Depicting Medieval Alchemical Cosmos

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45 J.M. Rampling / Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86

Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos:George Ripleys Wheel of Inferior Astronomy

Jennifer M. Rampling *University of Cambridge

Abstract Alchemical images take many forms, from descriptive illustrations of apparatus to com-

plex allegorical schemes that link practical operations to larger cosmological structures.I argue that George Ripleys famousCompound of Alchemy (1471) was intended to beread in light of a circular gure appended to the work: the Wheel . In the concentriccircles of his lower Astronomy, Ripley provided a terrestrial analogue for the planetaryspheres: encoding his alchemical ingredients as planets that orbited the earthly ele-ments at the core of the work. The gure alludes to a variety of late medieval alchemical

doctrines. Yet the complexity of Ripleys scheme sometimes frustrated later readers, whose struggles to decode and transcribe the gure left their mark in print and manu-

script.

Keywordsalchemy, George Ripley, Wheel,astronomia inferior , pseudo-Lull, diagrams, alchemicalimagery

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15733823-0003A0003

Early Science and Medicine 18-1-2 (2013) 45-86

ISSN 1383-7427 (print version)ISSN 1573-3823 (online version)

www.brill.com/esm

* Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB23RH, United Kingdom ( [email protected] ). This research was funded by a Darwin Trustof Edinburgh Martin Pollock doctoral scholarship and a Wellcome Trust postdoctoralresearch fellowship [090614/Z/09/Z]. Further support for archival visits was providedby the British Society for the History of Science and the award of the 2008 Richard IIISociety Bursary of the Institute for Historical Research. I am grateful to all these bod-ies for their generous support. My warm thanks also to those institutions which, by per-mitting self-service digital photography for research use, have made the task ofcomparing di ferent versions of RipleysWheel possible and a fordable: the Bodleian

Library, Oxford; Cambridge University Library; Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford;Edinburgh University Library; The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; andTrinity College Library, Cambridge.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Introduction

The heavenly bodies of medieval Aristotelianism moved in circles, incor-ruptible and immutable. Far below in the terrestrial sphere, Europeanalchemists pursued change. Whether seeking to transmute base metalsinto silver and gold, or sick bodies into firm and healthy ones, exponentsof alchemy sought to achieve remarkable physical transformations,

which they sometimes strove to represent in pictorial form. These forms varied, as did the range of alchemical theories and practical procedures

that coexisted in late medieval Europe. In this variety, we can witness

the efforts of diverse practitioners to represent phenomena inaccessibleto the eye alone: the hidden principles and structures of matter, and themeans by which these might be manipulated and brought to fruition.

Yet one recurring feature of alchemical iconography is its frequent depar-ture from earthly realms, through the evocation of astronomical figuresand cosmological schemes.

Alchemical writing often develops the idea of a physical or analogicalcorrespondence between heaven and earth: a relationship most fre-

quently and conveniently expressed by the use of the seven planetarysymbols (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to denotethe seven metals (usually gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin andlead respectively). Such correspondences need not have immediate prac-tical implications. Rather, the presentation of alchemy as a terrestrialor inferior analogue to celestial astronomy suggested a framework

within which alchemical transmutation was both possible and compat-ible with an established world view. The description of alchemy as

For instance, astrological timings seldom feature in alchemical practicae: JoachimTelle, Astrologie und Alchemie im 16. Jahrhundert. Zu den astroalchemischen Lehrdich-tungen von Christoph von Hirschenberg und Basilius Valetinus, in August Buck, ed., Die okkulten Wissenschaften in der Renaissance(Wiesbaden, 1992), 227-53, at 230-31;

William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, Introduction: The Problematic Status of Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, inSecrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Cam-bridge, MA, 2001), 1-37.

On alchemy as astronomia inferior , see Julius Ruska,Turba Philosophorum: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Alchemie. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaf-ten und der Medizin, 1 (1931), 80; Telle, Astrologie und Alchemie, 238-40; Newman andGrafton, Introduction, 18. On these correspondences more generally, see Michela


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astronomia inferior , although better known in early modern contextsthrough the usage of the Benedictine Abbot Johannes Trithemius, astrol-oger-mathematician John Dee, and astronomer Tycho Brahe, was previ-ously developed in medieval treatises, including the Lumen luminum (or De perfecto magisterio), discussed below. These macrocosmic relation-ships could also be represented as figures or diagrams, allowing diversephilosophical and practical allegiances, capable of supporting multiplelevels of exegesis, to be condensed into a single image.

A variety of genres and types of alchemical illustration developedalongside one another in Latin Europe. While recognising that medievalpictorial forms elude strict typologies, the historian Barbara Obrist hasusefully distinguished between verbal and non-verbal figures. To theformer belong lists, tables and associated diagrammatic constructs. Thelatter vary from plain, descriptive pictures of furnaces and apparatus, tothe elaborate sequences of figurative illustrations that have becomecharacteristicone might even say emblematicof modern compen-

Pereira, Heavens on Earth. From the Tabula Smaragdina to the Alchemical FifthEssence, Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 131-44. Nicholas H. Clulee, Astronomia inferior: Legacies of Johannes Trithemius and John

Dee, inSecrets of Nature, ed. Newman and Grafton, 173-233; Jole Shackelford, Paracel-sianism and Patronage in Denmark, in Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technologyand Medicine at the European Court, 15001750, ed. Bruce Moran (Woodbridge, 1991),88-109, at 95-105. The eponymous glyph of Dees Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564) and its imita-

tions, including the hieroglyphic star of Philipp Gabella, provide well known earlymodern examples: Clulee, Astronomia inferior. Barbara Obrist, Visualization in Medieval Alchemy, Hyle. International Journal for

Philosophy of Chemistry, 9 (2003), 131-70; online (unpaginated) at http://www.hyle.org/ journal/issues/9-2/obrist.htm (Accessed 20 April 2012). On the problems associated with classi cation of medieval diagrams, see John North, Diagram and Thought in

Medieval Science, inVillards Legacy: Studies in Medieval Technology, Science, and Artin Memory of Jean Gimpel , ed. Therese Zenner (Ashgate, 2004), 265-87; Christoph Lthyand Alexis Smets, Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scienti cImagery, Early Science and Medicine, 14 (2009), 398-439, at 420-24. Diagram is used throughout in its modern sense. For early modern use of diagram-

mata, see Ian Maclean, Diagrams in the Defence of Galen: Medical Use of Tables,Squares, Dichotomies, Wheels, and Latitudes, 14801574, inTransmitting Knowledge:Words, Images, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa and IanMaclean (Oxford, 2006), 135-64, at 135.


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dia of alchemical art. As Obrist notes, images were almost entirelyabsent from Latin alchemical texts until the second half of the thirteenthcentury. When they do appear, figures usually accompany treatises

whose function is, at least in part, to situate alchemy within an author-itative framework, particularly that of Aristotelian natural philosophy.The pictorial elements of these works often refer to larger cosmologicalstructures, striving towards the legitimation of alchemy as both scientia and as ars. One of the earliest surviving attempts, a sequence of imagesaccompanying the Book of Secrets of Constantine of Pisa, grafts alchem-ical material onto pre-existing pictorial forms. In this case, the appro-priation is both philosophical and theological, as part of an attempt torelate the qualities of metals to the six days of Creation within a peda-gogical context.

While Constantines figure offers one of the earliest medieval exam-ples, in this essay I shall focus on an image from the very close of themiddle ages. This is a circular figure attached to the Compound of Alchemy, or Twelve Gates, of the English alchemist George Ripley,Canon of Bridlington (d. ca. 1490). This late fifteenth-century diagram,

In practice, non-verbal gures may include text, and vice versa. For a scholarlyanalysis of the substance and context of several medieval sequences, see Barbara Obrist, Les dbuts de limagerie alchimique: XIVe-XVe sicles (Paris, 1982).

Obrist, Visualization. An important exception is analysed in Obrist, Cosmologyand Alchemy in an Illustrated 13th Century Alchemical Tract: Constantine of Pisa, TheBook of the Secrets of Alchemy, Micrologus, 1 (1993), 115-60. Earlier Greek alchemical

works sometimes included both verbal and non-verbal gures, although these were lessfrequent in Arabic works; cf. Obrist, Visualization. On thirteenth-century attempts to establish alchemys status as an academic disci-

pline, see Constantine of Pisa, The Book of the Secrets of Alchemy: Introduction, Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. Barbara Obrist (Leiden, 1990); William R.Newman, Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages, Isis, 80 (1989),423-45; William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the. Experimental Ori- gins of the Scienti c Revolution (Chicago, 2006).

Obrist, Cosmology and Alchemy; Constantine of Pisa,The Book of the Secrets. On Ripley, see Jennifer M. Rampling, Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and

His Alchemical Sources, Ambix, 55 (2008), 189-208;eadem, The Catalogue of the Rip-

ley Corpus: Alchemical Writings Attributed to George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), Ambix, 57(2010), 125-201 (henceforthCRC ); Lawrence M. Principe, Ripley, George, in Alchimie. Lexikon einer hermetischen Wissenschaft , ed. Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Munich,1998), 305-6.


