The Metamorphoses of Metals:

Ovid and the Alchemists

Thomas Willard

Of Ovid’s many faces during the late Middle Ages and early modern era
surely the strangest is that of the alchemical philosopher: the authority on
metamorphosis whose words and stories can guide the aspiring adept.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the poet of love and change should be quoted
in texts about chemical affinities and reactions, as later generations would
call them, especially when the texts were written in Latin by authors
schooled on Ovid. It seemed all the more natural at a time when the seven
common metals were known by the names of their presiding gods: lead
and tin were Saturn and Jupiter, iron and copper were Mars and Venus,
gold and silver were Apollo and Cynthia, and quicksilver was (and remains)
Mercury. A story about the gods was easily construed as a chemical allegory.
For example, the story of Hermaphroditus, born of the union of Mercury and
Venus and joined with the nymph Salmacis,1 was searched for clues about the
Rebis: the alchemical enigma of the double natured thing (literally, res bis).
Accompanying a seventeenth-century engraving of Hermaphroditus is a
motto stating “that the Hermaphrodite is born on two mountains,” which
the modern editor takes to be the opposing principles of mercury and
sulphur (fig. 8.1).2
Modern students of Ovid have marvelled at the perversity of
searches like these. Eighty years ago, the Harvard classicist Edward
Kennard Rand described a fifteenth-century manuscript that purports
to translate tales of metamorphosis into French verse:
Ovid’s text is made a quarry for the alchemist’s pick and shovel … The
fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha, for instance, betokens, like the twin peaks
of Parnassus, the masculine and the feminine elements among the metals,
that is, gold and silver, from the union of which the philosopher’s stone

1 See Met. 4.274–388. Book and line references are to the Miller edition.
2 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. de Jong, 252, 254. The engraving is reproduced on
p. 414.
152 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

is produced. In this fashion, the whole poem is subjected to the fatal touch
of Midas; Ovid’s gold is converted into the baser metal.3

A more recent scholar has remarked that readers of this poème baroque
will be surprised to find Deucalion and Pyrrha alongside figures such as
King Solomon and the Spanish mystic Ramon Lull.4 One may well ask
why anyone would venture what now seem such deliberate miscon-
structions of the Metamorphoses.
This is not strictly a modern question, of the sort raised during the
Scientific Revolution, and an answer to it will be offered later. Even
before it surfaced in attacks on alchemy, it was voiced and implied in
works by serious writers on the subject. Indeed, it came up in one of
the first printed books of alchemy. The Pretiosa margarita novella or “New
Pearl of Great Price” was printed in 1546, at the famous Aldine Press
in Venice, and was reprinted in several important collections. The work
is usually attributed to Pietro Boni, a physician of Ferrara, though the
explicit states that he simply edited the manuscript.5 In any case, the
manuscript is said to have been prepared in the 1330s, less than two
centuries after the first books of alchemy were written in Latin or
translated into Latin from Arabic. Set up as an academic debate and using
methods taught in medieval universities like Ferrara’s, it promises to
determine whether alchemy “is both apparent and existent or only
apparent and nonexistent,” as the full title explains. It concludes, of
course, that alchemy is real and that the secret procedure is “The New
Pearl of Great Price” (Pretiosa margarita novella) for which the wise will
sell all else (Matthew 13:45). It does not disclose the secret, but simply
suggests ways of solving the problem and discovering the philosophers’
stone.
Midway through the book there is a chapter “Of the ferment and
its conditions, properties, and conversion, as performed according the
philosophers of this art.” The ferment is described as the sine qua non
“without which the art of Alchemy cannot be performed and per-

