Sunday, November 27, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Jenny Rampling podcast on Alchemy and Patronage in Tudor England
I met Rampling in Philly at the CHF conference in 2005 and I was very impressed with her work on alchemical emblems. We should be grateful to have somebody like her working on this era, the Ripley scroll, and the alchemical illustration in general. Check out the second podcast on this list.
(from this link you need iTunes, but it's free)
or use this direct download link provided by Anechoic (look at it in a video player to see the slideshow of the images she's discussing)
here's a partial transcription of the first minute or so
in talking about alchemy today, I want to stress variety. When we think about alchemy we think about transformation and change... specifically the transmutation of base metals gold... As I hope to convince you today, there's a little bit more to alchemy than that... variety in the goals and pursuits of alchemy, in the occupations of its practitioners, in the way way that its mysterious processes were interpreted... Alchemy was not a monolithic entity... practiced by courtiers and artisans, physicians and priests, merchants and scholars... practitioners from a range of backgrounds were nevertheless concerned to present themselves as heirs to a single unified and ancient tradition of privileged knowledge... for all their personal diversity individual alchemists often adopted similar styles of self-presentation... by appealing to long-established conventions, not only of technical writing, but also poetry and art...
like historians alchemists were continually concerned about funding
and here's another lecture from Rampling - The Mirror of Alchemy: Images and Reflections of the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos, including examples of work by the fifteenth-century English alchemist George Ripley and the Elizabethan mathematician and astrologer, John Dee.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Lambsprinck with Latin text
I made these images from this pdf Lambsprinck antiqui libellus de lapide philosophicorum available online from the Jung Collection of Alchemy, Magic, and Kabbalah
English Translation with images
The Book of Lambspring video on Youtube
A Threefold Alchemical Journey through the Book of Lambspring, by Adam McLean
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Collection of Tweets on Alchemy, Renaissance Magic, Esotericism, Philosophy, Literature
The One and the Many Gods http://t.co/sPcHxGDw
SEP Schopenhauer article revised http://t.co/VxrRMZOk
RT @EPButler Disentangling the intelligible from the phantasmatic's
as important for developing the phantasm as for grasping intelligibility
"If Athens is where the Greeks learned power accrued to one who knew
how to write, Alexandria learned the reader has special power as well."
"Whose is the cunning hand that set them up? A Puzzle Maker of
infinite cunning and infinite resources!" http://t.co/iE6Ygty3 via
@fadesingh
How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and
Classical Mythology http://t.co/SSsSQCRr
Der Kommentar des Proklos zu Hesiods ‘Werken und Tagen’
http://t.co/MMO68R11
Metaphor, Allegory and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and
Modern Revisions http://t.co/85s9NS8V
Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria
http://t.co/FLONTOLO
Feminine Personification of Wisdom:Study of Homer's
Penelope,Cappadocian Macrina,Boethius'Philosophia+Dante's Beatrice
http://t.co/yp7yuiXT
Proclus: the theurgical power...gathers benefits of
divination+purificatory power of ritual+all activities whatsoever of divine
inspiration.
Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective http://t.co/21gMWGDe
Edward Butler, Polycentric Polytheism+the Philosophy of Religion
http://t.co/0xhiwcE3 non reductive crosscultural comparison between deities
Butler:polycentric nature of NP theology theoretical articulation for
henotheistic practices w/in polytheism w/o invoking “mono tendencies.”
Thoth article in Edward Butler's Theological Encyclopedia of Ancient
Egyptian Gods and Goddesses http://t.co/d7hBUf6J
Leen Spruit on Pico' theory of intelligible species
http://t.co/P3zoeEIQ
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Glenn Magee http://t.co/2y6L2dkU
Dawson: "Only when God or meaning is present to the text but less so
to the world or [vice versa] does the allegorical imagination emerge."
"ancient literary critics rarely concerned with the interpretation of
a whole literary work...focus on the level of the word or the gloss."
The trouble, according to Silk, is that theorizing about poetry has
gone on without theorists giving thought to actual poems.
Crowther: metaphor is essentially predicative and its "basic purpose"
is "the cognitive elucidation" of what is being described
"for Plato, metaphor could have a heuristic function in a
conversation in which neither party was able absolutely to enlighten the
other."
Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Egyptians: A Theological
Encyclopedia http://t.co/qSdpexqd by @EPButler
Hellenismos and the Future of Paganism: An Interview with Rebecca
Buchanan http://t.co/d6VyjnHa
RT @EPButler The beauty of #Bruno is that he reads everything, then does
such original things with it that "influence" seems beside the point.
"[Bruno] rejected hylomorphism in favor of a monism in which the
universal, infinite, and eternal substance was identical with God+nature."
Giordano Bruno in Paul Oscar Kristeller's Eight Philosophers of the
Italian Renaissance http://t.co/P43InTQA
Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thought, with an annoted translation of
his Infinity of Worlds http://t.co/1JpMxzFl Dorothea Singer
Sicut sensus non potest sentire sine sensibili, ita anima non potest
intelligere sine phantasmate.–Aquinas, Sentencia libri De anima, III.12
Speculative Medievalisms: A Laboratory-Atelier http://t.co/sLIr80yo
"... second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses,
transcendent prolepsies, and such other light food." -Rabelais
Gatti: One of the most original aspects of Coleridge's interest in Bruno regarded his dialectic.
Where did Philip K. Dick get his ideas about Giordano Bruno?
http://t.co/oQPQPiDA (under construction, would appreciate any leads)
Giordano Bruno as supplement to Deleuze http://t.co/vc8Niqx2
RT @aureliomadrid: eriugena (part of the) periphyseon
http://t.co/lLrwuzJg PDF @t3dy
Kripal: Grof begins, like William James, with a "methodological
principle of excess." Esalen p.256
McKenna: “[John] Dee is the last person to be able to unify into
one world view science,+mathematics,+magic,+astrology all together.”
"Modern science is an incredibly demonic enterprise." -Terence
McKenna on Alchemy and Renaissance Magic as influences in the history of
sci.
RT @davidbmetcalfe "I breached the veil of ISIS and all I got was
this cheaply printed pamphlet on intra-psychic vampires..."
"Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being.
This is the basis of all magic." -Terence McKenna http://t.co/FS9QMZMM
@davidbmetcalfe all they did at Eleusis was hold a stupid ear of corn
up to my head and speak the Word.
"Flaming giraffe equals Masculine apocalyptic monster. Cat angel
equals divine heterosexual monster. Hourglass equals metaphysical
monster.” -Dali
The Glass Bead Gamification #lessinterestingbooks
@davidbmetcalfe Archon is a virus?
RT @erik_davis: Hilarious and deeply weird take-down of human
potential. Dylan Moran. http://t.co/aMYtzAU3
RT @philo_quotes: The human body is the best picture of the human soul. ~ Wittgenstein
Paracelsus Celebration website by Allen Debus, dean of alchemical
studies in the history of science http://t.co/86uUAipq
The Problem with Propitiation http://t.co/XnnaiP3c Thelema and Faith blog
RT @Lyndon_M: "I searched for God and found only myself. I searched
for myself and found only God." - Sufi Proverb (via... http://t.co/7 ...
Zurich Paracelsus Project http://t.co/w9DUspkj
Alchemical allegory in Rabelais http://t.co/ITQreZnL
"our only way to arrive safe at the queendom of Whims was to trust to
the whirlwind and be led by the current." -Rabelais, G+P Bk.5 #fnord
Ficino and Neoplatonic Theories of Language http://t.co/V3MNbv9W
James Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man
"The inner nature of everything may therefore be known through Magic
in general, and through the powers of the inner (or second) sight." -PC
"[Alchemy] is like unto death, which separates the eternal from the
mortal, so that it should properly be known as the death of things." -PC
Paracelsus on inner seeing http://t.co/yMEPTNJt
“Just as outer seeing is suited to the farmer, inner seeing, which
is secret seeing, is suited to the physician." -Paracelsus
Paracelsus "was the first to imagine that the body worked like an
alchemical laboratory+that it was chemical in nature" http://t.co/Cbci22B4
chart of alchemical symbols in unicode http://t.co/EQ3E4AHa
Test for Unicode support in Web browsers Alchemical Symbols
http://t.co/Nikrnqv3
Proposal for Alchemical Symbols in Unicode http://t.co/PzowB2FF
RT @fredgibbs: #histsci + #dh = awesome. RT @dhnow: Resource:
Alchemy, Text Analysis, and Networks! Oh my! http://t.co/U300DVdI
RT @rmathematicus: Contrary to the claims of many sources Paracelsus
was probably not born on 11/11 http://t.co/YlUTryKq
Muehlberger: "In antiquity, some Christians believed that angels were
minds, or intellects, detached from bodies,"
Muehlberger: "In a way, angels were like computers---very, very good
at figuring things out and getting things done..."
