John Dee

This paper situates biblical post-apocalyptic imagination and climate-inflected literature within the emergent field of the blue humanities, foregrounding oceans and watery systems as ethical, theological, and planetary agents. Drawing on the work of Steve Mentz, Stacy Alaimo, and Elizabeth DeLoughrey, it argues that water—fluid, mobile, and boundary-crossing—offers a powerful medium for rethinking ecological crisis through Christian theological and posthumanist lenses. From the storm-shattered island of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the enchanted seas of C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, maritime spaces become sites where moral agency, vulnerability, and environmental precarity are staged.
Rejecting the “terrestrial bias” that privileges stability and mastery, the paper reads scriptural waters—the primordial deep, the Flood, the Red Sea, Jonah’s engulfing waves, and Revelation’s prophetic seas—not as static symbols but as dynamic actors that unsettle anthropocentric frameworks. Contemporary climate fiction echoes this logic: rising seas, intensified storms, and collapsing coastlines expose human dependence on systems that resist control. Through concepts such as Alaimo’s “wet ontologies” and Mentz’s “tidal thinking,” the paper shows how watery worlds reshape theological themes of creation, judgment, lament, and hope.
Attentive to environmental justice, the paper also addresses maritime migration and sea-level rise as narratives of unequal suffering, linking DeLoughrey’s oceanic histories to Christian ethics of hospitality and global responsibility. Ultimately, it identifies a repertoire of blue theologies—practices of lament, humility, and resilient hope—through which climate literature cultivates ethical and spiritual response to planetary change.

This paper explores locally-situated logics of ethical judgment underpinning practices of road building in Nepal, and how those logics are attuned to the challenges of navigating complex socio-political dynamics, socio-natural environments, and regional political economies. In so doing it challenges homogenizing discourses of corruption that commonly surround infrastructure development. Building on ethnographic research on rural road construction in two agrarian districts, we argue that different understandings of who is responsible for contributing to infrastructure development, and what forms of private gain from public road budgets are usti able, do not always conform to o cial understandings of the public good. Such discrepancies arise, we suggest, from the practical role that certain forms of rule breaking play in getting roads built, as well as from the contested legitimacy of the rules themselves. The politics of participatory development bring to light the ambivalent morality of certain forms of public/private transgressions, and tensions between competing imaginaries of the "public" nature of "local" rural roads-which constitute important, and largely overlooked, dynamics in infrastructure development. Attention

If the Alchemical Wedding is the Magnum Opus of the Rosicrucians, then the novel The Angel of the West Window is the Magnum Opus of author Gustav Meyrink. The book describes the symbolism, the detours and the ultimate journey to the alchemical goal  -  the Alchemical Wedding. And more than that, this book combines the messages of all nine previous Gustav Meyrink books reviewed by me on Academia.edu, plus a posthumously published book that has not yet been reviewed here. The Angel of the West Window can, should, be called the culmination of his oeuvre.

Wenn die alchemistische Hochzeit das Magnum Opus der Rosenkreuzer ist, dann ist der Roman “Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster” das Magnum Opus des Autors Gustav Meyrink. Das Buch beschreibt die Symbolik, die Umwege und die letztendliche Reise zum alchemistischen Ziel - die alchemistische Hochzeit. Und mehr als das, das Buch vereint die Kernaussagen aller neun vorherigen Bücher von Gustav Meyrink, die auf Academia.edu besprochen wurden, sowie ein posthum veröffentlichtes Buch, das hier noch nicht besprochen wurde. Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster kann als Höhepunkt seines Schaffens bezeichnet werden.

Als de alchemistische bruiloft het Magnum Opus is van de Rozenkruisers, dan is de roman De engel van het westelijk venster het Magnum Opus van auteur Gustav Meyrink. Het boek beschrijft de symboliek, de dwaalwegen en de uiteindelijke tocht naar het alchemistische doel - de alchemistische bruiloft. En méér dan dat, het boek combineert de boodschappen van alle vorige negen Gustav Meyrink boeken die op Academia.edu besproken zijn plus een postuum uitgebracht boek dat hier nog niet besproken is. De engel van het westelijk venster mag de culminatie van zijn oeuvre genoemd worden.

Few images in Christian civilization have captured the imagination of humanity as profoundly as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Reproduced in churches, homes, monasteries, and places of devotion throughout the world—especially in the Philippines, where Christian symbolism occupies a cherished place in family life—the image has become more than a sacred representation of Christ’s final meal with His Apostles. It has evolved into a visual archetype of fellowship, sacrifice, mystery, and divine communion.

Painted between 1495 and 1498 on the wall of the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, Leonardo’s masterpiece is traditionally understood as portraying the dramatic moment described in the Gospel of John (13:21), when Jesus reveals that one among His disciples would betray Him. Yet, beyond its historical and theological meaning, the composition itself appears to invite deeper contemplation.

Leonardo da Vinci was not merely a painter but a Renaissance polymath—an artist, inventor, mathematician, anatomist, engineer, and student of nature. Living during a period deeply influenced by sacred geometry, classical philosophy, and Hermetic currents of thought, Leonardo’s works often reveal layers of symbolism concealed beneath their outward appearance. Whether intentionally or intuitively expressed, his compositions continue to inspire philosophical and esoteric interpretation.

This paper proposes a contemplative reading of The Last Supper through the symbolic lens of the four classical elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—as understood in ancient philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and Western mystery traditions. The arrangement of the twelve Apostles into four groups of three, surrounding the central figure of Christ, presents a symbolic structure that invites reflection on the elemental forces of nature, the triadic principles of manifestation, and the initiatic journey of inner transformation.