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embellished with English and Latin texts, is a curious hybrid: combiningpictorial representation, discursive text and allegorical verse, and encom-passing a remarkable range of earlier material in terms of both pictorialform and alchemical doctrine. Thanks to the interest and frustration itevoked in subsequent copyists and publishers, it also teaches us a gooddeal about techniques for interpreting and the mechanics of producingfigures of elaborate design and elusive meaning in the early modernperiod.

RipleysCompound is one of the best known works of English alchem-ica. Dated by colophon to 1471, the year of King Edward IVs restorationto the throne of England, this Middle English poem enjoyed a wide cir-culation from the late fifteenth century onwards, in English, Latin, andEuropean vernaculars. In an engaging structural conceit, the alchemi-cal work is represented as a twelve-gated castle, each gate correspondingto a chemical process. Ripley outlines these in twelve chapters, from theouter gate, Calcination, to Projection, the final test of the elixirs trans-mutational efficacy. However, he makes little reference to his architec-tonic device within the actual text, instead focusing on the processes

themselves. This neglect stems from the fact that Ripley had appropri-ated the twelvefold structure and much of the content of individual gatesfrom another work, the Scala philosophorum (Ladder of thePhilosophers). While the twelve rungs or gates offer a convenient tax-onomy, throughout the poem Ripley reaches for another device to con-

vey the subtleties of his art: a wheel or figure, also referred to as theCoelum philosophorum (Philosophers Heaven). It is this figure, ratherthan the twelve taxonomic gates, that provides the clearest model for

understanding Ripleys work, through its representation of alchemy aslower Astronomy.

For a census of extant manuscripts, see CRC . On the Compounds European recep-tion, see Jennifer M. Rampling, John Dee and the Alchemists: Practising and PromotingEnglish Alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire,Studies in History and Philosophy of Sci-ence, 43 (2012), 432-36;eadem, Transmission and Transmutation: George Ripley and

the Place of English Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, Early Science and Medicine, 17(2012), 477-99.

Rampling, Establishing the Canon. Ripley attributed theScala to Guido de Mon-tanor.


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The Stu f Extremes Are Made Of

Wheels and circles are familiar tropes of medieval alchemy, often denot-ing the squaring of the circlethe transformation of the four Aristo-telian elements. An element changes when its previous form is destroyedand it assumes another, through substitution of its primary elementaryqualities. Thus earth (cold and dry) becomes water (cold and moist) bylosing its dryness, while water in turn becomes air (hot and moist) ascoldness yields to heat. In alchemy, these revolutions map convenientlyonto certain observed processes, most obviously the dissolution of a

solid into a liquid, and its volatilisation by distillation or sublimation.The theory prohibits an element from transforming into its contrary without intermediate transition through a middle term. A concern with

cyclical transformations is also characteristic of the influential alchem-ical doctrines pseudonymously attributed to Raymond Lull. For exam-ple, the Testamentum, the foundational work of the pseudo-Lulliancorpus and one of Ripleys major sources, describes the reduction ofmaterial compounds into their constituent elements:

Before [Nature] can pass right through by the circular wheel of elements, it is nec-essary she be divided into four parts, so she can cross by the four elementary qual-ities, namely from dryness into cold, and from gross into simple, and from cold intomoist, and from heavy into light, and from moist into hot, and from bitter intopleasant and sweet.

On pseudo-Lullian alchemy, see Michela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus attributedto Raymond Lull (London, 1989);eadem, Prima Materia. Echi aristotelici e avicennianinel Testamentum pseudolulliano, in Aristoteles Chemicus. Il IV Libro dei Meteorologicanella tradizione antica e medievale, ed. Christine Viano (Sankt Augustin, 2002), 145-64;

Jennifer M. Rampling, The Alchemy of George Ripley, 14701700 (Ph.D. dissertation,University of Cambridge, 2009), ch. 2.

[N]atura, priusquam poterit pertransire per rotam circularem elementorum,necesse est quod dividatur in quattuor partes, ut possit transire per quattuor qualitateselementares, videlicet de sicco in frigido, et de grosso in simplum, et de frigido in humi-

dum, et de ponderoso in leve, et de humidum in calidum, et de aspero in suave et dulce.Ps. Lull, Il Testamentum alchemico attribuito a Raimondo Lullo: Edizione del testo latinoe catalano dal manoscritto Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 244, ed. Michela Pereira andBarbara Spaggiari (Florence, 1999), I: 248. Translations are mine unless stated otherwise.


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The elemental wheel, able to turn both forward and back, also providesan elegant analogy for the metallogenetic framework of the Testamen-tum, in which substances can be rewound to an earlier state, digested,and set in motion once more. The author suggests that, although com-pleted by nature, metals may still be undone, allowing nature to beginher work afresh. An analogy is made with the biological function ofingestion:

Metals are generated by vapours of the said sulphurs and mercuries by succes-sive decoction, which are true extremes without mean, with a perfect closure in

the work of nature. However, when they are [taken from] their mines, Nature con-trives through corruption to go back by circular motions, undoing and generatingthem a second time, and with another turn, such that they attain a new generationthrough digestion in their mines and there they are dispersed by its movementuntil they attain a better kind, just as the generation of esh happens in the bodyof an animal through digestion of food and drink.

This process assumes a natural evolution of metals, whereby the lessperfectly digested bodies, such as lead, are gradually improved throughrenewed digestion. The possibility of such material retractions encour-ages the alchemist to ape natures processes: to reduce a metal to anearlier extreme, then rebuild it in a purer and more valuable form. Thereversibility of these circular motions was also important to Ripley,describing the decomposition of metals: Thys done, go backward,turnyng thy Wheele againe.

This complex material odyssey also had theological connotations. Inthe alchemical cosmology of theTestamentum, the four Aristotelian ele-ments are described as being formed from the fifth essence: a primordial

[G]enerata per vapores dictorum sulphurum et argentorum vivorum per succes-sivam decoccionem sunt metalla, que sunt vera extrema sine mediocritate cum perfectaclausura in opere nature, sed per corrupcionem, quando sunt extra suas mineras, inten-dit natura ad redeundum per motus circulares, illa corrumpendo et iterum generando;et ista altera vice terminantur in novam generacionem per digestionem in suis mineris et illic per suum motum digeruntur, donec terminentur in speciem meliorem, sicut

generacio carnis t in corpore animalis per digestionem comedendi et bibendi. Testa-mentum, I: 22. Calcination 18. George Ripley, The Compound of Alchymie, inTheatrum Chemi-

cum Britannicum, ed. Elias Ashmole (London, 1652), 107-93 (hereafterTCB ), at 133.


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substance from which God created the heavens, the angels, and terres-trial matter. All matter originally shared in the purity of its parent sub-stance, until the time of sin when Creation was corrupted by the Fallof Man. Post-lapsarian nature, stripped of her unsullied buildingblocks, lost the ability to generate true perfection: For, by reason of hergross and corrupt matter, Nature cannot make a thing as perfect as shedid at the beginning.

While this situation will be ultimately and catastrophically remediedin the refining fires of Judgement Day, in the meantime both human anddivine intervention are necessary to achieve material perfection. By help-ing nature regain her lost status, the alchemist therefore contributes toa very serious enterprise: the absolution of matter. While Ripley clearlyregarded his alchemy in terms of material processes, his work is invested

with this additional, spiritual dimension. Thus, in the Compound , theperfection of matter is continually related to the souls journey throughthe fires of purgatory, and on to paradise:

For lyke as Sowles after paynys transytory

Be brought into paradyce where ever ys yoyfull lyfe;So shall ourStone after hys darknes in PurgatoryBe purged and joynyd in Elements wythoute stryfe.

Testamentum, I: 12-14. For a corpuscular reading of this passage, see William R.Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, An American Alchemist in theScienti c Revolution (Chicago, 1994), 98-103; for a contrary view, see Pereira, Prima Materia, 155-59.

Ista quattuor elementa sic creata remanserunt pura et clara racione clare partisnature ex qua erant creata usque ad tempus peccati, quod exivit a natura et adhuc estad tempus indulgencie post peccatum. Sed postquam mortui sunt homines et animaliaet nascentia terre desiccata cum destruccione generacionis, veniendo de corrupcionein generacionem et de generacione in corrupcionem, sic quod de corporibus impurisresolutis mutantur elementa in id, quod contagiat et corrumpit elementa, per quamcorrupcionem omnis res viva est parve duracionis.Testamentum, I: 14.

[Q]uoniam natura non potest facere rem tam perfectam, racione sue materie grosse

et corrupte, sicut fecerat in suo principio. Sed natura in operando imperfeccionis par-ticipat cum magna corrupcione propter materiam elementorum minus purorum, quamquotidie ipsa invenit. Testamentum, I: 14.

Putrefaction 14.TCB , 151.


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This attractive analogy recurs more powerfully in theCompounds con-cluding Recapitulation. The protagonists are a couple familiar in medi-eval alchemical literature, the red man and his white wife. Together,they traverse the wheel of seasons, from marriage in the west, purga-torial eclipse in the north, spring-like resurrection in the east, and tri-umphant ascension in the south:

Then to wyn to thy desyre thou need'st not be in dowte,For the Whele of our Phylosophy thou hast turnyd abowte.