3 Rand, Ovid and His Influence, 141. Rand refers to “Le grand Olympe,” a poem
preserved in several manuscripts, notably Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 2516 and BnF
MS 14789 (3032). The author and his circle are discussed in Fulcanelli, The Dwellings
of the Philosophers, 107–115.
4 See Nicolas Valois, Les cinq livres, ed. Roger, 28; cf. 274.
5 Pretiosa margarita, in Theatrum chemicum, 5:713. See Ferguson, Bibliotheca chemica,
1:115, 2:2–3. All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 153

fected,” and the philosophers are said to discuss it dupliciter (duplici-

tously). On the one hand, they speak in terms of metals to explain how
the work is performed, while, on the other, they use language that is
“veiled” and “most occult” to hint at the secret of how the work is
perfected.6 Indeed, the discussion has to go beyond metals because the
ferment is generally understood in alchemy as the process by which the
soul of a substance is separated from the body and then reunited.7 Our
author gives examples of this most occult or secret language, which turns
out to be very close to the language of myth. He explains that poets like
Vergil and Ovid use both historiae fictae (made-up stories) and fabulae
mirandae (marvellous tales) and do not write metaphysica (philosophy),
but he asserts that their poems have a “foundation in the truth hidden
in the mind of the poet, so that from poems the hidden truth regarding
the wisdom of the sun [that is, of alchemical gold] can be discerned.
Otherwise, indeed, neither the poems nor the images can be judged,
and every poem and figure can be extended to many significations.”8
The answer to the question “Why look for answers in Ovid?” seems to
be that he knew about almost everything, as Macrobius said of Vergil.
And if the poet knew the answers, they could be found in the poetry,
no matter how much he hid them.
After a series of examples from Vergil, the Pretiosa margarita novella
gives five instances of hidden gold in Ovid (aurum in Ovidio occultatum).9
The stories cited here, and summarised each in one sentence, are all
immediately familiar: Phaethon and the chariot of the sun, Theseus and
the Minotaur, Medea and Aeson, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Pyramus
and Thisbe. Each, however, has an added twist, found in alchemical
retellings but not in Ovid’s poem. Phaeton enters the chariot “on a
sunbeam congealed by prayer” which, for anyone schooled in the
doctrine of correspondences, means on a piece of gold:
And such is the fable of Phaethon, in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (2.1–400),
who entered the house of the sun on a sunbeam congealed by prayer,

6 Pretiosa margarita, in Theatrum chemicum, 5:607.

7 Abraham, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 74.
8 Pretiosa margarita, in Theatrum chemicum, 5:616. The abridged English translation
omits this passage; for the surrounding text see New Pearl of Great Price, 258–259.
9 Pretiosa margarita, in Theatrum chemicum, 5:615. The references to Vergil include
wax images (Ecl. 8.72–81), the figure of Proteus (Georg. 4.422–452), the aegis of
Minerva (Aen. 8. 407–453), and the golden bough (Aen. 6.136–148). Ovid refers to
the last of these (Met. 14.113–114), as other alchemists noted.
154 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

walked about, and went up to his father; and who began to drive the
chariot of the sun and its steeds, which, coming too close to the earth,
were incinerated, etc.

Theseus saps the Minotaur’s strength by introducing a golden substance

into the labyrinth, which suggests adding sulphur to react with the
poisonous form of mercury:
And this is the same author’s fable of the intricate building that is called
the Labyrinth, in the isle of Crete, which once entered has one true exit
and many false, in which was kept the man-eating Minotaur, and into
which a large weight of gold made from animal fat and wax was thrown
by Theseus, who, having enchanted the beast and sapped its strength,
killed it with his weapons (8.152–182).

Medea teaches Aeson how to rejuvenate himself and helps him find an
assistant to regulate the flame under her cauldron, which suggests that
the alchemist must work on himself but with great care:
And this is the same writer’s fable of the old man taught by Medea, who,
wanting to rejuvenate himself, severed the members of his entire anatomy
and stewed them in water until it was thoroughly boiling, but no more,
whereupon all the members swam into place and he was made young;
however, when the watchman slept before the boiling was stopped, all
the members dispersed on the surface and he did not revive, etc.
(7.262–294).