This paper presents three original contributions to the study of John Dee's angelic manuscript system, with particular focus on Liber Loagaeth (Sloane MS 3189) as an artifact embedded in a larger intellectual and documentary context. The first contribution is the construction of a chronological diary dataset comprising 89 dated or dateable entries drawn from Dee's primary diary record, spanning the period from Cracow in 1583-1584 to Prague in September 1584. This dataset constitutes the first systematic index of diary references directly pertaining to the composition and reception of Liber Loagaeth, identifying six distinct speaker categoriesincluding Dee himself, Edward Kelley, and four angelic interlocutors-and enabling for the first time a chronological mapping of the manuscript's documentary genesis. The second contribution is a systematic analysis of three candidate manuscript identifications for what the angelic transmissions describe as a promised revelation beyond Loagaeth, here designated the "Mystery of Mysteries." The third contribution is a structural comparison demonstrating seven confirmed correspondences between Loagaeth's mathematical architecture and the organizational principles of Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), including the precise numerical progression 7¹ → 7² → 7⁶ that governs the manuscript's 117,649 total cells. Together, these three contributions situate Liber Loagaeth not as an isolated curiosity but as a component of an internally coherent cosmological project whose full scope has not previously been charted.

Scholarly commentary on John Dee's angelical corpus has long assumed, without systematic demonstration, that the 49 Calls embedded in Liber Loagaeth (Sloane MS 3188-3189, 1583) and the 48 Claves Angelicae (Sloane MS 3191, 1584) constitute related or functionally equivalent texts. Harkness (1999) noted that the two corpora are not identical but offered no quantitative evidence in support of this observation. The present paper provides the first computational demonstration of their structural independence. Drawing on the vocabulary comparison dataset, the Governor diary mapping dataset, the central Governor correspondence dataset, and the morpheme analysis database, this study establishes that the two corpora are vocabulary-disjoint at a corpus-level Jaccard similarity of 0.0047, that zero of 49 Call-Clava pairs share a single lexical token in direct paired comparison, and that the corpora represent distinct registers of the angelical language delivered across separate scribal events separated by approximately one year. These findings resolve a longstanding ambiguity in Enochian studies and have significant implications for future source-critical scholarship on Dee's transmission records.

Liber Loagaeth (Sloane MS 3189), the forty-eight-leaf manuscript of 49 × 49 letter grids produced by John Dee and Edward Kelley between 1583 and 1584, has never been subjected to systematic computational analysis. This paper reports the first such study, conducted over a corpus of 212,082 letters distributed across 96 leaf-sides parsed from Peterson's (2003) cell-by-cell transcription. Three principal findings emerge. First, a confirmed generation formula for the Book of Soygacell[r][c] = (f(cell[r][c-1]) + cell[r-1][c]) mod 23, which achieves 100 % accuracy on all 1,225 interior cells of Soyga Table 1-produces match rates of only 3.71 % to 5.76 % when applied to 15 paired Loagaeth tables, against a random baseline of 4.35 %. Second, the corpus Index of Coincidence ranges from 0.044 to 0.101 across tables (mean IC = 0.082), placing Loagaeth firmly within the natural-language-like statistical zone rather than the random-text zone occupied by Soyga (IC ≈ 0.044). Third, directional reading traversals across Table 1 yield only short coincidental substring matches rather than coherent Enochian vocabulary sequences. These findings collectively establish that Loagaeth is structurally independent of the Soyga algorithm, statistically non-random, and not reducible to any single reading direction.

This summary presents the main points of the work "Monas Hieroglyphica", written by John Dee in 1564:
The author dedicates this work to King Maximilian, offering a mathematical, magical, cabalistic, and anagogical explanation of his hieroglyphic symbol, the "Monad".
The Hieroglyphic Monad: The symbol is composed of simple geometric elements — the point, the straight line, and the circle — which Dee uses to represent creation, the elements, and celestial relationships.

In this chapter from Athanasius Kircher’s Quadrivium, the principle of “the All in the All” is introduced as a foundation of metaphysical thought. Through ideas of unity and infinity, Kircher explores how all diversity originates from and is contained within a single, indivisible source. Drawing on Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and Dionysian traditions, he shows how seemingly opposing forces are unified in the divine, where the maximum and minimum merge. This passage presents a view of reality in which everything shares a single essence, rooted in unity and expressed through an infinite variety of forms.

Cette contribution, mise en acte, propose une lecture d'Arbaʿeen comme phénomène de langage non verbal, où la procession fonctionne comme une forme d'énonciation collective. En mobilisant les sciences du langage, l'anthropologie du rituel et une réflexion philosophique nourrie en partie par la pensée et tradition islamiques , l'analyse y déplace la question du sens de l'énoncé verbal vers l'expérience corporelle, le mouvement et l'espace. Ainsi, l'Arbaʿeen est abordé comme une « syntaxe du corps », où la marche constitue dans une certaine mesure une grammaire tacite du politique, de l'éthique et de la fidélité, comparable à d'autres formes processionnelles religieuses et politiques (jaloos sud-asiatiques, pèlerinages soufis, processions catholiques, marches politiques). La marche y apparaît ainsi comme acte performatif : elle ne formule pas un sens, elle le rend présent. L'étude explore enfin la dimension symbolique et imaginale d'Arbaʿeen, où Karbala se constitue comme espace de présence en acte, ainsi que la production d'un espace public éphémère, non étatique, fondé sur l'hospitalité, le don et l'auto-gestion. Arbaʿeen y est pensé comme une pédagogie collective du temps et de l'espace, où certaines vérités ne se disent pas : elles se vivent et se révèlent dans la présence.