Ripley often describes the motions of the philosophical wheel through-out the course of the Twelve Gates. At certain points he also adviseshis audience to consult an accompanying figure, which provides the keyto understanding the whole poem:

Have thou recourse to thy Whele I councell the unto, And stody tyll thou understond eche Chapter by and by.

Although no fifteenth-century version of the figure survives, numeroussixteenth and seventeenth-century manuscripts testify to the complex-ity of Ripleys design: a quadripartite wheel, composed of concentricspheres with captions and verses (see Fig. 1). This has been little stud-ied, yet its design closely matches the instructions provided in the text.Ripley himself refers to a figure, for instance at the tenth gate, Exalta-tion:

This circulation beginne thou in the west,

Then into the south, till they exalted bee,Proceede duely, as in thy gure I haue taught thee.

Recapitulation 5. TCB , 187. Calcination 17-18, Solution 11-13, Congelation 29, Cibation 5, Fermentation

15, and Exaltation 8-9. Recapitulation 10.TCB , 188. These manuscripts are discussed below; cf. CRC . The authenticity of the Wheel has not been previously established: hence, a recent

edition of the Compound notes only that some manuscript copies of the Compound also included a visual, astronomical gure, the counterpart of the engraved Wheelementioned in his Worke that appears in the 1591 edition: Stanton J. Linden, Introduc-tion,George Ripleys Compound of Alchemy (1591), ed. idem (Aldershot, 2001), xix.


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Figure 1: Wheel . Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, MS Anonyma 2, vol. 5, 28v.(By kind permission of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh)

In which processe clearely thou mayst see,Fro one extreame how to another thou mayst not go,But by a meane, since they in qualities contrarious be.

Exaltation 9-10 (my emphasis).TCB , 180. In most copies of theWheel , the direc-tions appear upside down (at 90 in some cases) in relation to modern compass points.Thus West is usually placed at the right side of the gure, while South appears at thetop, being approached clockwise through North and then East.


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One of the functions of RipleysWheel is thus to model the shift of ele-mentary qualities between extremes, via a mean. The figure efficientlyincorporates the four elements and their secondary qualities, the com-pass points, seasons, dimensions (height, depth, and two sides, or lati-tudes), signs of the zodiac, and, from medicine, the four administering

virtues (digestive, expulsive, retentive and attractive) into the single,circular image. Using this figure, one may calculate in an instant thata cold, moist temperament is the mean between a cold, dry one and ahot, moist one; that the expulsive and attractive virtues are the extremesof the digestive virtue; and that to pass from north to south one mustfirst traverse the east. The Wheel therefore provides a digest of the rangeof transformations detailed throughout the Gates.

Ripley also drew upon earlier pictorial forms for the design of thefigure itself. The wheel of elements lends itself very well to diagrammaticrepresentation, particularly in the form of a rota, or wheel. Such use ofcircular figures to classify knowledge, including calendrical, geographi-cal and astronomical information, was characteristic of natural philo-sophical treatises from the early middle ages onwards. In De naturarerum, Isidore of Seville described several suchrotae, including a quad-ripartite wheel of the year, in which each of the four seasons was assignedan appropriate pair of secondary qualities, suggesting the passagebetween seasons as one of continual motion rather than discrete stages.These figures were valuable in depicting contrariety: thus, in the wheelof seasons, summer (hot and dry) faces its opposite, winter (cold and

wet). Such quadripartite wheels might also group information on thefour cardinal directions, elements, bodily humours, and signs of the

zodiac (the latter divided into four groups of three). Another advantage

In the Testamentum, the four administering virtues are reinterpreted as qualitiesresulting from the dissolution into one substance of two quicksilvers, active and pas-sive.Testamentum, I: 154.

For the medieval use of rotae, particularly for quadripartite systems, see John E.Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984), 52-61, 356-58; Wesley M. Stevens, The Figure of the Earth in Isidores De natura rerum, Isis, 71(1980), 268-77; Barbara Obrist, La cosmologie mdivale. Textes et images I. Les fonde-ments antiques (Florence, 2004), 50 and passim; cf. Maclean, Diagrams in the Defenceof Galen, 140, 158.

On the signi cance of the number four in ancient and medieval cosmologies, see


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of the rota, besides its usefulness in illustrating contraries and suggestingrotation, is that it may be divided into concentric circles: a feature whichprovides the basis of many medieval cosmological diagrams.

The value of wheels both in tabulating and manipulating informationis also apparent in the geometric diagrams of the historical Lull and hisalchemical followers. By allocating letters of the alphabet to particularingredients and processes, the authors of Ripleys main pseudo-Lulliansources, the Testamentum and Liber de secretis naturae, represented thecombination and reiteration of letters in complex schemes, usually cir-cular (see Fig. 2).

While Ripley was probably influenced by such figures, his ownWheel differs from these Lullian models in aiming to condense the entirealchemical opus into a single figure. Its quadripartite design looks backto Isidorean models, incorporating the elements, secondary qualities,seasons, and cardinal directions, each quarter accompanied by versesand scriptural references. Four grades of perfection (origin, imperfection,perfection, plusquam perfectum) are also accommodated. At the sametime, the Wheel mimics cosmological schemes, comprising an innercircle nested within ten concentric spheres. In this version, the starsdepicted are not the heavenly bodies, but their terrestrial equivalents:the four metallic bodies used in Ripleys alchemy. These are the Sun,

Anna C. Esmeijer, Divina Quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Applicationof Visual Exegesis (Assen, 1978).

The alchemical diagrams are not combinatorial in the manner of authentic Lullian

gures: Pereira and Spaggiari,Testamentum, cxxxix-clxiii; Pereira, Le gure alchemichepseudolulliane: un indice oltre il testo?, in Fabula in Tabula. Una storia degli indici dalmanoscritto al testo elettronico, ed. Claudio Leonardi, Marcello Morelli and FrancescoSanti (Spoleto, 1994), 111-18, at 115-16. On combinatorial gures, see Murdoch, Album ofScience, 60.

On this point I disagree with Urzula Szulakowska, who construes the Compounds wheel references as an attempt to represent pseudo-Lullian computational circles as

a castle with twelve doors which had to be negotiated by a circular sea-voyage:Szulakowska,The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance Alchemical Illustration (Leiden, 2000), 21; cf. Pereira, Le gure alchemiche pseudolulliane, 115-16.Unlike another populariser of pseudo-Lullian writings, Christopher Parisiensis, Ripleyseems to have been less interested in reproducing Lullian wheels or alphabets; I alsond no reference to a sea voyage in the body of the Compound . These terms are also represented in other contexts, for instance in rotae designed

to assist with syllogistic reduction. See Murdoch, Album of Science, 59.


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Figure 2: Ps. Lull,Testamentum. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 244, 55a. (By kindpermission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

Moon, Venus, and Mercury, equating to gold, silver, copper, and mercury.This correspondence is noted in the accompanying verse:

Our heaven this Figure called isOur table also of the lower Astronomy

Which vnderstood thou may not misseTo make our Medicen parfetlyOn it therefore set thy study

And vnto God both night and dayFor grace and for ye Author pray.

TCB , 117.


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In astronomical terms, the stars are here presented out of order. Indeed,towards the centre of the scheme the function of the circles changes,from representing space, in the form of the heavens, to providing it, ascells in which relevant information can be tabulated. Rather than plan-ets, the three inner circles contain the names of colours and primaryand secondary qualities associated with various stages of material trans-formation. RipleysCoelum philosophorumdepicts an alchemical ratherthan astronomical cosmos: a true lower Astronomy that describes thegeneration of heavenly perfection from mutable, terrestrial elements.

Yet, significantly for our understanding of Ripleys alchemy, his celestialorbits conceal practical information on the proportions of substancesto be used. Within the four planetary spheres, Roman numerals indicatethe relative proportions of ingredients to be used: one part of the Sunfor three of the Moon, eight of Venus, and twelve of Mercury (see Fig. 3).

The correct proportion of his ingredients is one of the secrets thatRipley alludes to but does not state explicitly within the body of thepoem. Another is the identity of his famous Green Lion, an imperfectmetallic body that provides a mean between the two perfect bodies, goldand silver. Ripley never discloses the Lions nature within the text of theGates, except to emphasise that it does not signify vitriol. TheWheel reveals all:

The sphere of Venus is 8, the goddess of love, which is the mean of joining the tinc-tures between Sun and Moon, and it is a body easily converted to either, and there-fore it is put in the work for an imperfect body, and it is called the Green Lion.

The Green Lion therefore denotes eight parts of copper. Yet to unpickthese puzzles, text must be read in light of image, as Ripley warns:

Diligently looke thou, and to thy gure attend, Which doth in it containe these secrets great & small.

Congelation 24, Admonition 4.TCB , 167; 190. Sphaera Veneris VIII deae amoris, quae est medium coniungendi tincturas inter

solem et lunam, et est corpus de facile couertibili ad vtrumque et ideo ponitur in operepro imperfecto corpore et dicitur leo viridis.TCB , 117. On Ripleys use of copper in theCompound , see Rampling, Establishing the Canon, 205.

Recapitulation 1.TCB , 186.


