Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. If you've ever melted chocolate
Speaker 1: or had a glass of whiskey, or if you've ever
Speaker 1: used purple paint, you can thank our guest today, a
Speaker 1: woman considered to be the mother of Western alchemy. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Criminalia. I'm Maria Marquis and I'm Holly Fry. Quote
Speaker 1: one becomes too, two becomes three, and out of the
Speaker 1: third comes the one as the fourth. That is the
Speaker 1: most famous axiom attributed to Marry the Jewess, who it said,
Speaker 1: is the first known alchemist of the Western world. She
Speaker 1: is known to have invented processes and apparatus that went
Speaker 1: on to be used for centuries, both in and out
Speaker 1: of the scientific community. In fact, one of them, as
Speaker 1: Maria hinted at, you may have used in your home kitchen.
Speaker 1: Mary lived some time during the first through maybe the
Speaker 1: third century CE, which is a pretty wide delta, But
Speaker 1: I mean, what can you do when your timeline is
Speaker 1: roughly two thousand years ago. She lived in Egypt, and
Speaker 1: at the time of Mary's life, the region was a
Speaker 1: province of the Roman Empire. Alchemy can be described as
Speaker 1: a combination of ancient chemical science and speculative philosophy. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about it all season, and those who practiced
Speaker 1: it had a few goals in mind. The popular image
Speaker 1: of an alchemist was an individual who wanted to transmute
Speaker 1: base metals into silver or gold, and of course, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed, they also wanted to discover the key to immortality.
Speaker 1: Perhaps in your imagination there is a cauldron or maybe
Speaker 1: a room full of glass vials and overflowing bookshelves, and
Speaker 1: for some alchemists that we've talked about, that could be accurate.
Speaker 1: What we know is that along the way, many made
Speaker 1: some significant contributions to science. For example, among many other things,
Speaker 1: alchemy gave us a better understanding of metallurgy and how
Speaker 1: to extract metals from ores. It also gave us things
Speaker 1: like European porcelain, and it laid out the basis for
Speaker 1: the science of toxicology. Really, alchemy laid the groundwork for
Speaker 1: modern day chemistry and medicine. But let's go into reverse
Speaker 1: for just a moment. Alchemy came to the West. It
Speaker 1: wasn't started in the West. In China. There is a
Speaker 1: long history, and I mean thousands of years of Daoist monks,
Speaker 1: using alchemy to focus on the external world as well
Speaker 1: as the inner force of the body. Indian alchemists were
Speaker 1: focused on transmuting gold and prolonging life, long before the
Speaker 1: Western world knew anything about these sorts of practices. It's
Speaker 1: believed that Western alchemy practices began probably around b C.
Speaker 1: At the time of Egyptian king Hermes Trismegistus. As a
Speaker 1: side note, that is what he was named by the Greeks,
Speaker 1: but he was also known as Talk the Egyptians, and
Speaker 1: that is how he is deified. Egyptian alchemists presented their
Speaker 1: first document, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. That's a tablet
Speaker 1: which was said to contain the secret of the prima material.
Speaker 1: The prima material was considered to be the matter that
Speaker 1: was the foundation for everything else. By the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: in Europe, alchemists naturally kind of fell into two categories.
Speaker 1: Those who were focused on chemical processes and apparatus, which
Speaker 1: is more like the precursor to today's chemistry, and those
Speaker 1: who were focused on the metaphysical side of the practice.
Speaker 1: And this was the group who went looking for gold
Speaker 1: and immortality. Unlike the alchemists we've been talking about who
Speaker 1: have been perhaps stereotypically trying to turn lead into gold.