This study proposes that the Shakespearean canon is the product of a collective writing project by members of the School of Night, the intellectual circle centred on Sir Walter Raleigh, including Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Harriot, and George Chapman subsequently edited and unified into a single ideological opus by Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Drawing on stylometric studies, bibliographic analysis, philological examination, and intellectual history, the study traces the distinctive contributions of each member to specific plays, examines the systematic revision of King Lear between quarto and Folio as evidence of de Vere's editorial hand, and interprets the First Folio of 1623 as a deliberate act of political and ideological consolidation. The evidence, taken cumulatively, warrants a serious reconsideration of the Shakespearean canon as a collective rather than individual achievement.

This thesis conducts a systematic examination of the hierarchical frameworks attributed to the demonic realm across historical, theological, and cross-cultural documentary sources. Drawing on primary grimoire literature, ecclesiastical treatises, demonological encyclopaediae, and comparative religious texts, the study maps the organizational structures that successive traditions have ascribed to demonic entities-from the rank-and-file spirits catalogued in the Lesser Key of Solomon to the supreme infernal princes documented in the Pseudo-Monarchia Daemonum and the Dictionnaire Infernal. The research identifies consistent structural logicsmonarchical ordering, assignment of dominions, legionary quantification-recurring across geographically and chronologically distinct traditions, suggesting that the hierarchical impulse in demonology reflects broader human cognitive patterns in the categorization of supernatural adversarial forces. The thesis further presents individual case analyses of the principal demonic figures occupying the highest tiers of these systems, evaluating the consistency, variation, and symbolic weight assigned to each across the documentary record.

This article (in Polish) presents a case study illustrating the phenomenon known as mediated translation, in which a translator translates a text orinally written in language A from an already existing translation into language B, to obtain a mediated translation of the work in "his own" language C. In 1553,  Fadrique Furió y Ceriol published his treatise "Del consejo y consejeros de los principes." His book, originally in Spanish , on political issues popular at the time, earned an international readership and was soon translated into other languages, including at least twice into Italian and into English. In 1563 a Latin translation was made by Simon Schardius, which in turn served as the version for a mediated translation into Polish by Bartosz Paprocki, entitled "Senator" and published in Kraków in 1579. Paprocki was not the only Polish writer to translate Ceriol's treatise. Jakub Górski used one of the Italian translations to produce a second Polish version (published in 1587), and Krzysztof Warszewicki  produced another Latin translation (1597-98), probably straight from the original Spanish text.

GIOR DANO BRUNO 'HOMO UNIVERSALE' L'Autrice propone un vademecum metodologico che consenta anche al lettore non specialista di accostarsi alla filosofia di Bruno. Attraverso un percorso che tiene conto solo delle testimonianze, dei documenti, dell'economia interna dei testi e del modus operandi di Bruno, l'Autrice sottopone a revisione alcune ricostruzioni biografiche ormai sedimentate e propone una raccolta di saggi che riguardano momenti della biografia intellettuale del filosofo, esempi di ermeneutica testuale e sondaggi sulla sua fortuna cinqueseicentesca. Un testo sfrontato nell'approccio ma validato da risultati di ricerca originali, che assolve al compito di proporre un Bruno 'filosofo di professione' e homo universale, per poi lasciare i lettori liberi di accogliere cum grano salis il Bruno che prediligono, vicissitudinario, mercuriale o umbratile, solo per ricordare alcune delle categorie storiografiche più attestate. Candida Carella è ricercatrice presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia della 'Sapienza' -Università di Roma, dove insegna 'Storia della filosofia moderna'. Si occupa di Giordano Bruno, di filosofia dell'Early Modern, della storia culturale e istituzionale della Roma cinque-seicentesca e del rapporto tra filosofia, inquisizione e censura ecclesiastica nella Roma pontificia.

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The British polymath John Dee (1527-1608/1609) was one of his country’s foremost experts in international law. In May 1578, he presented Queen Elizabeth I his legal argument for the British colonization of the Americas: Brytanici imperii limites. As he concludes in document IV of the Limites, the British claim to North America would ‘depende cheiflie vppon our Kinge Arthur his wonderfull foreyn conquests’. The present study therefore attends to the enlistment of folklore and mythology in ongoing processes of settler-colonialism. Following a brief introduction to the Tudor-era reception of King Arthur, it surveys various textual influences on Dee’s Arthurian myth. Through the combined reading of primary and secondary texts, it ascribes to the thirteenth-century Norse 'Vinland sagas' a greater influence on the Limites than has been previously suggested, drawing attention to one passage in particular which has received insufficient scholarly attention. Dee’s Arthurian speculations are then considered as intellectual background for the naming of Newfoundland's Avalon peninsula—a connection proposed, but never substantially explored, in previous studies. Yet, finding the relation between Dee’s Arthur and Newfoundland’s Avalon more discursive than empirical, both drawing on the ‘island imaginary’ of British maritime expansion, it concludes with the suggestion that Dee’s method of historical ‘conjuration’ anticipates later Anglo-American approaches to Vinland.

This paper explores how the classical four elements appear in Enochian Magic through John Dee's diaries. The angelic cosmology aligns with the density order found in earlier occult literature. Visionary episodes (the Four Watchtowers and the Round House) link each element to a compass direction, colour, and an angle of the Great Table. The resulting correspondence (East-Fire, South-Air, West-Water, North-Earth) shows that the elemental framework is a structural core of the Enochian system, echoing earlier Hermetic traditions and informing its internal logic.

