Joshua Trachtenberg
First published in 1939.
This online edition was created and published by Global Grey on the 3rd February 2023.
[url=https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/jewish-magic-and-superstition-ebook.html][/url]

Not much alchemy in it but a good read.

https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/online-..._ftnref353

"This article presents the decryption, historical analysis, and alchemical interpretation of an alchemical cipher found in a shared notebook of John and Arthur Dee (British Library MS Sloane 1902). The cipher is an early example of a Bellaso/Della Porta/Vigenère type, a strong encryption method which was historically deemed indecipherable. The essay explores the medical and alchemical context for the manuscript into which the cipher was copied and provides the transcription, plaintext solution (in Latin), and English translation of the encrypted text. Further, it interprets the enciphered text through the lens of alchemical practice and provides evidence for the dissemination of this cipher as part of a larger alchemical knowledge network."


Open access.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....23.2201744

A new book explores how 16th-century Italian women used marble dust, pearls, gold and mutton fat in their quest to look as pretty as a picture


Jill Burke’s How To Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity is published on August 3 (Profile Books/Wellcome Collection). Burke is also a contributor to a related exhibition, The Cult of Beauty, which opens at the Wellcome Collection on October 26


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beaut...-0zrpqkm7z

   

A beautifully illustrated, full-color guide to scrolls and their uses in medieval life.

Scrolls have always been shrouded by a kind of aura, a quality of somehow standing outside of time. They hold our attention with their age, beauty, and perplexing format. Beginning in the fourth century, the codex―or book―became the preferred medium for long texts. Why, then, did some people in the Middle Ages continue to make scrolls?



https://www.amazon.com/Role-Scroll-Illus...0393285030

The Neijing Tu (simplified Chinese: 內经图; traditional Chinese: 內經圖; pinyin: Nèijīng tú; Wade–Giles: Nei-ching t'u) is a Daoist "inner landscape" diagram of the human body illustrating Neidan 'internal alchemy', Wu Xing, Yin and Yang, and Chinese mythology.



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





Damo Mitchell gives a 40 minute introductory talk on the Nei Jing Tu chart which is carved into the wall of the White Cloud Temple in Beijing. In the talk, Damo talks about the image in general and gives an overview of the symbolism.



The full, two-hour long version of this lesson, complete with translations of all the Chinese text and poetry, is available on the Internal Arts Academy which can be found at: http://www.damomitchell.com



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acX1nCrZ2AA



   

The Nature of Utopia in the Early Seventeenth Century

Thesis by Michael James Macaulay.

 “The Rosicrucian manifestos show specific leanings to particular forms of Renaissance magic. Astrology is largely ignored, while natural magic and Kabbalah are only briefly mentioned in order to show how defective they had been before 'CRC' had found them. It may also be significant that 'CRC' turned his back on Egypt, the home of Hermes Trismegistus. The most important occult practice in the manifestos is, overwhelmingly alchemy. Alchemical references permeate throughout the manifestos. CRC's tomb can be seen as a recreation of an alchemist's laboratory, with its lamps and instruments. Even the 'artificial songs' are more alchemical than Orphic. It was a popular notion that music would aid the production of the philosopher's stone: Maier, for example, produced several alchemical compositions. Though it has not, to my knowledge, been suggested before, the life of 'CRC' could be an allegory for the spread of alchemical knowledge into Europe.”

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1657/1/1657.pdf?EThOS%20(BL)

Direct download.

"This thesis... looks in detail at the development of similar “occult” and non-mechanical ways of thinking by earlier English thinkers; from the earliest English “scientists”: John Dee (1527–1608), William Gilbert (1544–1603), and Francis Bacon (1561–1626), to members of the Royal Society of London, the first scientific society (founded in 1660), including Robert Boyle (1627–1691), Robert Hooke (1635–1703), and others. This thesis shows, therefore, that the occult ways of thinking that can be seen to have shaped Newton’s new
physics were already current in English thought (and were by no means confined to alchemy), and already provided a powerful and fruitful alternative to the mechanical
philosophy which was dominant in Continental Europe. The power and fruitfulness of these English ideas is shown by the very fact that these ideas can all be seen, as
this thesis shows, to have culminated in the highly successful work of Sir Isaac Newton."


Thesis by Xiaona Wang.

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/18...sAllowed=y

(No landing-page - immediate download)

The Book of Soyga, also titled Aldaraia, is a 16th-century Latin treatise on magic, one copy of which was owned by the Elizabethan scholar John Dee. After Dee's death, the book was thought lost until 1994, when two manuscripts were located in the British Library (Sloane MS 8) and the Bodleian Library (Bodley MS. 908), under the title Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor, by Dee scholar Professor Deborah Harkness.

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

Links to transcriptions/translations at bottom of Wiki article.

By Julie Pinel (fl. 1710-1737).

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

"Alongside the importance placed on the art of conversation in the eighteenth century, salon society took an amateur’s interest in science and philosophy. Also
prevalent in this period, was the continued significance of the pursuit of gold. This was observed in literature also, and it became a common theme found in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century airs. The air à boire, ‘Pour guérir sans retour la vive bléssure’, whose text was written by an anonymous author, illustrates this... 

As well as the loose reference to alchemy in the air à boire discussed above, ‘Ah que l’homme est sçavant’ presents us with a particularly unusual air on this very topic. The text, by Pinel, clearly points to alchemy, through its basic description of the alchemic process:

L’on fixe le mercure on a beau me le dire,
Dans un creuset je vois mettre de l’or
Et de soufleur confus jamais ne l’en retire."

Quoted from a thesis about Julie by Corisha Brain:

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handl...olume1.pdf

Sheet music here:

https://imslp.org/wiki/Nouveau_recueil_d...%2C_Julie)

Recording of some of her music here:

https://ladm.org/product/pleasures-pinel/