"...because they had rational minds but did not have the difficulty
of having desires and passions, like humanity." http://t.co/ta27zGPg
Angels in Christianity Evolved Over Time,New Research Shows
http://t.co/ta27zGPg
RT @erik_davis: Play well! Pre-guru Tim Leary on behavior change and
the games of human culture: http://t.co/ZfY7w2Wm
RT @erik_davis: Dark and wacky Harold Bloom oped on Mormonism,
Romney, politics and the poetry of American religion: http://t.co/WtCkVBwL
RT @erik_davis: Comic Patton Oslwalt on LSD and the pagan conspiracy
of Lucky Charms. http://t.co/a8xivTyH
Jinn according to Quran and Sunnah http://t.co/4ePfmw5O Surat al-Jinn
-- 72nd sura of the Qur'an http://t.co/jj0FQXvJ
Stela of Ashurbanipal carrying a basket on his head
http://t.co/1xT0sBiZ
Stela of Ashurbanipal http://t.co/UJnIy44t
The Babylonian Visual Image http://t.co/OmzJCT6M in the Routledge
Babylonian World
Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David
Pingree http://t.co/MP6us2Ry Pingree bio at wikipedia http://t.co/enYxPmWS
Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip http://t.co/6zn2RhIq
#anthropology
Alchemical Symbolism through questions http://t.co/F6wqmpR6
in Image and Reality... "Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking
is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields."
Paracelsus on the Unconscious http://t.co/GDlxV9FB
"Paracelsus is credited as providing the first clinical/scientific
mention of the unconscious." http://t.co/WfU23Nv6
"Resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations."
[attributed to?] Paracelsus http://t.co/240PNth3
"drawing philosophical conclusions by consulting intuitions may be
problematic bc those intuitions aren't consistently held across cultures"
Philosophy of Religious Experience http://t.co/A7JZdsf1
"These capacities for conscious deliberation, rational thinking and
self-control are not magical abilities." http://t.co/yxDowKbo
"Kripal: ...no way for parapsychologists to test+experiment on
aspects of paranormal experiences." http://t.co/Z40nOJFi via
@davidbmetcalfe
RT @davidbmetcalfe: Rice prof speaks on paranormal, consciousness in
lecture http://t.co/oZ2UXwev
Aquinas was able to reconcile the diversity of ideas with God’s
simplicity. The solution involves viewing ideas as nonbeings relative to
God
"Divine ideas are exemplar causes in the likeness of which God
produces creatures. Ideas belong to God’s practical knowledge."
review/Doolan
alchemical texts on Scribd http://t.co/xnSaTMUC
THERE are many points in alchymical history which have been purposely
passed over as affording nothing worthy of remark http://t.co/Mqlqefbe
RT @erik_davis: Thelema is magickal (de)construction. RT @t3dy:
Burroughs admired Crowley for his application of a...hermeneutic of susp...
Biblical Israel's History viewed from the inside and out.
http://t.co/yZyVUzg0
I think Burroughs admired Crowley for his application of a methodical
(if occult) hermeneutic of suspicion to the idea of Control.
beginning of a translation of John Dee's Mathematical Preface to
Euclid into readable contemporary English http://t.co/mgCZ5QPq
John Dee translated Euclid "that you may thereby recreate some
profit: and moreover to excite and stir up others learned, to do the like."
