+- Alchemy Discussion Forum (https://www.alchemywebsite.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Alchemy Discussion Forum (https://www.alchemywebsite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Articles on alchemy (https://www.alchemywebsite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: Tilton: Alchymia Archetypica (/showthread.php?tid=2277)
Tilton: Alchymia Archetypica - Paul Ferguson - 08-01-2025
Alchymia Archetypica: Theurgy, Inner Transformation and the Historiography of Alchemy by Hereward Tilton
In late antiquity and the Middle Ages the ambiguous and often surreal symbolism of alchemy was purposefully employed to protect closely guarded secrets of laboratory practice, which most commonly concerned the manipulation and simulation of precious metals. Enigmatic figures such as the green lion, the black sun and the hermaphrodite were elements of a cipher language for the initiated laboratory worker; usually the tracts utilising this language were readily recognisable as recipes, but the extended allegories of Arabian and Hellenistic Egyptian provenance provided a further level of abstraction in the relationship of sign to referent.
https://www.academia.edu/26102240/Alchymia_Archetypica_Theurgy_Inner_Transformation_and_the_Historiography_of_Alchemy