Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art

Practically every old alchemical emblem ever peeled of the printing block is included in this wonderful collection, which is invaluable for this reason alone. The text is a rather muddy analysis along Jungian psychological lines and amounts to little. But the pictures! What a spectacular theatre of bizarre imagery! Indeed the need to interpret is ineluctable. Many volumes have been written offering equally plausable, and mutually exclusive, solutions to the cypher-babble of the alchemists. Since there is no reason to suppose that the medieval sages themselves were all on the same page, no single modern interpretation is sufficient to explain their strange symbols away. Fortunately it's not really necessary to understand these pictures in order to enjoy them - in fact it might easily be said that their very impenetrability is the key to the fascination they hold. All enthusiasts of curious antiquities, students of comparative religion and the migration of symbols, latter-day mystics interested in magic and the occult, could loose hours and hours rapt in close contemplation of this spectacular book. A must-have!Similar in scope, containing many of the same plates and including a few others exclusively, is "The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century" by Stanislas Klossowski de Rola.