Elizabeth Olsen Brocious
Brigham Young University


"Alchemical imagery and ideology is present in many Romantic works of literature, but it has largely been overlooked by literary historians in their
contextualization of the time period. The same can be said for mysticism in general, of which alchemy is a subset. This project accounts for alchemy in the works of
transcendental philosophers and writers as it contributes to some of the most important conversations of the Romantic time period, particularly the reaction against empirical philosophy and the articulation of creative processes."

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/view...ontext=etd

Alexandre Mattos Roberts

"This dissertation examines how scholars in eleventh-century Constantinople and Antioch (under Byzantine rule, 969-1084) understood matter and its transformation. It argues that matter, a concept inherited from ancient philosophy, continued to be a fertile and malleable idea-complex endowed with cultural and religious meaning in medieval thought-worlds of the Eastern Mediterranean."


https://escholarship.org/content/qt3n31m...38a812.pdf

Marcos Martinon-Torres

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/14...592114.pdf

Niermeier-Dohoney, Justin Robert

"This dissertation investigates the influence of vitalist matter theories and the practical, operational techniques of alchemy on agricultural improvement projects in seventeenth-century England. It argues that the historical territory of alchemy is much broader than many historians of this subject have conceded over the past generation."


https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1409?ln=en

Elaine-Theresa Rosdorff
Calif. State Univ.


https://scholarworks.csun.edu/bitstream/...sequence=1

Andrea Rutherfoord [sic]

"This study examines the themes of alchemy and transformation in Paradise Lost and seventeenth-century thought. Beginning with an overview of the historical roots of alchemy, this study analyzes the ancient, underlying philosophical concepts that marital union produces the birth of the soul and that destruction is necessary for this birth. Alchemical references identified in Paradise Lost include animal lore and direct alchemical images, which demonstrate Milton’s knowledge of alchemy and his deliberate use of the alchemical metaphor. These themes support the proposal that Milton, a Christian humanist, uses alchemy as a metaphor described in this study as “divine alchemy,” which begins with his belief that Christians, inheriting original sin, must submit themselves to a transformative process similar to transmutation to restore right reason and, ultimately, achieve salvation."


https://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/o...e_Lost.pdf

An interesting engraving from

Vincentius Koffsky.
Hermetische Schriften, denen wahren Schülern und Nachfolgern unserer geheimen spagirischen Kunst zum Nuz beschrieben und hinterlassen den 4ten Octobr. Ao. Domini MCCCCLXXVIII.

Christ is crucified on a tree. A monk collects the blood from a wound in his side. In the background is a temple, shaped like a furnace. The three sections are labelled Mars, Antimony and the Sun/Gold.


   

"In an age of dramatic scientific advances, a man named Johann Konrad Dippel achieved almost folkloric infamy.  The inventor of Prussian Blue dye and the author of seventy works, he is best known for the rumors that swirled around him.  Could this man have been a simple scientist, or a nefarious sorcerer?  And might he have inspired one of the most famous literary characters ever?"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkIRmqU4cY

https://lorethrill.com/johann-konrad-dip...nkenstein/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Konrad_Dippel


   

The Openness of Knowledge: An Ideal and Its Context in 16th-Century Writings on Mining and Metallurgy

Pamela O. Long



"Alchemy overlapped with craft traditions, particularly those of the goldsmith trade, and it developed its own laboratory techniques for processing metals and other substances. It also was imbued with a complex group of religious and philosophical ideas from the ancient Near East. In the 15th century, influenced by Ficino’s Neoplatonism, it enjoyed a surge of popularity and would remain a respected art until the 18th century. Here it is sufficient to emphasize alchemy’s view of transmission as an esoteric process, in which an authority transmitted alchemical knowledge to a few initiates usually within an apprenticeship relationship. The cryptic writing of the alchemists is well-known as a method whereby alchemical knowledge was hidden from the uninitiated. Alchemical authorship could be hidden as well. The real author of all alchemical writings was considered to be the ancient Egyptian god Toth. The attribution of alchemical books to the highest authority was a customary practice."

https://www.mprl-series.mpg.de/studies/11/2/index.html

"Recent archaeological evidence reveals early Virginia, which included both the Roanoke and Jamestown colonies, as the birthplace of the American chemical enterprise"

https://www.acs.org/education/whatischem...istry.html