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Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
- Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
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RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
pjburkshire > 18-03-2024, 07:51 PM
(19-12-2020, 06:44 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you, Matthias!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (aer, ignis, aqua, terra, lapis) is a decent match for the Voynich hypothetical "five elements" in f77r
This five elements imagery between the woman on the left and the man on the right I do agree with! But I see it as part of pregnancy, not of a distillation process. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
pjburkshire > 18-03-2024, 08:06 PM
(01-07-2021, 03:26 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree, if there is reference to quintessence in the VM then this is probably the most obvious place to look. Note that the male figure is most likely breathing into the pipe - look at his puffed cheeks. "Breath" can mean creation, life.
I had not noticed that before. There was a lot of uncertainty in earlier centuries about what and how much the father contributed to a pregnancy. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
Barbrey > 23-10-2024, 10:02 AM
In answer to R. Sale's question above about what alchemical symbolism is present in the VMS, I believe one strong possibility, even probability, lies in the entire page of f79r, which tells the story of Hermaphroditus, a tale so ubiquitous in alchemical literature that almost no alchemical text would be complete without it.
The story is not clear on first sight because of what R. Sale calls the authors' "trickery". A good example of this is the nymphs themselves. In my opinion, they've got substance but no form unless it is bestowed upon them by their context, narrative or accoutrements. Their pregnant bellies are at base a symbol of "life". In the first few Zodiac pages, they are encased in barrels, signifying that whatever substance they are composed of is likely watery. Aether, or the quintessence, is sometimes thought of as a fine air, but according to Aristotle and Rupescissa after him, it is actually watery. Thus, each nymph is representative of the water of life, which everything in the heavens is composed of according to these philosophers. They hold stars, and this gives us a clue to their form. In the "Zodiac", they are stars, composed of the water of life, or quintessence.
But they are shapechangers. They can be male or female, gods, goddesses, angels, stars, souls, planets, etc., but you cannot identify their form except by their possessions and context. Moreover, another characteristic of quintessence, particularly for angels, is that it is immutable but always changing, so if you identify a character in a narrative, the character will never look the same if it appears twice or more.
The following interpretation owes much to Koen and his blog posts on the Actors of the VMS. In them, he identifies two Ovidian stories in the balneological pages of the VMS. As a student of literature, narrative and semiotics, I too believed there were narratives in this section, perhaps from myth, Ovid or Boccacio, but even then I was sceptical when I first read these posts. It was only when I read the stories themselves side by side with the illustrations and Koen's notes that I became convinced he was truly onto something.
With these qualifications and attributes stated, I'll address the page itself. (I would really appreciate it if a moderator could insert a picture of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. here because it's not working for me!). There are five main images running down the left side of the page, corresponding to the main events of the Ovidian story of Hermaphroditus.
1. In Ovid, a handsome youth, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, encounters an enchanting fountain/pool. In the VMS, the first illustration is of a nymph under a fountain of water. Remember that nymphs can be male.
2. In Ovid, the fountain belongs to Salmacis, a naiad. She spots the youth and blushes with desire for him. In the VMS, her eyes look upwards as if spotting him and her cheeks are red.
3. In Ovid, she grabs the youth (one gets the impression of rape) and prays to the gods to join them together forever. In the VMS, she reaches across the running vertical stream of water and grasps his arm. Notice that Hermaphroditus and Salmacis are now in separate pods opposite each other.
4. In Ovid, Hermaphroditus is angry and resists, trying to withdraw from her, but it is too late. In the VMS, we see the characters' red faces, this time in anger, and they seemingly have drawn apart. But notice the pods! The pods have joined and become one! Two conflicting substances in one form - the epitome of the alchemical marriage. Poor Hermaphroditus.
5. In Ovid, the transformation is complete, though Hermaphroditus does get granted a curse on the pool that anyone that enters it will become effeminate. Various illustrators show the hermaphrodite as either two bodied, two halves joined together, or as either a youth or maiden with both vulva and penis. In the VMS, we find a small man (possibly effeminate) half submerged in a green (not blue) pool, lounging against a log or beam, his arm crooked in a chevron ^-shape with a spike running through it. Thus, although the hermaphrodite has no genitals, in the chevron ^ and spike we get both phallic and vulva symbols, which reveal Hermaphroditus' new gender.
Why the green water? In many alchemical emblems of the hermaphrodite, s/he is standing upon a green dragon. The VMS green pool is not dragon-shaped, but nevertheless probably identifies for us the same thing: prima materia. The rebis, hermaphrodite, arises from prima materia. This is possibly thematic of the whole balneological section, blue water is heavenly, green is earthly prima materia from which the heavenly water must be distilled.
