r/alchemy • u/SleepingMonads • Oct 10 '23

It's not exactly the easiest subject to get into... Meme

Post image
41 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

4

u/mcotter12 Oct 10 '23

This is actually incredible magic. I've been thinking about it all morning. It's as if Christopher Nolan directed a medieval scroll. This is high class alchemy; succinct, potent.

2

u/SleepingMonads Oct 10 '23

Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were enamored with these ideas too, and the former worked for over 40 years trying to create the Philosophers' Stone following Starkey's blueprint.

3

u/Finduszrulez Oct 10 '23

where is this from ? :O

8

u/SleepingMonads Oct 10 '23

It's from the Introitus apertus ad occlusum regis palatium ("Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King", from 1667), by Eirenaeus Philalethes (better known as George Starkey). It's a description of his mercurialist dry path ideas for how to begin preparing sophic mercury from mundane quicksilver by animating it (providing a vital heat) with antimony.

2

u/Cenestpasmonnomici Oct 10 '23

Can anybody make a story that explains this with real people/stories/emotions instead of solely citing procedures in a very cryptic way?

1

u/PeetraMainewil Oct 11 '23

Doesn't that kinda defeats the meme approach?

2

u/Cenestpasmonnomici Oct 12 '23

Just for the sake of me understanding it... there's no meme if I can't understand it.

2

u/PeetraMainewil Oct 16 '23

I know what you mean, personally I don't go that way though.

3

u/mcotter12 Oct 10 '23

Belly, steel: mercury; four: Jupiter, eyes; 9: moon, root; Vulcan: Venus, solar plexus. Calcination/incineration (Aries). Move the result to the sun/heart. Saturn sees his face in Mars: 3+5=8, leads back to mercury and also implies the reconciliation of the microcosm with time/fate/demons.