Iter Exstaticum Coeleste, published in 1660 as the second edition of Kircher's 1656 work Itinerarium Exstaticum, stands as an imaginative synthesis of early modern astronomy, natural philosophy, and sacred cosmology. Framed as an ecstatic, visionary journey through the heavens, the work draws on the long tradition of philosophical ascent—from Platonic and Neoplatonic models of intellectual illumination to medieval dream visions—while grounding its celestial itinerary in the latest astronomical debates of the seventeenth century. Under the guidance of the angelic companion Cosmiel, the narrator is led beyond the sublunary world and through the planetary spheres, confronting competing cosmological systems, from Ptolemaic geocentrism to Copernican heliocentrism and Tychonic compromise. Rather than offering a single dogmatic resolution, the text stages astronomy as a dynamic field of inquiry, in which mathematical models, sensory experience, and theological commitments must be held in careful balance. Authored by Athanasius Kircher and edited and refined by Gaspar Schott, the Iter Exstaticum Coeleste exemplifies the Jesuit intellectual project of reconciling empirical investigation with divine order. Kircher's expansive curiosity finds here a literary form capable of accommodating wonder, speculation, and disciplined inquiry alike, while Schott's editorial hand lends clarity and structure to the argument. Schott also actively defends Kircher's ideas against ecclesiastical censors who had raised objections to the earlier 1656 work, offering theological and methodological justifications to secure its acceptability within Church oversight. In guiding the reader through the heavens, Kircher and Schott invite contemplation not only of the structure of the cosmos, but of humanity's place within a universe understood as both mathematically ordered and theologically meaningful.

John Dee's system of Enochian Magic took different forms throughout the centuries. The history of its sources may be divided into several distinct periods. This text aims to briefly recount the most notable contributions and give a general overview of the literature on the subject. Records of John Dee's conversations with angels between years 1581-1607 survived in several manuscripts. These are nowadays known to us as Sloane 3188, Sloane 3189, Sloane 3191, Add 36674, as well as Cotton Appendix XLVI parts 1 and 2 (all currently in the British Library in London), and the Ashmole 1790 (in the Bodleian Library, Oxford). See Appendix A for a brief breakdown of their contents. Some existing manuscripts have been significantly damaged. Although some have been reconstructed, many pages are lost completely. Dee admits to have burnt some 9 or so years worth of angelic actions between 1591-1600. 1 Other papers were lost due to a maid of a previous owner of the manuscripts, who used them to line pie plates. 2 What survives is nevertheless a nearly complete corpus of Dee's work with Edward Kelley. A large part of these records (Cotton Appendix MSS) went on to be published by Meric Casaubon in 1659 as A True and Faithful Relation of What

This paper compares the Liber Scientiae Auxilii et Victoriae Terrestris with John Dee's original diary entries. The analysis uncovers six discrepancies in the assignments of the Angels of the Twelve Tribes-most notably for Parts 66, 67-69, 72, and 87-and shows how transcription errors in Dee's manuscripts have been replicated across modern Enochian references. By highlighting these inconsistencies, the study demonstrates the importance of returning to primary sources for accurate Enochian scholarship.

The Great Table is the central matrix of the Enochian magical system, existing in two historic forms: the Original Table (1584) and the Reformed Table (1587). By examining John Dee's manuscripts and related scholarship, this paper identifies 16 minor Governor name mismatches and 23 letter alterations in the Reformed version. Most discrepancies stem from simple phonetic or scribal errors, not purposeful corrections. Angelic testimonies from 1584 already reflect the later-known Reformed arrangement, showing that the layout was intended from the outset. Consequently, the Reformed Tables altered letters are largely transcription mistakes, while its overall ordering is authentic. The reconstructed True Great Table restores the original letters within the correct arrangement, providing a reliable reference for contemporary Enochian study.

This article interrogates the epistemological foundations of John Dee (1527-1608/9), challenging the historiographical bifurcation that separates his mathematical contributions from his occult practices. By situating Dee within the fluid intellectual landscape of the sixteenth century, this study argues that Dee operated within a "hybrid epistemology" where mathematics served not merely as a tool for quantification, but as the primary ontological bridge between the terrestrial and the supercelestial realms. Through an analysis of the Monas Hieroglyphica and the Mathematicall Praeface, this paper demonstrates how Dee constructed a unified theory of authority that synthesized Neoplatonic abstraction with operative magic. It is argued that for Dee, the authority of knowledge was not derived from empirical verification in the modern sense, but from the successful performance of access to hidden, divine structures of reality. Consequently, attempting to categorize Dee through post-Enlightenment binaries of science versus pseudoscience obscures the internal coherence of early modern knowledge regimes. This analysis reveals the mechanisms by which early modern intellectuals navigated patronage, secrecy, and the legitimation of non-empirical knowledge claims.

The amino acid composition of a protein can tell you a lot about it’s health implications. For example a protein source high in sulfur amino acids (methionine and cysteine) can affect methionine metabolism and, ultimately, health. Cysteine is a conditionally essential amino acid, because it can be synthesized endogenously from methionine. Thus, when a dietary protein provides enough methionine beyond the need for cellular protein synthesis, the remaining surplus can be used to synthesize cysteine. Therefore, when a dietary protein has a cysteine concentration in balance with methionine, the need to utilize methionine for its synthesis is reduced. This is often referred to as the methionine-sparing effect of cysteine. Disciplines Food Chemistry | Food Processing | Food Science | Human and Clinical Nutrition | Molecular, Genetic, and Biochemical Nutrition Comments This article is published as Schalinske, K.L. (Fall 2010) High quality proteins can impact circulating homocysteine levels...

We demonstrate a precise mathematical correspondence between the 16th-century Enochian magical system and the prime number sieve structure modulo 30. The Enochian framework, allegedly communicated to John Dee and Edward Kelly by angelic entities, encodes: (1) the 30 "aethers" as the mod 30 prime residue system, (2) the 19 "keys" reflecting the 8th prime number, (3) the constraint ϕ(30) = 8 coprime residue classes, and (4) the 4 "watchtowers" as the 2 2 binary substructure. The probability of this correspondence arising by chance is computed as P < 10-8. We conclude that the Enochian system constitutes either an ancient encoding of number-theoretic knowledge or evidence that deep mathematical structures are accessible through non-ordinary cognitive states.

