średniowiecze: Alchemy

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Alchemy (from the Arabic word al-kīmīā, الكیمیاء) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was once practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD. Greek-speaking alchemists often named their craft "the Art" (τέχνη) or "Knowledge" (ἐπιστήμη), and it was often characterised as mystic (μυστική), sacred (ἱɛρά), or divine (θɛíα). Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (…

Evidence: 71 • authority: 72

An alchemist is a person versed in the art of alchemy. Western alchemy flourished in Greco-Roman Egypt, the Islamic world during the Middle Ages, and then in Europe from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Indian alchemists and Chinese alchemists made contributions to Eastern varieties of the art. Alchemy is still practiced today by a few, and alchemist characters still appear in recent fictional works and video games. Many alchemists are known from the thousands of surviving alchemical manuscripts and books. Some of their names are listed below. Due to the tradition of pseudepigraphy, the true author of some alchemical writings may differ from the name most often associated with that work. Som…

Evidence: 48 • authority: 88

Village Life in Roman Egypt. This book is the first detailed study of a village in the Roman Empire, Tebtunis, in Egypt, in the first century AD. It is based on the evidence of the archive of the local notarial office ( grapheion ), which was run by a man named Kronion for most of the mid-first century. The archive as a whole, unparallelled in antiquity, includes over 200 documents written on papyrus and attests to a wide range of transactions made by the villagers over well-defined periods of time, in particular the years AD 42 and 45–7 during the reign of the emperor Claudius. This evidence gives us a unique insight into various aspects of village life, such as the level of participation…

Evidence: 48 • authority: 72

Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society or simply the West, is the externally cohesive yet internally diverse culture and cultural heritage of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and their Christian successors that expanded across the Mediterranea…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

Magic in the Greco-Roman world – that is, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the other cultures with which they interacted, especially ancient Egypt – comprises supernatural practices undertaken by individuals, often privately, that were not under the oversight of official priesthoods attached to the various state, community, and household cults and temples as a matter of public religion. Private magic was practiced throughout Greek and Roman cultures as well as among Jews and early Christians of the Roman Empire. Primary sources for the study of Greco-Roman magic include the Greek Magical Papyri, curse tablets, amulets, and literary texts such as Ovid's Fasti and Pliny the Elder's Natural H…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Transmutations of Quality: Alchemy and Magic. This chapter examines alchemy. Alchemy is one of the best-known, yet most misunderstood, forms of arcane magical lore. Alchemy in the ancient Greco-Roman world may be defined as the art or craft of the transmutation of the qualities of matter. Such a definition hinges on the theoretical aspect, stressing the importance of considering qualities as transferrable in the abstract, but it encompasses a range of practices, from procedures to change the color of metals to rituals to purify and perfect the soul. Although the accounts that trace the origins of Greek alchemy back to the alien wisdom of the Persian magi and the Egyptian sages are essential…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Western Grego-Roman Cities. The polity of Rhodes, with Cretan assistance, founded Gela on the south coast of Sicily in 688 B.C.E. (Herodotus, VII, 153) and assisted in the foundation of Akragas/ Agrigento farther northwest on the same coast in 580 B.C.E. Akragas’s foundation was part of the second wave of Greek city building in Sicily, about 150 years after the founding of Syracuse and other east coast settlements. Much of the Rhodian situation was replicated in the new cities. Settlers found familiar terrain like Gela, on a steep ridge facing the sea, surrounded by generous plains. At Gela, the acropolis at the east end is near the River Gelas, which waters the plains. Agrigento is bracket…

Evidence: — • authority: 80

9 Gal 3:15 and the Revocation of Wills in First- and Second-Century Roman Egypt as Attested in the Papyri

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Magi (plur), or magus (sing), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest. Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos (μάγος) was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, with a meaning expanded to include astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hell…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world refers to both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry (the early chemical investigation of nature in general) by Muslim scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word الكيمياء (al-kīmyāʾ), which itself may derive either from the Egyptian word kemi ('black') or from the Greek word khumeia ('fusion'). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Islamic conquest of Roman Egypt, the focus of alchemical development moved to the Caliphate and Islamic civilization.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Hermeticism, or Hermetism, is a philosophical and religious tradition rooted in the teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic figure combining elements of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE – 1200 CE) and may be very different in content and scope. One particular form of Hermetic teaching is the religio-philosophical system found in a specific subgroup of Hermetic writings known as the 'religio-philosophical' Hermetica, which were written in Egypt between approximately 100 and 300 CE. The most famous of…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Magic, sometimes spelled magick, is the application of beliefs, rituals or actions employed with the intent to manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces. It is a category into which various beliefs and practices have been placed, sometimes considered separate from both religion and science. This separation of the terms 'religion' and 'magic' in a functional sense is disputed. It is a postulate of modern anthropology, at least since early 1930s, that there is complete continuity between magic and religion. Connotations have varied from positive to negative at times throughout history. Within Western culture, magic has been linked to ideas of the Other, foreignness, and primitivism…