A Hermetic ‘Terma’ Lineage in the Arabic Apollonius of Tyana
Aaron Cheak, PhD
Several important Arabic alchemical works are attributed to the first-century Neopythagorean philosopher and magician, Apollonius of Tyana. Known as the ‘lord of talismans’ in both Greek and Arabic tradition, Apollonius features in several Arabic works for which we have no Greek originals. Most scholars consider these works pseudepigraphal, but they nevertheless reveal genuine currents of Græco-Arabic Hermeticism.
The most influential work of the Arabic Apollonius (Balīnās) is the Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣan‘at al-ṭabī‘a, the ‘Secrets of Creation and the Art of Nature’, alternatively known as the Kitāb al-‘ilal, ‘Book of Causes’. The manuscripts of this work have been dated by scholars to the late eighth or early ninth century, but according to al-Jildakī, it was translated during the time of Khālid b. Yazīd (d. c. 85/704), thus linking it to the era of one of the earliest Arabic alchemical works—the Risālat Maryānus (The Epistle of Morienus). [1]
The Sirr al-khalīqa is significant for three principle reasons: (i) it situates alchemy first and foremost as a science of cosmogenesis; (ii) the cosmology elaborated by the Sirr would exert an enormous influence upon the alchemical school of Jabir ibn-Hayyan; and (iii) the Sirr contains the earliest known version of the ‘Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus’. We will examine each of these aspects in a separate study. For now we wish to discuss the framing scenario that the work provides, for it reveals significant details about the very nature of Hermetic texts.
A Hermetic ‘Terma’ Lineage
Apollonius infoms us that he is not the author of this work but merely its discoverer. In the introductory preamble he describes how he found the text in an underground passage beneath a statue of Hermes Trismegistus, presumably in his native Tyana (Central Anatolia). The statue bore an inscription which reads:
I am Hermes, the threefold sage. I have erected this sign in public, yet in my wisdom I have veiled it, so that only a sage like myself can find it. Whoever wishes to know the secret of creation and the art of nature should look under my feet. [2]
By digging beneath the statue, Apollonius discovers a wind-ravaged subterranean passage blanketed in absolute darkness. An old man of his own likeness appears to him in a vision and tells him to create a glass lamp in order to investgate the underground passage. Upon being asked who he was, the old man replies: ‘I am your perfect nature’. With the glass lamp, Apollonius reaches a chamber where he discoveres a ‘man on a golden throne’ holding an emerald tablet and a book. Upon the tablet, the ‘Art of Nature’ is written; within the book, the ‘Secrets of Creation’ and ‘Knowledge of Causes’.
Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche, founder of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism), who concealed wisdom treasures (termas) to be discovered by treasure-finders (tertöns).
Apollonius’ framing tale notably mirrors pseudo-Democritus’ discovery of the ouroboric formula inside a mysterious Egyptian temple column. [3] In both instances, we appear to be dealing with what we might call a ‘Hermetic terma lineage’—i.e., a motif comparable to the Tibetan tradition of discovering magically concealed texts or sacramental objects hidden by the lineage master in rocks, rivers, or winds for future discovery by adepts known as Tertöns (‘treasure finders’). In Tibetan, gter ma literally means ‘hidden treasure’, and here we are reminded of the Hadith so dear to Ibn ‘Arabi in which God reveals himself as a ‘hidden treasure’ (kanz-i makhfi) who ‘desired to be found’ and who therefore created creatures in order to discover himself. [4] We will return to this motif separately, but for now it is important to emphasise that the metaphysics of this Hadith hinge on the unity of all creation—all created beings—with the divine principle of being itself (wujūd), a word used to express Greek ontological concepts but whose fundamental meaning in Arabic is ‘finding’.
The idea of hiding wisdom treasures for a future incarnation of oneself to discover may seem foreign to Islamic metaphysics, which emphasises resurrection rather than reincarnation; however, it makes perfect sense for a Neopythagorean such as Apollonius, for whom rebirth (palingenesis) would have been a vital reality. This suggests that even if the work itself is pseudepigraphic, it appears to draw on genuine Greek ideas.
