Cyranides

The ''Cyranides'' (also ''Kyranides'' or ''Kiranides'') is a compilation of magico-medical works in Greek first put together in the 4th century. Latin and Arabic translations also exists. It has been described as a " farrago" and a ''texte vivant'', owing to the complexities of its transmission: it has been abridged, rearranged, and supplemented. The resulting compilation covers the magical properties and practical uses of gemstones, plants, and animals, and is a virtual encyclopedia of amulets; it also contains material pertinent to the history of western alchemy, and to New Testament studies, particularly in illuminating meanings of words and magico-religious practices. As a medical text, the ''Cyranides'' was held in relatively low esteem even in antiquity and the Middle Ages because of its use of vernacular language and reliance on lore rather than Hippocratic or Galenic medical theory.

In the ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'', Thomas Browne described the ''Cyranides'' as "a collection out of Harpocration the Greek and sundry Arabick writers delivering not only the Naturall but Magicall propriety of things." Although the ''Cyranides'' was considered "dangerous and disreputable" in the Middle Ages, it was translated into Latin by Pascalis Romanus, a clergyman with medical expertise who was the Latin interpreter for Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. The 14th-century cleric Demetrios Chloros was put on trial because he transcribed magical texts, including what was referred to as the ''Coeranis''.

Form and structure

The original 4th-century ''Cyranides'' comprised three books, to which a redactor added a fourth. The original first book of the ''Cyranides'', the Κυρανίς (''Kuranis''), was the second component of a two-part work, the first part of which was the Ἀρχαϊκἠ (''Archaikê''). Books 2–4 are a bestiary. The edition of Kaimakis (see below) contains a fifth and sixth book which were not transmitted under the name ''Cyranides'' but which were included with the work in a limited number of manuscripts. A medieval Arabic translation of the first book exists, and portions of it are "reflected" in the Old French work ''Le livre des secrez de nature'' (''The Book of Nature's Secrets'').

The ''Cyranides'' begins by instructing the reader to keep its contents secret, and with a fictional narrative of how the work was discovered. In one 15th-century manuscript, the author of the work is said to be Kyranos (Κοίρανος), king of Persia.

Sample remedies and spells

The ''Cyranides'' devotes a chapter to the healing powers of the water snake; its bezoar is used to cure dropsy. Fish gall is recommended for healing white spots in the eye; fish liver is supposed to cure blindness. For a "large and pleasurable" erection, a mixture of arugula, spices, and honey is recommended, as is carrying the tail of a lizard or the right molar of a skink. The fumigation or wearing of bear hair turns away evil spirits and fever.

Daniel Ogden, a specialist in magic and the supernatural in antiquity, has gathered several references from the ''Cyranides'' on the use of gemstones and amulets. The collection offers spells to avert the child-harming demon Gello, who was blamed for miscarriages and infant mortality, and says that aetite can be worn as an amulet against miscarriage.

Magico-religious tradition

Olympidorus provides a summary of a passage from the work, not part of the abridged version now extant, that has cosmological as well as alchemical implications:

In the extant version, the ''Cyranides'' contains a description of the ''heliodromus'', a phoenix-like bird from India which, upon hatching, flies to the rising sun and then goes west when the sun passes the zenith. It lives only a year, and, according to some interpretations of an unreliable text, leaves behind an androgynous progeny. R. van den Broek, ''The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions'' (Brill, N.D.), pp. 286–28
online.
On the sex of the phoenix, see F. Lecocq, «‘Le sexe incertain du phénix’: de la zoologie à la théologie», ''Le phénix et son autre: poétique d'un mythe des origines au XVIe s.'', ed. L. Gosserez, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, p. 177-199, ()

Editions and translations

* The Latin translation.
* (NB: Kaimakis did not consult the Latin text while making this edition).
* Partial Greek text.
* Arabic translation and partial Greek text; Greek text contains many typographical errors.
* (Arabic translation of fragments from books 2–4 of the ''Cyranides'')
* English translation and commentary on select passages from Book 1.

Selected bibliography

* Bain, David. "Μελανῖτις γῆ in the ''Cyranides'' and Related Texts: New Evidence for the Origins and Etymology of Alchemy." In ''Magic in the Biblical World: From the Rod of Aaron to the Ring of Solomon''. T&T Clark International, 2003, pp. 191–218. Limited previe
online.
* Bain, David. "περιγίνεσθαι as a Medical Term and a Conjecture in the ''Cyranides''." In ''Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 281–286. Limited previe
online.
* Faraone, Christopher A. ''Ancient Greek Love Magic''. Harvard University Press, 2001. Limited previe
online.
*Mavroudi, Maria. "Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research." University of California, Berkeley. Full tex
downloadable.
Also published in ''The Occult Sciences in Byzantium'' (La Pomme d'or, 2006), limited previe
online.

References

{{Alchemy

Hermetica
Traditional medicine
History of ancient medicine
Alchemical documents
Greek alchemy