Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[Barbrey]

Hi nablator!  You have to remember that the Book of the Holy Trinity seems to have about 20 different versions - I try if I can to use the earliest, the Munich version, which Barbara Obrist dated to 1420.

BSB Cgm 598 I suppose? There are several pictures of the hermaphrodite+dragon from various mss. of the Book of the Holy Trinity in Barbara Obrist's book Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique but not from this one. In which book/article did you find the 1420 date? If it is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., it is the Nürnberg ms. 80061 that is dated 1420 so it is the earlier one maybe. It is the one that I linked in my post.

On the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. they date the Munich ms. to the second half of the 14th century.

[...] Munich BSB, cgm. 598, which can be dated after 1467

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On the Wikimedia page that displays the double-headed androgyne + dragon, 1417 (no other source has the 1417 date, so it is probably an error). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Nevertheless, in the Munich version, the dragon is green, as are most subsequent dragons going forward.

The dragons are very similar (because one ms. is a copy of the other) and only the wing is green on these pages:




Am I looking at the wrong pages or the wrong manuscript?

Adam McLean calls this one the Luciferic hermaphrodite and it has different properties, and that’s indeed a green wing.

"Hermaphrodite" and "androgyne" are not good descriptions of what actually looks like conjoined twins in the Aurora consurgens and a crowned two-headed monster with wings (therefore "Luciferian") in the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit.

No, you are right, it should be Nürnberg. Sorry, that’s what I get for writing off the top of my head. I did get my pictures from Adam McLean’s site on The Two Hermaphrodites here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Re naming conventions: every scholar I’ve read calls them  hermaphrodite, androgyne or rebus; you can find an alternative if you like. The article bi3mw just posted goes into at length the origins of this figure.