"In this episode, we explore the fascinating history of alchemy in the Islamic(ate) world, from the writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan, to the Emerald Tablet, Abu Bakr al-Razi & the Sufis."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krSBUR9u_Fs

The Art of Distillation is a landmark alchemical and chemical handbook written by the 17th-century English physician John French and first published in London in 1651. It is widely regarded as one of the earliest and most definitive English-language treatises dedicated to the practice of distillation. [1, 2, 3]

The book served as a comprehensive manual that blended the author's own first-hand laboratory experience with translations of prominent European chemical and "spagyric" (Paracelsian alchemical) authors. [2, 4] 

Core Themes & Structure
Divided into six distinct books (sections), the text covers a wide array of practical and theoretical topics: [2, 5]
* Equipment and Theory: French meticulously details the setup of an early modern laboratory. He explains the design of different furnaces (made of brick, clay, or iron), variations in heat levels (ranging from the gentle warmth of digesting manure to naked flames), and the proper use of alchemical glassware like [alembics and "pelican" vessels](https://books.rsc.org/books/monograph/83...evelopment). [5, 6, 7, 8]
* The Three Kingdoms: The heart of the text provides step-by-step recipes for extracting essential oils, spirits, tinctures, and acids from vegetables (plants/herbs), animals, and minerals or metals. [9, 10]
* Medicinal Focus: As a doctor of "physick," French emphasized the therapeutic application of these distillates. The book is famous for its intricate, non-alcoholic herbal remedies intended to heal various physical maladies. [2, 10, 11]
* Spagyric Curiosities: The final sections explore more esoteric alchemical experiments, including the "anatomy" and spiritual sublimation of gold and silver. [2, 9]

Cultural Impact & Legacy
The book is heavily illustrated with 42 distinct woodcuts showcasing the industrial and bench-scale chemistry of the era. Though historians note that French borrowed heavily from earlier German alchemists like [Hieronymus Brunschwig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Brunschwig) and Johann Rudolph Glauber, his English compilation became an essential household reference book for domestic medicine throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. [1, 3, 4, 12]
In modern pop culture, the book received a resurgence of interest when its 300-year-old non-alcoholic herbal recipes inspired the creation of the popular contemporary brand [Seedlip non-alcoholic spirits](https://www.seedlipdrinks.com/en-us/our-story). Full digital scans and transcriptions of the historical text can be explored on open-source platforms like [Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Distillation). [11, 13]

[1] [https://www.globalgreyebooks.com](https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/art-of-...ebook.html)
[2] [https://wateetons.com](https://wateetons.com/wp-content/uploads...lation.pdf)
[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation)
[4] [https://recipes.hypotheses.org](https://recipes.hypotheses.org/278)
[5] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRCIZ3kf_js)
[6] [https://www.alchemywebsite.com](https://www.alchemywebsite.com/jfren_1.html)
[7] [https://www.scribd.com](https://www.scribd.com/document/19186914...French-doc)
[8] [https://books.rsc.org](https://books.rsc.org/books/monograph/83...evelopment)
[9] [https://www.amazon.co.uk](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Distillatio...B0CXDCTYSK)
[10] [https://www.amazon.co.uk](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Distillatio...9358584246)
[11] [https://www.seedlipdrinks.com](https://www.seedlipdrinks.com/en-us/our-story)
[12] [https://pure.mpg.de](https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3391...46/content)
[13] [https://en.wikisource.org](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Distillation)

Text here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Distillation

"This autumn, the will of Nicolas Flamel is on public display for the first time at a new exhibition at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. Stored in a Parisian hospital archive for centuries, the document sheds a new light on how he ended up being revered as an alchemist, says Maëlys Bitouzet, one of the curators of the exhibition. "They were documents that had never been studied," until the museum evaluated them in 2024, says Bitouzet."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/202...hers-stone

"Can methodology and phenomenology enter into genuine dialogue, within scholars and individuals, and to what extent? This evening, Professor Wouter Hanegraaff and Ike Baker take up that question in a  conversation moderated by Corey Andrews, PhD Candidate...The conversation will drift toward state-specific knowledge and gnosis, and toward the tension and kinship between scholar and practitioner. The speakers consider strategies for a synthesis of the two approaches, and the care required to keep their distinction intact. Most specifically, it will address the claims that originate in theory or in experience, and the differing aims, limits, and vocabulary of each. Throughout, the evening turns to the ways academic and practitioner based exploration of esotericism might enrich one another."

