
The Surreal Art of Alchemical Diagrams - prismatic
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-surreal-art-of-alchemical-diagrams/
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npiazza83
[https://c6.staticflickr.com/9/8839/28644483981_4406f4a99d_c....](https://c6.staticflickr.com/9/8839/28644483981_4406f4a99d_c.jpg)

Here we see a sixteenth century rendering of the brothers Mario with their
shadow counterparts illustrated. The crown placed above Waluigi depicts the
then nascent understanding that society must irrevocably trend toward its own
consecration of power into nothing. More Borges than Barthes, Waluigi does not
deconstruct his counterpart. He IS the labyrinth.

~~~
long
That the entire organized affair -- the chaos of Waluigi notwithstanding --
takes a back seat to the foundation of rooted plants in the foreground
suggests that the apparent social structure on offer, a hierarchical and
linear assemblage, is finally an illusion; we cannot overcome the complex and
rhizomatic nature of reality.

~~~
IANAD
Or, it could be that the king and his wierdo companion that likes to wear a
helmet like Mercury fell into a river. So, the king told his servants to hold
up his robe up to dry in the breeze, and he threw his crown up to them while
they took a swim, realizing only too late that the floor of the river was
covered in some sort of icky water plant.

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david-given
See also Melissa Scott's alchemical space opera trilogy, _The Roads of Heaven_
: _Five Twelths of Heaven_ , _Silence in Solitude_ and _Empress of Earth_.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Alchemical space opera. Spaceships fly because
their keels are impregnated by Philospher's Tincture, which always seeks to
return to the celestial world. By stimulating it with a harmonium tuned to the
music of the spheres, it can overcome the drag of the ship's mundane matter
and rises towards heaven...

And if you think that's weird, you should see the FTL drive. Let's just say
that the alchemical diagrams pictured in this article are a key to it, and
using the right symbology is _vitally important_.

Excellent books, but very hard to find on paper. Luckily, the author has a
revised version available in ebook form.

~~~
duskwuff
> Alchemical space opera.

A genre which has also been explored in the interactive fiction game "Hadean
Lands" (hadeanlands.com).

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rdtsc
This is (was) an another blog of obscure and fantastic images of that sort:

[http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/](http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/)

It has been around for years but unfortunately it looks like it stopped being
updated last September.

But you can navigate through old posts to find engravings of Japanese
falconry, medieval hand combat techniques, Baltic Heraldry
([http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/search?updated-
max=2014-09-...](http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/search?updated-
max=2014-09-08T22:55:00%2B10:00&max-results=6&start=8&by-date=false)),
zoomorphic caligraphy ( [http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/search?updated-
max=2014-07-...](http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/search?updated-
max=2014-07-29T00:00:00%2B10:00&max-results=6&start=11&by-date=false) ), 16th
Century Book of Commets ( [http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2013/09/comet-
sketches.html](http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2013/09/comet-sketches.html) )
and so on.

Map Sea Monsters is one of my favorite:

[http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2013/08/map-
monsters.html](http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2013/08/map-monsters.html)

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bathMarm0t
If you're interested in why anyone would draw things like this, give Jung a
read. His "Alchemical Studies" is chock full of diagrams, in addition to in
depth explanations of the symbology and relations between the figures. It's
mythological and religious in nature. The alchemists were kind of like nascent
scientists, and it's extremely interesting to see how people back then
thought. Fair warning: the rabbit hole goes very, very deep (you should
probably read a few other works by him first for any of this to make sense:
Symbols of Transformation and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious), so
just be prepared for the long haul.

~~~
Jach
I had a professor really into this way of thinking (it frustrated students who
didn't "get it" to no end), he had us read The Waking Dream by Ray Grasse. I
thought that book was a great introduction to the symbol-minded way of
thinking that typically seems so foreign to us modern educated techies.

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kowdermeister
Wow, this whole site is full of little treasures :) THX, bookmarked.

