Now a pizza joint, this house in Anagni near Rome is alleged to have 'alchemical' symbolism on the outside. Anyone been there? Adam?
Recently restored, and there's a book about it by Guglielmo Viti.
'According to local lore, the seemingly incomprehensible and elaborate inscriptions and frescoes are the result of von Barnekow’s hallucinations, visions and his alchemical research, which he pursued in the solitude of his Anagni residence (that he called “tribuna Albertina”) over twenty-five years. The inscriptions and frescoes should be read as a description of von Barnekow’s own transformation and alchemical journey, crowned by the apparition of the Virgin that occurred on November 27 1861. The house struck the German historian and traveler Ferdinand Gregorovius, who sketched it in 1856.'
For those who do not already know of Ora Clavis on Facebook, he spends most of his time trawling online library catalogues looking for manuscripts and printed books containing alchemical, masonic, magical and other emblematic images. I try and view his page every day and very often find some interesting items I have not seen before. Last week I found there the Donum Dei manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Recently, he has posted some images from Freemasonic sources.
His page is entitled Grimoires , Manuscrits & livres magiques du monde
In this wide-ranging interview, conducted on the occasion of the release of a new film addressing the implications of his thought, the physicist and metaphysician Wolfgang Smith speaks about the need to integrate science with reality in a way that affirms the lived experience of humanity, and preserves the archetypal and qualitative dimensions that give it meaning. He is critical of scientific fundamentalism and its overreaching tendencies, of the false premises of Darwinian evolutionism and of the limitations of Einsteinian physics and quantum reality. Physics, on its own terms, he claims, must affirm, on pain of absurdity, the metaphysical dimension of reality and of the corporeal existence that it informs.
On 6 July, Christie’s presented an Art d’Asie Sale in Paris, featuring a wide array of Asian art – from imperial porcelains to Tibetan thangka. Surprisingly, it was a Taoist alchemy album from early Qing dynasty (1644-1911) which achieved the highest price and stole the show.
The 48-page Taoist alchemy album – illustrated with colourful pictures, diagrams and detailed essays – is an ancient Chinese guide to produce a Golden Elixir for immortality.
Rarely seen at auctions, it was hammered down at €600,000 – far exceeding the pre-sale low estimate of €10,000 by 60 times. After fees, it was sold for €756,000 (around US$771,000) to take the crown of the sale.
The secrets of nature's alchemy captivated both the scientific and literary imagination of the Middle Ages. This book explores Chaucer's fascination with earth's mutability. Gabrovsky reveals that his poetry represents a major contribution to a medieval worldview centered on the philosophy of physics, astronomy, alchemy, and logic.
I came upon this in an art store today, an oil paint colour labeled 'Caput Mortuum', and was thinking, Adam, that it could be a decent side hustle for you to act as a consultant for an (established? emerging?) pigment/art supply company in creating an 'alchemical' line of colours, the Thrice-Great, or Peacock's Tail series, say. I say that in jest, but I almost bought the colour today on name alone.
One could come up with a few dozen evocative names, I’m sure, just from Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. Just around the treatises of Ripley are mentions of the 'Blackest Black' as being like a "Cimmerian utter Darkness of compleat Rottenness", which, admittedly, sounds less like an oil paint colour than a black metal concept album; but Lyon Green, Terra Foliata, Toad fully Ruddy, Crow's bill Blue as lead ('Crowys byll bloe as lede'), etc., that could hold unto a small tube label.
And it would be very poetic to walk into a studio (or watch a YouTube video) and hear the artist explain: "How did I made the colour on that section? Easy, you just mix two parts of White Eagles with one part of Splendor Solis."