Also, there is a second spike much further down the log. Two spikes in a beam in the 15th century symbolize Christ's stigmata of the hands. And that is exactly what the other alchemical texts of the time were doing with the hermaphrodite and Christ - see Leah De Vun's "The Jesus Hermaphrodite". I would not be so persuaded of this except that in Koen's two stories he also has anomalies that could be perceived as stigmata: the bloody flower head aka the crown of thorns, and the possibly battered animal body, aka Christ's lashes. I can write much more on this but will leave it here.
I hope I have made a good case! If anyone wants to read more, please see Thomas Willard's "Ovid and the Alchemists", Leah De Vun's "The Jesus Hermaphrodite" and "Prophecy, Alchemy and the End of Time", Barbara Obrist's "Visualization in Medieval Alchemy" and anything you can find about Jean Rupescissa and quintessence as well as anything on Aurora Consurgens and The Book of the Holy Trinity. I found all of these online but if you have trouble, let me know and I'll search out the links. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
Barbrey > 28-10-2024, 04:15 AM
bi3mw said: "A simple observation: On 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. similar processes seem to take place ( from the blue "canopy" / blue liquid to the green "pool" / green liquid ). Can this be coincidence ?"
In my opinion, it is not a coincidence at all. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows us the hermaphtodite as the philosopher's stone or rebis, as I outline above. OTOH, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows us the mermaid, or melusine, as the philosopher's stone, but not within an Ovidian story; instead, the context here is religious. While the tale of Melusine is most commonly associated with French aristocratic lineage, the alchemical Melusine is a different matter. This is the alchemical marriage of body to soul. Nobody explains this better than Paracelsus; the idea seems to be attributed to him but who knows how old it was. At any rate, The Little Mermaid is a direct consequence of this alchemical idea!
In Roger Bacon's Opus Majus, he explains the evolution of religion, from animal worship and the Egypyians, to the half-animals of the pagans, to the Jews, to the Christians. So when I saw this sequence after having just read the passage, I was struck by the similarity.
At the top of the page, you have the figure with the cross. This is Christianity (or Ecclesia, as Koen has suggested). Christianity is built on the foundation of the Old Testament. The ring in the dead figure's hand I have identified as King Solomen's ring, signifying either Wisdom or Judaism, in other areas of the VMS. There are a lot of pipes leading down to our pagan mermaid, possibly signifying dead ends or defunct religions between.
The mermaid herself is in a green pool of prima materia (just like Hermaphroditus in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) with the bodies of animals. Her human form represents her soul, rising up out of her animal tail, towards the reigning religion of Christianity. As Melissa Ridley Elmer’s says “Through her place in the alchemical lexicon, a tradition with pagan beginnings but, ultimately, developed and dominated by clerics of the Church and, later, physicians in the Middle Ages and Renaissance—like Paracelsus (1493–1541), with whose work she is especially associated—Melusine becomes a form imbued with the promise of enlightenment and salvation, a dual figure representing the union of the natural and supernatural worlds. Like the figure of Christ in the imita- tio Christi, the alchemical Melusine serves as a bridge between the visible and invisible, between the explicable and the inexplicable, between immortality and humanity, and between the sacred and the profane. In representing the mingling of the natural and supernatural worlds and the fairy and the ordinary, Melusine ultimately figures both the union of pagan and Christian beliefs and the transformation of the pagan symbol of the siren into a Christian one of duality and enlightenment.” (Ridley Elmes, Melissa, “The Alchemical Transformation of Melusine”, 2) -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
Barbrey > 28-10-2024, 09:53 PM
I don’t remember, R. Sale, and the free copy of the article I found has been taken down. It’s $40 on Brill (which my small college’s library does not have access to). Btw, I have read bits and pieces of your own analysis of this f79v and don’t discount it. You could well be right, and there are synergies between the two interpretations anyway. What I find fascinating is that alchemy seems to have entangled itself with all the more classical medieval interpretations, especially religion, but also heraldry and myth/legend. Whenever someone interprets images one way, I seem to find an alternative alchemical explanation without even expecting one.
I think in this case, though, this analysis does help explain the similarities between 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. . With the way the narratives seem to work, the human Melusine could possibly even be travelling up to become a Christian soul, as Hermaphroditus travels down to become the hermaphrodite. There might be a comment here about the nature of prima materia too, which can be found in almost anything. In f79r, the green pool contains a tree trunk. In f79v, the green pool contains animals in the water and out of it. So they might be emphasizing that prima materia can be found in both vegetative and animal sources. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
Barbrey > 30-10-2024, 04:37 AM
Another thing about the Melusine: I don’t think we can do justice to her symbolism without taking into account Pisces. As with so much of the VMS, symbols or themes reverberate sometimes dozens of pages apart; they don’t tend to be isolated but the patterns can only be found in the most minute of details.
First all, the Pisces fish tail and the Melusine fish tail have an uncanny resemblance.
Secondly, in the inner ring of Pisces, the barrels are on their sides, as if the nymphs are swimming.
Thirdly, many of them are barely in their barrels, some are even wholly out, as if they’ve escaped.
