03-27-2023, 01:46 PM
This essay by Peter Forshaw mentions Medusa in the works of Bracesco and others. Worth a browse.
Around the mid-sixteenth century, alchemical works began to appear that dealt with mythological material in some depth, notable examples being two works by the Italian physician and alchemist Giovanni Bracesco (1482–1555): Il legno della vita (The wood of life; 1542) and La espositione di Geber (The explanation of Geber; 1544). In the latter he explicitly writes of how Jupiter’s transformation into a shower of gold represents the distillation of philosophical gold; the transformation of Argos’s eyes into a peacock’s tail intimates of the color changes of philosophical sulfur; the petrifying gaze of Medusa means the fixation of the elixir; the fable of the phoenix, repeatedly reborn, signifies the multiplication of the elixir; the tale of Daedalus and Icarus represents the processes of putrefaction and distillation; while the flight of Atalanta, chased by Hippomenes, is the coagulation of quicksilver with sulfur.
https://furnaceandfugue.org/essays/forshaw/
Around the mid-sixteenth century, alchemical works began to appear that dealt with mythological material in some depth, notable examples being two works by the Italian physician and alchemist Giovanni Bracesco (1482–1555): Il legno della vita (The wood of life; 1542) and La espositione di Geber (The explanation of Geber; 1544). In the latter he explicitly writes of how Jupiter’s transformation into a shower of gold represents the distillation of philosophical gold; the transformation of Argos’s eyes into a peacock’s tail intimates of the color changes of philosophical sulfur; the petrifying gaze of Medusa means the fixation of the elixir; the fable of the phoenix, repeatedly reborn, signifies the multiplication of the elixir; the tale of Daedalus and Icarus represents the processes of putrefaction and distillation; while the flight of Atalanta, chased by Hippomenes, is the coagulation of quicksilver with sulfur.
https://furnaceandfugue.org/essays/forshaw/