Victor Brauner viewed painting as a form of spiritual alchemy, famously describing his encaustic wax techniques as performing "the great spagyric art" of alchemical transformation. 

* Spagyric Art: Brauner studied the writings of the alchemist Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa, treating the physical act of painting as an initiatory and transformative discipline. 
* Wax and Candle Tallow: While hiding in the south of France during World War II, supply shortages led him to paint with candle tallow and wax. He viewed this rustic, recycled material as possessing profound esoteric and alchemical value. 
* Personal Mythology: Influenced by his father’s spiritualist séances in Romania, Brauner combined alchemy, the tarot, and kabbalah to build a hermetic visual language of hybrid, anthropomorphic creatures.


Brauner integrated hermetic and alchemical motifs directly into several notable artworks, using symbols like the ouroboros, the union of opposites, and tarot archetypes to depict spiritual transformation.


Some of his works influenced by alchemy:

* Le Surréaliste (1947): Widely considered one of his definitive alchemical masterpieces. Based on the first major arcanum of the tarot (The Magician or Le Bateleur), it depicts the artist as an alchemist wielding power over the life-giving elements. His oversized hat forms the mathematical infinity symbol shaped like an ouroboros (a snake biting its own tail), which represents cosmic harmony and the cyclic nature of alchemy. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/681

* Gli amanti / The Lovers (1947): A painting rich with occult and hermetic symbols. It features a magical wand adorned with a moon on one side and a sun on the other, reflecting the classic alchemical concept of Conjunction—the sacred union of cosmic opposites. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLip9lla18

* The Alchemist / L'Alchimista (1956): A direct reference to the practice of the esoteric sciences, capturing Brauner's ongoing exploration of mystic entities and transmutational archetypes later in his career. https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/206181-0

* Composition with Portrait (1935): Painted during a period of intensifying fascination with the subconscious and the occult. It employs biomorphic, split, and layered imagery to visually interpret the fractured self passing through hidden, spiritual "phases" of transformation—much like base metal transitioning through alchemical stages. https://www.wikiart.org/en/victor-braune...trait-1935

https://www.wikiart.org/en/victor-brauner

Voynich Comparator | Wellcome MS.22: A Pocket Italian Alchemical Cookbook of Metals, Gems, Dyes, Quintessence and Distillation

Wellcome MS.22 is a crucial Voynich control because it shows alchemy as repeatable recipe and transformation knowledge rather than only symbolic imagery.

https://edukatesg.com/2026/08/31/voynich...tillation/

MS here (I think): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ugn23v6p

"This presentation will examine the remarkable practices of alchemy and some of its fascinating practitioners, who sought to unravel the mysteries of nature, as well as explore how modern laboratories are recreating alchemical processes to verify some of alchemy’s seemingly impossible claims."

Thursday, Sep 3 · 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM CDT

Linda Hall Library
5109 Cherry St. · Kansas City, MO



Register at the library's website:

https://events.lindahall.org/alchemyands...revolution

""Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence" is the title of a 1965 paper written by philosopher Hubert Dreyfus and published by the RAND Corporation. In it, Dreyfus compared the early AI research programme to medieval alchemy: a discipline producing occasional impressive results through trial and error, while lacking a theory that explained why those results occurred. The comparison stung then, and it resurfaced in 2017 when researcher Ali Rahimi used his NeurIPS Test of Time award talk to argue that machine learning had become "alchemy" — a field where practitioners stack techniques that work without understanding the mechanism. In modern engineering usage, alchemy in artificial intelligence means development driven by empirical tinkering rather than by explanatory theory, reproducible method, and measurable cause and effect. Understanding that distinction is one of the most practical things an AI team can do, because alchemical projects are the ones that fail silently in production."

https://webpeak.org/blog/alchemy-artific...telligence

"In the oldest alchemical traditions, there were two kinds of transformation. The first was solve — to dissolve, to break down, to separate what was whole into its parts. The second was coagula — to reassemble, to recombine, to create something new from what the dissolution revealed."

https://cairennweaver.substack.com/p/par...sformation

"The Alchemist's Vessel: A Practical Guide to Dragonsblood reclaims an ancient secret: the deep red resin known as dragon's blood. This comprehensive guide bridges millennia of alchemical tradition, folk medicine, and modern science, revealing how this sacred substance—harvested from Dracaena and Daemonorops trees—offers profound healing for wounds, digestion, circulation, and immunity. Drawing from Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Indigenous practices, and Hermetic lore, the book provides step-by-step instructions for creating tinctures, salves, and rituals that restore health and spiritual sovereignty."

https://books.brightlearn.ai/The-Alchemi...index.html

"The alchemical wedding is, before anything else, a marriage of the Sun and the Moon. In the illustrated manuscripts of European alchemy they approach one another as king and queen, Sol and Luna, sulphur and mercury. Sometimes they clasp hands; sometimes they enter a bath or tomb; sometimes their bodies dissolve together and reappear as a single, double-natured being."

https://www.mercurialpathways.com/post/1...and-psyche

"Browse 124 characters from the Alchemical Symbols Unicode block (U+1F700–U+1F77F). Click any character to view details and copy it."

https://getmoji.app/symbol/alchemical-symbols

"Symbolica is where the great esoteric images are shown whole, at full quality, and explained symbol by symbol, so that anyone can read them."

https://thesymbolica.com/about/

"Although the alchemists' fundamental goal of elemental transmutation was flawed, on a deeper level the work of alchemy (cloaked in allegorical images) also represented the transformation of the soul. Modern science has accomplished the transmutation of elements using means that the alchemists never dreamed of. And there is still a small group of occult researchers who persist in trying to continue the work. The documents of alchemy make fascinating reading for historians of science and the esoteric."

Free to use with subscription options.

https://sacred-texts.com/categories/alchemy