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https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/po...tor-review

I recently found this rather puzzling alchemical emblem. I can't recall seeing anything quite like it
It is a folded parchment sheet in

University of Kassel, 2° Ms. chem. 24

It is entitled, Spherae sive Compassi mineralis Nova inventio  (A New Discovery of the Mineral Sphere or Compass)

It was created by Justus de Buschia, probably in 1552.


Six rays stream down from heaven and are being collected in a hemispherical vessel. It has a number of holes in its base, and beneath this, on the platform supporting the hemisphere, there are six circular discs. The rays from above shine through the holes onto these discs, which are labelled, Iovis, Solis, Lunae, Martis, Saturni, and Veneris. These discs each bear a symbol that I cannot quite make out.



   

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A recently (August '22) amended page, from a site on numismatics, about medals commemorating successful transmutations.

https://www.coingallery.de/Varia/Alchemi...emie_E.htm

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Here is an interesting diagram found in Athanasius Kircher's book on alchemy in his Mundus Subterraneus.

The Latin text appears to say.
Whatever is contained in the whole of alchemy is set before the eyes of the inquisitive reader, as if in an anacephalaeotic synopsis. And outside of this, whether you look at the manufacture of stone, or at the metallurgical art, or at the mixtures of metals, or again at their genesis, do not look for anything useful and fruitful for chemical operations.

In this combinatorial chart, the imperfect metals and substances all seem to trace themselves back to the perfect metals plus sulphur.

   

Newton wrote and transcribed about a million words on the subject of alchemy. Newton's alchemical manuscripts include a rich and diverse set of document types, including laboratory notebooks, indices of alchemical substances, and Newton's transcriptions from other sources.


Indiana University project:

https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/

From Dee’s “Hieroglyphic Monad” to Andreae’s “Chemical Wedding”: Re-reading Frances Yates

Tom Willard

https://www.academia.edu/93954985/From_D...nces_Yates

Chapter 87 of this online textbook is devoted to Alchemy in Art.

Some attractive images which I haven't seen before:

http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2016/01/...isual.html

I have already posted a complex emblem from Nat Lib Vienna 11396, Johannes Friedrich von Rain.
This manuscript contains a number of emblems copied from various manuscripts and books, Donum Dei, Rosarium Philosophorum, Azothe, works of Michael Maier.
Here is one of Mercury as an Atlas figure.


   

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   The image of the alchemist in a cave-like laboratory, with manuscripts and glassware strewn about the floor, with a stuffed pufferfish hanging from the ceiling (a visual pun), has been a recurrent theme for the XVIIth-century Dutch and Flemish painters, with these satirical tableaux where the still life overlaps with the genre scene. Satirical because they purport to show a symbolic image of a disordered, confused mind. The capharnaum of the laboratory mirrors the chaotic mind of the souffleur. Two articles cover that in J. Wamberg (ed.), Art & Alchemy, (2006): ‘Alchemy and Its Images in the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’ (L. De Witt & L. Principe), and ‘Convention and Changes in Seventeenth-Century Depictions of Alchemists’ (J. R. Corbett.)
 
   In literature, Chaucer and Jonson depicted obliquely and mockingly the chaos and confusion of alchemy, Balzac romanticized its Sisyphean task in La recherche de l’Absolu, but afterwards, there is very little. The most recent example that I can think of would be in a tale of Ligotti, about a deranged scientist whose mind caved in under the weight of contradictions:


“Thus, [he] unpacked several oddly shaped vessels decorated with strange glyphs and primitive images. And these clumsy vessels he rested upon a table among elegant containers of nearly invisible glass… More exotic or antiquated paraphernalia were revealed slumbering in crates and boxes: cauldrons, retorts, masks with wide-open mouths, alembics, bellows of different sizes, crusted bells that rang with dead voices, and rusted tongs that squeaked when manipulated; a large hourglass, a small telescope, shining swords and dull knives, a long wooden pitchfork with two hornlike prongs and a tall staff with marvelously embellished headpiece; miniature bottles of very thick glass plugged with stoppers in the shape of human or animal heads, candles in ivory holders with curious carvings, bright beads, beautiful convex mirrors of perfect silver, golden chalices engraved with intricate designs and powerful phrases; huge books with brittle pages, a skull and some bones; doll-like figures made of wax and wood, and various little dummies composed of obscure materials… And all these things the scientist brought together within his dim and drafty laboratory: each, in his mind, would play its part in his design.” 


-Thomas LIGOTTI, ‘Mad Night of Atonement’, in Noctuary, 1994, pp. 104-5

Paul Ferguson has created a guide to typing alchemical and other symbols into a text.


https://www.academia.edu/40286832/HOW_TO..._additions