Friday, November 20 from 17.30 - 19.30
Language: The conversation will be conducted in English.

Price & Admission:
€27.5 - In person ticket
€17.5 - In person discount ticket for students & stadspas holders
€16 - Livestream (online ticket)

https://tinyurl.com/4nw7ew69

Recent research into the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408 at Yale University) centers on material construction, page ordering, and structural cipher simulations rather than a definitive linguistic translation. [1, 2, 3]
 
## Page Reordering and Structure
* Misbinding Discovery: A study published in Digital Medievalist by researcher Colin Layfield and paleographer Lisa Fagin Davis revealed that the manuscript's sheets (originally folded bifolios or singletons) were likely sewn into nested quires in the mid-to-late 15th century, putting the pages out of their original sequence. [3]
* Impact on Decipherment: Using latent semantic analysis and physical clues like water stains and ink analysis, the researchers found that reading the pages in their historical order changes how the text connects to the botanical, astronomical, and human illustrations. [3]
* Multiple Scribes: Paleographic analysis indicates the volume represents a collective or modular compilation involving up to five different scribes rather than the work of a single "mad genius". [3, 4]

## Cipher and Linguistic Modeling
* The "Naibbe" Cipher: A study published in early 2026 demonstrated that a historical-style cipher (utilizing card- and dice-based mechanics modeled on the medieval Italian game Naibbe) can produce text that mimics the statistical frequencies, word lengths, and grammar rules of "Voynichese". [5]
* Positional Constraints: Later 2026 preprints suggest that simpler structured generators cannot simultaneously replicate all positional constraints found across the manuscript, keeping open the debate between an encoded natural language, an artificial/constructed language, or a complex cipher. [2]
* Unresolved Decipherment: Despite claims using AI, Semitic language comparisons, or historical ciphers, no proposed translation has achieved independent verification or widespread scholarly consensus. [5, 6, 7, 8]

## Material and Historical Context
* Dating: Radiocarbon analysis consistently confirms the vellum parchment dates to the early 15th century (between 1404 and 1438). [3]
* Medical and Herb-Lore Focus: Ongoing historical research connects the manuscript's illustrations—particularly the botanical, astrological, and bathing/balneological sections—to late-medieval European traditions of "women's secrets" (gynaecology, herbal remedies, and self-censored or ciphered medical texts). [9, 10]
* Early Ownership Evidence: Multispectral imaging of the opening folio (f1r) clarified faded cipher tables left by 17th-century owner and Prague physician Johannes Marcus Marci, showing early attempts to break the code rather than an original author's key. [11]

[1] [https://edukatesg.com](https://edukatesg.com/2026/09/02/voynich...ipt-today/)
[2] [https://www.pageandprovenance.com](https://www.pageandprovenance.com/blog/v...ow-in-2026)
[3] [https://unn.ua](https://unn.ua/en/news/the-mysterious-vo...-centuries)
[4] [https://aroundprague.cz](https://aroundprague.cz/en/news/curious/...pages-were)
[5] [https://www.livescience.com](https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/...y-suggests)
[6] [https://en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript)
[7] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5F-peZ0qu4&t=283)
[8] [https://www.theartnewspaper.com](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2020/06/...deciphered)
[9] [https://theconversation.com](https://theconversation.com/for-600-year...sex-227157)
[10] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5EFdnsJzYf8)
[11] [https://www.voynich.nu](https://www.voynich.nu/solvers.html)


