The frog

[Jorge_Stolfi]

In the last two, the frog is symbolizing prima materia.

I have been fond of chemistry since I was ~13, when I got a toy chemistry set for Christmas.  I wish I could have the time, knowledge, and resources to decipher alchemical treatises like that one, to infer what reactions and substances they were referring to.   Unfortunately most people who study those manuscripts are historians and paleographers who don't know much of chemistry; and there are few if any competent chemists who can even read those books.

(For instance, my guess about the Emerald Tablet is that it is talking about the element mercury,.  It dissolves gold and silver - often referred to as "Sun" and "Moon", it seems -- and can be recovered by distillation at a few hundred degrees, leaving behind any impurities dissolved in it, and decomposing its oxides.  The vapor is invisible but it is still mercury that will condense when cooled: "that which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above", etc.  Not coincidentally, the fist known Arabic version of the Tablet dates from about the time when Jabir bin Hayyam is reported to have perfected the still or alembic, like the one shown in that image, and used it to discover sulfuric and other acids...)

All the best, --jorge