quotes about alchemical images http://t.co/6AErCm7Z
"...as alchemical authors say, speaking metaphorically." -Albertus Magnus
“ . . unlike the arbitrariness of linguistic signs, pictorial forms
can preserve original knowledge.” -Barbara Obrist on alchemical images
review of Torijano's "Solomon the Esoteric King" http://t.co/BmeMhIvl
#grimoire
Visualizing Angelic Visions http://t.co/oGN40f87
Kabbalistic / Qabalistic Tree of Life Diagrams http://t.co/k234yq44
RT @satfeed: Idries Shah: On Sufi Knowledge http://t.co/MlqOq0Km
"Plotinus’s heirarchy of Being is more famous than his thinking of
any unity at all as a kind of profusion." http://t.co/h5V60dpr The Cone
Melancholy Saturn on his Chariot http://t.co/3ZiXwgyD
The Cone of Plotinus: Ontologies of Profusion and Particularization
http://t.co/Oili2sIq
Diagramming Plotinus http://t.co/tmKXp6LH
Lab Full of Flasks http://t.co/D67g7Dbv
Mysterium Magnum: Michelangelo's Tono Doni http://t.co/04HFN71i
Ficino's translation of Plotinus on Numbers http://t.co/lJRvcxlq
Dogma vs. Ideation: Methods of Plotinus http://t.co/jJObnxeS
Plotinus proposes three Hypostases of God, each progressively
‘inferior’ but still fully divine: http://t.co/3XG43eOL
Porphyry and Plotinus (illuminated) http://t.co/XAIrVTUU
Dan Merkur on Active Imagination in Paracelsus http://t.co/IasmmIkN
@globalinfowatch check out Merkur's Gnosis on Paracelsus, or his
online papers such as "The Angelic Stone" and "Nectar" http://t.co/nPtBFuTU
Trithemius gives a functional account of an angel
http://t.co/KuwSquHP
Agrippa on Natural Magic in De Vanitate http://t.co/mOQFaXN2
Farinella on the influence of Proclus on Giordano Bruno's Art of
Memory http://t.co/ZcBcENfh
Michael Maier cites Ficino in his discussion of the philosopher's
stone http://t.co/LojgEVcX
Proclus and John Dee's Heiroglyphic Monad http://t.co/cdwIJAG0 an
excerpt from Calder's thesis
Alchemical emblems re-purposed as music theory comics
http://t.co/437BccmZ
John Dee on the powers of Mathematical Mind http://t.co/ynKZJ8XZ
a few scholarly passages on Giordano Bruno's Art of Memory
http://t.co/YWRu3aO3
Brian Copenhaver on the influence of Proclus on Ficino
http://t.co/2lsKRZJU
Paola Zambelli on Bruno as a reader of forbidden books
http://t.co/fdQ3lgrT Zambelli on H. C. Agrippa http://t.co/2boEziKc
notes from Johannes Reuchlin "On the art of the Kabbalah"
http://t.co/1YfwqrAW Reuchlin on techniques and names http://t.co/oIEjBcf5
Proclus, Elements of Theology, 109 propositions in Latin
http://t.co/qdECwoXE
Hakan: "by understanding how the different parts of the universe are
related, the wise man can become a magician." http://t.co/LzrW0sPi
Hakan on al-kindi "everything that existed in actuality in the
universe emitted rays in every direction"
Dee's copy of the Neoplatonist-Plotinus De rebus philosophicis libri
LIIII. in enneades sex distributi (London, Royal College of Physicians)
"Dee’s “Hieroglyphic Monad” became an instrument by which the
mind was able to transcend dianoetical reasoning..." http://t.co/LzrW0sPi
Writing about various nebulous concepts of magic, which I don't think
Pico intended to invoke, has been the most difficult thing about my MA
"That 'occult blind' you can’t figure out may not be intentional?
It just may be a mistake." http://t.co/pJwgR6sw via @sarahveale
Invocatio (formerly known as X, Y and Zen) http://t.co/UWIgOsNA a
blog mostly about western esotericism
"Miracles act to "prove" a particular revelation. But what do
paranormal experiences prove? Well, nothing yet..." Jeffrey Kripal
Paranormal America Interview with Jeffrey Kripal http://t.co/6qc0XUPv
Kripal
"I want this book to challenge the common assumptions people
make about profound, life-changing, mind-blowing mystical experiences."
