08-10-2024, 01:53 PM
"Hughes was not interested in the worldly, laboratory–based alchemy from which modern chemistry derives. His interest was in the spiritual alchemy which began in Italy when, in 1460, Cosimo de Medici, instructed Marsilio Ficino to translate an ancient Greek document, purportedly based on the writings of an Egyptian sage know as Hermes Trismegistus. These Hermetic writings were taken up and further developed by Pico della Mirandola, and, especially, by the Franciscan friar, philosopher and poet, Giordano Bruno, who brought his teachings to England in 1583."
https://ann.skea.com/An%20Alchemy.html
"The Cambridge University Library is almost certainly where Hughes read some of the earliest English occult treatises written as poems by alchemists like George Ripley (1415-1490), Thomas Norton (c.1433-c.1513), and (in the seventeenth century) by Eugenius Philalethes (the name adopted by Thomas Vaughan (1621-66)) and his twin brother Henry. Many anonymous alchemical works were also written as poems - a medium which perfectly suits the symbolic, metaphorical and imaginative language in which the spiritual and technical secrets of alchemy have been couched since its earliest appearance, reputedly in Ancient Egypt."
https://ann.skea.com/TH%20and%20British%...ition.html
https://ann.skea.com/An%20Alchemy.html
"The Cambridge University Library is almost certainly where Hughes read some of the earliest English occult treatises written as poems by alchemists like George Ripley (1415-1490), Thomas Norton (c.1433-c.1513), and (in the seventeenth century) by Eugenius Philalethes (the name adopted by Thomas Vaughan (1621-66)) and his twin brother Henry. Many anonymous alchemical works were also written as poems - a medium which perfectly suits the symbolic, metaphorical and imaginative language in which the spiritual and technical secrets of alchemy have been couched since its earliest appearance, reputedly in Ancient Egypt."
https://ann.skea.com/TH%20and%20British%...ition.html