Just like our Melusine escaping her tail (or a whole fish, but I think we’re still meant to equate the image with Melusine).
Fourthly, the barrels are green, just the prima materia pool.
In my Hermaphroditus post, I already stated my belief that the nymphs are basically substances or essences, in the Aristotelian sense, and while always symbols of life or being, that can be modified by their context, narrative or accoutrements. In the zodiac page, because of their containment in barrels as if they’re made of water, we can at least tentatively identify their substance as the water of life.
But now the barrels are green and the nymphs heavily identified with Melusine; I posit it’s the same principal but without the blatant religious context of the Melusine page.
The whole goal of alchemy at this time period, aside from creating gold, was to extract the water of life, a heavenly substance, from prima materia, an earthly substance, by distilling it many times over. Did the alchemists believe this elixir, or quintessence, could bestow immortality? Some undoubtedly did, but not all. Rupescissa himself, who experimented with it and then popularized the whole idea, noticed the preserving effects of distilled alcohol and believed he had hit upon the earthly equivalent to the heavenly water of life, but the goal was to prolong life(because, after all, biblical personages lived hundreds of years so this was eminently possible, a secret that was lost).
So once again, we have the heaven-like substance, the water of life nymphs, emerging from earthly prima materia. And thus, modern chemistry was born along with Rupescissa’s experiments.
I think I will post some of this content in the Images thread. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
Barbrey > 30-10-2024, 05:41 AM
Lastly, before starting a new thread in Imagery, after dwelling a lot on prima materia and the colour green, I wonder about the rest of the VMS and if this could hold true throughout. I’ve never paid attention to the plants; I have no expertise or interest, and decided early on they might be mnemonic devices. But after G. Koen’s survey of the colours blue and yellow finding them vastly out of proportion to the colours real plants would display, making them fantastical, I wonder if we should not instead be concentrating on the greens, almost entirely in the leaves, which with a few exceptions look the most real to me anyway.
The authors might be identifying the best parts of plants to serve as prima materia for distillation purposes. I haven’t surveyed the plants, but a brief look at the “small plants” section shows an astonishing variety of leaf shapes, and moreover leaves seem to make up a disproportionate number as compared to blooms. I’ve also heard that identifying plants by leaf appearance is more reliable than blooms, because no species of leaf is quite like another and even in fall and winter they can be identified when flowers aren’t blooming.
Just a thought. -
RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
nablator > 30-10-2024, 02:16 PM
(23-10-2024, 10:02 AM)Barbrey Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why the green water? In many alchemical emblems of the hermaphrodite, s/he is standing upon a green dragon. The VMS green pool is not dragon-shaped, but nevertheless probably identifies for us the same thing: prima materia. The rebis, hermaphrodite, arises from prima materia. This is possibly thematic of the whole balneological section, blue water is heavenly, green is earthly prima materia from which the heavenly water must be distilled.
Hi Barbrey,
About the green water... The hermaphrodite/rebis is standing upon a dragon in the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, but the dragon is not green. Its back is covered with something green. Is it a weird wing or a leaf? A typical illustration: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I suppose it could be identified/confounded with the green lion in Morienus' Liber de compositione Alchemiae (that calls it a glass), illustrated in the Rosarium Philosophorum (1550):
The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (17th century) is certainly green but there is no hermaphrodite standing on it. Confusing imagery, as always. Is it the Water or Mercury of the Philosophers and also the prima materia? Maybe.
From the Rosarium Philosophorum You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: "Of Our Mercury which is the Green Lion Devouring the Sun". I have not looked for the source for this part yet - the Rosarium, as its name indicates, is a hodgepodge of various texts, quoted without attribution.
Quote:In the first of the sequence, the fountain pours forth the three substances that supposedly flow from the centre of the soul. These are 'Lac Virginis' (the Virgin's milk), 'Acetum fontis' (the spring of vinegar) and 'Aqua Vitae' (the water of life). The latter represents the force within man, that which originally exists. The other two represent, once again, a contribution from both the feminine, receptive, lunar forces, and those of the penetrating, sharp, solar male. These mingle and mix in the lower part of the soul - the fountain's basin - and the substance created is known as the water of Mercury. The latter stages of the alchemical process take place in these waters.
![[Image: msferguson6_p161.jpg]](https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/images/exhibitions/month/msferguson210/msferguson6_p161.jpg)
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RE: Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS
bi3mw > 30-10-2024, 02:48 PM
(30-10-2024, 02:16 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From the Rosarium Philosophorum You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: "Of Our Mercury which is the Green Lion Devouring the Sun".
Quote:Vitriol is the most important liquid in alchemy, bar none, serving as a catalyst for all subsequent reactions. It was distilled from an oily, green sulphate substance that formed naturally from the weathering of sulfur-bearing gravel. This Green Vitriol is symbolized by the Green Lion in alchemical drawings.....