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Figure 3: Wheel (detail of planetary spheres). Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.23,32Ar. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

Creating Heaven on Earth

Thus far, Ripleys appropriation of the language and diagrammatic formsof astronomy is relatively straightforward: as a means of encoding prac-tical information. However, the diagram invokes the heavens in anothersense: as a context for explaining how celestial perfectionthe phi-losophers stonecan be generated within the sublunary sphere.

While the reduction of alchemical prime matter into its elementalcomponents is framed in terms of division, the opposite process, or cir-cling of the square, is constructive: a single, fifth element is createdthrough repeated cycles of elemental transitions. The ultimate object ofthe Wheel is not to square the circle, but to illustrate how a square ofpaired, contrary qualities (most obviously, those of the four elements)may, by continual rotation through their means, generate a fifth, perfect


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substance: the quintessence. This precept is inscribed in the innermostring of the Wheel , encircling its central axis:

When thou hast made the quadrangle roundthen is all the secrett found.

The notion of generating a single substance from the quadrangle ofelements was a well established alchemical doctrine by the late four-teenth century. The Wheels alternative appellation, Coelum philosoph-orum, leads us to another of Ripleys most influential sources, thepseudo-Lullian Liber de secretis naturae, seu de quinta essentia (TheBook of the Secrets of Nature, or of the Quintessence). Most of thistreatise was in turn derived from the Liber de consideratione quintaeessentiae of the Spiritual Franciscan John of Rupescissa, who describedthe manufacture of a medicinal quintessence by repeated distillation,or circulation, of spirit of wine. John hailed his quintessence as ourheaven: a homogeneous substance whose incorruptibility provided ananalogue for the immutable fifth element of the heavenly bodies. This

TCB , 117. The hub itself usually contains either a cross, with the four elementslabelled (Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, Vol. 5), or a motto:centrum lapidis (University of Edinburgh MS Laing III.164; Cambridge, Trinity CollegeLibrary MS O.2.16, Pt. 3; Cambridge University Library FF.ii.23), lapis noster (BritishLibrary MS Sloane 2580A; Lambeth Palace, Sion College MS Arc.L.40.2/E.6, Pt. 1), orsimply centrum (Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1445, Pt. 1).

See, inter alia, the Rosarium philosophorum of John Dastin (inc. Desiderabile desi-derium) in Theatrum chemicum, prcipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiet lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, prstantia et operationibus... , ed. Laza-rus Zetzner, 6 vols. (Ursel and Strasbourg, 16021661) (henceforthTC ), III: 663-98, at682: Aperi & claude, solve & nota, extende & plica, ablue & dessica, hoc facito continuedonec in quadrangulum vertatur & in rotundum.

Ripley draws upon the Liber de secretis naturae particularly in his Preface to theCompound : see Rampling, The Alchemy of George Ripley, ch. 2.

On John of Rupescissa (Jean de Roquetaillade) and the quintessence, see F. Sher- wood Taylor, The Idea of the Quintessence, in Science, Medicine and History,

ed. Edgar A. Underwood, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), I: 247-65; Robert P. Multhauf, John of

Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry, Isis, 45 (1954), 359-67; Robert Halleux,Les ouvrages alchimiques de Jean de Rupescissa, Histoire littraire de la France, 41(1981), 241-77; Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissain Medieval Europe (New York, 2009). Although Ripleys aim in theCompound is gener-


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reading informs the alchemy of another Ripleian poem associated withthe Compound , the Epistle to Edward IV :

We have an Heauen yncorruptible of the Quintessence,Ornate with Elements, Signes, Planetts, and Starrs bright.

The separation of sub- and supralunary regions in Aristotelian physicsultimately prevented Johns attempt to link the celestial and the alcoholicquintessence from becoming more than an analogy. In Ripleys alchem-ical cosmos, however, the coelum provides the unifying premise for a

compilation of other analogies between earthly elements and Heavenin all its sensesperfected matter, celestial region and Christian para-dise.

The Wheel illustrates the attainment of terrestrial perfection in rela-tion to another interesting theoretical position, distinct from the pseudo-Lullian corpus: the notion of plusquam perfectum, or more-than-perfect.This explanation for the transmutational efficacy of the philosophersstone is encountered in Ripleys main source text, the Scala philosopho-

rum, and, given its importance for reading the Wheel , is worth consider-ing in more detail here.The first rung of the Scala, Calcinatio, describes the aims of the

alchemists work:

We are seeking to operate spiritually on the above arti cial operation, in a contrarysense, namely by killing the live and spiritually reviving the dead, and disposingoutwardly to something more-than-perfect.

ally chrysopoetic rather than medicinal, in Fermentation 8 he does refer to theQuyntessens ... whych helyth Dysesys all.

Epistle 21.TCB , 114. The Epistle also refers to Our lower Astronomy (stanza 20) andinstructs, And of the Quadrangle make ye a Figure round (15). On the relationshipbetween the Epistle and the Compound , see CRC .

On Johns di culties in this regard, see DeVun, Prophecy, ch. 4. Johns Heaven waslater echoed in the title of Philipp Ulstads popular Coelum philosophorum seu de secre-tis naturae liber (Fribourg, 1525).

[A]d arti cialem operationem superis sensu contrario spiritualiter operari niti-mur: natura tamen imitando, scilicet vivum occidendo, atque spiritualiter mortuumresuscitando, & ad plusquam perfectum exterius disponendo. Jean-Jacques Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1702) (hereafter BCC ), II: 138.


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This notion of super-perfection is encountered in several alchemicaltexts from the early fourteenth century onwards. It is set out with par-ticular clarity in the influential Rosarius philosophorum, attributed to

Arnald of Villanova. The Rosarius argues that, in order to raise imper-fect metals to the perfection of gold and silver, the elixir must itself bemore perfect than the precious metals. Imperfect metals cannot perfectthemselves, nor can they be improved using the perfect bodies, gold andsilver, since such a dilution would serve only to diminish the perfectionof the latter. By the same reasoning, any transmuting agent would haveto be better than the perfect bodies:

It is necessary that that which is Elixir is made more puri ed and digested thangold or silver; therefore, that the Elixir itself has to turn all imperfect diminishedbodies to another perfection, into gold and silver, which can hardly complete them-selves And for this purpose the working will be made in our stone, so that itstincture may be improved in it more than in its [own] nature.

The conclusion that the elixir must be more than perfect is even moreexplicitly stated in the Speculum alchimiae, sometimes attributed toRoger Bacon. The author of this fourteenth-century treatise employssimilar reasoning to the Rosarius, reiterating that base metals cannot beimproved simply by adding precious ones:

If this perfection might be mixed with the imperfect, the imperfect should not beperfected with the perfect, but rather their perfections should be diminished bythe imperfect, and become imperfect. But if they were more than perfect , either in

A large number of pseudo-Arnaldian texts carry this or a similar title. I refer to thetext with the incipit Iste namque Liber vocatur Rosarium, printed as the Thesaurusthesaurum, et Rosarium philosophorum ( BCC , I: 662-76). On the di culties posed bythe various Rosarii , see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science,8 vols. (New York, 1934), III: 55-66; Antoine Calvet, Les Oeuvres alchimiques attribues Arnaud de Villeneuve. Grand oeuvre, mdecine et prophtie au Moyen-ge (Paris-Milan,2011).

Quoniam est necessarium, qud illud quo est Elixir, magis t depuratum & diges-tum, qum aurum vel argentum, e qud ipsum Elixir habet convertere omnia imper-

fecta alia perfectione diminuta corpora in aurum vel argentum, quod ipsa minimper ciere possunt: quia si de perfectione sua alteri darent, ipsa imperfecta existerent:e quia non possunt tingere, nisi quantum se extendunt. Et ad hoc et operatio in lapidenostro, ut melioretur ejus tinctura in eo plus qum in sua natura. BCC , I: 665.


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a two-fold, four-fold, hundred-fold, or larger proportion, they might then well per-fect the imperfect.

This concept of plusquam perfectum provides a natural complement tothe pseudo-Lullian doctrine of means, whereby passage from oneextreme to another is only possible through an intermediate stage orsubstance. By conceiving of imperfection, perfection, and super-perfec-tion as steps on a ladder of means, the alchemist obtains theoreticalspace in which to contemplate restarting the process of metallic evolu-tion. This task would otherwise be frustrated by the workings of nature,

or, more accurately, its lack of working. In nature the state of perfection,once achieved, provides the terminus of the scale, since the evolutionof metals ceases with the accomplishment of gold and silver. However,by considering the perfect metals as means, with imperfection at oneextreme, it becomes not only possible but necessary to infer the exis-tence of a super-perfect state at the opposite extreme. This conclusionprovides powerful support for the role of the artificer in improving onnatural processes.

