Bedtime Stories PT. II

Cleopatra the Alchemist & The Chrysopoeia

bedtime stories pt. II 〰️ Cleopatra the Alchemist & the Chrysopoeia 〰️ like many of the people I study, theres a lot of unknowns about this alchemist & philosopher, including her name. We know she is often confused with Cleopatra of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, as well as Cleopatra the Physician, despite “Cleopatra” being an assigned pseudonym. We know she most likely lived during the 3rd century, is of Greek & probably Egyptian descent, and is very likely the original inventor of the Alembic Still. She definitely lived and worked in Alexandria along the Nile a River, where it was societally acceptable for women to engage in this work, unlike in other surrounding areas at the time. She is regarded by scholars of her and our time as one of four women alchemists who could produce the Philosophers Stone, of course meaning she is one of four recorded to have done so & we all know how record keeping works. Three written works of hers exist today: On Weights and Measurements, Gold Making of Cleopatra, and A Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra ~ keep in mind that she wrote but did not title these works as that isn’t her name. In a Dialogue of the Philosophers she recounts a meeting she had with a group of male peers in which she casts light on several natural mysteries. Her deep understanding of Earth both amazed and slightly scares her audience. At one point she makes a beautiful analogy between the goal of the alchemist, the transmutation of base matter into something highly useful, with the natural growth occurring in the plant & animal kingdoms. The Chrysopoeia is a single scroll on papyrus containing drawings, astrological & mystical symbols & just a few explanatory words on alchemy. One of these drawings is of the Alembic. For this ancient alchemist, the greatest of transmutations didn’t involve turning base metals into silver or gold, it involved turning plants and minerals into useful medicine. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes was the central mystic treatise for all alchemical endeavors and though it describes the process of environmental evaporation and condensation, it does in a highly symbolic and inaccessible way. By drawing this diagram of the Alembic, she sought to make the alchemical art of distillation easier and far more accessible for medical practitioners of her time. Medicine was big business then as it is now and this is the ancient equivalent of a pharmaceutical company giving away a valuable patented medicine for the sake of the betterment of humanity. A coup of wild proportions. She could have kept the designs to herself, which would have certainly given her offerings an edge in the manufacturing of reliable medicines which in turn would have put her in a position to travel, teach, etc. But she shared her design, choosing to transit her thoughts and sow her seeds broadly in hopes that others would use that information to further their own work and make new discoveries. This is the kind of energy I’m bringing into the next decade. Collective > Individual forever.