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  Sir Francis Bacon: the View Beyond
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-23-2023, 02:02 PM - Forum: Reviews and book notices - No Replies

"This BOOK CELEBRATES the vision of Sir Francis Bacon on the 450th anniversary of his birth - as man of alchemy, science and mystery. It has great implications for our generation, since Bacon lived at a time before the split between religion and science took place - a period before the triumph of the materialistic model. Four and a half centuries later, that model is itself beginning to look very frayed at the edges, not just because of the revolutions in physics, but because of the discoveries of neuroscientists that we have the ability to change the shape of our own brains by our consciousness, independently of the brain itself, and the acknowledgment of medical researchers that consciousness also has a role to play in whether or not we heal."


http://www.polairpublishing.co.uk/viewbeyond.html

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  Podcast: Alchemy in the Ottoman Empire
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-23-2023, 01:32 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy - No Replies

"Alchemy has traditionally been understood as a pseudoscience or protoscience that eventually gave way to modern chemistry. Less often have the writings of alchemists been studied on their own terms. Yet, given the endurance and prolific nature of the alchemical traditions and the involvement of important figures of "modern science" such as Isaac Newton in the field of alchemy, a teleological understanding of the transition from alchemy to chemistry seems inadequate for discussing how science was practiced in the past. This may be particularly true for the Ottoman context, where a longstanding tradition of alchemy becomes subsumed under a larger narrative of the triumph of Western science during the nineteenth century. In this podcast, Tuna Artun explores the world of alchemy and discusses its transformation during the Ottoman period."

https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/20...mpire.html

Also at Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/75rBqbicHUtsn5Y2XKHFOH


A talk on the same theme by Michael Rank:

https://play.acast.com/s/historyofalchem...chael-rank

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  Mike Zuber: Spiritual Alchemy
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-22-2023, 12:11 PM - Forum: Reviews and book notices - Replies (2)

From Jacob Boehme To Mary Anne Atwood.

By Mike Zuber.

At Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/document/57202447...nne-Atwood

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  The Alchemical Antialchemism of Hryhorii Skovoroda
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-22-2023, 12:07 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy - No Replies

"The paper is devoted to the analysis of relations between Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophy and the alchemical discourse. Skovoroda fundamentally rejects the traditional concept of the philosophers’ stone. However, his views are unexpectedly and deeply related with the spiritual alchemy of those times – the search for the “living philosophers’ stone” in the microcosm of human soul. Such “alchemical antialchemism” of Skovoroda’s  philosophy seems to be natural in the context of inner controversies of the  phenomenon of European alchemy of XVI – XVIII centuries."

By K. M. Rodygin.
English text with Russian abstracts.

At Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/316464418/THE...-SKOVORODA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hryhorii_Skovoroda

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  The Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 09:15 PM - Forum: Articles on alchemy - No Replies

Wicked Angels and the Good Demon: The Origins of Alchemy According to the Physica of Hermes

Christian H. Bull, University of Oslo and Princeton University

"The alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis, writing around 300 CE, is our only source for a series of treatises by Hermes called the Physica, which reportedly spoke about angels  who had intercourse with women, as in 1 Enoch, and which credited the revelation of alchemy to an enigmatic figure called Chemeu."

https://www.academia.edu/36394399/Wicked..._of_Hermes

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  Poetry: Peter Bennet's Folly Wood
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 09:00 PM - Forum: Reviews and book notices - No Replies

"Bennet anchors his work in Northumbrian history, providing scholarly endnotes to sketch the lives and deeds he reimagines, e.g., those of the 17th-century Quaker evangelist James Nayler, and of the 15th-century alchemist George Ripley, whose writings propel Bennet’s “Folly Wood” sequence. He quotes from the archival record throughout his historical sequences, with dialogue and commentary by participants forming found poetry and meta-text. The notes include glosses on the many citations in Latin and from the Bible, and discuss the intertextuality of Bennet’s work; for instance, his “Landscape with Psyche” begins with an epigraph from Pierre Corneille (which Paul Valery also used), refers to a Claude Lorraine painting, and includes phrases from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass as retold by Thomas Bulfinch and Walter Pater."

Review:
https://oceanstatereview.org/2023/08/05/...ted-poems/

Peter reading some of his poems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7erEpL-jF8

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  Fiction: Deborah Harkness
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 08:51 PM - Forum: Reviews and book notices - Replies (2)

Author of the All Souls Trilogy:

"A Discovery of Witches is a 2011 historical-fantasy novel and the debut novel by American scholar Deborah Harkness. It follows Diana Bishop, a history of science professor at Yale University, as she embraces her magical blood after finding a long-thought-lost manuscript and engages in a forbidden romance with a charming vampire, Matthew Clairmont."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Discovery_of_Witches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Harkness

This interesting website, by an art historian, explores the material culture of the Trilogy:

https://thearthistoryofallsouls.com/

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  Logoi Spermatikoi and the Concept of Seeds in Paracelsus
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 11:57 AM - Forum: Articles on alchemy - No Replies

By Hiro Hirai

" Paracelsus’s concept of seeds is an important contribution to
Renaissance theories of matter. Unlike the alchemists’ notion of metal
seeds, it has a strong Christian orientation, based on a particular inter-
pretation of the biblical Creation story. It is in this cosmogonical aspect
that Paracelsian seeds are more akin to the seminal reasons of Augustine
than to the logoi spermatikoi of the Stoics or Plotinus. The present study
examines the Augustinian background of this Paracelsian concept and
Marsilio Ficino’s intermediary role in its origination."


https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-revue...ge-245.htm

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  Shakespeare, Alchemy and the Creative Imagination
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 11:44 AM - Forum: Articles on alchemy - No Replies

By Margaret Healy.

Full text.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/fu...086/673351

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  The Michael Innes Collection
Posted by: Paul Ferguson - 08-21-2023, 11:41 AM - Forum: Alchemy texts - No Replies

"The library formed by the late Michael Innes just before the 1939-45 war and mainly in the fifties and sixties is the collection of a scholar with a philosophical and historical mind; at the same time Mr Innes was a bibliophile, as is shown by the fact that the early books - with a few exceptions - are complete and in good condition. It contains approximately 4,000 works. This includes 23 MSS and about 420 books of the 16th and 17th centuries, many of which contain a number of titles. The largest part of the library is of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and much of it is in French. The early books are in Latin, English, French, Italian and German, the last being in the minority as Mr Innes was not a German scholar, French together with English being his natural language. There are also a small number of books in Hebrew and in Arabic."


https://warburg.libguides.com/c.php?g=660284&p=4751036

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