Jason slays the dragon and sows “dragon’s teeth,” a term alchemists used
for the sublimate of mercury: “And this is the hidden gold in Ovid. And
this is the serpent which Jason slew, whose teeth he sowed, and from
which armed men sprang.”10 Finally, the white mulberry fruit, onto
which the blood of Pyramus and Thisbe falls, is first coloured black and
then red, thus recalling the three stages of the alchemical process: the
black work, the white work, and the red work, signifying death, life,
and transformation: “And this is the fable of the mulberries, which were
white at first and then were made black and red because of the

10 The Pretiosa margarita conflates two passages from the Argonautica: the sowing of
teeth in Book Three, where they are said to come from a serpent slain by Cadmus,
and the drugging of the dragon guarding the fleece in Book Four. Ovid treats the
passages separately in Met. 3.104–110, where Cadmus sows the teeth, and Met.
7.149–158, respectively.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 155

outpouring of the blood of Pyramus, who for the love Thisbe, whom
he believed slain by a wild beast, stabbed himself near a mulberry tree”
(5.83–166). Only in this last example do the alchemists seem to be
reading Ovid closely: Thisbe asks for the mulberry tree to bear fruit that
is pullos (black, 4.160), but the poet calls it pomo (dark red, 4.165). The
words nigra and rubea in the commentary correspond to the alchemists’
names for the first and third stages of their work, nigredo and rubedo. In
the other examples, words to the wise seem to be the details added to
Ovid. This allows the author to conclude: “And, in brief, this is every
strange, impossible transformation the storytellers tell.”
Again, these are said to be examples from earlier treatises of
alchemy. Most of them were reiterated in subsequent treatises and
became closely associated with the art. The Cretan labyrinth came to
represent the difficulties facing the alchemist, while Jason’s ship, the
Argo, represented the alchemical vessel and the Argonauts’ quest the
alchemical process itself. Other tales were cautionary: warnings not to
overheat the chariot, as Phaeton did, and not to cook the solution too
long, as happens in the alternate ending of Aeson’s story. A beautiful
illustration of Aeson’s story, dating from the sixteenth century, shows a
dove above the old man’s head, as a sign that the “ferment” has
succeeded and the soul is returning to the body (fig. 8.2).11 The
accompanying explanation, written by Salomon Trismosin, states:
Ovid, the ancient poet, indicated something similar when he wrote of the
wise old man who wanted to be made young again. He is said to have had
himself cut up and boiled until he was perfectly cooked, and no more,
then his members would unite again and be rejuvenated with great
strength.12

A seventeenth-century version of the image shows the alchemist stand-

ing in the vessel, sword in hand, ready to do all the work himself.13
Trismosin seems simply to be translating the Pretiosa margarita
novella. Other writers returned ad fontes and recommended comparing

11 British Library, Harley MS 3469, “Splendor solis.” The image appears under the
title “Boiling the body in the vessel” on the Alchemy Website (http://www.lev-
ity.com/alchemy/ss11.html).
12 Trismosin, Splendor solis, 30; cf. McLean’s commentary on this emblem as “The
Bath of Transformation,” 91. Also cf. Roob, Hermetic Museum, 198.
13 Isaacus, Die Hand der Philosophen, 30; reproduced in Klossowski de Rola, The
Golden Game, [1].
156 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

the accounts of Jason’s quest in the Metamorphoses and the Argonautica of

Apollodorus Rhodius.14 Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, nephew
of the Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, wrote that he
compared the Latin and Greek authors and consulted a text by the
Byzantine scholar Michael Psellus in order to see what was hidden
“under the veils of fables and the clouds of enigmas.” He concluded that
“Jason sailed to Colchos on the quest of the Argonauts to seize, not the
golden sheepskin of Phrygia, but a parchment of ram’s membrane on
which the process of making gold was described.”15 This view was
popularised in a three-book epyllion on goldmaking, written by the
Humanist poet Augurellus at the same time as Pico’s treatise (1515).16
Cornelius Agrippa, writing Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of the Artes and
Sciences, joked about those who “thinke that the skinne of the golden
fleese was a booke of Alcumie written upon a skinne after the manner
of the auncients, wherein was conteined the knowledge to make
golde.”17 He went on to write about the perversity of alchemists, but
he showed the same reliance on Ovid in his Three Books of Occult
Philosophy, where he quoted no other authority than the Metamorphoses
in chapters “Of the wonderfull Natures of Water, Aire, and Winds” and
“Of the occult Vertues of things.”18
Agrippa’s pronouncements on the Golden Fleece had some influ-
ence even on English literature. The Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe
read Agrippa and noted, “Cornelius Agrippa maketh mention of some
philosophers that held the skin of the sheep that bare the golden fleece
to be nothing but a book of alchemy written upon it.”19 And Nashe’s
friend Ben Jonson had the aspiring adept in his satiric drama The
Alchemist say: “I haue a peece of Iason’s fleece, too, | Which was no
other, then a Booke of Alchemie, | Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat
Ram-Vellam.”20 Later in the play, Jonson’s character is asked why he