Such speculations mark a point of departure from the pseudo-Lulliancorpus. In the post-lapsarian state of decay described in the Testamen-tum, nature can no longer achieve material perfection unaided. Onlythrough a painstaking removal of the corrupt outer layers can the pure,original substance of the elements be extracted, then recombined torecreate the quintessence from which all matter ultimately derives. Inthe Testamentum, the emphasis is therefore upon reclaiming a lost per-fection rather than attempting to surpass it. Indeed, the concept of

plusquam perfectum may be seen as contravening the salvific dimensionof the Testamentums alchemical philosophy.RipleysWheel accommodates the existence of a state beyond ter-

restrial perfection, relating it to the notion of material redemption. Twosets of accompanying verses make this point explicitly, comparing theredemptive power of the stone, which must be reborn in the womb ofmercury, with the incarnation of Christ. In the first sequence of four

verses, one positioned at each of the Wheel s corners, Ripley recounts

I use the 1597 English translation in Ps. Roger Bacon,The Mirror of Alchimy composedby the Thrice-Famous and Learned Fryer, Roger Bacon, ed. Stanton J. Linden (New Yorkand London, 1992), 8 (my emphasis).


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the passion, death and resurrection of Christ as an analogy for the death,purification, and exaltation of the stone. These begin:

as holy scriptur maketh mencionin the wome of a virgin immaculatcryst dessendyd for our redempcyonfrom hys hye trone to be encarnatSo here the son dessendyth from hys estateforth from the south passyng in to the westthorow the occean laboryng w i th out rest.

Each verse has its secular equivalent within the outer sphere of theWheel : four couplets which together chart the journey of the materialsof the work, the red man and his white wife, from their first dissolutionto the attainment of a state higher than gold:

Here the Red man & the wy feI-spowsed w i th the spyrit o f ly fe.Here to purgatory must hem gooThere to purged by payne And woo.Here the[y] be purged o f lthe originall& maid ressplendent as is the cristal.Here from paradise they go to [wo]nnBryhter maid nor is the Son.

Both sets of verses reinforce the notion of progressive, clockwise move-ment around the Wheel : a dynamic and teleological circulation fromimperfect prime matter into super-perfect quintessence. In Ripleys

Wheel , scriptural authority, proportions of ingredients, the pseudo-

When reproducing text from manuscript, I have retained original spelling and cap-italisation, using italics to denote the expansion of contractions. | denotes a line break.Information necessary to convey the sense of a word or passage is included withinsquare brackets.

Trinity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3, 127v. This version (like those in Ashmoles editionand several other early copies) di fers substantially from that printed by Rabbards: AsChrist the Scripture making mention, | In the holy wombe descended of Marie: | From

his high throne for our redemption, | Working the holy Ghost to be incarnate, | So hereour Stone descends from his estate, | Into the womb of our Virgin Mercuriall, | To helpehis brethren from lth originall. Rabbards version thus provides a more overtly alchem-ical reading, besides introducing the third person of the Trinity.

RCP of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, vol. 5, 28v.


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Lullian theory of means, Rupescissas heaven and the notion of plusquam perfectum combine in a single, complex figure: a remarkablestate-of-the-art of late fifteenth-century English alchemy.

Reinventing the Wheel

One curiosity of the Wheel s design is that, although the Compound encapsulates a variety of pseudo-Lullian doctrines, the figure is closerin appearance and function to traditional Isidorean models than thediagrams employed in his Lullian sources. Given the extent of Ripleysborrowings from another authority, the Scala philosophorum, we mightexpect to find in this work the source for his rota. Indeed, the Scala isreplete with the language of purgatory and seasonal change: metaphors

which inform the Compound as a whole, and the Wheel in particular.In stanzas 11-13 of his second gate, Solution, Ripley explains that all

bodies have three dimensions: altitude, latitude, and profundity. Our Whele must rotate through these dimensions, using a seasonal analogy:

beginning in the West, then proceeding through the dark, wintry eclipse

of the North (In darknes of Purgatory wythowten Lyght) before rising,spring-like, in the East, where blackness gives way to Colours passyng varyable. As the Wheel turns through the East and into summer, the white work is attained, For there the Sunne with daylight doth vprise.

Finally it ascends to the autumnal Chayre of Fyre in the South, whenthe fruits of the harvest will be gleaned:

For there ys Harvest, that ys to say an endOf all thys Warke after thyine owne desyre:Ther shynyth the Son up in hys own sphyre,

And after the Eclyps ys in rednes wyth glory As Kyng to rayne uppon all Mettalls and Mercury.

Printed versions of the Scala offer no obvious parallel to Ripleys vividaccount. The Recapitulatio does compare winter and summer to the

BCC , II: 141, 143, 145-46. Dissolution 13.TCB , 138. On the print history of the Scala, see Rampling, Establishing the Canon,

198-200.


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Works of the Moon (silver) and Sun (gold) respectively. However, Rip-leysWheel instead takes hyems (winter) to signify a process: putrefac-tion.

Fortunately, an unabridged version of the Scala survives in a late fif-teenth-century copy: Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.8.9. Here,the chapter on Solutio includes a lengthy passage that describes thetransformation of one form into another, via a series of spiritual qualitieswith infinite means. These qualities correspond to the third and high-est order of medicine described in the influentialSumma perfectionis of pseudo-Geber, as well as the three spatial dimensions of length,breadth, and depth (longitude, latitude and profundity). Furthermore,the Scala explains that the three may be combined into the fivefold(quinario), just as appears in the displayed figure.

Sadly, no copy of this figura, or tabula, survives. However, the text ofthe Scala enables us to partially reconstruct it. Thus, the first quality issaid to be found at the entrance to the work, related to the secondaryqualities of the element of earth (coldness and dryness) and to the west(occidentalia). This corresponds to the first side of our table of Inferior

Astronomy. The correspondence with Ripleys own figure of the lower

[S]ic autem opus Lunae nimis album, & opus Solis nimis rubeum: quia album opusest hyemis, rubeum ver aestatis, BCC , II: 146. Purgatorial language is invoked in Ciba-tio and Fermentatio, BCC , II: 143; 144.

The seasons appear as analogies for alchemical processes in a variety of fourteenth-century treatises, including the Studio namque lorenti (TC , IV: 941-54, at 943-44) and Practica vera alkimia (TC , IV: 912-34, at 917); see Thorndike, History of Magic, III: 182 n.24,184, 189.

Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.8.9, 14r. On the three orders, see The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber. A Critical Edition,

Translation and Study, ed. William R. Newman (Leiden, 1991), 546-48; 752-53. RipleysWheel was later interpreted in light of the Geberian orders by Eirenaeus Philalethes, ABreviary of Alchemy, printed in Ripley revivd: or, an exposition upon Sir George Ripleys Hermetico poetical works... (London, 1678); cf. Newman,Gehennical Fire, figure 3F.

Om ne totum ponitur in tribus, | scilicet ter minis dimensionalibus, in quibus moue-tur ter ra, quorum com|plecio latet in quinario, sicut apparet in gur a proposita Alter a

vero | spiritalis, celestina, cu m in nitis medijs, que ter cio ordini | medicinar um per Geberum expressatarum ibidem compar atur , quarum vtr amque conti|net tres dime n-siones relatiuas, videlicet longitudinem, latitudinem, | & profunditatem. Trinity CollegeMS O.8.9, 13v-14r.

Vnde pr ima qualitas spiritalis scilicet pri mi later is longi|tudinis, latitudinis tabule


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Astronomy is even more apparent when we compare the Scala text tothe first side of the Wheel : The fyrst side or west latitude of the stoneand the entry into the practice, earthy in qualitie, occasionate,occidental.

The second side of the Scalas figure, opposite the first (and hencethird on RipleysWheel ), denotes the quality of causing airiousness, theeasterly, the perfect, and the entrance of this speculative table, or ourart. Between these two sidesthe starting point and the attainment ofperfectionlies the mean of imperfection, characterised as depth, orprofundity:

For the quality of profundity, or dark secrecy, is called watery, northerly, and imper-fect. And just as one cannot pass from extreme to extreme except through a mean,so neither may one pass from the imperfect to the more-than-perfect exceptthrough the perfect. Upon which perfection a much higher thing is indeed

worked by nature.

Accordingly, altitude, the fourth and final point on the table, corresponds

to the attainment of a super-perfect state of matter, plusquam perfectum

:But the more-than-perfect quality, which is the highest dimension, resplendent,ery, autumnal, is called altitude, the clear summit, and also the spiritual longi-

tude, which in the fourth step has to nally stand fast.

While Ripleys treatment is not identical to that of the Scala, the latterevidently supplies the foundation of his Wheel . TheScala text also explic-itly unites the doctrine of means with the concept of super-perfection,

positing the attainment of a more-than-perfect state from an imperfect

nost re inferioris astronomie, dicitur | qualitas causati ter rei, frigidi, sicci, occidentalia,& introitus exper ien|cie nost re artis. Ibid ., 14r.

TCB , 117. Qualitas enim profunditatis, seu obscuri occulti, dicitur aquatica | aquilonaris

imper fecta. Et sicut non est transitus de extremo ad ex|tremu m, nisi per medium, sicnec de imper fecto ad plusquam per fectum, | nisi per per fectum. Ad quam quidem per-

fecti onem, ac eciam post prepar aciones | super ius, multum oper atur natur a. TrinityCollege MS O.8.9, 14r. Sed plus quam per fecta qualitas, que est di|mensio suprema, fulgens, ignea, autump-

nalis, dicitur altitudo, | manifestu m cacumen, atque longitudo spiritalis, que in quartogr adu | nalit er habet consister e. Ibid .


