The Artwork of Splendor Solis, the Most Wonderful Illuminated Alchemical Manuscript of Them All

When it was pub­lished within the Unit­ed States in 1998, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philoso­pher’s Stone was reti­tled Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sor­cer­er’s Stone. The jokes concerning the Amer­i­can learn­ing pub­lic’s appar­ent aller­gy to the very phrase philoso­pher write them­selves, however the change was additionally unfor­tu­nate for extra sub­stan­tial rea­sons. A “sor­cer­er’s stone” had no cul­tur­al res­o­nance in any respect, the place­because the philoso­pher’s stone had been wanted since, on the very lat­est, the daybreak of the fourth cen­tu­ry. Some sources declare that human knowl­fringe of it goes all the way in which again to Adam, who obtained the phrase direct­ly from God. In any case, it’s no mys­tery why the philoso­pher’s stone has lengthy cap­tured the col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion of human­i­ty, giv­en that it’s reput­ed to show lead into gold.

Among the many rumored pos­ses­sors of the philoso­pher’s stone by­out his­to­ry is Salomon Tris­mosin, a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Renais­sance alchemist who taught the influ­en­tial physi­cian Paracel­sus. He’s additionally cred­it­ed, no less than in leg­ends, with writ­ing Splen­dor Solis, a e-book as soon as no much less desir­ready than the subsequent Har­ry Pot­ter vol­ume in that sequence’ hey­day.

Noth­ing so mun­dane as “a listing of instruc­tions for whip­ping up a lit­tle alchem­i­cal soup within the hope of discover­ing a nugget of arti­fi­cial gold within the pot on the finish,” writes Jörg Völl­nagel at Medievalists.web, it moderately “units forth the phi­los­o­phy of alche­my, a world view accord­ing to which the human being (the alchemist) exists and acts in har­mo­ny with nature, respect­ing divine cre­ation and on the identical time inter­ven­ing within the course of­es underneath­ly­ing that cre­ation, all of the whereas sup­port­ing its development with the assistance of alche­my.”

As “a — or moderately the – prime examination­ple of an illu­mi­nat­ed alchem­i­cal man­u­script,” Splen­dor Solis has drawn the fas­ci­na­tion of even such mod­ern fig­ures as William However­ler Yeats, James Joyce, and Umber­to Eco. It additionally turned an impor­tant work within the sym­bol­ic-cul­tur­al uni­verse of Carl Jung, who, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jun­gian Ana­lysts, “rec­og­nized the alchem­i­cal motifs and sym­bols as expres­sions of the indi­vid­u­a­tion course of, the trans­for­ma­tion and inte­gra­tion of the psy­che. Splen­dor Solis, with its wealthy sym­bol­ism and professional­discovered alle­gories, res­onat­ed with Jung’s underneath­stand­ing of the arche­typ­al imagery and the trans­for­ma­tive nature of the human psy­che, con­tribut­ing to his the­o­ries on ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy.”

None of that is to say that Jung, or many oth­er esteemed intel­lec­tu­als of the previous cou­ple of cen­turies, believed that base met­als actual­ly could possibly be trans­mut­ed to gold and sil­ver. However they did underneath­stand that the phe­nom­e­non of alche­my has a lot to disclose concerning the irre­solv­ready exis­ten­tial nego­ti­a­tion between man and the world he inhab­its. It res­onates so deeply that it’s even labored in chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, and to nice com­mer­cial suc­cess at that. You’ll be able to even really feel a few of it simply by gaz­ing upon Splen­dor Solis’ 22 gold-high­gentle­ed, book-of-hours-style illus­tra­tions on the site of M. Moleiro, pub­lish­er of 1 fac­sim­i­le edi­tion. And who is aware of? If, as on the planet of Har­ry Pot­ter, the philoso­pher’s stone additionally grants immor­tal­i­ty, per­haps Salomon Tris­mosin nonetheless walks some­the place amongst us.

You’ll be able to view pages of Splen­dor Solis on Wikipedia. Enter the picture gallery right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Gallery of Fan­tas­ti­cal Alchem­i­cal Draw­ings

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Fable­i­cal ‘Thinker’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put On-line (Together with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Had been Made with Alche­my

Movies Recre­ate Isaac Newton’s Neat Alche­my Exper­i­ments: Watch Sil­ver Get Turned Into Gold

Hun­dreds of Medieval Med­ical Man­u­scripts with Unusual Cures Get Dig­i­tized & Put On-line: From Leech­es to Crushed Weasel Tes­ti­cles

The Imaginative and prescient­ary Mys­ti­cal Artwork of Carl Jung: See Illus­trat­ed Pages from the Purple E book

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.