Chrysopoeia


In alchemy, the term chrysopoeia means transmutation into gold. It symbolically indicates the creation of the philosopher's stone and the completion of the Great Work.
The word was used in the title of a brief alchemical work, the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra attributed to Cleopatra the Alchemist, which was probably written in the first centuries of the Christian era, but which is first found on a single leaf in a tenth-to-eleventh century manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, MS Marciana gr. Z. 299. The document features an ouroboros containing the words "the all is one", a concept that is related to Hermeticism. Stephen of Alexandria wrote a De Chrysopoeia. Chrysopoeia is also the title of a 1515 poem by Giovanni Augurello.