14 See Faivre, Toison d’or et alchimie. For a twentieth-century interpretation by a

practising alchemist see Fulcanelli, Le Mystère des cathédrales, 155.
15 Pico della Mirandola, Opus aureum de auro, in Theatrum chemicum, 2:324.
16 Augurello, Chrysopoeia, Book Two, in Theatrum chemicum, 3:213–228. See
Martels, “Augurello’s Chrysopoeia (1615).”
17 Agrippa, The Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Arts and Sciences, 158.
18 Agrippa, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 11–18, 24–25 (1.6, 1.10). See
Müller-Jahncke, “The Attitude of Agrippa von Nettesheim.”
19 Nash, Nashes Lenten Stuff, 40.
20 Jonson, The Alchemist, D1v (2.1.89–91); see Abraham, 59–60.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 157

did not try to convince another possible dupe by drawing attention to

the allegorical character of the art: “Are not the choysest Fables of the
Poets, | That were the Fountaines, and first Springs of Wisedome, | Wrapt
in perplexed Allegories?”21
Francis Bacon dignified this allegorical method with the name
acroamatic, meaning heard by initiates, as distinguished from the mag-
isterial method used by schoolmasters.22 He referred famously to the
natural science in the myths of Vergil and Ovid as The Wisdome of the
Ancients. In the book of that title, he took thirty-one figures from
classical myth and interpreted each in the manner of Euhemerus, that
is, in physical terms. In the twenty-ninth essay, on “Proserpina, or
Spirit,” he followed the legend of Proserpina as told in Book Five of
the Metamorphoses, but he construed the goddess who cannot be kept
underground as the spirit that cannot be confined in matter:

By Proserpina the Auncients meant that aethereall spirite which (being

separated from the vpper globe) is shut vp and detained vnder the earth
(represented by Pluto which the Poet well expressed thus.
Siue recens tellus, seductuq; nuper ab alto
Aethere, cognati retinebat semina coeli.
Whither the youngling Tellus (that of late
Was from the high-reard Aether separate)
Did yet containe her teeming wombe within
The liuing seeds of Heauen, her nearest kin. (Met. 1.80–81)
This spirit is fained to be rapted by the Earth, because nothing can
with-hold it when it hath time and leasure to escape. It is therefore caught
and stayed by a sudden contraction, no other wise then if a man should
goe about to mixe ayre with wather, which can be done by no meanes,
but by a speedy and rapid agitation, as may be seene in froth, wherein the
ayre is rapted by the water.23

Bacon was openly sceptical of the alchemists if “in this regarde they set
their Elixar to effect golden mountains, and the restoring of natural
bodies, as it were, from the portal of Hell.”24 Nevertheless, he followed
the interpretive strategies of the alchemists. “Indeed,” says the Bacon

21 Jonson, The Alchemist, E2r (2.3.205–207).

22 Oxford English Dictionary, “acroamatic,” a.; “magistral” a. 2; citing The Advance-
ment of Learning.
23 Bacon, The Wisdome of the Ancients, 158–159.
24 Bacon, The Wisdome of the Ancients, 163.
158 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

