"This essay explores circular compositions in medieval and early modern art. Delving into the intersection of religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas, the text examines the prevalence of circular depictions in medieval and early modern aesthetics. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the author draws from primary Hermetic and Neoplatonic sources, providing four reasons for this preference."

Roger Ferrer-Ventosa

Full text.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/171

...and a Boehmean-Alchemical Theophany

"In Jakob Boehme's theosophy, Sophia is the bride of the soul, and the mirror that God imagines in. She is the Mirror of Wisdom (Spiegel der Weisheit), her wisdom a pearl. Redolent of Ezekiel's vision, Boehme describes God as akin to a wheel or eye; Sophia is also an eye, the beautiful divine image and reflection. She resides within one's fiery soul of the heart, in one’s Gemüt. This Theophany also features imagery of the 7 source-spirits, the burning heart, and countless other alchemical symbols."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIOtmWL2iDY

"During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English numerical practices underwent a complex transformation with wide-ranging impacts on English society. At the beginning of the early modern period, English men and women believed that God had made humans universally numerate, although numbers were not central to their everyday lives. Over the next two centuries, rising literacy rates and the increasing availability of printed books revolutionized modes of arithmetical practice and education. Ordinary English people began to use numbers and quantification to explain abstract phenomena as diverse as the relativity of time, the probability of chance events, and the constitution of human populations. These changes reflected their participation in broader early modern European cultural and intellectual developments such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. By the eighteenth century, English men and women still believed they lived in a world made by God, but it was also a world made--and made understandable--by numbers."


By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England
by Jessica Marie Otis (Author)


Not specifically alchemical but perhaps of interest.

https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Numeracy-...0197608779

Just thought I’d put this on the record in case someone can shed some light. Pallax appears to be a gemstone, though whether real or not I do not know. I came across it in Gerard Dorn’s Artificium Supernaturale:



https://archive.org/details/hin-wel-all-...0/mode/2up




p. 243, line 5.









It also appears as an amusing entry in Chambers Cyclopaedia 1786, vol. 3 part 2




   








and in Erstning’s Nucleus:




http://tinyurl.com/y5z4v8r5




   






and in Pseudo-Llull:




https://archive.org/details/hin-wel-all-...p?q=Pallax

"I quietly decided at the start of 2023 that my word for the year would be alchemy. I thought about it all year while I did pretty much nothing about it, wondering what was going on and how to find a hook into an action that would make that mean something. I didn’t know why it mattered. I didn’t know what ‘it’ even was. Except for tinkering with Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown Alchemy Deck in a state of bafflement, and acquiring Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy so it could gather dust on my bookshelf, I felt blank."


https://katefinazzi.substack.com/p/4-an-...n-clinical

"The papers (3,100 items; 10,077 images) of leading Jungian analyst Edward F. Edinger (1922-1998) span the years 1550 (photostatic copy of an alchemical treatise) to 2016, with the bulk of the material dating from 1951 to 1998. Reproduced from the originals donated to the Manuscript Division in 2016-2021, the collection illustrates Edinger’s ability to explain C. G. Jung's ideas and concepts in a simple and precise manner, making Jung's work more accessible. The papers also provide insight into Edinger's own theoretical work, including his belief that modern man's psychological disorientation was a result of the loss of a core religious mythology, and his interest in the therapeutic role of alchemy, literature, philosophy, and religion."


https://www.loc.gov/collections/edward-f...ollection/

The First Alchemists: The Spiritual and Practical Origins of the Noble and Holy Art, by Tobias Churton

Inner Traditions, 1644116839, 320 pages, November 2023

https://musingmystical.com/the-first-alc...s-churton/

A selection of images from mostly Renaissance books, and mostly in Latin, dealing with alchemy which illustrate the
ancient Hebdomad (ἑβδομάς) which formed the basis of the Longusian tradition.


https://sevenoxonians.files.wordpress.co...ary-v1.pdf

" In this episode of Esoterica we investigate what is likely one of the earliest encoded alchemical texts: "the Formula of the Crab" or "the Formula of the Scorpion." Found in a 10th century Greek manuscript, this formula contain a Greco-Egyptian alchemical process for producing a gold-like alloy of copper, silver, and lead. As we explore the formula we will also discuss how Greco-Egyptian alchemy differed from later theories under the influence of the mercury-sulfur theory of the metals. What will discover is an emphasis on the ability to control the color of metals as opposed to metallic transmutation reflecting the religious vocation of the earliest Egyptian metallurgists."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYI1PpMElgM

"Or, more properly and to give the book its full era-appropriate title, The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz, A Romance in Eight Days, by Johann Valentin Andreae in a new version by John Crowley. Cheekily claimed as a special 400th anniversary edition, The Chemical Wedding is a new version of one of the founding Rosicrucian documents, an allegorical text from 1616 first published in German, purportedly by one Christian Rosencreutz, actually by a Lutheran pastor named Johann Valentin Andreae. This version, writes Crowley, is not a new translation. He based it on the original English translation from 1690 and a more modern one from 1887, plus some consultation with a new translation from 1991 and assistance from Andrés Paniagua, who checked Crowley’s versions “against original German printings".”

https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/20...n-crowley/