Maria the Jewess

In the 1st century CE, when Roman polytheism reigned supreme, the Jews were persecuted for their monotheism.  In that age of male heroes, women were relegated to a second class.  An alchemist would have been further still from conventional thought, but it was a trailblazing Jewish woman alchemist who began the intellectual tradition that Sir Isaac Newton would follow 15 centuries later. 

Sir Isaac Newton, the paragon of the rational scientific male, in his day was a leading alchemist, when same was considered heresy, punishable by death by public hanging.  Compelling then was this Jewish woman’s tradition. Newton transcribed more than 10 million words of notes, consisting of 16 folios, on the subjects of alchemy, religious and historical studies.  And they were burned. So who was Mary the Jewess, also known as Maria Prophetissima and Maria the Copt and what did she know?

The Jewish Women’s Archive explains Maria “…was the first non-mythical Jewish woman to write and publish works under her own name. Maria is generally regarded as the first actual alchemist who is not a mythical figure. According to Zosimos of Panoplis, she started an alchemical academy in Alexandria, Egypt, and reportedly excelled at the process of transmutation of base metals into gold. Zosimos wrote a brief account of Maria’s philosophy, called The Four Bodies Are the Aliment of the Tinctures. Maria the Jewess invented several important pieces of chemical apparatus and was also known for a variety of mystical and alchemical sayings.”  

Highly inventive, she used ovens made of clay, metal and glass, and formed gaskets using wax, fat, paste made of starch, and clay mixed with fat to seal the joints.  Glass allowed the viewer to see the reactions, and allowed work to be done with mercury and sulfurous compounds.  She may have been the first person to mention hydrochloric acid, and invented the double-boiler, known even today as the Bain-Marie, as well as the tribikos, a distillation still with three spouts, and the kerotakis, an extractor with a metallic palette inside a vacuum container holding vapors.  According to Zosimos, she ground cinnabar [mercury (II) oxide] with mortars and pestles or lead and tin.  Her fame endured in both Arab and European alchemy.  The Kitāb al-Fihrist (Book Catalogue), by Ibn Al-Nadim in the late 10th century listed her among the 52 most important alchemists.  

Her inventive spirit was surpassed by her writings.  The “Axiom of Maria” states, “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”  Carl Jung used this as a metaphor for the principium individuationis, the means by which one thing becomes distinct from other things.  From Aristotle through Schopenhauer to Nietzsche this has been a fundamental concept in philosophy.  

Concerning the union of opposites, Maria wrote: “Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought.”  As yin and yang define the whole, Maria was ahead of her time.  Zosimos of Panopolis, the alchemist and Gnostic mystic, claims that Maria was a peer of Hermes Trismegistus who famously wrote, “As above, so below.”  It is said that Maria taught Democritus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher, renowned for formulating an atomic theory of the universe.  Reportedly they met in Memphis, Egypt, during the time of Pericles.  

For the Greek alchemists ὕδωρ θεῖον, was both divine water and sulphurous water with the alchemical vessel imagined as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapours of mercury and sulphur likened to the purifying waters of baptism, which perfected and redeemed the initiate.  It would seem that the Christian rite of baptism bears alchemical roots.  

All rivers lead to the sea, so too the River Jordan, where a woman Jewess holds a baptismal place at the delta basin, whereto wisdom flows down like the rain: as above, so below, indeed.  Peace to all.

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Credit where credit is due: David Purpur, again. Elena Benham, again. While Gaia gifts us, abundantly…