There is no scientific consensus on whether the Voynich Manuscript is an encrypted natural language or a synthetic cipher. Instead, statistical and linguistic analyses have revealed a deeply contradictory set of traits that prevent it from fitting cleanly into either category. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The text possesses characteristics that strongly lean toward both possibilities:

## The Case for Natural Language
* High-Level Text Organization: At the macro level, "Voynichese" mirrors natural language. Words follow regular distribution patterns (Zipf's law), occur in specific thematic clusters depending on the section (e.g., botanical vs. astronomical), and display a logical narrative flow. Scholars like linguist Claire Bowern argue that these complex, multi-page properties are incredibly difficult to fake organically, casting doubt on simple "meaningless hoax" theories. [5, 6, 7]
* No Simple Substitution: The statistical structure is not consistent with basic monoalphabetic or polyalphabetic ciphers, which usually warp character frequencies in highly predictable ways. [5]

## The Case for a Cipher or Notation System:
* Abnormal Predictability: At the character and word level, the manuscript behaves nothing like a spoken human tongue. "Voynichese" has an incredibly low character-level entropy (h₂ ≈ 2, compared to 3 or 4 for natural languages). Letters appear in hyper-rigid, position-dependent combinations—certain symbols only appear at the start of a word, others only in the middle, and others only at the end. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8]
* The "Naibbe" and Generative Models: Recent cryptographic experiments demonstrate that a hand-operated cipher using substitution tables and randomized character breaking (modeled on medieval mechanics) can accurately replicate many of these jarring text limitations. [4, 9]

## The Third Alternative: A Procedural System:
A growing segment of structural research suggests looking past the binary of language vs. code. Structural modeling using AI highlights the possibility that the text is a procedural notation system—similar to an algorithmic shorthand, an abbreviated medical index, or a step-by-step technical manual. Rather than spelling out phonemes or standard syntax, the characters may serve as visual reference coordinates or operational keys designed for trained practitioners. [2, 3, 10]
Would you like to examine how specific languages (like medieval Hebrew or Latin) have been statistically mapped against the text, or look into why the positional constraints of individual characters make translation so difficult? [3, 4, 9, 11]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/voynich/comment...e_voynich/)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript)
[3] [https://medium.com](https://medium.com/@derekearnhart711/the...0c72822b5a)
[4] [https://www.theartnewspaper.com](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/01/...manuscript)
[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript)
[6] [https://alumniacademy.yale.edu](https://alumniacademy.yale.edu/sites/def...script.pdf)
[7] [https://aroundprague.cz](https://aroundprague.cz/en/news/curious/...pages-were)
[8] [https://www.voynich.ninja](https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-4763.html)
[9] [https://www.pageandprovenance.com](https://www.pageandprovenance.com/blog/v...ow-in-2026)
[10] [https://www.facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/theguardian/pos...174596697/)
[11] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5F-peZ0qu4&t=473)


The chances of the Voynich Manuscript being a purely alchemical text are low, though not completely ruled out. While the idea remains popular with amateur theorists, modern academic consensus leans far more heavily toward the manuscript being a medical or pharmaceutical treatise focused on late-medieval women's health. [1, 2, 3]
The alchemical theory falls short upon closer examination due to a few key inconsistencies:

## 1. The Missing "Male" Element
Alchemical allegories of the 1400s relied heavily on the concept of conjunctio—the union of opposites. This was visually represented by pairs: a king and a queen, the sun and the moon, or a red lion and a white lily. [4]
* In the Voynich's famous balneological (bathing) section, the figures are almost entirely female.
* Prominent Voynich scholar Jennifer Rampling has noted that this total lack of male personification runs completely counter to the standard visual cycles of medieval alchemy, where the male element was required to represent gold or the spirit. [4, 5]

## 2. A Lack of Standard Symbols
Medieval alchemists loved code, but they used a very specific, universal language of symbols. They drew basilisks, green dragons devouring the sun, pelicans, and Ouroboros (snakes eating their own tails). 
* The Voynich Manuscript features none of this.
* Instead, it contains highly detailed (if poorly colored) roots, leaves, astrological diagrams, and tubes that look more like medieval plumbing, distillation setups, or anatomical drawings (like fallopian tubes) than spiritual or chemical transmutation. [3, 6, 7, 8]

## 3. The Medical Counter-Evidence
Recent historical discoveries argue strongly against alchemy and in favor of pharmacology and gynecology.

