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Poussin's Shepherds
Forum: Alchemical symbolism and imagery
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-15-2026, 08:52 AM
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William of Conches: Dialo...
Forum: Reviews and book notices
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-15-2026, 08:41 AM
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John Dee's Aphorisms On A...
Forum: Reviews and book notices
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-15-2026, 08:26 AM
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The Arabic Influences on ...
Forum: Reviews and book notices
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-15-2026, 08:23 AM
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New translation of Dee's ...
Forum: Reviews and book notices
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-15-2026, 08:18 AM
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» Views: 48
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Video: Hidden Symbols of ...
Forum: Alchemical symbolism and imagery
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-14-2026, 10:25 AM
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» Views: 69
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Dan Jing Ju Yao
Forum: Alchemy texts
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-14-2026, 10:18 AM
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» Views: 57
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Newton's Alchemical Writi...
Forum: Articles on alchemy
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-14-2026, 10:15 AM
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» Views: 55
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Exhibition NY, SF: Leonor...
Forum: Alchemical symbolism and imagery
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-14-2026, 09:17 AM
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» Views: 74
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Videos: The Hermetic Dial...
Forum: Articles on alchemy
Last Post: Paul Ferguson
10-14-2026, 09:03 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 57
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| Constantine of Pisa: The Book of the Secrets of Alchemy |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-09-2026, 02:11 PM - Forum: Alchemy texts
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"The Liber Secretorum Alchimie, dating almost back to 1257, presents an attempt at introducing alchemy into the field of Aristotelian natural science (philosophy), with the purpose of providing the practice of manipulating metals with a solid theoretical foundation. Arranged from lecture notes by its author, a student of medicine originating from Pisa, it allows a direct insight into mid-13th century university teaching of natural science, which included astronomical, astrological, meteorological and geographical material."
https://brill.com/display/title/1367
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| Maria Papathanassiou on Stephanos of Alexandria |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-09-2026, 02:04 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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Part One:
"We speak with Maria Papathanassiou about Stephanos of Alexandria: the last known Platonist/Aristotelean philosopher trained at Alexandria, a politically-connected courtier at Herakleios' Constantinople, a Christian, an astrologer, an alchemist, and more."
https://shwep.net/podcast/philosophy-and...ia-part-i/
Part Two:
"In Part II we explore two of Stephanos' works: the astrological piece entitled Apotelesmatikē pragmateia, with its katarchic ‘Horoscope of Islam’, and his influential, vexing, and beautiful alchemical work, On the Great and Holy Art of Gold-Making."
https://shwep.net/podcast/the-horoscope-...a-part-ii/
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| Voynich: Problems of Transliteration |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-06-2026, 02:57 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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Transliteration of the Voynich MS text
By René Zandbergen
"The mysterious writing in the Voynich MS has resisted all attempts to translation or decryption, in spite of the increasing number of attempts over the last decades. What has become clear is that the text has a number of unusual properties, and increasingly advanced text and language analysis techniques have been deployed in order to get to the bottom of this mystery. The basis for all these attempts is the existence of a computer-readable version of the text-a transcription, or rather a transliteration as we don't even know the alphabet of this writing. This paper deals with a number of aspects of the transliteration of the Voynich MS text."
https://www.academia.edu/103494451/Trans...ch_MS_text
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| Voynich: the Five-Scribe Hypothesis |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-06-2026, 02:54 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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By Torsten Timm
"The five-scribe hypothesis proposed by Davis (2020c) has become a foundational premise in recent Voynich Manuscript research, influencing linguistic analysis, topic modeling, and public understanding of the manuscript. This paper subjects the hypothesis to critical examination. Building on the continuous evolution framework established in Timm (2026a), which demonstrated that the manuscript's text evolves gradually from one state to another rather than partitioning into discrete systems, this paper shows that: (1) Davis's diagnostic criteria-the glyphs <k > and <n>-fail on empirical examination, with both variants appearing on nearly every page of the manuscript; (2) the five scribes reduce to pre-existing categories, with Scribes 1 and 2 replicating the Currier A/B language distinction and Scribe 4 identifying pages with labels rather than running text; (3) the chain of apparent independent confirmation is circular, with each study inheriting assumptions from the previous one; and (4) the handwriting variation is more parsimoniously explained as continuous evolution of a single hand alongside the documented continuous evolution of the vocabulary. The conclusion is that discrete scribe categories, like discrete language categories, are imposed on a continuum."
https://www.academia.edu/164902241/One_H...Manuscript
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| Jennifer Rampling: George Ripley and the Place of English Alchemy |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-05-2026, 02:40 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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Transmission and Transmutation: George Ripley and the Place of English Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
By Jennifer Rampling
"Continental authors and editors often sought to ground alchemical writing within a long-established, coherent and pan-European tradition, appealing to the authority of adepts from different times and places. Greek, Latin and Islamic alchemists met both in person and between the covers of books, in actual, fictional or coincidental encounters: a trope utilised in Michael Maier's Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (1617). This essay examines how works attributed to an English authority, George Ripley (d. c. 1490), were received in central Europe and incorporated into continental compendia."
https://www.academia.edu/4760830/Transmi...ern_Europe
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| Voynich: Why it resists conventional interpretation |
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Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 03-05-2026, 02:37 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy
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The Challenge of Analyzing a Dynamic Text: Why the Voynich Manuscript Resists Conventional Interpretation
By Torsten Timm
"The Voynich Manuscript (MS 408, Beinecke Library, Yale University) has resisted all attempts of conventional interpretation for over a century. This paper argues that the persistent failure of cryptographic, linguistic, and statistical approaches stems from a shared foundational assumption: that the manuscript’s text was produced by a static system—whether a fixed cipher, a natural language grammar, or a stable encoding scheme. Analysis of the manuscript’s word network and vocabulary evolution reveals that this assumption is untenable."
https://www.academia.edu/164728008/The_C...rpretation
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