"Pico did not intend to marry or conjoin the two [magic+kabbalah] but
rather to subjugate both to Christianity..." Idel,Kabbalah+Hermeticism
"Let us come to wisdom and union only by the way of intellectual
speculation or by sudden intuition, but not by magical actions" Y. Alemanno
Moshe Idel on Kabbalistic theurgy and Magic http://t.co/FEfOGUsf
2011-11-11 02:04:38
t3dy: RT @APassion4Jazz: " #Jazz #music is a language of the emotions."
Charles Mingus
RT @john_overholt: Fantastically useful online exhibition: Signs &
Symbols: Decoding Mediaeval and Renaissance Iconography
http://t.co/D ...
Dan Merkur on Dante and Gnosis http://t.co/kcMTPyGz problem of
Theosophy http://t.co/f0egRaUu Hermeticism vs Gnosticism
http://t.co/YPDA9scz
Alchemical texts were powerful tools for doing some kind of spiritual
operation, but not for comforting readers with shallow New Age truisms
I don't think alchemical texts were designed to deliver the kinds of
easy answers that these spiritual alchemists find, but to instruct+play
These spiritual alchemy readings that I'm complaining about really
argue that we should ignore alchemy texts, since we already know the plan
What haunts me about spiritual alchemy readings is that they do such
violence for the texts, while spuriously claiming to let them speak.
Khunrath, Maier, Fludd, the later Rosicrucian alchemists, were rooted
in the Paracelsian developments. Marvelous/orignal/novel developments.
Paracelsian alchemy was a new development. It wasn't a fulfillment of
ancient deep roots,but result of interface of gnosis/theosophy/science
A spiritual alchemy reading should get alchemical matter theory
right. It does no good to interpolate anachronistic modern spiritualities.
Since alchemical matter theory was not nonsensical, but in fact a
sophisticated set of signs+discourse practices, this is where to start.
The spiritual alchemy lineage of Atwood-Silberer-Jung is based on
radical assumption that alchemical matter theory was nonsense. Not true.
Problematic "Spiritual Alchemy" readings tend to rely on implicit
anti-science bias to persuade their victims. Alchemists weren't anti-sci.!
Alchemy as an art/science was primarily concerned with generating
knowledge about matter. Spiritual metaphors are based on that knowledge.
The crucial point I'd like to make about "Alchemical Spirituality" is
that it's stranger than even obscurantist interpreters claim it to be.
Historians of Science aren't stripping spirituality/symbolism away
from alchemy. However, "spiritual alchemy" strips the art/science aspect.
Fundamentals of Symbolism Part II From the Renaissance to Modern
Times http://t.co/RsTZePqn discusses Pico, Ficino, Plotinus
Alchemy of the Sun (updated) http://t.co/m6x4RssI
Neoplatonist Spectrum of Consciousness diagram http://t.co/zQy7OuRf
Lesser-Known Intellectual Trends in the Early Renaissance: Humanism,
Neo-Platonism, Hermeticism http://t.co/ywknXvYL
Metaphors of Mixture in Neoplatonism http://t.co/pghXgjsv Gersh, From
Iamblichus to Eriugena
Triumph of Aquinas, and a link to Iconography of St. Thomas
http://t.co/oIqBClYh
Routes of Mystical Traditions: Antiquity to St. Teresa of Avila
http://t.co/uz5d1RNP
I can't figure out where Neoplatonism comes into this article on
"Neoplatonism and Alchemy" http://t.co/OygLPMGi cool chakra diagrams though
Islamic Platonists and Neoplatonists http://t.co/FYukXt48
Diagram of Renaissance Esotericists influenced by Neoplatonism
http://t.co/Bcpjo9z8
Arthur Versluis on the "sympathetic empiricism" approach to the study
of Esotericism and Mysticism http://t.co/ej2F6JqY
"at minimum, the study of esotericism,+in particular mysticism,
requires some degree of imaginative participation in what one is
studying"AV
Ficino on the Sight of the Beloved (longer version)
http://t.co/sRDr7qnc posts tagged Ficino on the excellent Reditus
http://t.co/kddKUAfP
"It always happens that lovers fear and worship in some way the sight
of the beloved." -Marsilio Ficino, commentary on Plato's Symposium
Merkur on Dante and Angels, Allegory, encounters between Gnosis and
Platonism http://t.co/kcMTPyGz
Merkur on the Problem of Theosophy for Christian Mysticism
http://t.co/f0egRaUu
Eriugena: East and West http://t.co/jmos3Mqi
"Eriugena had successfully pushed Platonism about as far as it could
go without turning into a theosophy." Daniel Merkur, Gnosis p.241
Paracelsus invented not only spiritual alchemy but medical
chemistry.