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear that Mary was much interested in discovering
Speaker 1: the philosopher's stone that had eluded alchemists everywhere. Perhaps she
Speaker 1: was on the side, but no one seems to have
Speaker 1: left any evidence that that was the case. Mary, it seems,
Speaker 1: was most interesting it in practical chemical processes. Think of
Speaker 1: her work as a a mix of today's analytical chemistry
Speaker 1: and chemical engineering, or maybe like today's industrial chemists. None
Speaker 1: of Mary's own writings have survived over the last two
Speaker 1: thousand years, but quotations credited to her have been found
Speaker 1: in hermetic writings, most notably the work The Dialogue of
Speaker 1: Mary and Eros on the Magistry of Hermes, written by
Speaker 1: an anonymous Christian philosopher. In it is also vocabulary that
Speaker 1: would eventually become part of the language of alchemists, including lyukosis,
Speaker 1: which is whitening, and xanthosis, which is yellowing. The famous
Speaker 1: tenth century index of Arabic books called the Katab Alphorist,
Speaker 1: compiled by ib And al Nadeem, site Mary too as
Speaker 1: one of the fifty two most famous alchemists. But let's
Speaker 1: note that these works were written between eight and ten
Speaker 1: centuries after she lived. It in on Idem also highlights
Speaker 1: that Mary was able to prepare cop put more to him.
Speaker 1: Cop up more to him could be considered just a
Speaker 1: useless substance leftover from a chemical operation, but alchemists didn't
Speaker 1: overlook it. It's also a type of purple hematite iron
Speaker 1: oxide pigment. You may know it as cardinal purple, and
Speaker 1: it's often used in oil paints and various dyes. There
Speaker 1: are probably several reasons we could get into why this
Speaker 1: discovery was notable, but let's talk about the Roman citizen
Speaker 1: ry to your everyday person. This discovery wasn't just about
Speaker 1: making iron oxide. The pigment made it way easier to
Speaker 1: get a purple shirt or purple paint. Tirian purple, which
Speaker 1: was known as Phoenician red or Imperial purple, was expensive,
Speaker 1: and it's because it took a substantial amount of labor
Speaker 1: to produce. Tirian purple is a biological pigment and it's
Speaker 1: made by extracting the dye from tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: rock snails. One Roman gown it was said needed ten
Speaker 1: thousands shells to be dyed in this manner. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a break for a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and when we return we will talk about distillation and
Speaker 1: how Mary's inventions change the alchemy landscape. Welcome back to Criminalia.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about who Zosimos of Panopolis is and why
Speaker 1: he's important to Mary's story. So we catch up with
Speaker 1: Mary's story when she appeared in the works of the
Speaker 1: writer Zosimos of Panopolis, also known by the Latin name
Speaker 1: Zosimos Alchemista, which means Zosimos the Alchemist. He was an
Speaker 1: Egyptian alchemist and gnostic mystic who wrote more than a
Speaker 1: century after Mary's death. It's believed that while his information
Speaker 1: is pretty strong, he likely misidentified Mary as a quote
Speaker 1: sister of Moses, and she's still often identified as Miriam
Speaker 1: the pro Fit, the sister of Moses. Miriam the Prophet
Speaker 1: is a biblical woman who is also known as Mary
Speaker 1: the Jewess, as well as Maria the Hebrew, Maria the Sage,
Speaker 1: and Mary the Prophetess. The Arabs know her as the
Speaker 1: daughter of Plato. She was likely considered Mary or Maria
Speaker 1: the Wise. Zes Simos was not Mary's contemporary, and when
Speaker 1: he mentions her, he often points out that she was
Speaker 1: quote one of the sages and had lived in times past.
Speaker 1: He writes of her work, her experiments and inventions, that
Speaker 1: we don't get a picture of her life outside of
Speaker 1: her work through his writings, because he was really all business.