Dr. John Dee, a renowned mathematician and astrologer, was a close confidant of Queen Elizabeth I. He shared his knowledge of astrology and the occult with her, including the use of a crystal globe for divination. Despite being misunderstood by the public as a magician, Elizabeth valued his intellect and frequently sought his counsel.

Dr. John Dee, a renowned scholar and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, faced financial difficulties despite the Queen’s support. He received gifts and assistance from various nobles, including the Queen, Lord Burghley, and Mr. Richard Candish. Although he was appointed Warden of Manchester College, his personal interactions with the Queen ceased, and he returned to Mortlake, where he passed away four years later.

Сэмуэль Нортон (1548–1621), выдающийся английский алхимик XVI века, в своём труде Возвращение Сатурна на небеса, излагает методику создания Философского камня, как белого, так и красного, с использованием свинца и олова. Дополненный врачом и алхимиком Эдмундом Дином, трактат представляет собой практическое руководство по трансмутации металлов и включает ряд ценных вставок из трудов Джорджа Рипли о возгонке Меркурия и очищении Сатурна. Нортон подробно описывает последовательность алхимических операций, начиная с растворения и очистки металлов и завершая их возвышением и фиксацией в совершенном состоянии. Впервые представленное на русском языке, это издание будет ценным ресурсом для историков алхимии, исследователей герметического искусства и всех, кто интересуется философией трансмутации и западноевропейской эзотерической традицией. строчку. Издание сделано в формате билингва, с добавлением алхимических гравюр.

Книга «В преддверии Храма мудрости» принадлежит перу Франца Гартмана, немецкого врача и теософа, участника розенкрейцерских и масонских организаций, и последователя Е. П. Блаватской. Здесь он излагает историю герметизма и проясняет его основные принципы, восходящие к учениям вечной философии. Эти принципы открылись греческим неоплатоникам, а затем хранились и развивались средневековыми алхимиками и оккультистами. Основу этих учений составляет интуитивное познание Бога, доступное только тем, кто способен подняться над разумом и рассуждением, чтобы созерцать истину. Истина не знает времени и истории. Поэтому Орден розенкрейцеров – это духовный союз Адептов, а не реальное тайное общество. Идея розенкрейцерства выражает мистическую суть христианства, порывающего с земными церквями и верного духу Христа. Гартман изобличает самозванцев, мнимых «розенкрейцеров», жаждущих власти и богатства, и излагает историю истинных Адептов, обладающих реальными оккультными силами и способными творить чудеса. Впрочем, эти чудеса не отрицают законов природы, а только подтверждают их – обнаруживая скрытое единство материи и духа.

Сборник "Алхимия и культура" предлагает глубокое погружение в многогранное наследие алхимии, демонстрируя ее неразрывную связь с различными аспектами человеческой культуры. В трех ключевых эссе читатель узнает, как древние алхимические представления и практики выходили далеко за рамки лабораторий, проникая в искусство, литературу, философию и даже экономику. Джеймс Элкинс исследует сложные взаимоотношения между алхимическим символизмом и современным искусством, выявляя точки притяжения и отталкивания. Генри К. Болтон раскрывает удивительное влияние алхимии на нумизматику, показывая, как мечта о трансмутации металлов оставила осязаемый след на монетах и медалях. Элизабет Холмс анализирует глубокое воздействие герметической философии на творчество выдающегося поэта Генри Воэна, демонстрируя, как мистические учения формировали его поэтический мир. Сборник дополнен иллюстрациями, сопроводительными статьями и комментариями. Завершает сборник послесловие д. ф. н. В. В. Винокурова

This study analyses the relationship between melancholy and mystical experience in the self-referential work of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Drawing on The Book of Her Life and The Book of the Foundations, it examines how self-writing becomes a tool for discernment, allowing for the differentiation between authentic visions or states of "rapture" and daydreams induced by melancholy. Within this framework, the limit-experience of knowledge and contemplation is interpreted in its ambivalence, both as a spiritual obstacle and as a pathway to the transcendent. The research is situated in the context of the Spanish Golden Age, with reference to theological and medical debates on black bile and its connection to religious experience. Cette étude analyse la relation entre la mélancolie et l´expérience mystique dans l´oeuvre autoréférentielle de Santa Teresa de Jesús. À partir du Libro de la vida et du Libro de las Fundaciones, il s´agit d´examiner comment l´écriture de soi devient un instrument de discernement permettant de différencier les visions autentiques ou états de « arrobamiento », des rêveries induites par la mélancolie. Dans ce cadre, l´expérience limite de la connaissance et de la contemplation est interprétée dans son ambivalence, à la fois comme un obstacle spirituel et comme une voie d´accès au transcendant. La recherche s´inscrit dans le contexte du Siècle d´Or, en faisant référence aux controverses théologiques et médicales sur la bile noire et son lien avec l´expérience religieuse.

Conclusiones inconclusas o in-conclusiones del libro 'Espectros y conjuras. Asedios a la cuestión colonial'. Este libro examina cómo la escritura colonial encubre la violencia material y simbólica que la hace posible y, a la vez, invoca los espectros de lo borrado; esto es, los signos de lo que debía permanecer enterrado, pero que retorna como diferencia inquietante y disrupción textual. A partir de las reflexiones de Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricœur y Jacques Derrida sobre los espectros, este libro indaga esta cuestión paradójica y espectral en una serie de textos coloniales paradigmáticos de la historia cultural latinoamericana que incluyen relaciones de conquista, obras de teatro imperial, relatos etnográficos, planes de gobierno y control de la población, novelas e historiografías de autores como Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Bartolomé de las Casas, Michael de Carvajal, sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, José de Anchieta, Antônio Vieira, Eligio Ancona y Oswaldo Costa, entre otros.