scholar Charles W. Lemmi, “one is irresistibly reminded of the alche-

mists in reading the essay on Proserpine.”25
It was a contemporary of Bacon, Count Michael Maier, who
elaborated the alchemical reading of Ovid to the fullest. It was Maier –
whose work Lemmi cites as a possible sign of Bacon’s influence26 – who
did the most to establish alchemy as the key to all mythologies. And it
was Maier whose many books with their gorgeous engravings helped to
define the new philosophy known as Rosicrucian. His longest book,
Symbola aureae mensae (1617), recorded the sayings (symbola) of sages
from twelve nations. Following speeches by representatives of Egyptian,
Hebrew, and Greek alchemy, a monk named Morienus gets up, straight
out of medieval tradition, to discourse on Roman alchemy. He names
all the great poets from Lucretius to Vergil and, in the final sentence,
Ovid: “Ovid too, with all those metamorphoses of the gods and
goddesses collected in one volume, appears to have tasted secretly of
nature and of the working of occult arts, which although not themselves
discussed, still are hidden under the wraps of fables and can easily be
discovered.”27 In a marginal note beside this last sentence Maier wrote
that “Ovid enjoys the reputation of being the father of philosophic
secrets.” On the next pages, he answered the objection that gold-making
is merely a poetic fiction: “I respond to the major objection, that it is
equivocal whether ‘the authors of fables truly understood the words’ or
whether such things really existed in nature and the fables were made
to seem obscure and enigmatic to us, given the weakness of our
reason.”28 If the poets consciously invented nonsense stories, Maier
reasons, then the objection holds; if not, their texts are open to
interpretation. He is not far from the if of Pietro Boni in the Pretiosa
margarita novella three centuries earlier. Boni said the alchemical inter-
pretation would be valid if hidden in the poet’s mind. Maier said it was
valid unless the poet clearly thought otherwise. What seemed fabulous
might simply point up the reader’s lack of reason.
Maier’s own poetic practice shows that he built on the words of
Ovid, adding knowledge he had gained from many other sources.
Toward the end of his large book of Symbola, he included a “subtle
allegory” about the search for the mythical phoenix and its secret.29 And

25 Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon, 77.

26 Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon, 144.
27 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 181.
28 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 185.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 159

at the end of the allegory he wrote a pair of poems on the legend. The
first was an encomium of the phoenix in which Maier described the
bird’s nest with the cassia bark that Ovid mentions.30 The second was a
set of elegiacs “On the Hermetic Medicine of the Phoenix,” where the
phoenix has both the sacred and secular dimensions that Panofsky found
in Renaissance iconography associated with the bird. 31 He prefaced the
poems with lines thanking Apollo for revealing the secret of the phoenix
through an interpreter,32 which could mean in the words of a poet, and
followed them with a statement that sums up his scientific and literary
attitudes: “If anyone will not acknowledge the force of reason, he must
needs have recourse to authority.”33 Ovid is an auctoritas, for Maier.
Those who will not accept Maier’s reasoning about the bird and the
panacea should bow to Ovid’s authority.
Maier quoted Ovid in most of his other books, as J.B. Craven’s
bibliographical study of those works reveals. In what may be his
best-known work, the sumptuously printed Atalanta fugiens, Maier
elaborated on many of Ovid’s tales, including that of Atalanta and
Hippomenes. He offered a series of seventy-nine emblems, each with a
motto, a copperplate engraving by Theodore de Bry, a poem in Latin
and German, and a prose commentary. He even set the poems to music
as fugues for three voices.34 He included the account of Hermaphrodi-
tus, mentioned earlier, with such Ovidian details as the similarity of
Hermaphroditus and Cupid (4.321). His learned editor H.M.E. de Jong
believes Maier is closest to Ovid when reworking the story of Venus
and Adonis.
In the motto above emblem 41, Maier described the scene in the
engraving (fig. 8.3): “Adonis is killed by a boar and Venus, rushing up
to him, painted the roses red with her blood.”35 This represents a clear
departure from Ovid, where the blood is that of Adonis (10.728–733),
but it is a necessary departure as Venus is to transform the dead body by

29 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 561–607; reprinted in Musaeum hermeticum,

703–740, and translated in Hermetic Museum, 2:201–223.
30 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 606; cf. Met. 15.398.
31 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 607; cf. Hermetic Museum, 2:223, and Panofsky,
Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, 37.
32 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae, 607.
33 Hermetic Museum, 2:223.
34 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. Godwin.
35 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. de Jong, 263; the figure appears on 427.
160 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

adding something of herself. There is a further departure in the epigram

beneath the engraving. After a couplet to remind us that metamorphosis
runs in the family, Adonis being the son of Myrrha, who was changed
into a myrrh tree (10.489–502), there are two couplets that read:
Accurrit Venus & pede læsa cruore ruborem
Contulit ipsa rosæ, quæ prius alba fuit.
Flet Dea (flent Syri, luctus communis in orbe est)
Illum lactucis mollibus & posuit.

