Friday, August 31, 2012

Zodiac Mosaic From an Ancient Synagogue

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/synagogue-zodiacs.asp

Enochian d20


Forkbearded Angel

(of course I'm reminded of the Tyroshi from George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones novels)
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=475851105772506&set=a.472246089466341.111440.472245659466384&type=1

Is this Arabic Occult Manuscript the source of Lovecraft's Arkham?

Halu Rumuz al-Arkam fi Kashfi 'Ulum al-Aklam














via http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=475852695772347&set=a.475845012439782.112518.472245659466384&type=1

Al-Mahbub






via http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.477962428894707.113187.472245659466384&type=1

Ta'likat al-Buni






from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Digital-Occult-Manuscripts/472245659466384

here's an article on al-Buni: Noah Gardiner, Forbidden knowledge? Notes on the production, transmission, and reception of the major works of Ahmad al-Buni

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Abstract - Ripley's Alchemy + English Politics

Entre littérature, science et politique: les oeuvres alchimiques de Thomas Norton et George Ripley

Published in Revue Historique, 658, 2011/2. See http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=RHIS_112_0243
The alchemical works of Thomas Norton (The Ordinal of Alchemy) and George Ripley (The Compound of Alchemy) are two of the most important testimonies of the popularity of alchemy in England, in the second half of the fifteenth- century. Nevertheless, they generally have been studied only for their pseudo-scientific content, and very much depreciated. However, their writers address, especially in their prologues, some important questions on literature, language and knowledge, and also on the prince and the relations of power in the society. Their choice to transmit a discipline located at the junction of science and art (in the medieval sense of the term) and characterized by secrecy, in a poetical form and in an accessible vernacular language, raises, indeed, many interrogations. It points to the facts that the established boundaries between literary and scientific texts are not always pertinent; that in the second half of the fifteenth-century, English has indeed became a language of transmission of knowledge. Overall, these alchemical treatises in verse contribute to the formation of a lay culture marked by its English identity. At the same time, they are an invitation to think about the multiplicity and the complexity of contemporary conceptions of knowledge – even with regards to a specific type of knowledge, alchemy. Finally, the political aspects of these texts are important: both Norton, and more openly, Ripley, want to help to transform the prince, who must be actor and object of this change, to improve the governance of the country. This is all the more necessary in a political society destabilized by the Wars of the Roses.

Selected Images from Robert Fludd - Utriusque Cosmi

























Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Podcast on Philip K. Dick and Alchemy

Here is a downloadable or streamable recording of the talk I gave at the ASE Conference.
I look at the influence of three "hermetic alchemists" on PKD: Bruno, Paracelsus, Boehme,
as well as the scholarship of Frances Yates and the psychology of Carl Jung.
Philip K. Dick and Alchemy