The Women of Alchemy: Protochemistry's Female Seekers

Centuries ago, women practiced distillation and other alchemical arts; largely forgotten, they were pre-science pioneers and foremothers of today's chemists

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In his Chemical History Tour, Arthur Greenberg declares that in bygone centuries, most "women played virtually no significant role in chemistry for a long period." The accuracy of this statement depends on how one defines "chemistry" or more properly, "alchemy," chemistry’s much older, decidedly mystical sister. If the forerunner of today’s chemistry may be expanded to include perfume-making, distillation of household medicaments, preparation of moisturizing creams and sundry other items that make life easier and happier, then a lot of women definitely practiced alchemy. Many of their names have been lost to antiquity, but their accomplishments still inspire.

Were Women Allowed to Practice Alchemy?

Alchemists knew nothing of probability clouds or the Uncertainty Principle, but they knew that useful results could be obtained from bringing opposites together. Male and female forces united shaped the best possible outcomes, and chemicals were often referred to by gender-specific names like the White Queen and the Red Daughter.

The importance of melding male and female essences is exemplified in many illustrations from alchemical texts. The Mutus Liber’s plates show male and female alchemists working side by side, a pictorial representation of the soror mystica, a female lab worker whose assistance in the Great Work was necessary to its successful completion. Some of these women were no doubt imaginary "spiritual helpmeets," but others were clearly very real.

In the Book of Samuel, women are not simply permitted to practice perfume-blending: God specifically takes the Israelites’ "daughters to be perfumers," and wall paintings in Jerusalem confirm that women’s scent-concocting skills were indispensable to both temple and court. The apocryphal Book of Enoch tells of the fallen angel Azazel, who teaches both men and women the secrets of alchemy, including rudimentary metallurgy, dye-making, and even how to make eyeshadow from antimony. Amasras teaches them how to cut roots and perform incantations, an ancient nod to the herbalist expertise for which so many women were eventually executed as witches.

Notable Female Alchemists

In its noblest form, alchemy’s quest to turn lead into gold was really a search for perfection in all things, including body, mind, and spirit. Some of the women who followed this path were so prominent that their names have actually been preserved and honored through the centuries.

The Gnostic Christian Zosimus of Panopolis was revered as an alchemist even by the famous Arabian pre-chemists. He worked with his sister, Theosebeia, and instructed her via letter as to how to perfect her alchemical tinctures while simultaneously attaining a higher level of spiritual development.

Maria Prophetissa, sometimes called "Mary the Jewess," labored in Alexandria around 200 B.C.E. She invented several important items of lab equipment, including a component of the distillation apparatus, and a water bath that allowed substances to be heated evenly. She is said to have discovered hydrochloric acid and synthesized "Mary’s Black," the substance produced by the fusion of sulfur with a mixture of lead and copper.

Another important Alexandrian alchemist was named Kleopatra; she designed the alembic, the top of the still that helped lab workers perform vital distillation and decomposition techniques. That other, more renowned queen named Cleopatra was interested in perfume chemistry and the study of poisons. The men who discovered her tomb marketed a perfume based on one of her personal formulas, but had to withdraw it when they both suddenly became desperately ill. No alchemist likes her secrets disclosed for others’ profit!

In the 16th century, Italian alchemist Isabella Cortese published The Secrets of Lady Isabella Cortese, which promptly sold eleven editions and was translated into German. It taught lessons as varied as the preparation of a universal medicine, toothpaste- and skin-bleach-making, saponification reactions, and an erectile dysfunction cure composed of rather nasty ingredients like quail testicles and winged ants.

Queen Henrietta Maria published The Queen’s Closet Opened in 1655. She called her recipes "Experiments," perhaps for the first time pointing out that the housewife’s distillation of medicines and preparation of other household goods involved chemistry. Hannah Woolery wrote The Accomplished Ladies’ Delight in Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, and Cookery around 1675, and Frenchwoman Marie Meurdrac published Benevolent and Easy Chemistry, in Behalf of Women in 1666. Far ahead of her time, self-taught alchemist Meurdrac distributed free medicine to the poor, and taught female students in her laboratory. She was an outspoken advocate for women’s education in the sciences, arguing that "the mind has no sex."

Kitchen Chemists: Alchemy's Silent Sisters

Most female alchemists never wrote a book or taught a class. They just quietly practiced practical alchemy in their kitchens or stillrooms. Many were master perfume crafters, a fairly important task in the eras when a once-a-year bath was the norm. Others gathered herbs, and used distillation and other alchemical procedures to make medicines and insecticides; modern digitalis heart medication owes a debt to these "witches’ " foxglove concoctions. Quite a few became early versions of cosmetic chemists; some of their products were shockingly toxic by modern standards, but others can still be tried for fun today. Successful experiments were written down in detail in small books passed down through generations.

21st-century women who "home craft" cosmetics or herbal tinctures are the spiritual descendents of these long-forgotten scientists. So too are their better-known sisters like geneticist and Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, who said, "Truth has a mystical origin both inside and outside myself." Somewhere, the female alchemists who helped pave her way must have nodded wisely in agreement.

Sources

Aftel, Mandy, Essence and Alchemy, New York: North Point Press
Bartlett, Robert Allen, Real Alchemy, Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press
Greenberg, Arthur, A Chemical History Tour, New York: Wiley-Interscience; quote from this work may be found on p. 56.
Hauck, Dennis William, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy, New York: Alpha. Barbara McClintock’s quote from p. 283.
Moran, Bruce, Distilling Knowledge, First Harvard University Press; Meurdrac's quote from p. 64.