Speaker 1: It was believed that he may have based his text
Speaker 1: on Furnaces and Apparatus is on a text written by
Speaker 1: Mary herself, and he also quotes her extensively in his
Speaker 1: work The Coloring of Precious Stones. Writing at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the fourth century, CE, Zosimos gives us some of
Speaker 1: the oldest surviving texts on alchemy, and his works include
Speaker 1: Agatha demon an alchemist in Late Roman Egypt, Pseudo Democritis,
Speaker 1: author of the four Books of Pseudo Democritis, and Hermes Transmegistus,
Speaker 1: whom we mentioned earlier. He provided one of the first
Speaker 1: definitions of alchemy as the study of quote, the composition
Speaker 1: of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits
Speaker 1: from bodies, and bonding the spirits within bodies. Zosimos is
Speaker 1: considered one of the most important sources of the history
Speaker 1: of Egyptian alchemy, and he's also included in a compendium
Speaker 1: of alchemical writings that was probably put together during the
Speaker 1: Byzantine Empire in the seventh or eighth century C. There
Speaker 1: are recordings of Mary's story in addition to Zassimos's writings
Speaker 1: at the Fannius, who was the Bishop of Salamis, mentions
Speaker 1: Mary as Mary the Jewis and two of his works,
Speaker 1: Great Questions and Small Questions. Mary's legacy was also translated
Speaker 1: into Arabic writings, where she was written as a contemporary
Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ, which would put her life at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the first century C. It was also
Speaker 1: suggested she was a contemporary of Austin's, a Persian brother
Speaker 1: in law of Xerxes, who lived as long ago as
Speaker 1: roughly five hundred BC. So even with mentions of contemporaries,
Speaker 1: there's enough contradiction that it's tricky to pin down her
Speaker 1: exact position on a timeline. Some of the experiments attributed
Speaker 1: to Mary and her inventions continue to be used in
Speaker 1: modern day chemistry. According to William Newman, professor in the
Speaker 1: Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University,
Speaker 1: we quote the earliest real distillation apparatus can be identified
Speaker 1: as something like a still found in the works of
Speaker 1: Zosimos of Panopolis. He attributes these discoveries to marry the Hebrew,
Speaker 1: and once you have good distillation apparatus, lots of things
Speaker 1: are possible, Newman continues, quote Mysteriously, for some reason, nobody
Speaker 1: he actually tried to isolate ethel alcohol out of wine
Speaker 1: or beer until much later. But when they did, they
Speaker 1: had to have decent stills, and he's talking about Mary's stills.
Speaker 1: The idea of distillation is described in the Emerald Tablet
Speaker 1: as quote. It rises from Earth to heaven and descends
Speaker 1: again to Earth, thereby combining within itself the powers of
Speaker 1: both the above and the below. Distillation was one of
Speaker 1: the key stages in the process of transmitting base metals
Speaker 1: into gold, and you had to know how to distill.
Speaker 1: You had to, and it was Mary who invented and
Speaker 1: described the alchemical apparatus and processes to do so. It's
Speaker 1: like the most poetic description of distillation. You had to
Speaker 1: You had to rises from Earth to heaven. We are
Speaker 1: going to take a break for a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Mary's relationship to Carl Jung. Welcome back to criminalia. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk now about three of Mary's inventions, including
Speaker 1: one that you probably have used in your home. These inventions,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the apparatus called the Kara tacas. First,
Speaker 1: Kara Takas copied the process of distillation that naturally occurs
Speaker 1: in nature, and the device went on to become a
Speaker 1: staple in chemistry lambs. The apparatus is made of an
Speaker 1: air tight container with a sheet of copper on its
Speaker 1: upper side, and it's used to heat substances to collect vapors.
Speaker 1: If you've ever listened to people talk about distillation of spirits,
Speaker 1: that all sounds pretty familiar. When it is used, it's
Speaker 1: sealed connections form a tight vacuum. As part of her work,
Speaker 1: Mary studied sulfur compounds and discovered what we call Mary's black.
Speaker 1: Mary's black is a black sulfide coating on metal, and
Speaker 1: it's produced during the process of katakas. Mary's device was
Speaker 1: later modified by a German agricultural chemist named Franz von
Speaker 1: Sockslet in eighteen seventy nine, and the extractor today still
Speaker 1: bears his name, the Sockslet extractor. The Socolet extractor apparatus
Speaker 1: is pretty similar to what Mary had made herself. It's
Speaker 1: a glass reservoir set between a lower flask at the
Speaker 1: bottom and a condenser at the top. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most popular techniques for extraction of certain components called
Speaker 1: semi volatile organic compounds from solid materials, and the solvent
Speaker 1: that's used in the process removes any insoluble impurities that
Speaker 1: were in the original material. Of note. In addition to
Speaker 1: the extractor, Von Sockslet had a hand in nutritional science
Speaker 1: as well. Louis Pasteur, for instance, we all know, invented
Speaker 1: the food preparation process known as pasteurization that was patented
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five to fight the quote diseases of wine.
