Was there “alchemy” in ancient Mesopotamia, and if so, with what was this “art” concerned? Should we even take the trouble of investigating these questions?


https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/05/Al...Two-Rivers

Machine learning has many potential applications for working with GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) collections, though it is not always clear how to get started. This post outlines some of the possible ways in which open source machine learning tools from the Hugging Face ecosystem can be used to explore web archive collections made available via the Internet Archive’s ARCH (Archives Research Compute Hub). 

A technical article that might be of interest to people interested in building/searching/cataloguing large sets of images:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/05/10/gett...llections/

Manly Palmer Hall Box 14.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collectio...um-ca-1700


   

   



Claudio de Domenico Celentano di Valle Nove (Neapolitan, act. early 17th century)

https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitio.../aa-6.html

Tracing the development of alchemy in England over four hundred years, from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, Jennifer M. Rampling illuminates the role of alchemical reading and experimental practice in the broader context of national and scientific history. Using new manuscript sources, she shows how practitioners like George Ripley, John Dee, and Edward Kelley, as well as many previously unknown alchemists, devised new practical approaches to alchemy while seeking the support of English monarchs. By reconstructing their alchemical ideas, practices, and disputes, Rampling reveals how English alchemy was continually reinvented over the space of four centuries, resulting in changes to the science itself. In so doing, The Experimental Fire bridges the intellectual history of chemistry and the wider worlds of early modern patronage, medicine, and science.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Experimental-Fi...0226826546

Not alchemical, but I thought I'd share these beautiful shell and pebble mandalas with you, the work of Jersey artist Jo Logue:

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/new...FlKFtLMJhE

'Alchemy is one of the most difficult fields of study in Western Esotericism for a host of reasons: texts are often in ancient languages, practically encoded, full of arcane symbolism and obscure instructions.  One of the most daunting tasks is even where to begin.  There are thousands of alchemical texts spread over 1500 years - which is the best starting point if you want to study alchemy?  In this episode of Esoterica, we argue that the Summa Perfectionis (c. 1310) is the best answer.  We explore the question of the text's authorship, transmission, composition, alchemical theory of substance, change, and, of course, metallic transmutation.'


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

One of the most interesting rare book collections housed at the Bernard Becker Medical Library is the Robert E. Schlueter Paracelsus Collection:

http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/paracelsus/index.html

The whole site is well worth exploring:

https://becker.wustl.edu/archives-and-ra...-exhibits/

A picture book that uses alchemical symbols to illustrate questions of good and evil.

https://archive.org/details/emblematanovadas00frie

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/08...-nova.html

https://veiledmarket.com/product/t-shirt...nd-skulls/


Engraving by Jacob(us) de Zetter.

   

ALCHEMY, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg, Sturtevant, Emilio Vedova, Andy Warhol, 26th May—29th July 2023 Opening Thursday 25th May 6—8pm, Thaddaeus Ropac, London Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NJ

Bringing together major works by some of the most influential European and American artists of the post-war and contemporary periods, Alchemy examines the enduring fascination with material transformation and alchemical thinking in artmaking. The group exhibition features works by artists who have engaged with alchemical ideas at key moments in their practice, including Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg, Sturtevant, Emilio Vedova and Andy Warhol. Assembling a group of art-historically significant works, including many shown for the first time in the UK, the exhibition highlights how ideas of material, artistic and philosophical transmutation both inform and are redefined by, these pioneers of art.

https://fadmagazine.com/2023/05/04/josep...l-alchemy/