(Venus rushed up and, wounding her foot, / She herself coloured red with
her blood the rose, which had been white at first. / The Goddess weeps
– the Syrians weep, and the whole world is plunged into deep mourning.
/ And she put Adonis down under the tender lettuce.)36

Why lettuce instead of Ovid’s anemone (10.735–739)? There is, of

course, a play on the words lactuca (lettuce) and luctus (mourning), and
perhaps a further play on lac (milk), a common synonym for quicksilver.
In addition, Ovid’s Venus mentions Menthe, the nymph transformed
into mint, when she announces the metamorphosis of Adonis into the
windflower (10.728–730). Maier may suggest the use of sympathetic
magic on Venus’ part: she may apply the cool moist leaves of lettuce to
the object of her overheated love in order to free herself from it. In
Galenic medicine, physicians prescribed the leaves and even the seeds
of lettuce to subdue sexual passion and cure lovesickness. Indeed, a
medical text of Maier’s time told of Venus using lettuce for just this
purpose.37
Maier insists that Adonis is the child of incest and explains that
kinship is a necessity when it comes to alchemy: “For in this art nothing
is achieved, if not father and daughter, or mother and son are united,
and if from this union no birth results. The nearer the spouses are to
each other, the more fertile they will be.”38 Maier’s first modern
translator, de Jong, comments:

36 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. de Jong, 263.

37 Ferrand, Treatise of Lovesickness, 321. Ferrand wrote a treatise on erotomania
(1610), condemned by the Parlement in Toulouse (1620) and apparently suppressed;
his retelling of Ovid’s story (1623) may have been influenced by Maier’s (1617). Both
men were physicians, and wrote principally for their peers. I owe this reference to
Dr. Julia Branna Perlman.
38 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. de Jong, 264.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 161

Adonis came into existence from the incestuous union between Cinyras
and Myrrha, that is to say that all manifestations come from one primary
matter and therefore all differentiations, which can be perceived, are
related to that one starting-point. Adonis is killed by a wild animal, in
other words the Lapis Philosophorum is killed in the first instance, it is
the stage of the putrefactio[n]. The love of Venus and Adonis – now
turning into the motif of the white roses – completes the process; the
white roses are the symbols of the “whiteness,” which precedes the coming
into being of the “tinctura rubea”; Venus colours the white roses red.39

De Jong adds a black stage to the red and white of Ovid’s legend, much
as the author of Pretiosa margarita novella added a stage to the story of
Pyramus and Thisbe. Another commentator follows suit:
The emblem illustrates the Dissolution (Death) of the Subject (dissolved
by the marital Dissolvent), which brings about the Blackness (nigredo).
According to Maier’s text, Venus places her dead lover under tender
lettuce leaves, thereby indicating the Reincrudation. Her blood colours
the White Rose Red, because, beyond the long night of Death, Whiteness
is eventually reached, and ultimately Whiteness is Tinged with the
Redness of perfect Fixity.40

For all the sophistication in Maier’s verse and de Bry’s engraving, we

have not come very far from the “hidden gold” in the Ovid of three
centuries earlier. Nor would readings progress so much as they would
repeat.
The title of this article, “The Metamorphosis of Metals,” is taken
from a Latin treatise by one Eirenaeus Philalethes, a “peaceful lover of
anonymity” whose identity has been guessed but not finally estab-
lished.41 A generation after Maier, he conceded that most of his prede-
cessors wrote “in an obscure, figurative, allegorical, and altogether
perplexing style.”42 But while he claimed to speak plainly about the seed
that is contained in mercury, he ended in parables, saying, “Mercury is
our doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil, urine, may-dew, mother,
egg, secret furnace, oven, true fire, venomous Dragon,” and so forth.43

39 Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. de Jong, 266.

