Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells
Owen Davies
Yale University Press, pp.256


Reviewed here:

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/abiding-charms/

   

Spanish-language alchemy blog by Miguel Lopez Perez with lots of interesting material:


https://www.quaderna-alchimica.info/

Margaret E. Boyle, «Scents and Celestinas: Alchemical Women in Early Modern Spain», en Early Modern Women, Volume 15, Number 2, Spring 2021, pp. 113-120.



https://www.quaderna-alchimica.info/scen...n-spain-2/

Click 'Leer' to read.

This 17th-century engraving is from Thomas Norton's The Ordinall of Alchimy and was made after a 15th-century illuminated manuscript (now preserved in the British Library). Norton, a practicing alchemist, depicts the secrecy with which alchemical knowledge was to be treated. The master abjures the student to "Accept the gift of God under a sacred seal," while the student replies "I shall preserve the secrets of holy alchemy in secrecy."


   

"In his anti-literary 1890s, August Strindberg took to the laboratory to experiment in alchemy, and some of his thoughts led to a peculiar book published in Germany in 1894 called Antibarbarus I: oder Die Welt für sich und die Welt für mich (YA.1990.a.22668). His discovery of the process of transmuting lead into gold was conjecture and anti-scientific, if anti-anything, but 13 years later, this simple pamphlet, first published in Germany, transmuted into one of the finest luxury editions printed in Sweden."


https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/05/a-r...barus.html

   

Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d

Mary Losure. Candlewick, $19.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-7636-7063-4

 
"In this charming biography of Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Losure (Wild Boy) posits that “this last sorcerer—this greatest of all alchemists—was the same man who banished magic from the scientific world.”


https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780763670634

   

From Societas Magica Newsletter Issue 39:

"The British Library’s Sloane collection includes a series of thirty-four notebooks,predominantly concerned with alchemical and medical topics, compiled by an anonymous diarist sometime around the end of the sixteenth century. The notebook manuscripts in question have been most comprehensively studied by Anke Timmermann and David Evett. Evett’s contribution focuses especially on six of the notebooks that include a series of programs for the execution of allegorical paintings more concerned with social and political themes than iatrochemistry. The only direct clue to the compiler’s identity is the initials “C. S.” inscribed on a page pertaining to one of the aforementioned allegories. However, copious circumstantial evidence points to a strong possibility that C. S. is, in fact, Charles Sledd, apothecary, anti-Catholic spy and informer for Francis Walsingham at home and abroad, and sometime acquaintance of John Dee. In what follows, I will lay out some evidence for this identification."


Brian Johnson.

https://societasmagica.org/userfiles/fil...sue_39.pdf

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https://www.routledge.com/subjects

A profusely-illustrated "lesson" on Bosch's triptych with, towards the end, a brief reference to alchemy.

Marie Porterfield


https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...iation-oer

Shades of Ungodliness: Satie, the Occult, and the Flight from Reason

Lindsey MacChiarella

"Faced with a collapse of orthodox religious ideals precipitated by the technological revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, Satie and many in the  Western world took refuge in unorthodox occult religions during the fin de siècle. Avant-garde artists and composers found inspiration in these irrational and imaginative religions, and occult groups often acted as artistic patrons. The Rose+Croix Catholique, with whom Satie collaborated for two years, was  a particularly influential supporter of new Impressionist and Symbolist  movements."

https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/o...m/PDF/view