Speaker 1: It was Franz in eight six who proposed that the
Speaker 1: process applied to milk and other beverages. Mary's also credited
Speaker 1: as having invented an apparatus called the triba coast, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a three armed apparatus that was also
Speaker 1: used for distillation. It's actually not one clear whether Mary
Speaker 1: did or did not invent the triba coast, but Zosimos
Speaker 1: credits the first description of this instrument to her. In
Speaker 1: her writings quoted by him, she recommends that the copper
Speaker 1: or bronze used to make the tubes on the Treba
Speaker 1: coast should be the thickness of a frying pan, and
Speaker 1: that the joints between the tubes and the steelheads should
Speaker 1: be sealed with flour paste. That's pretty specific and that's
Speaker 1: actually still used today, and this is the one that
Speaker 1: most of us are going to recognize. Mary also invented
Speaker 1: a water bath technique known as the beam Marie that
Speaker 1: literally is French for Marie's bath. This apparatus is basically
Speaker 1: a heated but not boiling water bath, and it works
Speaker 1: similarly to a double boiler, which basically is just two pots,
Speaker 1: so a larger one with warm water in it and
Speaker 1: a smaller, more shallow pot that nestles inside that larger one.
Speaker 1: The setup applies indirect heat through steam, and it can
Speaker 1: maintain a base that's in a liquid state or reliquefy
Speaker 1: a solidified base. In the laboratory, it can be used
Speaker 1: to incubate samples at a constant temperature over a period
Speaker 1: of time. This water bath method has also been the
Speaker 1: preferred heat source instead of an open flame for heating
Speaker 1: flammable chemicals. It's a way to prevent a fire from starting.
Speaker 1: In the culinary world, still today, it's used to make
Speaker 1: cheesecakes and set custards such as crambrew let, or plan.
Speaker 1: It's a preferred method because the steam that develops keeps
Speaker 1: the surface of the food from drying out as it bakes.
Speaker 1: Need to melt chocolate, The bomb Marie is for you
Speaker 1: because this technique prevents the fat from separating and liquefying
Speaker 1: honey warming high fat sauces like hollandaise. There's really no
Speaker 1: end to the uses for the bombrie and how it
Speaker 1: can make like a perfectly smooth thing out of something
Speaker 1: that was one solid. It is also used across the
Speaker 1: food service industry is a way to keep dishes warm
Speaker 1: for an extended period of time. Because she did live
Speaker 1: so long ago, we did see stories about Mary that
Speaker 1: may or may not be factual. For instance, though we
Speaker 1: weren't able to dig deeply into this because we're not
Speaker 1: experts in ancient alchemy. Yet we did read about the
Speaker 1: idea that Mary believed medals had different genders, and by
Speaker 1: joining genders together you could create a new entity, a
Speaker 1: new substance. There is a quote that's attributed to her
Speaker 1: that goes join the male and the female, and you
Speaker 1: will find what is salt. The idea is interesting, but
Speaker 1: whether or not Mary believed that, we really can't be sure.
Speaker 1: It's also believed that Mary may have founded an academy
Speaker 1: where she taught alchemy in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Speaker 1: Could be so, but again this is one that's difficult
Speaker 1: to verify. Actually, there are more than a few problems
Speaker 1: that we ran into when trying to look at Mary's
Speaker 1: life and peace at altogether. We've talked about some of them.
Speaker 1: But Mary, it said, was also the one who discovered
Speaker 1: hydrochloric acid, but that is pretty hotly debated. It may
Speaker 1: have been discovered by Jabir ibben Hyan in d or
Speaker 1: perhaps it should be credited to William Prout in four.
Speaker 1: And then there's George. Sincellis George, who was a Byzantine
Speaker 1: chronicler of the eighth century that places his work minimum
Speaker 1: five centuries after Mary's life, described Mary as a teacher
Speaker 1: of the philosopher Democritis, whom she hadn't met in Memphis, Egypt,
Speaker 1: during the time of Pericles. Problem with all that is
Speaker 1: that the time of Pericles is a period between roughly
Speaker 1: four sixty one to four nine b c eat. That
Speaker 1: means in something like six hundred years before the earliest
Speaker 1: point where we know that Mary could have been alive.
Speaker 1: So teasing out her life outside of Alchemy can be
Speaker 1: really something of a challenge. That quote Holly shared at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the episode really does live on for Mary.