This article constitutes a review of the Polish edition of Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology. It summarises the main tenets of the philosopher’s intellectual propositions, including agrologistics or thinking “without Nature”, by placing these ideas in relation to other concepts proposed by the author, e.g. hyperobjects. The review discusses Morton’s reading of the Anthropocene’s farming origins and his meandering way of writing. Although his discursive practices might be demanding on the reader (and can easily induce frustration), such type of performative writing may be seen as an intriguing proposition of interdisciplinary critical discourse in the age of climate catastrophe.

This essay examines the Rosicrucian view of death as a transformative passage, emphasising the Christian Rosicrucian path as a self-initiatory journey of inner alchemy. Through ritual, Kabbalistic symbolism, and mythic allegory, death is reinterpreted as ascent—an unveiling of divine consciousness.

The essay contrasts contemplative self-transformation with operative occultism, affirming the Rosicrucian ideal of resurrection as the soul’s inward return to eternal harmony.

The effectiveness of competitive strategies in enhancing firm performance has been widely acknowledged. Yet, their applicability and impact in small manufacturing enterprises operating in resource-constrained and competitive environments like Kampala Metropolitan remain underexplored. This study examines the influence of competitive strategies on the performance of small manufacturing enterprises in Kampala Metropolitan, Uganda. Using a cross-sectional research design, data were collected from 96 respondents, including owners, operations managers, and marketing managers of small manufacturing firms. The study employed a quantitative method to analyse the relationship between competitive strategies and firm performance. Results revealed that cost leadership and focus strategies positively and significantly influence firm performance, with cost minimization in production, human resource management, and procurement contributing to increased profitability. The focus strategy, mainly targeting specific market segments, was also found to enhance customer satisfaction and market share. While the differentiation strategy demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship with firm performance in the correlation analysis, it was not significant under regression analysis. This suggests that although offering unique products and services can foster customer loyalty and premium

