93, cited by Henry Corbin, e Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, tr. Nancy Pearson (Boulder: Shambhala, 978), p. 7. 14 Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, Sohravardī et les Platoniciens de Perse (Paris: Gallimard, 97–72), bk. II, ch. III, cited by Corbin (978), p. 2.
