ذبول مدرسة الإسكندرية .. الإسكندريه والسيمياء

The Decline of the Alexandrian School .. Alexandria and Alchemy

The Decline of the Alexandrian School

By the end of the fourth century AD, semiotics in Alexandria had completely deviated from the materialistic approach to the esoteric (Sufi) approach. This may be due to the influence of Eastern philosophies in Alexandria, but it may also be due to another, simpler reason: the material methods did not bear fruit. They did not produce gold.

In the absence of a systematic experimental method to work on, the semioticians turned to the only thing available to them: magic. In the process, the target changed from gold to the spirit of gold. The new goal became the spiritual transformation of the semioticians. Materials slowly and gradually became less important, until the only ingredients left were secret rituals and spells. Now the semiotician could practice his profession without breathing fumes or lighting fires. This is not to say that material techniques did not witness a revival, but unfortunately Alexandria at that same time, in general, was suffering from intellectual decline and decline.

There was a gradual philosophical transformation. Gnosticism became dominant in the 2nd century AD, and with it the belief that the only source of knowledge was revelation and inspiration from the gods. In the 3rd century AD, Neoplatonism became important and was associated with a disdain for thought and science. In addition, two other events occurred in the last years of the Christian era, each of which was not so serious individually, but together they led to the stagnation and decline of Alexandria.

The first event was the defeat of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, which led to the city being placed under Roman rule. The other event was the beginning of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the Palestine suburb of the Roman Empire. A small sect of Jews embraced the teachings of Christ, which eventually developed into the independent Christian religion thanks to the works of Paul of Tarsus.

From 100 AD, these two events combined in such a way that the Hellenistic era finally ended.

In the 3rd century AD the political atmosphere became more oppressive, culminating in the imperial order of Diocletian to destroy all semiotic writings, because he was afraid that the producers of gold and silver would obtain enough money to finance the rebellion.

In this oppressive atmosphere, the philosophies that spread from Persia to Babylon continued to perpetuate the dualistic ideas that do not accept the middle ground of good and evil, embodying infinite asceticism and Sufi (esoteric) beliefs. Christianity absorbed these ideas, and when Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (c. 330 AD), this was accompanied by repressive measures. The Christians aimed to destroy pagan philosophy and alchemy. Pagan temples and libraries were looted in Egypt. In Alexandria, a mob of monks summarily executed Hypatia, the last pagan philosopher, around 400 AD. Shortly thereafter, the museum in Alexandria was closed and its library scattered. Around 500 AD, the Academy in Athens was closed and the remaining philosophers fled to Persia. Thus the Hellenistic era came to an end.

However, there was a savior for the wealth of the Hellenistic scientific establishment. In 400 AD, the Christian church was sharply divided over the exact nature of Christ’s divinity. The monk Nestorius was excommunicated and fled to Syria with his followers, carrying with them whatever Hellenistic teachings they could. The manuscripts could be preserved and stored in the monasteries of these people. The dissenters.

Around 500 AD the Nestorians were expelled from Syria, so they migrated to Persia and entered under the protection of the Shah. There they established schools on the Alexandrian model and translated the works of Plato and Aristotle and some of the writings of the early semioticians into Syriac. Among the subjects studied in their schools were astronomy, astrology, medicine and alchemy. As we shall see, Alexandrian science resurfaced from these schools.

These schools accepted alchemy as a serious subject of study, like medicine and astronomy, because - as we have seen - it seemed a reasonable and logical theory. It found its inspiration in natural events and its confirmation in the approach to successes. Thus the question may arise: if the theory is so defensible, why did it not happen to others elsewhere? The answer, of course, is that it did.

Other semioticians contemporary with the Alexandrian school:

India and China

Both the Chinese and Indian civilizations - which flourished at the same time as Alexandria - developed their own semiotic systems. There was certainly some exchange of information. It is thought that wandering bands of craftsmen, similar to modern Gypsies, travelled from the Indus Valley to Thrace and Gaul (12 BC), but these systems were sufficiently different from Alexandrian alchemy that we can see that the same people, when contemplating the same grains of sand, could arrive at the same ideas independently of one another. Indeed, it is interesting to ask why not all societies developed alchemy. The answer, which varies from one society to another, is that this may have been due to the weather or the relative value of gold.

The absence of semiotics in the far north can be understood if we think about the climate: the work of daily survival took precedence over semiotic contemplation. Southern Africa was certainly warmer - enough so - and was not lacking in technology or social organization: from about 200 BC the Kingdom of Kush spread iron-making to the south-central. But at this time - as we have indicated - gold was useless except as an ornament or a medium of exchange, and in fact the inhabitants of southern Africa did not need to trade, as the growing season (ripening) extended throughout the year and the southern Africans practiced hunting and gathering fruits along with cultivating the land. It was said that the ancient civilizations of southern Africa valued iron more highly than gold, because it was more useful in hunting and agriculture. In addition, if they really wanted gold, it was available to the inhabitants of southern Africa under and above the ground. This gives the answer to the following question: Who did not try to produce gold? It was those who could, with some effort, extract it.

This answer may be correct in Central America. Pedro Sancho recorded in 534 AD the abundance of gold among the Incas: “Among other things were sheep of great size of pure gold and ten or twelve statues of women of their natural sizes and proportions of pure gold.”

Lopez Vaz recorded in 1586 that Panama was thus the richest land in gold of the rest of the Andes (14). No stronger incentive can be found to exert effort in the cauldrons of gold.

The same is true of Japan, which is rich in metallic and superficial gold but not in mercury, the constant and recurring ingredient in the recipes of alchemists. The transformations and reactions we see of this liquid metal are among the convincing arguments for transformation, and mercury was perhaps as important to the development of alchemy as the need for gold. However, there were regions that met our conditions, an abundance of mercury and a scarcity of gold, and the incentive was India and China.

The semiotics of India and China represent, in some respects, separate little worlds in the history of chemistry, but in other respects they are inseparable from the general history. The development of alchemy in these regions roughly parallels developments in the West.

Sometimes it precedes them and sometimes it lags behind them. We will therefore present here these two advanced sciences with their technical and philosophical foundations and trace them through the time of the Alexandrian school itself. We will return in the following chapters to see how they contribute to the whole of alchemy.