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starting point. The same concept is illustrated by RipleysWheel , which,starting with the entry to the practice in the west, proceeds from theimperfect (north), via the perfect (east) to, finally, the altitude of thestone in the south shining more than perfect the end of practice.In both works, the four elements are rotated into a single, fifth essence:a fixed and super-perfect substance with the quality of transmutingimperfect bodies to the perfection of precious metal. Rather than rollingfully-formed from Ripleys imagination, theWheel owes its origins to thesame source as his Twelve Gates: theScala philosophorum.

It is possible that Ripley even had an image to work from: the tableof Inferior Astronomy alluded to in theScala. Yet, although allusions tothe Scalas figure survive (including a reference earlier in the chapter tosecundum figuram), the actual table has long since parted companyfrom its text. From what remains, we cannot establish whether the figure

was intended to be circular or rectangular. An initial search for comparable figures yields several possibilities.

One treatise in a late fifteenth-century manuscript, British Library MSHarley 3528, does include a rectangular figure. Attributed to Orthola-

nus by the scribe, this short, illustrated text provides a Christianizedcommentary on the second part of the Lumen Luminum minus et perfectimagisterii (The Lesser Light of Lights and Perfect Magistery), a thir-teenth-century work pseudonymously ascribed to either Aristotle or

Al-Razi, which offers some Aristotelian underpinnings for alchemicaltheory and practice. The Ortholanus commentary begins in a similar

vein, explaining that all bodies within the sublunary sphere possess fourqualities, humours, complexions, odours, and colours, and exist within

three dimensions: longitude, latitude, and profundity. These fourfoldprinciples are illustrated not by a rota, but by an Aristotelian square of

British Library MS Harley 3528, 101v-103r (inc. Omnia corpora que et summo opi-ce; expl. Item vocant mundum medium. Deo gracias). Printed as Aristotles De perfecto magisterio: TC , III: 76-127. The text in MS Harley

3528 also shares some similarity with the Practica vera alkimica attributed to Ortholanusin TC , IV: 912-34. The author of the Practica has sometimes been equated with the Hor-tulanus who authored a famous commentary on the Emerald Tablet. On the di culty

of identifying and dating Hortulanus/Ortholanus, see Thorndike, History of Magic, III:176-83.

[Q]ue om nia compre|hendunt ur sub tr ibus dimenc i onibus Ita quod omne corpusdimencio|nat ur que sit longitudo latitudo & profunditas. MS Harley 3528, 101v.


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opposition. The commentary also relates the alchemical work to thetransition from purgatory to earthly paradise in a style highly reminis-cent of Ripleys treatment in the Compound . The late fifteenth-centurydating makes it hard to determine whether the commentary was a sourcefor the Scala, or was in fact derived from it. Either way, theScalas descrip-tion of its figure as a table is perhaps more appropriate for a squarethan a rota.

While Ripleys choice of a circular figure may represent his innovation,another related rota does survive in a manuscript also dating from thesecond half of the fifteenth century, British Library MS Sloane 3747 (seeFig. 4). It illustrates a short Latin treatise, entitled Sphaera inferiorisastronomiae. This Sphere of inferior astronomy has many similarities

with Ripleys Wheel , including four smaller circles at the corners of thefigure, each assigned a season, dimension, and secondary quality. TheSphaera is also divided into concentric circles. Rather than suggestingplanetary orbits, these are numbered to denote the three Geberianorders of medicine, mo-ving inwards from the first to the third orderand finally the quintessence (represented by E) in the centre. Yet theinfluence of the true heavens is more conspicuous here than in RipleysWheel , for the outer circle indicates which astrological house rules eachof the three orders, in each quarter.

Other influences are harder to map. The accompanying treatise offerslittle clarification regarding date or origins, once more leaving open thequestion of whether it derives from the Lumen commentary, the Scala,or even Ripleys ownWheel . The aim of the figure, stated at the beginningof the text, is to demonstrate how the four elements may be transformed:

Ibid ., 103r. The two rotae have several captions in common (Sol tenet ignem, etc.), text which

also appears in MS Harley 2407 (15th cent.), 54r. Quinta aute m | littera scilicet E ponitur in centro spere coloris | rubei ad designan-

dum quintam essenciam | ex 4 elementi s ortam & per circulaci onem eleuata m | inincoruptibilitatem (And the fth letter, namely E, is placed in the centre of the sphere,of a red colour, to denote the quintessence, born out of the four elements and throughcirculation elevated into incorruptibility). MS Sloane 3747, 81v.

For instance: In p r imo ordine aquarius In 2 geminis In 3o libra & hic digestiua in

the third quarter. The travails of the alchemical couple are described in the two innercircles, e.g. hic pur gant maculas propr ias. A detailed table of proportions completesthe sphere: de notat hac spera q ue sit proporci o vera. Ibid ., 80v.


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Figure 4: Sphaera inferioris astronomiae. The British Library, London, MS Sloane 3747,81v. ( The British Library Board)

From elementary quadrangularity into the centre, inducing roundness by the cir-culation of one into another until they be made altogether re: simple, pure, sub-tle, tingeing and xed, which is called the quintessence or quinary, temperate andfree of repugnance.

This text reminds us of Ripleys goal, to make the quadrangle round.Throughout the treatise, the resonance with Ripleys own views is strik-

[Q]u adrangularitate | elementari in centralem p roducunt ur rotunditate m | per circulaci onem vnius in alterum donec ant to t aliter ignis | simplex purus subtilis tingens& xus qui dicitur | quinta essencia seu quinaritas temp er ata tocius | repugnancie

vacua. Ibid ., 81r.


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ing, and adds to our sense that both the image and text must be somehowlinked to Ripleys oeuvre. Although this question is unlikely to be defin-itively resolved, theSphaera remains, to my knowledge, the earliest sur-

viving witness of a wheel of inferior astronomy. Besides representingan original and integral part of the Compound , it is clear that Ripleysown Wheel exemplifies ideas and images which were already circlingboth literally and figurativelyin fifteenth-century England.

The example of the Scala reveals Ripleys role as a late medievalalchemical commentator, who reshaped the Latin prose treatise into oneof the most distinctive examples of English alchemical poetry. Ratherthan adapting the text alone, Ripley extended his programme to includethe reinvention of the Scalas quadripartite figure, with the addition of

verses and clues to his own alchemical methodology. The Wheel alsomarks the climax of a series of sustained analogies throughout the poem:allegorical readings of scripture; the posthumous adventures of the redman and his white wife; the revolutions of the philosophical wheel itself.The result is an extraordinary, multi-purpose figure: a practical hiero-glyph which later generations would use to unlock the secrets of Ripleyspoem. Indeed, it is the Wheel , rather than the famous twelve gates, whichencapsulates the alchemy of the Compound .

The importance of the Wheel in Ripleys alchemical thinking is under-lined by its reappearance in his influential Medulla alchimiae (Marrowof Alchemy) of 1476. Ripley includes the process for anaqua com- posita, in which he describes the sequence of anticipated colour changes.

While its contents are presented as part of the recipe, we have no diffi-culty identifying the source of this purple passage:

And between blackness and future whiteness there shall appear a green colour, with so many colours afterward as can be thought of by human wit. But when a white colour begins to appear, like the eyes of shes, it may be known that sum-

mer is near; whom autumn will auspiciously follow with ripe and long-awaited red-ness, after ashy and citrine colour. For then, rst descending in due course from hissouthern seat, perfect, natural and shining by gross solution, into the pale west,imperfect, lateral; then into the north, dark, purgatorial, changeable and watery;

This manuscript is a member of the Corthop Group discussed in Rampling, The Alchemy of George Ripley, ch. 4;CRC , 128, 137.

On the Medulla, see CRC .


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The earliest extant copy of the figure itself may be the large, coloured version in Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, vol.

5, dating from the turn of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenthcentury (see Fig. 1). The earliestdated figure is from the Liber GeorgiiGolde in Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.2.16. The significanceof the Wheel or, as it is described in Goldes manuscript, the Sphereis emphasised on the Compound s title page, where the scribe notes, Inthe Year of our Lord 1539 was this little book written, all the way up tothe Sphere (A nno Domi ni 1539 scriptus erat libellus iste vsque adspheram). Sure enough, the Sphere has been placed at the end of thetract, under the heading, thys ffygure conteynyth all our secretts bothgret & small.

By the mid-sixteenth century, the Wheel had become a commonplaceaddition to manuscript Compounds. In 1545, Thomas Knyvet included ahandsome version on a fold-out parchment sheet inserted between theRecapitulation and Admonition in his copy; similar in design to Gol-des (see Fig. 5). The London haberdasher Rychard Walton, whose owncopy dates from the 1560s, also seems to follow the Golde model. MS

Ashmole 1445 includes an even more detailed copy, incorporating fourEnglish headings which are not found in the other copies so far men-tioned, but which were printed by Ralph Rabbards in 1591.

Of these copyists, Walton is known to have been a practising alche-mist, who also had an interest in collecting alchemical texts, includingmany of Ripleys works. Whether he regarded the Wheel as a source ofpractical information, a connection to a preferred authority, or an objectof antiquarian interest, is unclear in the absence of further cluesprob-

ably, it was a combination of all these. Although there is some evidence

Trinity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3, 82r. Ibid ., 127v.

Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.23, 32Ar. Her folowith the fygure contaynyng all the Secretes | of thys tretes bothe great and

Small. Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1479, 31r. These are excerpted from scripture: for instance, he brought water out of ye stone

and oule from ye most hard rocke, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1445, Pt. 1, 30r (cf.

Exodus 17:6; Deuteronomy 32:13). On Walton, see Charles Webster, Alchemical and Paracelsian Medicine, in Health,

Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge, 1979),301-34; Rampling, The Alchemy of George Ripley, ch. 6.


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Figure 5: Thomas KnyvetsWheel . Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.2.23, 32Ar.(Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

that the Wheel was viewed as having practical relevance, such clues tendnot to accompany copies of the figure itself. For instance, the scribe ofMS Ashmole 1426 (Pt. V) composed a practical commentary on theCom- pound in the first third of the sixteenth century, in which the spere ofthis auctor is singled out for praise. Besides the matter to be used, onemust know the correct proportions. The Wheel s Latin verses follow, cor-rectly interpreted: This that foloweth declareth bothe the mattre | andthe Right proporcyon. Ye most haue of [venus] | .8. mer cury: 12 lune .3.


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[sol] .1. A century later, a seventeenth-century reader used a versefrom the Wheel to gloss a recipe in the (pseudo) Ripleian Breviation, inMS Sloane 83. An even more enticing connection has been proposedby the Thomas Harriot scholar, John Shirley, who argues that the Englishmathematician used the Wheel as a guide to his meticulous alchemicalpractice, although this argument rests on a manuscript of uncertainprovenance.

While evidence for practice is slight, the careful transcription of Rip-leys difficult figure does indicate a concern with authenticity and antiq-uity. Thus Thomas Potter, updating his very falsse corrupte copy of theCompound in 1580, was pleased to find in a new exemplar the astrono-mycall tables also, | that were lackinge in my said firste | copye. Oneof these tables is RipleysWheel although, unusually, Potter providesall the verses in English. It is even possible to identify Potters exemplar,thanks to a note attached to the figure: Here followeth a figure contayn-inge all the secrettes | of thys treatyse, greate & small, w hi ch treatisebegynnethe, fol. i. and | endeth fol. 27. These folio numbers correspondto the placing of the Wheel in Knyvets copy, making this the likely exem-plar for Potters true copy, w hi ch I gott. anno. 1580.

Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1426, Pt. 5, 9. British Library MS Sloane 83, 2r. On the Breviation, see CRC . Lambeth Palace Library, Sion College MS Arc.L.40.2/E.6, discussed in John W. Shirley,

Thomas Harriot: A Biography (Oxford, 1983), 282-87. Shirley reproduces several of theWheel s verses (although he does not connect these with Ripley or the Compound ). Hisreading is supported by Stephen Clucas, Thomas Harriot and the Field of Knowledgein the English Renaissance, inThomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man of Science, ed. Rob-ert Fox (Aldershot, 2000), 93-136, at 126. However, an inscription on the manuscriptyleaf, The gift of Henry Holland, Citizen & Stationer of London, 1644, throws doubt

on the Harriot connection, which relies on the manuscript having passed to Harriotsliterary executor, Nathaniel Torporley, and hence to Sion College.

British Library MS Sloane 3580A, 140r. On Potter, see also George R. Keiser, Preserv-ing the Heritage: Middle English Verse Treatises in Early Modern Manuscripts, in Mys-tical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, ed. Stanton J. Linden(New York, 2007), 189-214.

MS Sloane 3580A, 238.

Ibid ., 140r. As supporting evidence, Potter mentions nding Ripleys tables in hisexemplar. Although Potters codex contains four gures, only one of thesethe sec-ondis Ripleys, as Potter himself knew, noting elsewhere that some verses shouldebe added to | Ripleyes table, w hi ch is ye seconde | table here (237r). Potters exemplar


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Part of the interest in these varying copies is the effort entailed inproducing them. The difficulty of first draughting the concentric spheres,then compressing various verses and captions into restricted space, hasleft its mark on many surviving copies. Rychard Walton, who initiallyleft a gap between the Recapitulation and Admonition, eventuallyrelocated his Wheel to a full sheet at the end of the work, leaving a notefor any readers who might have expected to find it earlier: The spere |Is at the ende of thys | boke. Thomas Knyvet, however, had alreadycommenced filling in the verses when lack of space forced him to aban-don his half-drawn Wheel, and start again on a larger sheet, folded andstitched to one of the original pages (see Fig. 6). In Goldes copy, twoblank pages are left between the Compound and the Wheel, tantalisinglyinscribed, Sequitur Sphera (The sphere follows).

The awkwardness of copying the large figure is doubtless responsiblefor the dearth of Wheels in early manuscripts. Although the functional-ity of the Wheel is impaired by translating its contents into linear form,as in MS Sloane 3170, ease of transcription is greatly improved. An exam-ple of compromise is provided in the Wheel in MS Ashmole 1445, wherethe scribe has recorded the Latin contents of the spheres within theWheel itself, then devoted the next two pages to comparing two Englishtranslations. This activity points to some antiquarian interest in col-lating surviving copies, an interest which underlies Thomas Potters

vigilance in updating his own copies of texts. We can guess that Potterssatisfaction in obtaining a true copy of Ripleys table was slightly damp-ened by his later discovery of an even more complete one:

This table is vnper fect & wanteth muche | as I per ceyved by a perfect & larger table, w hi ch | afterward I gott, conteyninge a great deale | more matter than this w hi ch

later table I haue | copied out also, and is set at the ende of this booke.

must therefore have included more than one gure, and Knyvets does, indeed, containtwo copies of the Wheel (see Figs. 5 and 6).

Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1479, 29r. Trinity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3, 126v127r.

MS Ashmole 1445, Pt. 1, 30v31r. A note to the four sphere verses on 30vwhich vary considerably from the usual versionsmentions that This 4. speres be after

another bocke. MS Sloane 3580A, 238r.


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Figure 6: Incomplete Wheel . Knyvet has used the empty space to sketch a partialhuman gure, and added a note about a bay horse with a Blacke eye and hasall eye.Cambridge University Library, MS. Ff.2.23, 32Av. (Reproduced by kind permission of theSyndics of Cambridge University Library)

It is likely that this and other copies of the Wheel usually placed in a vulnerable position towards the end of codiceshave become detached.

Such losses may explain theWheel s tendency to haunt even those cop-ies where it no longer exists. In MS Ashmole 1485, a wheel-lessCom- pound , we still find a deleted note after the colophon: And within oneleafe followenge is his wheele or figure | mentioned before in his


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Recapitulacion. Although the Compound in MS Ashmole 1486also fails to provide aWheel for its intended reader, the early sixteenth-century scribe urges him, in the letter that follows, to Above Allthing[s] | haue p rofounde Regard vnto the Spere of Rypla.

As these examples reveal, hand-copied Wheels varied in size, accuracyand level of detail. Variations proliferated when the figure was preparedfor print publication. The two English editions of the Compound , pub-lished in 1591 and 1652, differ markedly, both in textual redaction andthe Wheel s design.

In 1591, theCompound became the first English alchemical work tobe published in English: edited by Ralph Rabbards, a magistrate andformer engineer, printed by Thomas Orwin, and dedicated to the Queen,Elizabeth I. Rabbards placed the Wheel at the end of the book, afterthe Compound and Epistle to Edward IV , titled George Ripleys Wheelementioned in his Worke (Fig. 7). The transition into print has resultedin a rather stripped-down version compared to manuscript copies, per-haps reflecting the difficulty of accommodating the complex figure

within a single sheet. Rabbards himself seems to have anticipated criti-

cism, and justifies the design in A briefe note to the Readers:The Wheele that is placed (Gentlemen) last, as the period of this secret Worke mayof some be challenged (through the diuersitie of Copies) to di fer from the rst. Butherein I assure you I haue obserued no lesse care than counsaile, and that ofknowen Practisers, whose censures (made more certaine by experience) hauedetermined all doubts, and made me bolde to publish what followeth for the mostauncient.

Comparison with the earliest extant manuscripts suggests that Rabbardsconfidence in the antiquity of his exemplar was misplaced. His simple woodcut omits the captions from the inner spheres, which are present

in all hand-drawn copies of the Wheel from the 1530s and earlier

Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1485, Pt. 3, 46r. Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1486, Pt. 3, 72v. George Ripley, The Compound of Alchymy ... Divided into twelue gates ... Set foorth by

Raph Rabbards Gentleman, studious and expert in archemicall artes, ed. Ralph Rabbards (London, 1591). Rabbards text is reproduced with some spelling emendations inGeorge Ripleys Compound of Alchemy, ed. Linden.

Ripley, Compound of Alchymy, M3r. Ibid ., *4v.