This fascinating book from 1676 re translated into English written by one of the most obscure alchemists Edward Kelly stands as one of the rarest and most enigmatic documents within the Western Hermetic corpus, a synthesis of late Renaissance alchemy, Platonic cosmology, early modern experimental chemistry, and esoteric theology. Purportedly composed by Edward Kelly (1555–1597), the famed associate of Dr. John Dee, it reflects the intellectual crosscurrents of the Elizabethan period—when religion, magic, and nascent science were indistinguishable modes of knowing the divine architecture of the universe. Kelly’s treatise fuses Biblical typology with alchemical symbolism, casting the transmutation of metals as an analog of the spiritual regeneration of Adam’s fallen seed.🔑 The “Philosopher’s Stone” becomes a hieroglyph for the restoration of Edenic wholeness, mirroring Pauline doctrines of incorruption (1 Corinthians 15:42–54) and the promise of divine perfection. The “Earth of the Sages,” “Virgin’s Milk,” and “Hermaphroditic Water” parallel mystical descriptions of the Virgin Birth and the Holy Spirit’s generative medium, aligning alchemical conceptions of prima materia with the Genesis account of creation “from the dust of the ground.”🔑 From a cosmological perspective, Kelly’s text unites the four Aristotelian elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) with the Biblical fourfold rivers of Paradise (Genesis 2:10–14) and the Zoroastrian four Lights described in Persian theosophy, thus situating the work within an ancient Indo-Mediterranean lineage of sacred cosmography. The chapter on the “First Matter of Minerals” resonates with Egyptian and Chaldean metaphysics—particularly the notion of a divine ferment (Ka or Ruach) animating inert substance. In this way, the book bridges the Egyptian Hermetica, Greek Neoplatonism, and Hebrew Kabbalah, revealing the alchemist’s furnace as both a laboratory of nature and a temple of divine reconciliation. 🔑 From a philosophical standpoint, Kelly echoes the Platonic axiom that like is known by like: to purify metals is to purify the soul. This moral-alchemical parallelism recalls the Orphic and Pythagorean initiatory traditions, while also prefiguring the moral chemistry of later figures like Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme, who envisioned the cosmos as a spiritual crucible. The Azoth, or universal solvent, is described as both the vital spirit of the world and the Logos incarnate—an interpretation that finds resonance in the Gospel of John, the Sefer Yetzirah, and the Corpus Hermeticum alike.🔑 In scientific and proto-chemical terms, the treatise preserves a rare transitional vocabulary. It straddles the empirical curiosity of Roger Bacon, George Ripley, and Arnold de Villanova with the emergent rationalism of Boyle’s corpuscular theory. The numerous references to sulphur, mercury, and salt prefigure the Tria Prima of Paracelsian chemistry—anticipating the separation of chemical analysis from spiritual allegory. Yet Kelly refuses a purely material reading: his elements are both tangible and metaphysical, aligning with the later Swedenborgian idea of correspondences between heaven and the natural world.
🔑 CONTENTS WITH IN DEPTH SUMMARIES FOR EACH CHAPTER + BELOW THAT IF FULL RETYPED INDEX 🔑
Biographical Preface .... ix
The Stone of the Philosophers ... 1
Certain Fragments selected from the Letters of Edward Kelly .... 51
The Humid Way, or a Discourse upon the Vegetable Menstruum of Saturn  55
The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy ....... 111
Index ....... 149
🔑 DEEP SUMMARIES for each above chapter
🔑 Biographical Preface (pp. ix–xviii)
This preface offers a rare scholarly look into the life of Edward Kelly (1555–1597) — the enigmatic alchemist and companion of Dr. John Dee. It explores Kelly’s rise from a reputed “necromancer” to an esoteric adept employed by Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. The Preface contextualizes Kelly’s work amid the Renaissance revival of Hermetic and Paracelsian thought, emphasizing his attempts to achieve the Philosopher’s Stone through spiritual revelation as well as chemical art. It recounts his imprisonment, mystical “shew-stone” visions with Dee, and his controversial claims to angelic dictation, reflecting on whether his “transmutations” were literal or allegorical. The editor also situates Kelly’s writings within the lineage of alchemical mystics such as Arnold of Villanova, Bernard of Treviso, and Raymond Lully, portraying him as a transitional figure between medieval and Rosicrucian alchemy. Philosophically, this section argues that Kelly’s alchemy was anagogical — not merely metallic but spiritual — aiming to transmute the base metals of the soul into divine illumination. 🔑 The Stone of the Philosophers (pp. 1–50) Kelly’s primary treatise, De Lapide Philosophorum, is both cosmological and practical. It describes the genesis of the First Matter, the “chaos” containing all elements before separation by the divine Word. He teaches that the Stone, or Magistery, arises from the union of Sulphur (active, male, solar) and Mercury (passive, female, lunar) under the mediation of Salt, reflecting a trinitarian cosmology rooted in Hermetic principles. He elaborates the “Way of the Sages”, defining the processes of putrefaction, calcination, sublimation, and conjunction, which mirror spiritual death and resurrection. His vision is that Nature herself performs alchemy continually, and that man, made in God’s image, imitates this divine art by purifying matter and soul.
Kelly cites classical authorities such as Hermes Trismegistus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Aristotle, integrating them with Christian theology. Notably, he insists that the Stone is found within Mercury, the “seed of all metals,” and that the alchemist must find “the Sun and Moon within one substance.” The treatise culminates in a mystical exegesis of the Emerald Tablet, describing how the macrocosm and microcosm are joined through the Fire of the Sages — spiritual illumination through divine wisdom. 🔑 Certain Fragments selected from the Letters of Edward Kelly (pp. 51–54) This section gathers scattered epistolary fragments where Kelly writes to unnamed patrons and adepts concerning his philosophic discoveries. The tone is urgent and mystical — part confession, part instruction.
He warns against “the greedy and profane” who would force Nature’s secrets through avarice. His letters emphasize the need for inner purification before external success, revealing that “the gold of the Wise is the gold of the Spirit.”
References appear to the Black Raven, Green Lion, and Hermaphroditic Water, each a coded symbol for alchemical stages: nigredo (death), viriditas (renewal), and coniunctio (union). Kelly here stands as a moral philosopher of alchemy, asserting that the true laboratory is “the heart made clean through fire.” 🔑 The Humid Way, or a Discourse upon the Vegetable Menstruum of Saturn (pp. 55–110) Perhaps Kelly’s most technical text, this discourse presents the “Humid Way” — a method distinct from the “Dry Way” of the metallic philosophers. It centers on the Vegetable Menstruum, a mercurial solvent derived from the spirit of Saturn (Lead), used to dissolve metals and awaken their hidden vitality. Kelly here demonstrates familiarity with Paracelsian spagyrics — describing how the vegetable kingdom mirrors the metallic through menstruum, fermentation, and circulation. He analogizes the process to cosmic regeneration: Saturn’s heaviness conceals the seed of light, which the alchemist must liberate by the gentle fire of nature. This “humid path” is less violent and more organic — a slow alchemy of growth, akin to spiritual temperance. The discourse is filled with cosmological symbolism: the Menstrual Water of the Moon, Virgin’s Milk, and Peacock’s Tail denote stages of purification and illumination. In its metaphysical dimension, the treatise unites alchemy with botany, astrology, and theology, suggesting that all creation moves toward one goal — the perfection of light in matter.
🔑 The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy (pp. 111–148) A poetic and visionary synthesis of alchemy, cosmology, and astro-theology. Kelly compares the alchemist’s laboratory to the heavens themselves — the furnaces are planets, the elements are constellations, and the work of transformation mirrors the order of the cosmos.
He outlines the Seven Planets and their correspondences to metals and virtues:
• ☉ Sun — Gold — Illumination
• ☽ Moon — Silver — Purity
• ♂ Mars — Iron — Courage
• ♃ Jupiter — Tin — Benevolence
• ♀ Venus — Copper — Love
• ☿ Mercury — Quicksilver — Wisdom
• ♄ Saturn — Lead — Humility
The “Theatre” thus becomes a symbolic map of the universe where spiritual alchemy is the study of divine astronomy within oneself — as above, so below.
🔑 TAGS 🔑 Alchemy, transmutation, prima materia, philosopher’s stone, hermetic philosophy, biblical symbolism, esoteric cosmology, Adamic dust, Edenic restoration, divine fire, sacred chemistry ...

Currently housed in the British Museum collections, this polished obsidian (volcanic glass) reflective mirror was taken from Mesoamerica by the explorer Hernando Cortés between 1527 and 1530. The object was given
to the Dr. John Dee. Along with his assistant, Edward Kelley, Dee used the mirror produce visions of angels who would then be present at their séance performances. This essay examines the "life history" of the famous "shew stone" currently housed in London at the British Museum.

Giovanni Vincenzo Forte (fl. 1578–1611) was a distiller of Neapolitan origin who settled at the Philippine court in 1579, starting a family dynasty that served the Spanish crown for over a century. His wife was also known as ‘professor of secrets.’ His patron and promoter was Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvela, who was a great lover of gardening and therapeutic laboratory practices and had been organising the staff assigned to the gardens and distilleries of the King of Spain in his new capital, Madrid, since the 1560s.
Forte worked in Naples and Rome for Granvela, in Augsburg for the Fugger family, and in Madrid for Philip II. There he was responsible for setting up the distillation laboratory at El Escorial. In his early years in Madrid, he had many problems with some doctors, who had a lot of influence in the healthcare system. For this reason, he moved to the court of Rudolf II for a few months, where he came into contact with John Dee.
Vincenzo Forte seems to have been an important distiller in the service of Cardinal Granvela, who worked in different places and ended up in the then powerful Spanish court, where he practised for more than twenty years. In March 1601, he asked Philip III for permission to retire to his native Naples and for his position to be inherited by his son Valerio. His authority as a ‘Spacirico’ is recognised by the friar Donato d'Eremita di Roccad'Evandro, who places him as an expert, alongside Giovanni Battista Della Porta and Nicola Antonio Stigliola, for a prodigious medicine dispensed by him under the name of Elixir Vitae.
The Forte saga would continue in Spain for several generations as distillers to the king.

