Everything you ever wanted to know about generative artificial intelligence (AI) but were afraid to ask! Author and tech expert Tom Chatfield breaks down what AI is and what it means for authors and creators on the season finale of Authors' Matters.

https://tinyurl.com/2p883fb6

"This paper explores the life and work of 13th century English Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon in light of the spiritual-religious practice of alchemy. Bacon’s works in pertinence to alchemy reflect his belonging to a school of intellectual thought known as Hermeticism; which encompasses the practice of alchemy. Bacon can be placed among other philosophic practitioners of alchemy throughout history; allowing for expanded insight into the life of this medieval scholar. Throughout history, Bacon’s most well-known work, the Opus Majus, has been interpreted in a variety of ways. However, when considering what the practice of alchemy is at its Arabic roots, the sometimes vague and perplexing character of Roger Bacon becomes less elusive. Bacon has been called both a magician and a scientist as a result of the obscureness in his work; this paper explores the underlying motives Bacon had in constructing the Opus Majus. Roger Bacon expressed that sapientia or "divine wisdom" could be systematically obtained by following the revised scholastic curriculum he outlined in the Opus Majus. What is this sapientia? Where did Bacon get this idea? And why did Bacon work tirelessly to prove its efficacy to Pope Clement IV? This paper sets out to provide a deeper look into the place that alchemy held in Bacon’s life and the reasons he wished to integrate it into the Christian learning curriculum at the universities of Paris and Oxford."

By Victoria Tobes.

Full text.

https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.e...honors/12/

"This BOOK CELEBRATES the vision of Sir Francis Bacon on the 450th anniversary of his birth - as man of alchemy, science and mystery. It has great implications for our generation, since Bacon lived at a time before the split between religion and science took place - a period before the triumph of the materialistic model. Four and a half centuries later, that model is itself beginning to look very frayed at the edges, not just because of the revolutions in physics, but because of the discoveries of neuroscientists that we have the ability to change the shape of our own brains by our consciousness, independently of the brain itself, and the acknowledgment of medical researchers that consciousness also has a role to play in whether or not we heal."


http://www.polairpublishing.co.uk/viewbeyond.html

"Alchemy has traditionally been understood as a pseudoscience or protoscience that eventually gave way to modern chemistry. Less often have the writings of alchemists been studied on their own terms. Yet, given the endurance and prolific nature of the alchemical traditions and the involvement of important figures of "modern science" such as Isaac Newton in the field of alchemy, a teleological understanding of the transition from alchemy to chemistry seems inadequate for discussing how science was practiced in the past. This may be particularly true for the Ottoman context, where a longstanding tradition of alchemy becomes subsumed under a larger narrative of the triumph of Western science during the nineteenth century. In this podcast, Tuna Artun explores the world of alchemy and discusses its transformation during the Ottoman period."

https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/20...mpire.html

Also at Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/75rBqbicHUtsn5Y2XKHFOH

From Jacob Boehme To Mary Anne Atwood.

By Mike Zuber.

At Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/document/57202447...nne-Atwood

"The paper is devoted to the analysis of relations between Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy and the alchemical discourse. Skovoroda fundamentally rejects the traditional concept of the philosophers’ stone. However, his views are unexpectedly and deeply related with the spiritual alchemy of those times – the search for the “living philosophers’ stone” in the microcosm of human soul. Such “alchemical antialchemism” of Skovoroda’s  philosophy seems to be natural in the context of inner controversies of the  phenomenon of European alchemy of XVI – XVIII centuries."

By K. M. Rodygin.
English text with Russian abstracts.

At Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/316464418/THE...-SKOVORODA

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

Wicked Angels and the Good Demon: The Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes

Christian H. Bull, University of Oslo and Princeton University

"The alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis, writing around 300 CE, is our only source for a series of treatises by Hermes called the Physica, which reportedly spoke about angels  who had intercourse with women, as in 1 Enoch, and which credited the revelation of alchemy to an enigmatic figure called Chemeu."

https://www.academia.edu/36394399/Wicked..._of_Hermes

"Bennet anchors his work in Northumbrian history, providing scholarly endnotes to sketch the lives and deeds he reimagines, e.g., those of the 17th-century Quaker evangelist James Nayler, and of the 15th-century alchemist George Ripley, whose writings propel Bennet’s “Folly Wood” sequence. He quotes from the archival record throughout his historical sequences, with dialogue and commentary by participants forming found poetry and meta-text. The notes include glosses on the many citations in Latin and from the Bible, and discuss the intertextuality of Bennet’s work; for instance, his “Landscape with Psyche” begins with an epigraph from Pierre Corneille (which Paul Valery also used), refers to a Claude Lorraine painting, and includes phrases from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass as retold by Thomas Bulfinch and Walter Pater."

Review:
https://oceanstatereview.org/2023/08/05/...ted-poems/

Peter reading some of his poems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7erEpL-jF8

Author of the All Souls Trilogy:

"A Discovery of Witches is a 2011 historical-fantasy novel and the debut novel by American scholar Deborah Harkness. It follows Diana Bishop, a history of science professor at Yale University, as she embraces her magical blood after finding a long-thought-lost manuscript and engages in a forbidden romance with a charming vampire, Matthew Clairmont."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Discovery_of_Witches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Harkness

This interesting website, by an art historian, explores the material culture of the Trilogy:

https://thearthistoryofallsouls.com/

By Hiro Hirai

" Paracelsus’s concept of seeds is an important contribution to
Renaissance theories of matter. Unlike the alchemists’ notion of metal
seeds, it has a strong Christian orientation, based on a particular inter-
pretation of the biblical Creation story. It is in this cosmogonical aspect
that Paracelsian seeds are more akin to the seminal reasons of Augustine
than to the logoi spermatikoi of the Stoics or Plotinus. The present study
examines the Augustinian background of this Paracelsian concept and
Marsilio Ficino’s intermediary role in its origination."


https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-revue...ge-245.htm