Gnostic trends have been recognized in his thought from 16th c.
onward
Merkur: "The tradition of spiritual alchemy...originated when
Ficino's
concept of ethereal bodies was blended w/the alchemy of
quintessence"
Introduction to the Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism: interview with
Daniel C. Matt (translator of the Zohar) http://t.co/7x0HPrUN
Scholarly articles on Alchemy http://t.co/OsHjt4JC
Geoffrey McVey, Syracuse University, Rethinking the Magic of Giordano
Bruno (anybody know how to get ahold of this text?)
Pico della Mirandola and Henry of Ghent http://t.co/ihl5qCPl
(clippings from an Amos Edelheit paper)
Henry of Ghent Blog http://t.co/n1O2ZVSa All things pertaining to the
solemn doctor
Churton claims that Crowley was “a major thinker, as significant as Freud or Jung”.
as Tobias Churton puts it, without irony, “Crowley wanted to help us” (ibid)
review of recent Aleister Crowley biographies by Kaczynski and
Churton http://t.co/eaheFwyD
RT @VesselofHermes: Honey & the Elements http://t.co/PH7nPfHy
Alchemical Caves http://t.co/lbXv6pqK Saturn Sigils
http://t.co/BxWgWGLn Lion http://t.co/01mN7NHB Tree of Life
http://t.co/k234yq44
Alchemical and Esoteric tweets archive http://t.co/Vn9Y43bb
Want to do a PhD on Western esotericism? Two vacancies in Amsterdam
http://t.co/DyfJImg9
Idealism in the West Podcast on Renaissance Platonists Marsilio
Ficino and Pico della Mirandola http://t.co/2MSXy4xu
"The death of his daughter grieved Crowley." -biographer Lawrence
Sutin http://t.co/ANC8KPWy
Is "forging" a check an alchemical operation?
RT @eliothahn: RT @HermeticLibrary Renaissance Neo-Platonism
http://t.co/cL8kmbaO
An excellent podcast series by David Beardsley covers the history of
Platonic Idealism in the West http://t.co/pDoCMvXr Socrates to T.Taylor
RT @BobDobbs_: Codex Seraphinianus: semi-licit copy of a
semi-legendary book of the weird http://t.co/B2FqAXXR
"...magic spells are not mere metaphors for encryption schemes." Erik
Davis,
Magic, Memory,+the Angels of Information http://t.co/EcIUtuLV
"spaces of allegory remain fundamentally phantasmic+metamorphic, as
if the very rigidity of their codes produces a surreal countermovement."
"Such allegorical knowledge maps take an interesting turn
when they become allegorical narratives." http://t.co/EcIUtuLV
"By doing certain things certain results follow..." -Aleister
Crowley, Liber O http://t.co/Ou3Ge2nl (appended to Magick in Theory
+Practice)
"It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things,
certain results follow..." Crowley on gamification of magical entities
syllabus for Gordan Djurdjevic's course on Western Esotericism
http://t.co/fBOM2IzP
Abraham Abulafia stars in Swiss exhibit on Comparative
Mysticism:
http://t.co/F3foMBoP
via @avisolo
alchemical cutup of Voynich Manuscript, Ripley Scroll, Rosarium
Philosophorum http://t.co/ge0IDkIf
Rosarium Philosophorum http://t.co/72C3cEkU
The Ripley Scroll http://t.co/lP0UwMvE #Alchemy
Cramer's Emblems http://t.co/Mxl5YFC7 #alchemy
Make the birds fly http://t.co/UxNS5S2N
Green Lion Devouring The Sun -- Five Versions http://t.co/qffuEhxJ
Alchemical Heraldry from Pauvert http://t.co/75i2Gb2a
lovely phoenix illustration on The English Emblem Book Project
http://t.co/toGD1D18
Alan Moore reads "Robert Anton Wilson" http://t.co/FqYteOg2 via @CatVincent
Psychology's Magician (on Carl Jung) http://t.co/7oQEAau8
Renaissance Magic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://t.co/s3lXTLd8
Magic, by Tanya Luhrmann http://t.co/DlAsFQ6s
Pico's angelology is interesting, and perhaps even philosophically shocking, but for reasons other than his enthusiasm for magic+kabbalah.