Here we will discuss one of the most hackneyed documents in the historiography of Spanish alchemy. These are handwritten notes by the royal secretary Pedro de Hoyo, with replicas of Philip II's handwriting. We will relate them to other documents to reveal a more complex story.
We found that these types of experiments were expensive and presented a business opportunity for any fraudster. In this case, there was no deception, but rather a genuine attempt at transmutation that did not work. The Spanish king's objective seems to have been described by the governor of Valencia, when he comments that: ‘...it would be good to see the test first in court rather than in another place of heretics, so that we can be sure’. In the political arena, all the events described here are very revealing in many respects. We see that Queen Elizabeth managed skilfully at a delicate time for England, as she inherited a kingdom that was very limited economically and militarily. She devised a network of spies together with her favourite Robert Dudley, with whom she conversed personally and privately. It is surprising that, almost as soon as she came to the throne, she was very clear that she had to stir up the hornet's nest of religion throughout continental Europe, but always in a covert manner. If we analyse the names that appear in the messages from rapporteurs and ambassadors, we can see the involvement of William Cecil, Henry Percy, Henry Killigrew, Thomas Chaloner (1521-1565), Thomas Smith (1513-1577) and Richard Eden in organising and maintaining the network on a daily basis. The main couriers were Floris Diacceto, Burchard Kranich and John Dee himself, although future research may add to the list. Their most frequent contacts were Jacques Spifame, Jean de Ferrières and Gaspard de Coligny (1519-1572) in France, Heinrich Olisleger in Antwerp and the Duchy of Cleves, and Johannes Sturm in Alsace and Lorraine. In Upper Germany, their most important partners were Philip of Hesse, Christophe of Württemberg and Frederick of the Palatinate. In the case of the Duke of Vendôme, it is important to note that his personal secretary at the time, François Hotman (1524-1590), was also a great fan of alchemy. Another very important figure is Théodore de Bèze. Practically all of them were interested in alchemy and exchanged information on this discipline. It was certainly the bond that united them, but they sought another application for it and, as the Spanish ambassador says, in reality ‘...it is a flower they bring so that they can meet and discuss in secret, under the guise of it being secret science’. This is how they justified their clandestine meetings on religious matters without arousing too much suspicion. They also used the argument of buying and exchanging books to justify their constant travels. In fact, that was the official ‘mission’ of Diacceto, Kranich and Dee himself. Certainly, the acquisitions and deliveries of books were a fact, as was the legitimate interest in culture of all these people, but the ultimate intention was political and was guided from London. Philip II's advisers in Madrid were unaware of anything, despite the abundant reports they received. The entire investigation was a very slow process, highlighting an endemic problem of Philip's reign. For example, the ‘secret experiment’ that was being proposed to some aristocrats, such as the Duke of Vendôme, to join the Protestant alliance, was noted by Diacceto as early as 1562, but it would not be proven in Madrid until four years later, with the first war of religion in France over, the second in its infancy, and the antagonists radically polarised. The ambassador in London clearly anticipated that this entire group of people had been engaged since 1561 in ‘...testing and gauging the mood of some in the main towns of the country, and urging them to take up arms and join the alliance’. Indeed, in a very short time, the Spanish king found himself faced with alliances in progress, both in the revolt in the Netherlands and in France and Upper Navarre. This created problems that would hammer away at the rest of his reign, causing great political and economic damage to the interests of the Habsburgs.

This article explores the figure of Prospero in The Tempest in relation to the Renaissance magus, focusing particularly on the thought and trajectory of John Dee. Prospero’s art, while echoing Dee’s synthesis of mathematics, theology, esotericism, and imperial ambition, is ultimately benign and restorative, distancing him from the archetype of the diabolical sorcerer. Drawing on Frances Yates’s insights into Dee’s role in shaping the Elizabethan “imperial legend”, the article examines the play’s engagement with contemporary debates on magic, politics, and empire.

Through Prospero’s failed attempt to “civilize” Caliban, the play exposes the limits of magic as an instrument of colonial domination, contrasting Dee’s millenarian project—which imagined a providential union of knowledge, religion, and imperial power—with Shakespeare’s portrayal of magic as confined to the island, excluded from the political realities of Milan. At the same time, the article analyses the parallels between magic and theatre, highlighting Prospero’s role as both magician and playwright, and connects this to Dee’s search for a “lingua Adamica” capable of reuniting language, science, and creation.

The Tempest, I argue, stages the end of the Renaissance dream of exaltatio: the aspiration to unify all domains of knowledge and power. Prospero’s renunciation of magic signals a shift toward a modern epistemology, where illusion becomes theatre, language loses its cosmic authority, and empire confronts its limits.

Transcription and English translation of Athanasius Kircher's (1602-1680) Itinerarium Exstaticum (1656). This is a cosmological discourse that combines early modern science and Christian mysticism within a Neoplatonic framework. Framed as the ecstatic journey of a seeker named Theodidactus (translates to "taught by God"), the work depicts a tour through the celestial realm guided by the angelic figure Cosmiel. As Theodidactus travels from Earth through the planetary spheres and divine archetypes, Kircher describes a richly populated cosmos, drawing from 17th-century astronomical discoveries while aligning with Aristotelian metaphysics of actuality and potentiality.