Speaker 1: And let's go back to how important that quote has
Speaker 1: remained over the centuries. It was one becomes two, two
Speaker 1: becomes three, and out of the third comes the one
Speaker 1: as the fourth. Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Speaker 1: who founded analytical psychology, has said that Mary's rule runs
Speaker 1: like a light motif throughout almost the whole of the
Speaker 1: lifetime of Alchemy, extending over more than seventeen centuries, and
Speaker 1: according to him, the quote can be seen as a
Speaker 1: metaphor for his idea of the principle of individual ation,
Speaker 1: the central process of human development, when an individual achieves
Speaker 1: their sense of individuality. A very merry thing, it seems, Ali,
Speaker 1: But you got going on in the caldron today for MARYE.
Speaker 1: You know some things, some things. This one is a
Speaker 1: fruity little number, and I am calling it Mary's Black
Speaker 1: because it's black. This is a super simple one and
Speaker 1: you can serve it a couple of different ways. I
Speaker 1: initially did one that's like a very basic poured into
Speaker 1: a chilled cocktail glass. It is one ounce of blue curasou,
Speaker 1: one ounce of strawberry vodka, two ounces of pomegranate juice,
Speaker 1: and a couple of dashes of floral bidders. The floral
Speaker 1: bidders really changed the flavor profile, so just know if
Speaker 1: you skip it, you'll have a slightly different drink. Now
Speaker 1: this I just shook it all and poured it into
Speaker 1: a glass together. It's got a very sharp flavor because
Speaker 1: of that pomegranate juice. So if that altogether is too
Speaker 1: harsh for a sip, you can just pour club soda
Speaker 1: on top an ounce or two and soften it up
Speaker 1: a little around the edges. You can also soften it
Speaker 1: with ginger ale. If you want, whatever you want. It's
Speaker 1: your it's your alchemy. It's fine, it's your drink, it's
Speaker 1: your cauldron. But it's it's super easy to put together,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to do something that included at least
Speaker 1: two different alcohols. Since we owe Mary a little bit
Speaker 1: of a debt, of gratitude for the cauldron existing in
Speaker 1: the first place. This one is very easy to do
Speaker 1: as a mocktail. Keep the pomegranate juice. Obviously, if you recall,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what season it was. There was another
Speaker 1: cocktail where I mentioned that you can get non alcoholic
Speaker 1: blue curasau in most grocery stores. It's like over with
Speaker 1: the syrups, like with the simple syrups and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can use that. And then in lieu of strawberry vodka.
Speaker 1: You have some options here, right. You can do if
Speaker 1: you want to blend some strawberries to the point where
Speaker 1: they get pretty juicy, you could do that and put
Speaker 1: it in. You could also just slice some and put
Speaker 1: it in. You could muddle them. Basically, just get some
Speaker 1: fresh strawberries and add them to this whole business. And
Speaker 1: then you know, bitter's optional, but yes, same same basic thing.
Speaker 1: The strawberry is add such a nice thing. I originally
Speaker 1: did this with regular vodka and it just wasn't quite right.
Speaker 1: You need that strawberry flavor to make the other two
Speaker 1: play together nicely. It's like builds a bridge between the
Speaker 1: citrus and the pomegranate. It is really my kind of
Speaker 1: drink because I'm the cranberry tart, cherry pomegranate. I'm like,
Speaker 1: let me yeah, And it's a black drink, which I
Speaker 1: think we've only had. We had we'd have a couple
Speaker 1: we've had. I think we've had to and one of
Speaker 1: them we did with charcoal, and I always liked doing
Speaker 1: them with not charcoal. We did one not too long
Speaker 1: ago that involved cola in the mix to turn it dart. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought about also trying it with gin. There's a
Speaker 1: purple gin that I like to use. Yeah. Nope, Oh
Speaker 1: it didn't. It just wasn't. It wasn't horrible. It just
Speaker 1: tasted weird. It was like I couldn't even describe what
Speaker 1: was wrong about it. I didn't dance on the palette.
Speaker 1: I understand why angels dancing on the tip of my
Speaker 1: tongue when I drink this. There you go. So yes,
Speaker 1: that is Mary's Black, and hopefully if you make it,
Speaker 1: you find that it does dance on your palette. We
Speaker 1: are so grateful for the time you spend with us.
Speaker 1: So thank you for being with us and hearing Mary's
Speaker 1: story this week, and we hope you will come right
Speaker 1: back next week because we have a little more alchemy
Speaker 1: to discuss. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shonda land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.