Chapter by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan from the book "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture".

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000134522

Article by Gail Taylor.

https://ucl.scienceopen.com/document_fil...858601.pdf

See her translation of this book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Al-Razi-T...1507778791

ESOTERIC OR EROTIC? RUDOLF II AND HIS PRAGUE CHAMBER OF WONDERS

Sally Metzler

Field Museum of Natural History


"Individuals fortunate enough to receive a coveted invitation to visit Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II’s Chamber of Wonders in the Prague Castle would witness, among the many treasures, paintings focusing on couples scantily dressed and engaged in erotic, if not titillating escapades. Just a glance at the paintings in his collection, a bevy of sensuous nudes, might lead to the conclusion that the Emperor had a penchant for collecting bawdy and amorous art with little more substance than erotic stimulation. After all, Rudolf was a bachelor, and further, equated with being a bit peculiar to the point of mildly insane. However, the art created by his court artists offers far more than sensual delight. They represent the pervading hermetic intellectualism embraced by Rudolf’s court entourage. Moreover, although these works are indeed erotic, they are allegories of the alchemic ideal, the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone or true spiritual wisdom."

https://digitum.um.es/digitum/bitstream/...gen174.pdf

Performative and Multimedia Aspects of Late-Renaissance Meditative Alchemy: The Case of Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617)

by Johann Hasler

"In 1617 the alchemist, counselor and court physician to the then recently deceased Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612)
published his Atalanta Fugiens (Atalanta fleeing). The book fits into the general category of an ‘alchemical emblem book’, very
popular in the day: it contains 50 beautiful engravings to which are assigned poetic sextets in both Latin and German. The
main difference with all known similar works is that it includes a three-part canon with each engraving. According to the author,
the purpose is for all of this input “to be looked at, read, meditated, understood, weighed, sung and listened to, not without
a certain pleasure” (Maier 1990, 91). In this sense, this book might be interpreted as a very early example of multimedia, and
as a work which requires a performative attitude and activity (in the form of singing) and not merely to be read, for its original
purpose to be fully accomplished. In this brief article I will describe the work, and present arguments to support my belief that
it would be reasonable to conclude that it is an early form of multimedia"


https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/815/81518565011.pdf

By William Eamon.

Read-online option available at:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4130476

See also Eamon's book on Fioravanti:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professor-Secre...F8&qid=&sr=

and his paper on Italian Alchemists at the Escorial:

https://www.academia.edu/5413515/Masters..._Philip_II

and on Archduke Rudolf at the Spanish Court:

https://www.academia.edu/24929215/The_Sc...nish_Court

Thesis by Emily Ennis.

https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811...sAllowed=y

Free book, with an important discussion of the scientific status of alchemy:

https://www.royalacademy.dk/Publications...0Helge.pdf

By Mar Rey Bueno.

"In 1593 the Irishman, Richard Stanyhurst, one of the most controversial figures of Elizabethan letters, wrote to his friend Sir Francis Englefield from the town of El Escorial near Madrid, commenting on his activities at the court of the elderly Philip II. The letter, dated 2 August, begins with various personal matters before moving on to a more detailed description of the work he had been called upon to do for the Spanish monarch."

Full text.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836220/

"C. F. Wenzel was a chemist and an alchemist. He had deep knowledge of acids, bases and salts, and he was credited with the first formulation of the Law of Mass Action. Yet he was also an alchemist, who on the eve of the Chemical Revolution published his beliefs in transmutation and in the division of metals into their constituents, for which he was rewarded with the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences. His promoter, Professor C. G. Kratzenstein, was himself a believer in transmutation, even if he voiced some reservations."

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.w....202300091

How the Inquisition censored an encyclopedia of natural history.

"Nothing is censored in passages about seemingly more disturbing anomalies and monsters, such as sirens, flying dragons, the monacus marinus (half-fish, half-monk), or the draconpedes (half human, half-snake). The image of a woman eating living toads is a case in point. Censorship overlooked it, as if this was compatible with religious orthodoxy. Maybe it was perceived as some kind of innocuous fantasy. By contrast, “Alchemy was one of the sept ars demonials [sic], for the aid of Satan was necessary to the transmutation of metals, and the Philosopher’s Stone”."

https://rarebooksdigest.com/2019/02/27/a.../#_ftnref1

(Available in various languages).