40 Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game, 103. See OED, “reincrudate” v., “To
make crude again.”
41 See Newman, Gennehical Fire.
42 Philalethes, The Metamorphosis of Metals, in Hermetic Museum, 2:233.
43 Philalethes, The Metamorphosis of Metals, in Hermetic Museum, 2:234.
162 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

That is to say, his mercury or quicksilver was described under all these
names and others, but it is still the same. Mercury is a metaphor for
much that the alchemist must keep constantly in mind. Philalethes wrote
in the earlier and more famous Open Entrance that mercury and gold
were to be understood sine ulla metaphora, which the English translation
expands to say “not metaphorically, but in a truly philosophical sense.”44
This suggests that statements about the “may-dew, mother, egg,” and
so forth must be taken ad verbum – as literal statements about an alternate
reality. Like metaphors in the poetry that Maier and other alchemical
authors quote, they should be taken at face value and applied only with
caution to the phenomenal world.
The answer to our opening question – Why would anyone venture
such deliberate misreadings of Ovid? – is that the alchemical interpre-
tations seemed more inappropriate to some than to others, and alto-
gether praiseworthy to a few. The different views reflected different
attitudes to the classical texts and to the natural world they described.
Those who were most inclined to think of alchemists as misreaders
regarded the ancient poets as real people with limited knowledge of
nature – limited by the learning of their times – but almost limitless
powers of expression. Those who most admired the new interpretations
tended to think that the poets were divinely inspired and that great
poetry conveyed divine truths to interpreters of poetry, as Socrates
suggests in Plato’s Ion (536a-d). The properly inspired poet might invent
lines that neither he nor his contemporaries understood, but the original
inspiration could be conveyed through poetry for others to compre-
hend.
The same logic was applied to sacred literature. Either the Bible’s
account of creation was accommodated to the limited perception of
fallen man, as Augustine maintained, or it concealed the secret knowl-
edge of Moses, who was said to be “skilled in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). In general, Roman Catholic scientists – with
their more traditional, often Augustinian views of Scripture – hoped to
effect a separation of science and religion that would allow each to
flourish. They feared that the alchemists would go from Vergil and Ovid
to the Old and New Testaments and would give experimental science
a bad name. Meanwhile, to continue the generalisation, many Protestant

44 Introitus apertus, Musaeum hermeticum, 674; The Open Entrance, in Hermetic Mu-
seum, 2:179.
 The Metamorphoses of Metals 163

chemists hoped to extend their newly won freedoms of interpretation

and forge a new, millenarian harmony of religion and science. Maier
was squarely on the latter side. The Rosicrucian myth that he promoted
was millenarian in precisely that way.45
The debate is not over. Many North Americans, including certain
of their leaders, remain undecided about the separation of religious and
scientific education. Now that the emphasis has shifted from the creation
of heaven and earth to that of animals and man, the alchemists seem in
retrospect to have understood better than some writing today why an
omniscient deity would have chosen to teach in parables (Mark 4:2). It
may even seem refreshing to come across the old phrase of writers like
Pietro Boni and Michael Maier, when a twentieth-century alchemist
maintains that the stories of Noah’s flood and Plato’s Atlantis are not
necessarily to be taken literally but should be understood “under the
veil of parable.”46
When Ovid made his famous claim, in the Metamorphoses’ closing
words, that his poetry would go wherever Roman rule and language
extended, he could hardly have anticipated that his tale would be studied
by a priest in Gaul professing a religion from Judea and practising a craft
from Egypt and the Near East, especially one that Roman emperors like
Domitian would try to suppress. That is, he could hardly have imagined
readers like the priest to whom Rand drew attention in the early
twentieth century. One can only guess what Ovid would have made of
the alchemical metamorphoses that we have reviewed, as one can only
guess what he would have thought about Shakespeare’s adaptation of
the Pyramus and Thisbe story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or how
Shakespeare might respond to “The Skinhead Hamlet” or Caliban, the
Missing Link – interpretations offered, respectively, by a successful writer
for screen and television and by the first president of University of
Toronto.47 Such claims say the most about the culture that makes them,
and then pay tribute to the culture on which they draw. The claims of
alchemical secrets investigated here along with the scholarly interest in
such claims give evidence that Ovid, like Shakespeare, lives.
University of Arizona

45 SeeWillard, “Alchemy and the Bible.”

46 Fulcanelli,The Dwellings of the Philosophers, 508.
47 Curtis, “The Skinhead Hamlet”; Wilson, Caliban, the Missing Link.