On the painting with the title "The Alchemist" from the Flemish Mattheus van Helmont, circa mid seventeenth century, are many uses and abuses of #earlymodern paper products reflected in the details. I will address 7 of these paper issues in the thread. Bonus for #Alchemy friends: a large écorché figure, a distillation apparatus over a fire, and metal working assistants.
Enjoy.
I've been reading a book I got for my birthday about Zosimos the Egyptian alchemist and the connections to my own spiritual journey are blowing me away! Especially in relation to the hermeneutics I've been submerging myself in meditatively. The idea that an Egyptian temple has its own grammar and creates a "world" within a world is profound. It opens up an entire new way to experience the architecture, hieroglyphs and iconography. It's thrilling!
My spirit guide- a goddess who refers to herself as #Hathor calls me "Min". I didn't know what the connection between this god and goddess was until I learned just yesterday they had a common tie-in as both being worshipped by miners, particularly in the south of Egypt. Near Panopolis where Zosimos came from.
Something calls out to me from across the sands of time. I'm alone yet part of a long tradition.
The 14th international programme gilm - more than 70 films across cinema screenings, moving-image exhibitions, live performances, and a Festival Ceilidh. Fun, friendly and challenging. Kicks off May 2.
Homonculus:
Some Alchemists aim to create an artificial being known as a Homonculus. The practice may be interpreted as a precursor to reproductive and genetic science on one hand, and the effort to embody the universal spirit on the other. The goal was to create a life within the Alchemical vessel.
The starting Prima Materia used was sometimes bodily fluid. It was widely held that tiny fully formed humans were present in sperm. In this case the creature could be grown like a plant from a seed.
Other related goals could be to make a n indestructible new body for oneself out of divine universal materials.
Or some may have wished to create a super human servant or helper. The homonculus was probably a model for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story.
The depictions of the Homonculus found in Alchemical contexts usually show a little human figure in a flask or adjacent to other Alchemical works. The name itself comes from the Latin for “little man in the bottle".
Have fun if you’re planning to try to make a new friend this weekend!
There is a lot going on in Pieter van Laer's 1630s "Self-Portrait with Magic Scene" (e.g. #earlymodern#alchemy and #magic, and #books). But have a look at the paper cone in the right foreground of the painting. Likely seeds or #peppercorns are spilling out. This is relevant for #PaperHistory and #BookHistory, dear #histodons.
When discussing Sol and Luna as alchemical symbols Jung has Sol as the masculine principle and Luna as the feminine.
My transformation is opposite. I have become lunar man bathed in the desire (light/heat) of my solar goddess #Hathor .
Great #Yin overcomes great #Yang. (#Tao Te Ching) ☯️
Tiptoe through the Tulips (Tiny Tim)
Grasp or let go, #choose and know which works ...
In other words, be a #poet not a know-it, Be a #fantasy of your own #alchemy
and ...
**Enjoy the ride, day, wandering, nature and so onward ... **💫
Another scientist of unknown birthday in #linocut portrait of the earliest recorded #alchemist: Mary the Jewess (aka Maria Hebraea, Miriam, or Maria Prophetissa). The ancient alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (~300 CE), cites her research & innovations. She must have predated him, in the early centuries CE & several scholars suspect she lived in 1st century Alexandria. Zosimos relates that she wrote a treatise 🧵1/n
In alchemy, the green lion devouring the sun represents how aqua regia (a potent acid) can dissolve and purify base matter - first step of the alchemical Great Work. It also symbolizes how purifying one's shining ego is needed for spiritual enlightenment.
“The Bull of My Mother” is a phrase and epithet related to the reincarnation of a Kemetic pharaoh through the intercession of a Goddess.
A similar theme is also found in the Alchemical notion of the killing and rebirth of the King through the Queen in the vessel containing the “Water of Life” during the transformational Great Work.
