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.
@histodons#Alchemy too was partly about storing. The box on the table is made of wood chips, and these boxes were #earlymodern storage options for fresh paper sheets, for letters, for paper drafts, and for small books. Being an alchemist was also about managing your writings, paper supply, and objects. Collectors and free thinkers alike needed boxes to arrange ideas and objects. In the painting, a distillation apparatus made of glass is stored next to a paper notebook. #histknow
@histodons That's a thematic folder to organize loose paper sheets: drafts, notes, letters, you name it. Folders were and are a handy tool of organizing paper knowledge. Battling the information revolution of #EarlyModernEurope meant very often: organizing your papers in thematic or chronological folders. As a knowledge field, #alchemy too was a paper business. #histodons#histknow
"La nueva Jerusalén será eternamente un cristal de antimonio rojizo y transparente, como una piedra (preciosa): es el nuevo cielo y la nueva tierra, donde moraremos todos nosotros."
For #SciArtSeptember prompt “alchemical” my new #linocut portrait of the earliest recorded #alchemist: Mary the Jewess (aka Maria Hebraea, Miriam, or Maria Prophetissa). Alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (~300 CE), cites her research & innovations & several scholars suspect she lived in 1st century Alexandria. Zosimos relates that she wrote a treatise called "On Furnaces and Apparatuses" & she invented, or at least described … 🧵1/n
Mes réflexions sur mes créations dérivées de Rune avancent bien. Pour ma région au thème alchimie, je pense permettre d'obtenir le secret de l'alchimie avec plusieurs recettes trouvables. L'idée est qu'on pourrait conserver cette connaissance d'une région à l'autre.
Évidemment, cela nécessiterait de posséder les ingrédients nécessaires à chaque recette. Pour que ce ne soit pas trop facile, les ingrédients ne se trouveraient que sur les ennemis, qu'il faudrait vaincre avant de pouvoir les récupérer. Les ennemis Unique et les Rune Lords fourniraient les ingrédients les plus rares.
Je ne vais pas multiplier les types d'ingrédients, je veux garder la simplicité du système de base. 3 ingrédients me semblent bien. C'est le nombre de chaque ingrédient qui variera d'une recette à l'autre.
Pour apprendre une recette, il faudra d'abord la trouver. Ce sera probablement dans des lieux cachés et difficiles d'accès (ceux nécessitant l'action Delve).
Mourir ne vous ferait pas perdre la connaissance des recettes déjà trouvées, mais peut-être perdre les ingrédients récoltés et non encore utilisés?
Il faudra utiliser une carte Gear Outils d'alchimiste pour pouvoir fabriquer les recettes. On ne pourra pas fabriquer des recettes n'importe où: seulement dans les sanctuaires (les Sigil) qui auront donc une action supplémentaire: Craft. On ne pourra fabriquer qu'une recette à la fois par action Craft.
Avec ces différentes règles expliquées ci-dessus, j'espère proposer un petit sous-système sympa, intéressant et bien intégré aux règles de base sans toutefois trop faciliter la vie de la joueuse. Le but reste de garder la courbe de difficulté du jeu en fournissant un petit coup de pouce ponctuel. Mais ce coup de pouce devra se mériter.
The Philosopher's Stone:
A very common symbol in Alchemy is The Philosopher’s Stone. What is it?
The (let's abbreviate) PS like many alchemical symbols has many meanings.
The most common meaning refers to the final product of the alchemical transformation. This could be the material worked upon or the alchemists themselves.
There are often magical or miraculous properties attributed to the PS. It may be a super pure gold or a medical wonder cure.
It is often used as a “seed material" added to the Prima Materia to start the next cycle of transformation.
When these attributes describe the Alchemist, the practitioner becomes noble like the gold or a healer of body and spirit. He may be the ”seed” and pass his wisdom on to others. The PS may be a reconstituted body thereby conquering death.
If the practitioner is religious the PS may be a manifestation of a god or goddess.
If this is the case the interesting angle here in contrast to most common manifestations is that the actualized Spirit or Deity is produced from the Material (or Person) being worked on and is not drawn from any supernatural realm. The Spirit is considered as released from the material world. This attitude can create a feeling of relation or equality between the Material and Spiritual planes of existence.
Some images related to the PS are:
The Squared Circle, Cross, Adam (abstract human), Gold, Grail, Red (color), Gem, Resurrection, King's Son, Fruit, Stone, Child, Treasure
The Squared Circle figure- I see the triangle as “ relation" the square as “solidity" and the circle as “infinity". The symbol then is infinity contained in the material.
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!
Technically, what we call uppercase letters are termed "majuscule" and lowercase letters are termed "minuscule". Since common manual movable type typesetting stations usually kept the more frequently used type in a case closer to the user, and the less frequently used type in a different case at a higher level farther from the user, the terms upper case and lower case came into common usage.
Some recent additions from my personal library, hard to find works in very good condition added to The Curiously Curated Collection of Vintage Books at KnoxvilleRose on Etsy 🌹📚🌹
"It starts underground. Twofold, really, the growing of the onion and the making of good steel. Both come from the earth and both are elemental transformations. The act of smelting and the act of cooking are humanly transformation, divinely inspired. It was cooking that led us to alchemy." —Matthew Medendorp for Joyland
Like the cosmic serpent or oroboros, the Scorpio lunar eclipse on 5 May 2023 is likely to bring many things full circle.
In addition to closing out the six month cycle begun at the solar eclipse in October 2022, it may also have thematic links to the Scorpio lunar eclipses of May 2022, and April 2005.
Taking place in Hexagram 1, which is symbolised by the shape-shifter energy of the cerulean dragon, a Chinese constellation representing the primal cosmic forces of creativity and strength, this eclipse is about releasing the charge of any past burdens that may be weighing you down, and returning to states of psychological innocence.
Reconnecting to your ‘why’ – your sense of purpose, cultivating beginner’s mind, & making contact with your inner child, are all likely to be strong themes over the next three to six months.
The work begins with the prima materia: "[T]he serpent of Hermes or the Agathodaimon, the Nous that animates the cold part of nature—that is, the unconscious—is enclosed in the spherical vessel of diaphanous glass which represents the world and the soul."
This snake-like "damp-fiery cold Spirit" is the spirit of alchemy which Christianity regarded as demonic and which therefore found no acclaim except in the realm of the magical arts and sciences.
It should not be identified outright with evil; it merely has the uncomfortable quality of being beyond good and evil.'
This serpent must be...transformed as in alchemy, and this metamorphosis "must be understood as an overcoming of unconsciousness and, at the same time, of the attitude of the son who unconsciously hangs onto his mother."