* A 2024 study focused on Bavarian physician Johan Hartley—who lived right when the Voynich was written—showed that late-medieval doctors explicitly advised using secret alphabets and ciphered codes specifically for women’s medicine to keep sensitive topics private. [3]
* The strange, unidentifiable plants in the herbal section might not be alchemical illusions; instead, researchers suggest they are visual recipes. For instance, a drawing might combine the root of one real-world plant with the stem of another to visually show a doctor which parts to mix together for a remedy. [3, 9]

## Why the Alchemy Theory Persists
The theory remains alive largely because of the manuscript's historical provenance. Its first confirmed owner was the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, a ruler famous for his obsessive, lavish funding of alchemists like John Dee and Edward Kelley. Because Rudolf II bought it believing it was a magical text by Roger Bacon, the "alchemical codex" label stuck to the manuscript for centuries. [9, 10, 11, 12, 13]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51mm_u32mys)
[2] [https://elenigmavoynich.com](https://elenigmavoynich.com/en/blog/7-th...manuscript)
[3] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5EFdnsJzYf8)
[4] [https://www.voynich.ninja](https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-1745.html)
[5] [https://www.lrb.co.uk](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n15/.../who-knows)
[6] [https://voynichrevisionist.com](https://voynichrevisionist.com/2024/10/)
[7] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51mm_u32mys)
[8] [https://voynichportal.com](https://voynichportal.com/tag/medieval-alchemy/)
[9] [https://beinecke.library.yale.edu](https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/beinec...manuscript)
[10] [https://www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/voynich-m...ance-izpvc)
[11] [https://www.bbc.com](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22975809)
[12] [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5F-peZ0qu4&t=155)
[13] [https://santium.com](https://santium.com/language-series/voyn...ipt-codex/)


Ciphers in Late-Medieval Medical Texts
The idea of using a secret code for medical text wasn't a radical anomaly in the 1400s; it was a highly practical, recognized tool. Late-medieval physicians, pharmacists, and midwives frequently employed hidden ciphers to shield specific types of knowledge from the public, standard practice driven by distinct motivations:

* Protecting "Women’s Secrets": The most common target for medical encipherment was gynecology, obstetrics, and sexual health. Topics relating to contraception, abortifacients, and specialized anatomical treatments were deeply controversial under Church doctrine. To protect patients and themselves from accusations of heresy or witchcraft, doctors ciphered these specific passages while keeping standard remedies in plain Latin or vernacular text.
* Commercial Protectionism: Medical recipes and specialized chemical distillations were valuable intellectual property. Physicians and apothecaries used substitution ciphers to secure proprietary remedies, ensuring rival doctors couldn't steal their highly profitable formulations.
* The "Hartley" Precedent: Historical records show examples like the Bavarian physician Johan Hartley, who actively advocated for the use of restricted scripts and cipher keys within his medical networks specifically to prevent untrained individuals from misusing dangerous, toxic dosages of herbal abortifacients.


