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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

    In the small village church at Bad Teinach in southwestern Germany is an elaborately complex, Baroque-style triptych, that is virtually unknown to the English speaking world. In German, the title of this painting is "Die Kabbalistische Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia zu Württemberg" which may be translated into English as "The Kabbalistic Teaching Painting of Princess Antonia of Württemberg." The painting was designed by several eminent, 17th century, Christian Kabbalists, who were probably also Freemasons and Rosicrucians as well.

https://pamela2051.tripod.com/

Adam - I know you've published something on this...

Rasāyana (रसायन) is a Sanskrit word literally meaning path (ayana) of essence (rasa). It is an early ayurvedic medical term referring to techniques for lengthening lifespans and invigorating the body. It is one of the eight areas of medicine in Sanskrit literature. In the Vedic alchemical context, "rasa" also translates to "metal or a mineral".

Interesting book by S. Mahdihassan.

Apparently rights-free, and in English not Sanskrit as stated:

https://archive.org/details/indianalchem..._/mode/2up

In Roman Egypt, great scholars continued an ancient hope to transmute base metals into gold. Even though their goal eluded them, they did much to further human knowledge through experimentation. They also created a discipline that would endure for generations.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y18gHyud8l0

The Book of the Seven Climes is the earliest known study focused wholly on alchemical illustrations. The ‘climes’ (from which our word ‘climate’ is derived) are the seven latitudinal zones into which the astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy divided the inhabited world in the 2nd century AD. Their mention in al-‘Irāqī’s title expressed an intention for his book to be all-encompassing. Al-‘Irāqī reproduced illustrations from earlier Arabic alchemical texts and tried to decode their mysterious symbols and allegories, annotating the illustrations with his own interpretations. But how faithful was he in copying the illustrations for his book, and what changes were made as they were copied and re-copied during the five centuries of transmission linking al-‘Irāqī’s lost original to the 18th-century copy held at the British Library?

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

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Extensive (28 pp.) and insightful article on Joseph Wright's The Alchemist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, discovers Phosphorus, and Prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers (1771-1795).

Here, through free account to read:

https://archive.org/details/sim_art-quar...3/mode/2up

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https://shwep.net/2022/12/14/lucinda-mar...nd-future/

Lucinda Martin is a specialist on early-modern north-European pietist movements, and the thought of Jacob Böhme in particular, but in this interview we are speaking with her in her role as Director of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and Ritman Research Institute in Amsterdam. The Ritman library and its attendant initiatives is a kind of spiritual home for the historical study of western esotericism, and this has now been made official in a sense by a UNESCO award of ‘Memory of the World Register’ status to the library. We talk about a bunch of library-related matters.

Can anyone provide me with a better translation of this short verse?
I'm not entirely sure I grasp the final line.


Der Athem Gottes ists, der Luest und Leben giebt.
Der Sonn-  un Mondenschein, ein jeder Weiser Liebt,
Das wesen so daraus, mit weyl, der Weise machet,
Hat Adam schon gewust, als Eva ihn anlachet.



It is the breath of God that gives life and happiness.
Every wise man loves the sun and moonlight,
The wise man makes of it the essence,
Adam already knew, when Eve looked upon him.



   

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Qing dynasty Taoists alchemy manual fetched 75 times its estimate at Christie's, Paris, last summer:


https://en.thevalue.com/articles/christi...ion-result

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