In the vast alchemical literature of the Middle Ages, the Turba philosophorum is one of the oldest and most quoted texts. The title means "The Crowd" or "The Assembly of the Philosophers", and it describes the scene exactly: a group of sages gathered to discuss the great Work. The book enjoyed enormous authority among European alchemists, who regarded it as a kind of founding text.
Arabic origin
The Turba has come down to us in Latin, but scholars agree that it derives from an Arabic original, probably composed around the tenth century. The work thus arose in the Islamic world that gathered, translated and developed the alchemical knowledge of Greco-Roman Egypt. The German scholar Julius Ruska published an edition and study in 1931 that clarified its origin, and later research has identified traces of the Arabic original in alchemical texts of that tradition.
The Latin translation spread through Europe in the Middle Ages and was later printed in the sixteenth century in collections of alchemical texts.
The scene
The Turba is built as the record of an assembly. Pythagoras presides over the meeting, and numerous philosophers speak in turn. Their names are largely those of ancient Greek thinkers, especially Presocratics such as Anaxagoras, Empedocles and others, but often distorted by transmission through Arabic and Latin to the point of being hard to recognise.
The attribution of alchemical doctrines to the Presocratic philosophers has no historical basis: it is a way of linking the art to an ancient and venerable wisdom. But the choice is not random. The Presocratics had reflected on the elements and on matter, and their presence gives the dialogue a framework of natural philosophy.
A discussion without conclusion
Each philosopher sets out his opinion on the Work, on the matter to start from and on the operations to be performed. The opinions sometimes contradict one another and at other times repeat each other with small variations. This dialogic structure creates a particular effect: the reader does not receive a linear teaching but must compare the voices and seek the hidden agreement among them.
Some themes recur insistently:
- the unity of the matter of the Work, said to be one thing under many names;
- the importance of the permanent or divine water;
- the need to unite masculine and feminine, fixed and volatile;
- the value of patience and of repeating the operations;
- the deliberate obscurity of the philosophers' language.
The language of names
A fundamental feature of the Turba is the multiplication of names. The same substance is called in many different ways, and the philosophers openly declare that they do so to hide the secret from the unworthy. This practice became one of the rules of later alchemical literature: whoever read an alchemical text knew that names were masks and that one had to look for the thing behind the words.
The Turba also insists on the need to read many books and compare them, because what one author keeps silent another reveals. It is an invitation to patient, comparative study.
Its influence in Europe
The authority of the Turba remained great for several centuries. Many Latin alchemical texts cite it as a reference, and the title itself became almost a genre: other works appeared built as dialogues or assemblies of sages. The Rosarium philosophorum, one of the most famous alchemical collections of the sixteenth century, draws widely on this tradition of sayings attributed to the philosophers.
In the sixteenth century the Turba was printed in the great collections of alchemical texts, which made it accessible to a wider readership.
How to read it
Anyone approaching the Turba must be prepared for a fragmentary, repetitive and deliberately obscure text. A few suggestions for study:
- read the text as a dialogue, paying attention to the differences between the voices;
- note the names given to the matter and look for correspondences;
- do not look for practical instructions but for the conceptual framework of the Work;
- remember that the text passed through several languages and bears the marks of these transformations.
For the Studio Esoterico Cornelio the Turba is precious because it shows alchemy as an art of comparison: truth is not found in a single voice but emerges from patient listening to many.
In short
- The Turba philosophorum is a Latin alchemical text derived from an Arabic original, probably of the tenth century.
- It presents itself as an assembly of philosophers presided over by Pythagoras.
- The philosophers' names, often Presocratic, are distorted by transmission.
- The text multiplies the names of the matter to conceal its secret.
- It held great authority in European alchemical literature and was printed in the sixteenth century.
