"Among the many intriguing objects on display in the Egypt: faith after the pharaohs exhibition is an 18th-century copy of the Book of the Seven Climes (Kitāb al-aqālīm al-ṣab‘ah), on loan from the British Library. The book’s 13th-century author, Abū al-Qāsim al-‘Irāqī, believed it held ancient secrets coded in hieroglyphic texts. He was right, but not exactly as he imagined!"

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/medie...ew-secrets

Attached Files

Thumbnail(s)
   

"Caterina Sforza (1463-1509), regent of Imola and Forlì and progenitrix of the Medici Grand Ducal dynasty, had a keen interest in scientific experiment. She collected over four hundred alchemical, medicinal, and cosmetic recipes, and corresponded with other alchemical adepts about materials and laboratory techniques. Her example reflects a more general fascination with secrets that enthralled courts throughout early modern Europe, giving rise to a lively market for such information. It also offers an opportunity to explore some of the ways in which women—and men—engaged with scientific culture on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution in pursuit of health, beauty, wealth, and power. Not only is Caterina Sforza’s experimental activity emblematic of the wider panorama of women’s involvement in early modern scientific culture, but it also situates her at the origins of a Medici interest in alchemy and experiment that stretched well into the seventeenth century."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjX9guh9bNY

Gail Taylor.

"Today, when alchemy evokes wizards and crystal balls, it may seem odd to refer to a book of procedures on the transmutation of ordinary metals into
gold as a practical laboratory manual free of mysticism. Yet it was alchemy, the most ancient form of chemistry, which first brought the book and the laboratory
together. Over a thousand years ago, the Persian physician and alchemist Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī (c. 865 - 923) wrote the earliest laboratory
manual to reach us in its entirety."



http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/u...taylor.pdf

Gabriele Ferrario

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76378634.pdf

Chapter by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan from the book "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture".

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000134522

Article by Gail Taylor.

https://ucl.scienceopen.com/document_fil...858601.pdf

See her translation of this book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Al-Razi-T...1507778791

ESOTERIC OR EROTIC? RUDOLF II AND HIS PRAGUE CHAMBER OF WONDERS

Sally Metzler

Field Museum of Natural History


"Individuals fortunate enough to receive a coveted invitation to visit Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II’s Chamber of Wonders in the Prague Castle would witness, among the many treasures, paintings focusing on couples scantily dressed and engaged in erotic, if not titillating escapades. Just a glance at the paintings in his collection, a bevy of sensuous nudes, might lead to the conclusion that the Emperor had a penchant for collecting bawdy and amorous art with little more substance than erotic stimulation. After all, Rudolf was a bachelor, and further, equated with being a bit peculiar to the point of mildly insane. However, the art created by his court artists offers far more than sensual delight. They represent the pervading hermetic intellectualism embraced by Rudolf’s court entourage. Moreover, although these works are indeed erotic, they are allegories of the alchemic ideal, the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone or true spiritual wisdom."

https://digitum.um.es/digitum/bitstream/...gen174.pdf

Performative and Multimedia Aspects of Late-Renaissance Meditative Alchemy: The Case of Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617)

by Johann Hasler

"In 1617 the alchemist, counselor and court physician to the then recently deceased Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612)
published his Atalanta Fugiens (Atalanta fleeing). The book fits into the general category of an ‘alchemical emblem book’, very
popular in the day: it contains 50 beautiful engravings to which are assigned poetic sextets in both Latin and German. The
main difference with all known similar works is that it includes a three-part canon with each engraving. According to the author,
the purpose is for all of this input “to be looked at, read, meditated, understood, weighed, sung and listened to, not without
a certain pleasure” (Maier 1990, 91). In this sense, this book might be interpreted as a very early example of multimedia, and
as a work which requires a performative attitude and activity (in the form of singing) and not merely to be read, for its original
purpose to be fully accomplished. In this brief article I will describe the work, and present arguments to support my belief that
it would be reasonable to conclude that it is an early form of multimedia"


https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/815/81518565011.pdf

By William Eamon.

Read-online option available at:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4130476

See also Eamon's book on Fioravanti:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professor-Secre...F8&qid=&sr=

and his paper on Italian Alchemists at the Escorial:

https://www.academia.edu/5413515/Masters..._Philip_II

and on Archduke Rudolf at the Spanish Court:

https://www.academia.edu/24929215/The_Sc...nish_Court

Thesis by Emily Ennis.

https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811...sAllowed=y