Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[nablator]

Addendum: Rupescissa, for example, saw the distillation as the third stage of the process to the philosopher's stone. Here again an allegorical connection to Christ is established.

Tara Nummedal (2013), Alchemy and Religion in Christian Europe, Ambix, p.314

The fourteenth-century Franciscan John of Rupescissa offers only one example from this rich tradition. In his striking interpretation of an earlier alchemical author, pseudo-Arnald of Villanova, Rupescissa likens the third stage of the philosophers' stone, a distillation, to the crucifixion. Observing the digestion of alchemical mercury and the ascent of its vapours to the head of the alembic, Rupescissa saw Christ's ascension on the cross: “mercury is placed in the bottom of the vessel for dissolution,” he wrote, “because what ascends from there is pure and spiritual, and converted into powdery air and exalted in the cross of the head of the alembic just like Christ, as master Arnald [of Villanova] says.” Likewise, the alchemical vessel that enclosed the final stage of the red stone resembled “Christ inside the sepulcher.” Once the flames had brought out the internal redness of the stone, the alchemist was to remove the red stone from its vessel so that it would “ascend from the sepulcher of the Most Excellent King, shining and glorious, resuscitated from the dead and wearing a red diadem, just as Master Arnald has attested.” Although Rupescissa spun out this analogy in words, it appeared in image as well, for example, in the successful Rosarium philosophorum, which appeared in print in 1550 as the second volume of a compendium of alchemical texts.

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Interestingly, two of the nymphs wear large diadems at the bottom of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Who knows if that has something to say.

About the diadems, I found these interesting references in C.-G. Jung's analysis of alchemico-Christian symbols:

As the alchemists strove to produce an incorruptible “glorified body,” they would, if they were successful, attain that state in the albedo, where the body became spotless and no longer subject to decay. The white substance of the ash was therefore described as the “diadem of the heart,” and its synonym, the white foliated earth (terra alba foliata), as the “crown of victory.”

Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. This is from Senior, De chemia, p. 41: “The white foliated earth is the crown of victory, which is ash extracted from ash, and their second body.”

In Aurora [consurgens] the crown is given to the regina austri, Sapientia, who says to her beloved: "I am the crown wherewith my beloved is crowned," so that the crown serves as a connection between the mother and her son-lover.
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The soul descending from heaven is identical with the dew, the aqua divina, which, as Senior, quoting Maria, explains, is "Rex de coelo descendens." Hence this water is itself crowned and forms the "diadem of the heart," in apparent contradiction to the earlier statement that the ash was the diadem.
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The text of the Rosarium continues with a quotation from Morienus: "Despise not the ash, for it is the diadem of thy heart." This ash, the inert product of incineration, refers to the dead body, and the admonition establishes a curious connection between body and heart which at that time was regarded as the real seat of the soul. The diadem refers of course to the supremely kingly ornament. Coronation plays some part in alchemy—the Rosarium, for instance, has a picture of the Coronatio Mariae, signifying the glorification of the white, moonlike (purified) body.

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