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  • All About History

    Legends and pseudonyms

    Feb 28, 2020 5 minutes
    Written by Ben Gazur

    One of the joys of being a writer is seeing your name in print (see my own humble byline above) yet in the past many authors of alchemical texts hid their identity behind pseudonyms. Were these noms de plume a method of concealment or conceit? As with everything in the world of alchemy, the answers can be hard to riddle out.

    LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY

    Almost as far back as we look in the history of alchemy we find alchemists adopting different personas in their work. One of the texts in the Byzantine collection known as the ‘Corpus alchemicum graecum’ is called On Natural and Secret Things and is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. While Democritus, father of atomic theory, lived in the 5th century BCE, this work is no earlier than the 1st or 2nd century CE. Why was

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