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(see Fig. 7). These include the Latin notes containing the correct propor-tions of Sol, Luna, Venus and Mercuryessential if the figure is to beread in any practical sense. Indeed, the symbol for Venus has been omit-ted altogether, while the other three are doubled up, each appearingtwice. The sense of the Wheel is altered further by a striking addition:the symbols for the seven planets, from Moon to Saturn, have beenattached to respective circles, starting from the central hub. Yet the graft-ing of this conventional cosmological ordering onto the alchemical fig-ure makes nonsense of Ripleys original scheme. The outerring contains both Saturn and Sol; Jupiter now shares his sphere withLuna; and the double Mercury has intruded into the realm of Mars.

Without having access to Rabbards most auncient exemplars, wecannot know whether these changes were accurately reproduced froman unusual manuscript version, reflect Rabbards own amendments, orsimply demonstrate the erratic nature of Elizabethan editorial and print-ing practices. In the absence of further evidence, we might speculatethat the adjustment betrays a scribe or printers decision to bring Ripleyserratic orbits in line with the correct astronomical order. The outcomehas nevertheless left its mark on several seventeenth-century manuscriptcopies of RabbardsWheel . These include a version by Brian Twyne(15811644), archivist of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which repro-duces the full complement of planets (see Fig. 8).

The fluidity of the print-manuscript relationship and the practicalawkwardness of transcribing complex figures coincide in the form ofEdinburgh University MS Laing III.164, a sixteenth-century copy of theCompound with a complete Wheel . A first attempt has clearly gone

awry, and the sheet with the half-finished figure now furnishes the outerleaves of the quire. A later owner has added various amendments to theWheel and Compound , besides recording some opinions on the interpre-tation of the Wheel at the end of the work. These focus on the planetaryspheres, correctly identifying the necessary proportions to be used. Latininstructions on drawing the Wheel then follow (Rota fabrica), which

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 172: Twyne has added copies of theWheel , the Epistle to Edward IV , and Rabbards title page to this fteenth-century Compound . Seealso Bodleian Library MS Rawl. poet 121 (70r), in the hand of George Lideatt, merchanttailor.

CRC 9.6, in CRC , 152.


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Figure 7: Wheel . George Ripley,The Compovnd of Alchymy (London, 1591), M3r. WrenLibrary, Trinity College, Cambridge, Grylls.3.412. (By kind permission of the Master andFellows of Trinity College, Cambridge)

begin with the marking out of a large circle (Describatur circulusgrandis).

Edinburgh University MS Laing III.164, 120.


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Figure 8: Wheel . Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library MS 136. (By kind permission ofthe President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

Intriguingly, the scribe must also have been familiar with Rabbards edi-tion, for the Latin guide has been supplemented with English notes onthe reproduction of a Wheel , In forme as in the printed copye. Here,the artist should start by drawing the Sphere of the Moon, as bigg asthat which touch the fower inward circles. To delineate the outer limits


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of the Wheel, one should then make another paper as bigge as the circleof [Saturn], which fix | in the center of the former and fasten at ye crosse.Rather than simply leaving the spheres empty of text, as in the printexemplar, the Latin verses appropriate to Sol, Luna, Venus and Mercuryshould be added to the fower quarters thereof. Guidance is also givenon completing the other spheres.

If followed, the result would be a curious fusion of scribal and printedsources, in which the omissions of the Rabbardian Wheel are corrected

with reference to a manuscript exemplar. Yet, perversely, not all manu-scripts reflect this striving for accuracy. Around 1606, the dedicated copy-ist and compiler of alchemical treatises, Thomas Robson, transcribedtwo almost identical versions of The philosophers heaven, an ano-nymised version of the Wheel in which the large, single figure is brokendown into smaller circles and disembodied verses. Alternative Englishtranslations of the Latin verses are provided, yet the original scale andcontext of the figure are lost; traces surviving only in such enigmaticheadings as The first Cirkell w i thin the great Cirkell.

In Robsons neat copies, the deconstructed Wheel becomes justanother illustrated alchemical treatise. Elsewhere, solitary Wheels beganto orbit independently of the Compound , as illustrations in unrelatedcompendia. In at least one instance, an isolated Wheel appears with

verses and captions fully Latinizedall the more surprising given thatthe Liber duodecim portarum (the Latin version of theCompound ) seemsto have parted company from its figure before arriving in continentalEurope. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Wheel had acquired amodest life of its own, in which the substance of its verses and propor-

tions became increasingly divorced from practical considerations thatmade sense only when grounded in its source text.

The Wheel s evolution culminates in an otherwise-unidentified

Ibid . British Library MS Sloane 1744, 76v; Glasgow University Library, MS Ferguson 133,

14v (dated 1606).

Canterbury Cathedral, CCA-LitMs/A/14 (August 1590); Royal College of Physiciansof Edinburgh, MS Anonyma 2, vol. 4 (17th cent.), 269. British Library MS Sloane 1255 (ca. 15871600), 260b. A later copy of the Liber duo-

decim portarum, in Bodleian Library MS Canon. Misc. 223, does include the Wheel (Rotaphilosophica, accompanying LatinCompound ), 258


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Figure 9: An Alchymical or Philosophical Heaven, or Wheel . Glasgow University Library,MS Ferguson 238, inner yleaf. (By kind permission of Glasgow University Library, Spe-cial Collections)

engraving of An Alchymical or Philosophical Heaven, or Wheel, foundpasted to the flyleaf of Glasgow University Library MS 238 (see Fig. 9).

This has apparently been cut from a work of the English physician and occultist

writer Ebenezer Sibly (17511799), which I have yet to identify. The sheet includes thenames of Wrighten J.C. and the artist, Sibly. On Sibly, see Allen G. Debus, Scienti cTruth and Occult Tradition: The Medical World of Ebenezer Sibly (17511799), Medical History, 26 (1982), 259-78; Debus, A Further Note on Palingenesis: The Account of Eben-ezer Sibly in the Illustration of Astrology (1792), Isis, 64 (1973), 226-30.


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Figure 10: George Ripley, Figure conteyning all the secrets of the Treatise both great& small. Elias Ashmole, ed.,Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652), 117. (Bykind permission of SSPL/Science Museum)

This image presents a late and unattributed version of RipleysWheel ,from which most alchemical content has been removed. Startlingly, thefour elements at the centre of the scheme have been replaced by thesun, from which the planets recede in their correct, post-Copernican


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order. Rather than celebrating the alchemical quest to achieve heavenlyperfection on earth, Ripleys cosmos has been reinvented as an analoguefor human capacity, expressed by a new slogan:

Man know thyself is the greatist Wisdom for all Magick is found in Man.Man is the Epitome of the Creation the World in Miniature.

Conclusions

When the Wheel was published for the second time in 1652, by the anti-

quary, alchemist and founding member of the Royal Society, Elias Ash-mole (16171692), it appeared engraved on a fold-out sheet immediatelybefore the Compound in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (Fig. 10).The Theatrum, as the first printed compendia of English alchemical

verse, was essentially an antiquarian enterprise, reflecting Ashmolesconcern to preserve through his efforts the jewels of Englands alchem-ical heritage, being almost quite shrouded in the Dust of Antiquity.

Ashmoles attention to detail reflects his own striving for authenticity,

which also led him to commission magnificent engravings from Robert Vaughan, based on a manuscript exemplar, to accompany the first workin the collection, Thomas Nortons Ordinal of Alchemy. The simplergeometrical structure of the Wheel was entrusted to John Goddard, andthe resulting figure preserves all the material familiar from early manu-script copies, including the fine detail of the inner circles.

Flyleaf, Glasgow University Library MS 238.TCB , 117.

Ashmole, Prologomena, in TCB , B3v. On Ashmoles antiquarian project in relationto alchemy, see Lauren Kassell, Reading for the Philosophers Stone, in Books and theSciences in History, ed. Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine (Cambridge, 2000), 132-50;Bruce Janacek, A Virtuosos History: Antiquarianism and the Transmission of Knowl-edge in the Alchemical Studies of Elias Ashmole, Journal for the History of Ideas, 69(2008), 395-417.

Elias Ashmole (16171692). His Autobiographical and Historical Notes, his Corres-

pondence, and Other Contemporary Sources Relating to his Life and Work , ed. ConradHermann Josten, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1966), V: 585-86; M.K. Corbett, Ashmole and the Pur-suit of Alchemy: the Illustrations to the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652, Anti-quaries Journal , 63 (1983), 326-36.


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In cycling back to an earlier stage in the Wheel s evolution, Ashmoleand Goddard pursued the pristine knowledge of a revered authority: anattempt that necessarily obscures the intervening efforts of early modernpeople to read, decode and tinker with their exemplars. The circularityof alchemical production is not expressed merely in the procedures andphilosophies that its texts and images evoke. It is manifested by a con-tinual process of recycling and reinterpretation, as successive readersapplied their practical knowledge to its puzzles, or employed its conceitsto front new treatises for presentation elsewhere.

The Wheel illustrates a series of stages in an active process ofcompi-latio and exegesis that, Obrists work aside, remains little studied withinthe context of alchemical imagery. From the thirteenth century, alchem-ical authors re-spun earlier material to create colourful analogies andgraphical forms. Often preserved only in textual hints and scattered earlycopies, these have been largely overshadowed by successful adaptations,like the Wheel , which have in consequence been treated in isolation fromtheir medieval context. Fifteenth-century alchemical figures evolved

Depicting Medieval Alchemical Cosmos

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