In a separate Arabic text, Apollonius confirms our suspicions. ‘Some [alchemists]’, he notes, ‘write books on this high science for themselves, for their own purpose’ because ‘the idea of return and the place of return forms part of their revelation’. [5] By ‘return’, Apollonius evidently means reincarnation in the sublunary realm: ‘The world above is incorruptible; only the world below is subject to generation and corruption, becoming and dissolution’ he remarks, drawing on Greek philosophical cosmology. [6] He then cites the ‘firm conviction’ possessed by the ancient sages that ‘we come back, we begin again, we return to life, but only after a long duration of determined time’.
This is why the books they have written were written for themselves, for their own purpose. [i.e., in order that they may rediscover them one day]. These books were deposited in their treasuries. These books containing the revelation were part of the preserved, hidden, esoteric secrets. They do not exchange them and only reveal them to students who they know to be sincere, trustworthy, loyal, and pious. [7]
Thus, although Apollonius presents himself as merely the discoverer of the text, he also suggests he is the author who originally concealed the text for his future self to uncover. And in many respects, this suggestion is already prefigured in the inscription on the statue of Hermes: ‘I have veiled it, so that only a sage like myself can find it’. What we have here, therefore, is an implicit interplay of master and disciple switching roles over time; a single being giving and receiving the ‘secrets of creation’ over many incarnations.
This act of composing and receiving, concealing and revealing, played out by two beings who are secretly one, also hints at the deeper meaning of the ouroboros formula discovered by pseudo-Democritus under similar circumstances. As we have pointed out elsewhere, the principle motif in that particular emblem is summarised in the expression: ‘one nature acts upon itself’. [8] The serpent which bites and the serpent which is bitten are one. In other words, reality is agent and patient of one divine act. This act, as Apollonius makes clear, is cosmogenesis—the great work—but it is also the paradigm for all actions and all receptacles of action that take place within the cosmos itself.
Ultimately, the principles of cosmogenesis which Apollonius transmits speak to the relationship between the one and the many, a perception that is as equally Egyptian, Pythagorean, and Daoist as it is alchemical insofar as it is rooted in a fundamentally numerical expression. In Pythagorean cosmology, the path from one to two and ultimately ten is, in Daoist terms, the way from ‘one’ to the ‘ten-thousand things’. Both proceed via the dyad, the active and receptive aspects of the whole, which like yin and yang, never cease to be a whole. For this reason we must never forget the stark identity of primordial unity with prolific multiplicity, as the formulas of the Greek alchemical corpus emphasise: ‘one is the all’ (hen to pan estin). The mystery of creation is that unity unfolds into multiplicity yet remains a single whole, or, as Ibn ‘Arabi would realise, all beings are miraculous iterations of a single divine being. Similarly for Apollonius, ‘the secret of creation’ which he imparted to himself under the aegis of Hermes prefigures the same principle: ‘there is an inner connection between all creatures, because they all originate from one primordial matter’. [9]
Notes
This article is adapted from the chapter ‘Al-Kīmiyā as Divine Science’, in A. Cheak (ed.), Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (revised and expanded edition) forthcoming through Rubedo Press. This title is currently available for pre-order, and is scheduled to appear in 2024.
On Apollonius and the Sirr, see especially M. Karimi Zanjani Asl, ‘Sirr al-khalīqa and its Influence in the Arabic and Persianate World: ‘Awn b. al-Mundhir’s Commentary and its Unknown Persian Translation’, Al-Qantara 37.2 (2016), 435–473.
Sirr al-khalīqa, 1.2, U. Weisser, ed., trans., Das “Buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung” von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana (Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 74–75.
See our discussion in ‘Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium’. [link]
Kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan, fa’ahbabtu ‘an u‘raf, fakhalaqtu al-khalq li u‘raf’; M. Afnani, ‘Unraveling the Mystery of the Hidden Treasure: The Origin and Development of a Hadīth Qudsī and its Application in Sūfī Doctrine’ (Dissertation: University of California, Berkeley, 2011), 12.
‘Le « Livre des sept Statues » d’Apollonios de Tyane, commenté par Jaldakī,’ in H. Corbin, Alchimie comme art hiératique, ed. Pierre Lory (Paris: L’Herne, 1986), 90.
‘Le « Livre des sept Statues »’, 90–91.
‘Le « Livre des sept Statues »’, 91.
Cheak, ‘Circumambulating’. [link]
Sirr al-khalīqa, 1.1.3; Weisser, Das “Buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung”, 74.