This incestuous relation, that Jung called Mysterium Coniunctionis, present in both, probably has a common origin in the older Kemetic sources or even more remote regional mythology.
The awe inspiring and alien relation can be interpreted simply as the single Goddess representing both the protective nurturing mother type (cow) and the atttractive desire inducing daughter type (cobra). The relation is manifested in organic life as puberty when the intense sexual desire leads away from the cradling arms of the mother. Both the Kemetic and Alchemical relations point to an initiation ritual of union with the Goddess.
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When I do divination work with the goddess I feel like a mystic.
When I seal a soul into a crystal under her guidance I feel like a magician. But they are both Alchemy.
How does The Absolute, or the One, fit into the Alchemical schema? I woke up at 4 am asking myself this question. Here is the goddess' answer from my meditation:
Alchemy can be said to mean transformation. The Absolute, or in Kemetic terms, Kheper the new rising sun, is the opposite principle. It is the self-created and unchanging. But it is also more. It is a “push” towards transformation.
Where does this push come from? And how is it and the static aspect of Kheper symbolized in the alchemical process?
For a transformation to be conceived there must be an unchanging base for it to stand upon otherwise it can't be distinguished as a change. It would then be flux within flux and therefore invisible and unknowable.
The Absolute then is the necessary background condition of transformation. The symbol for this necessary condition in Alchemy is the retort or crucible.
The container is the Condition under which the transformation takes place. It is the unchanging venue where the dynamic action unfolds.
The retort is often stylized as a globe, skull or other “roundness” (like the Kheper beetle) to emphasize the static unchanging property.
As I mentioned, it is not just the enclosing necessary Condition that represents The Absolute, but Kheper's push, the impulse that precedes transformation.
The impulse is symbolized by a geometric line or angle. The dung beetle pushes his dung ball solar disc in a given direction. These lines of force combined are emblematic of abstract structure. The structure is, of course, the shape of the alchemical vessel.
So we have the shape and the containment properties of the vessel taken together as symbolizing Kheper or The Absolute.
To join the two aspects into one is the symbolic paradox of “squaring the circle”.
In my own practice the precisely angular crystal is incorporated into the cylindrical resonating chamber of my divining apparatus.
Scissor Dance: The Menstruum of Silver and Gold, 2009
"How many angels must cry for silver and gold?"
Lenny Kravitz
"I remember a funny dreamer in Leipzig who pretended that gold, which is a pure fire, could not be opened or made potable except by another pure fire. In so saying he was not wrong, and it is so in truth. But I asked him what he understood by the fire that was to dissolve gold. He did not wish to tell me but said that it was a fire that only lights but does not burn. Now I well remembered that Paracelsus also wrote of such a fire, but whether that dreamer understood what was meant by it, I doubt very much, for in such a fire the angels and good spirits are also transformed."
I know it seems strange that an African Goddess brought me to alchemy, unionism and anarchism but there it is. The path of transformation is certainly unexpected. My body is becoming gold.
Hathor, Min and their union in Copper mining and divinatory activities:
The mine shaft represents the vagina of the goddess and the digging chisel the phallus of the god. The seam of copper is the God’s fiery semen and turquoise/malachite is the mercurial effluvium of the Goddess- the Water of Life. Quartz is the earthly product of their copulation and represents the divinatory power of desire. The three mineral substances are analogically connected with the Alchemical elements:
Copper-Sulphur
Turquoise/Malachite- Mercury
Quartz- Salt
Welcome to my recently developed website designed as a philosophical and therapeutic project. I aimed to recreate and redefine my Catholic faith. However, by adding rich allegory, universal insights, and a monastic aesthetic, I ended up creating a "new" religious experience.
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OC The Astrum Temple (astrumtemple.com)
Welcome to my recently developed website designed as a philosophical and therapeutic project. I aimed to recreate and redefine my Catholic faith. However, by adding rich allegory, universal insights, and a monastic aesthetic, I ended up creating a "new" religious experience.