Pretty much everything Pico had to say about angelology had nothing to do with his (equally interesting!) concept of magic.
Pico took very seriously the notion that any post-Biblical figure's philosophizing was up for debate. This debate was a religious project.
Pico dared to criticize even Pseudo-Dionysius. He's working post-Aquinas, taking those thomistic/scholastic PsD. modifications into account.
I think it's pretty clear that even if we go with the most skeptical interpretation of Agrippa, a Pseudo-Dionysian theology underlies it all
Pico in being so ruthlessly critical of Ficino obviously misses much of value, but as a result carves out a unique territory for his new RM.
Each of the Renaissance Magicians seems to be misinterpreting the other RMs he's reading, but in good magical faith.
I want to know more about how Agrippa understood Trithemius. How did these guys manage to make such a profound impact on each other so fast?
Noel Brann gets it right with his "Magical Theology" approach to Trithemius, but it's clear that he's running into lots of problems.
Keeping in mind the errors of Frances Yates, I think she was absolutely correct to emphasize problem of "religious magic"/"magical religion"
Same goes for Agrippa's reading of Pico/Reuchlin. They share a magical religious faith but differ in their scientific method.
Understanding Pico's influence on Reuchlin is tricky, since he moves in such a different direction. We should compare their versions of PsD.
The problem with looking at "Christian Cabala" as simple succession from Pico on is that at each step of the way it gets radically refocused
Agrippa followed Pico in applying a critical method to the magic tradition of Ficino, but he was working to purify that same religious magic
For renaissance magicians like Ficino+Pico, the exaltation of the magus was a contemplative experience of the glory of God, not a power trip
"Crowley defended Rodin against the critical backlash+subsequently befriended the sculptor a few years later... published a collaboration"
RT @gary_singh: Rodin and America: Influence and Adaptation | Silicon Alleys | Metro Newspapers http://t.co/mjRIb3nC #esoteric #crowley ...
RT @VesselofHermes: Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth, Dan Merkur, University of Toronto http://t.co/d0xmzyV5 via @eglinski
Why study Renaissance Magic http://t.co/r8BFql05 notes from a religious studies grad student
Hymn-Singing from Plethon to Ficino (subjective to theurgic?) http://t.co/GwfT3J1v
Magic Square: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS (or rotate your own)
Michael Keaton should play Giordano Bruno. A Roman Lead Curse Tablet http://t.co/t605n30d
It's the Great Cthulhu, Charles Dexter http://t.co/rOagQgFc via some kind soul whose handle I misplaced on the clipboard
Schuon on Islamic Esotericism/Sufism http://t.co/xaUk5ZKG via "Henry Corbin" on Facebook
I'm quite looking forward to Egil Asprem's "Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic+Modern Occulture" due in May. http://t.co/q6ZMdkER
Walker: "Ficino is the earliest Renaissance writer I know of to treat the effects of music seriously and practically." http://t.co/t76uAQcu
Ficino to Pico in a letter, "What wonderful things! A work beyond belief to those who have lost the memory of truth."
Szonyi: Contexts for Dee's Angel Magic http://t.co/sPCalFLb
important research on Dee+grimoire magic in Clucas' interdisciplinary studies http://t.co/FLiP4scu
very excited, Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his
Influence (2011) Edited by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees
@DebHarkness did groundbreaking research into Dee's
Angelology -- check out Claire Fanger's review http://t.co/1jtSs380
Monday, November 14, 2011
Questions about Alchemical Symbols
Questions about Alchemical Symbols
Why did alchemists use astrological symbols of the planets to describe metals?
Why did alchemists use so many bizarre and monstrous animals?
How did alchemists use color? (color codes, alchemical materials)
Why are alchemical images so violent?
