Zosimos of Panopolis

We can then measure the incident irradiance or calculate it mathematically of the point falling upon here.

And if we then consider that point, well, now that the knowledge and wielding of that point is the unspoken portion that precedes all alchemical texts, right? So anything that you're reading that has alchemical in nature, whether it's more recent like Flamel or Valentine, or whether it's more ancient like Zosimos, Maria the Prophetess, et cetera, is that if you don't start at that point of that they were also able to focus the light of the sun to a cross, then everything that comes after reads as nonsense.

If you do start at that point, it becomes recipe books and it becomes manuals about how to use that light to then... move up and down the periodic table.

And a part of the beautiful thing about this, once again, is the mainstream paradigm itself recognizes that we have successfully went from element 80 to 79, and element 81 to 79, and element 82 to 79.

I'm sure y- you would love to go on a time machine and go hang out at a Starbucks back then and just [laughs] you know, walk into the room and talk to all these people.

"Hey, Zosimos.

Hey, Hypatia," you know? [laughs] But, um-

Well, my Greek would have to be a lot better than that, but I, I, I take your point.

Absolutely, and, and it's led us into some very strange paths.

There's a guy called Zosimos of Panopolis, and Zosimos lived about 300 AD.

We don't know, quite know when.

He was an alchemist.

But someone has to have the interpretive key to find out what you're really saying, right? Um, that, people find that interesting, and that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with occult sciences like alchemy or magic or, uh, astrology.

Although it is true that the works of those occult sciences like astrology and magic and alchemy do tend to use motifs of the esoteric all the time, right? I mean, alchemy is the classic example because once you get beyond the very, very earliest works of alchemy, the second most important alchemist who survives-- whose work survives from antiquity is Zosimos of Panopolis, writing roughly at the turn of the fourth century CE.

Yeah, I mean, his work is just replete with esotericism.

He uses weird images.

So she wrote a whole thing.

And I think she was involved with Zosimos, too.

He was another later Gnostic alchemist.

Yeah.

And I think we can all get on board with that probably if we're here.

Other major characters, Xochimilco of Panopolis, the biggest hermitist of them all, as far as we know.

A major player and a major player in alchemy, circa 300 AD.

He was an Egyptian metal worker and the first major figure in the history of alchemy, if you exclude the woman who taught him everything, known as Maria Prophetissima, also known as Maria the Jewess.

She was the historical founder of alchemy, which she says she learned up in Mesopotamia and then taught to Zosimos, who then trained his student, Theosibia.

He's one of the only three Hermetic practitioners in history at all that we can name.

Theosibia is the woman Zosimos wrote to, almost the only woman named in the story.

Stobaeus, 5th century, an anthropologist who copied out excerpts of the text, some of which only survived because he did, and that's why Litwa calls his technical Hermetica the Stobaean fragments, or the Stobaean Hermetica, often abbreviated as S.H., C-H, of course, is corpus hermeticum.