Alchemical Gold and the Pursuit of the Mercurial Elixir

An Analysis of Two Alchemical Treatises from the Tibetan Buddhist Canon

by Carmen Simioli

"This article focuses on the analysis of two Tibetan treatises on iatrochemistry, The Treatise on the Mercurial Elixir (Dngul chu grub pa’i bstan bcos) and the Compendium on the Transmutation into Gold (Gser ’gyur bstan bcos bsdus pa). These texts belong to the rasaśāstra genre that were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by Orgyenpa Rinchenpel (O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal, 1229/30–1309) and integrated into the Tibetan Buddhist Canon of the Tengyur (Bstan ’gyur)."

Full text.

https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/8/1...anguage=en

An exploration of the first stage of internal alchemy by Timo Pieters


https://www.academia.edu/36514487/Daoist...my_Neidan_

Available in facsimile from Ziereis:

"The manuscript at hand is stored under the shelf mark MS Ashburnham 1166 in Florence’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, attributed to Johannes von Teschen, or Ticinensis. It is famous for a representation of a dying man shot with an arrow and being used as soil by a tree growing up from his genital area, and is named after its last private owner, Bertram Ashburham. The text is adorned with gorgeous, enigmatic watercolors attributed to Francesco da Barberino (1264–1348)."

https://www.facsimiles.com/facsimiles/mi...of-alchemy

https://www.toptenz.net/10-forgotten-fem...istory.php

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"Among the many intriguing objects on display in the Egypt: faith after the pharaohs exhibition is an 18th-century copy of the Book of the Seven Climes (Kitāb al-aqālīm al-ṣab‘ah), on loan from the British Library. The book’s 13th-century author, Abū al-Qāsim al-‘Irāqī, believed it held ancient secrets coded in hieroglyphic texts. He was right, but not exactly as he imagined!"

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/medie...ew-secrets

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"Caterina Sforza (1463-1509), regent of Imola and Forlì and progenitrix of the Medici Grand Ducal dynasty, had a keen interest in scientific experiment. She collected over four hundred alchemical, medicinal, and cosmetic recipes, and corresponded with other alchemical adepts about materials and laboratory techniques. Her example reflects a more general fascination with secrets that enthralled courts throughout early modern Europe, giving rise to a lively market for such information. It also offers an opportunity to explore some of the ways in which women—and men—engaged with scientific culture on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution in pursuit of health, beauty, wealth, and power. Not only is Caterina Sforza’s experimental activity emblematic of the wider panorama of women’s involvement in early modern scientific culture, but it also situates her at the origins of a Medici interest in alchemy and experiment that stretched well into the seventeenth century."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjX9guh9bNY

Gail Taylor.

"Today, when alchemy evokes wizards and crystal balls, it may seem odd to refer to a book of procedures on the transmutation of ordinary metals into
gold as a practical laboratory manual free of mysticism. Yet it was alchemy, the most ancient form of chemistry, which first brought the book and the laboratory
together. Over a thousand years ago, the Persian physician and alchemist Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī (c. 865 - 923) wrote the earliest laboratory
manual to reach us in its entirety."



http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/wp-content/u...taylor.pdf

Gabriele Ferrario

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76378634.pdf

Chapter by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan from the book "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture".

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000134522

Article by Gail Taylor.

https://ucl.scienceopen.com/document_fil...858601.pdf

See her translation of this book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Al-Razi-T...1507778791