Why did alchemists use such disturbing sexual symbolism?
Why did the alchemists use such a confusing variety of symbols?
Is there a logic behind the construction/design of the shapes of alchemical symbols?
Philip K. Dick and the alchemists
letter to Claudia Bush (Exegesis p. 176)
what happened to me in March is exactly that "in the twinkling of an eye"23 rebirth or transformation, much like an abrupt chemical process ... as the alchemists so realized. But it must as I say be touched of adventitiously—which is the role Christ plays or did play, his work being already done. He set it in motion. It can't be turned back. He died, but he died knowing he did it. And of course he shared—he was the first to share—in the fruits of his own secret. He did add, though, that most of us would laugh at all this, finding it incredible and impossible and senseless, not to mention stupid. It never meant anything to me until March, and in March when it happened to me I couldn't relate what had happened to anything I'd ever been taught about God or religion. I thought god was up there in the sky. However, he is not; he is a spark which can fuse the total mind in each of us into something entirely new which was not there before (a description of irreversible chemical processes), burning off the dross and making stable (or as the Bible says, uncorruptible) the valuable contents. You can readily see the analogy between this and a chemical reaction in which the results are spectacular, as with ignited gunpowder. There is no way to anticipate the results based on a study of the three prior constituents, and if I told you what would happen unless you had seen it you probably wouldn't believe me. Fire is the adventitious element added; in the case of the transformation I went through, it is also a kind of fire: seen as chromatic phosphene activity. Probably this is radiation phosphene stimulation; the Soviets say that such radiation stimulating phosphene activity can come here—and does—from sidereal space. I believe it. This is the catalyst. The valuable aspect of the external catalyst is that it keeps the process within the control of who it is who controls these things; it isn't going to simply occur at a random time for no reason at all. The universal mind dispatches a Mediator—which is what Christ is called, correctly—to trigger it off; or anyhow the fish sign or any Logos triggering agent.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Quotes about Alchemical Images
“Visualization in medieval alchemy is a relatively late phenomenon. Documents dating from the introduction of alchemy into the Latin West around 1140 up to the mid-thirteenth century are almost devoid of pictorial elements. During the next century and a half, the primary mode of representation remained linguistic and propositional; pictorial forms developed neither rapidly nor in any continuous way. This state of affairs changed in the early fifteenth century when illustrations no longer merely punctuated alchemical texts but were organized into whole series and into synthetic pictorial representations of the principles governing the discipline.”
“ . . unlike the arbitrariness of linguistic signs, pictorial forms can preserve original knowledge.”
Barbara Obrist, Visualization in Medieval Alchemy
"What the world could express only imperfectly, or not at all, the alchemist compressed into his images; and strange as they are, they often speak a more intelligible language than is found in his clumsy philosophical concepts."
Mircea Eliade, M. The Forge and the Crucible, p.223.
Often in attempting to grasp within our thought the ideas illustrated by the images or sense with our feelings the symbolic patterns that are worked into such esoteric documents, we can get lost and discouraged if we merely jump headlong into the mass of symbolism. We need some esoteric tools (in computer terms, a disassembler) to unravel the code and label some of the more obvious structural elements. Once we have an entry point into the esoteric code we can work this into meditative exercises that slowly reveal the spiritual essence woven into the allegorical emblematic structure.
-Adam McLean, Notes on the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine
"there exists a range of deployments for alchemical emblems, showing greater or lesser reliance on pictorial representations, showing greater or lesser originality and coherence, and directed to a variety of purposes and audiences. 210
Deknamen are frequently woven into extended allegories or parables that recount the (often bizarre) transactions of a whole host of creatures. 211
the use of sexual imagery in alchemy results, paradoxically, from two opposing desires on the part of its creators: the desire to explain and the desire to conceal. 213
alchemical authors were aware of the metaphorical nature of their language and imagery
These potential ambiguities were not a drawback for alchemical purposes, but were in fact an asset given the specific needs of alchemical writers--particularly, the need for secrecy. 217
By drawing on an ever-expanding web of transumptive relationships, alchemical writers could disguise the identities of chemical substances with a host of Decknamen. 218
-Lawrence Principe, Revealing Analogies
Friday, November 11, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
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