Voynich Drawings vs. Real 15th-Century Herbals
When compared to standard text of the same era, the botanical illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript stand apart due to key anatomical deviations.
Standard 15th-century herbals (such as the Italian Tractatus de Herbis) generally aimed for functional realism or followed recognizable stylistic artistic conventions to help a physician identify a plant in the wild. The Voynich plants diverge from this tradition in distinct ways:

| Anatomical Realism | Plants are stylized but anatomically cohesive, depicting real-world leaves, stems, and roots belonging to a single species. | The plants are "Frankenstein" composites—featuring the root system of one species fused to the leaves of another and the flower of a third. |
| Root Systems | Roots are drawn plainly as simple, functional strings, tubers, or bulbs. | Roots are highly stylized and often resemble internal human organs (like lungs or livers), stylized geometric objects, or even animal claws. |
| Color Palette | Colors are applied naturalistically to match the plant's actual appearance (greens, browns, specific floral hues). | The coloring is flat, often disregardful of real nature, and sometimes looks hurriedly applied over the outlines as an afterthought. |
| Cross-Referencing | Text explicitly references known plants by their regional, Latin, or Greek names. | The text ("Voynichese") provides no readable anchors, making it impossible to cross-reference the odd drawings with known botanical indexes. |

The "Visual Recipe" Theory:
Rather than representing nonexistent magical flora, many medieval historians suspect the Voynich's chimeric plants are actually pictorial compound formulas.
Because the author was writing in a highly restricted script, they may have chosen to bypass textual ingredients entirely. Instead, they drew a single hybrid plant to tell the practitioner exactly what to harvest: "Take the root of Plant A, mix it with the leaves of Plant B, and distill it using the method indicated by Flower C."

[Gemini AI]

"Ageless Literature is more than a marketplace. It is a meeting place for those who revere the written word and the book as an object of beauty, discovery, and transformation. We bring together trusted booksellers, passionate collectors, and curious readers. What we have built is a community held to a standard, governed by integrity, authenticity, and a shared sense of purpose. We made it more accessible than the trade has ever been by creating the first mobile app for book collectors and reaching millions of collectors and readers every single month online. Here you will find no listing fees, no listings without photos, no print on demand services, and seller support that respects the collector and bookseller. We build relationships rooted in trust and a common love for rare books, ephemera, art, and objects of cultural history. Every interaction becomes part of something larger. Each transaction, each shared story, enters the living preservation of history. You are not a customer here. You are a steward of history."

https://www.agelessliterature.com/about

Richard Gibbs

"This study examines alchemy's contribution to the conceptual development of sixteenth-century French poetry. It proposes that alchemy, more than a collection of terms, figures, or topoi, functions in this context as a dynamic mode of thought oriented toward spiritual and material transformation."

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/entities/pu...07af6d756a

L'un t'éclaire avec son ardeur,
L'autre en toi met son deuil, Nature!
Ce qui dit à l'un: Sépulture!
Dit à l'autre: Vie et splendeur!

Hermès inconnu qui m'assistes
Et qui toujours m'intimidas,
Tu me rends l'égal de Midas,
Le plus triste des alchimistes;

Par toi je change l'or en fer
Et le paradis en enfer;
Dans le suaire des nuages

Je découvre un cadavre cher,
Et sur les célestes rivages
Je bâtis de grands sarcophages.



https://internetpoem.com/charles-baudela...f-so-poem/

https://www.academia.edu/37245479/Alchim...Baudelaire

"Ægypt is a fantasy tetralogy written by American author John Crowley. The series describes the life and work of Pierce Moffett, a history professor who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle Hermetic manipulations among the Faraway Hills at the border of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania...The four volumes deal with Moffett's real and dream life in the United States in 1977 (and, in an extended coda, into the early 1980s) with the narrative of the manuscript he is preparing for publication. Another manuscript, left unfinished by its author Fellowes Kraft and discovered by Moffett, is an historical fiction that follows the briefly intersecting adventures of Italian heretic Giordano Bruno and of British occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley."

https://www.amazon.com/Aegypt-John-Crowl...0553345923

The Emerald Tablet’s Strange Journey Into Isaac Newton’s Papers

Newton copied and interpreted the Emerald Tablet. His surviving manuscript reveals how its Sun, Moon and earth imagery became alchemical instructions.


https://curiosmos.com/emerald-tablet-isa...anuscript/