Well my suggestion would be to go straight to Frances Yates (ie "Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age", "Roscrucian Enlightenment") for an understanding of historical context of Alchemy then to Stuart Clark's "Thinking With Demons" for a more mdoern take on the associated issues linked to alchemy in practice during the early modern period as integrated with other social phenomena like the inquisition, Spanish Inquisition etc etc.
On the same path I have a fascinating little artle by a South African woman on Alchemy as a form of proto-hypertext with multiple levels of reading, non linear intertextuality etc which had all sorts of interesting little interpretations of alchemy in historical context and socio-cultural application. Its buried in a filing cabinet in my office some where and I can't find it at the mo. Anyone have any idea which article I am thinking of? Its very recent, as in past couple of years.
David
> Ty Falk <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Greetings!
>
> I'm writing because I require some assistance on a little project I'm
> working on. It is far larger in scope then anything I've attempted
> before. One of the aspects of mysticism that I've begun to teach as a
> normal part of my coursework is that of Alchemy, both as a system for
> internal change, as well as an external pseudoscience and system of
> allegory. The more I read about it, the more fascinating it becomes.
> What I noticed, however, is that, at least from what I've seen, the
> treatment of alchemy and the people who practice it is always as a
> side note in some other context, such as the exodus from Spain as a
> result of the Inquisition. I have yet to really come across anything
> that gives alchemy real spotlight treatment (granted, I've only really
> begun to traverse some of my newer sources). I want to do something
> that gives a relatively scholarly history of the concept from the
> scientific as well as mystical aspects, with a second section on
> practical application for the modern practitioner.
>
> Now I can handle the section on application well enough, it's the
> historical portion I'm finding daunting. I think the sort of
> symbolic/interpretive approach of, among others, Geertz, will be
> rather useful for doing this because of how allegorical and symbolic
> the tradition of Alchemy is. And I'm not above splashing some other
> theory here and there where needed. So in that vein I had a few
> questions.
>
> Firstly, has this been done before? As I said I have found a few books,
> but they
> seem to either treat the subject as secondary, or be rather limited in
> scope. (I have The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century
> by Grossinger on order, just waiting for it to come in.)
>
> Other then Hutton's book "The Triumph of the Moon", Adler's "Drawing
> Down the Moon", and Barrett's "A Brief History of Secret Societies",
> are there any modern texts you would recommend on the subject or that
> you think would give me a better context in which to do my analysis? I
> was already shown from this very site:
> http://www.alchemy-bibliography.co.uk/newthismonth.shtml
>
> There is a fair bit of occult literature that is circulated in
> electronic form. For example, one of the classic texts is "The
> Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz". This can be a difficult
> book to find a printed copy of, but is readily available on line from
> sites such as:
>
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/ and
> http://www.alchemywebsite.com/index.html
>
>
> How concerned should I be about being able to find physical copies to
> cite with regards to some of these texts? How should I treat different
> editions or translations?With regards to sources, how deep should I go
> check validity? Should I go back to a sources' sources'? Or would just
> the sources of the book I'm using suffice?
>
> Anything else you can think off of the top of your head, people or
> resource wise, that might be of use to me?
>
> Preciate it!
>
> Ty Falk
> ~~~~~~~
> Erisian
> Anthropologist
> Grand Rapids, MI
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