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Alchemical allegories

Alchemical texts often use elaborate extended allegories as a means of communicating key philosophical points, or to illustrate a particular alchemical process. In these allegorical texts a figure, with which the reader is supposed to identify, goes on an journey in search of wisdom or understanding of the mysteries of alchemy. There this figure meets various archetypal characters, kings, queens, various alchemical birds and animals, and witnesses a process of transformation. This parallels the use of series of symbolic illustrations in various alchemical books and manuscripts - these allegories are in essence the working out in text of similar alchemical ideas and processes as are found in the sequences of emblematic symbols.


The Allegory of John of the the Fountain
The Fountain allegory of Bernard of Treviso
The Parabola of Henricus Madathanus
Lumen de lumine
An adept's allegory to a certain scholar
The Duenech allegory
The Globe allegory
The Golden Age Restored
Greverus
The allegory of Merlin
Muller's allegory
Ruland's allegory
Sendivogius' Enigma of the Sages
Thomas Vaughan's allegory of the Mountain
Allegories of Zosimos of Panoplis


Other related allegorical works:-

Thomas Campanella's City of the Sun
Francis Bacon's New Atlantis
Jan Comenius The Labyrinth of the World
The allegorical tale in Novalis' novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen
The Mystic Tower from The Mystic Rose from the Garden of the King

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Alchemical texts


16th Century
Practical alchemy
Philosophical alchemy

17th Century
Practical alchemy
Philosophical alchemy

18th Century
Practical alchemy
Philosophical alchemy

Alchemical poetry

Alchemical allegories

Works of Nicolas Flamel
Works of George Ripley
Works of Sendivogius
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum
Emerald tablet of Hermes
Rosicrucian texts
Literary works
Texts from Musaeum Hermeticum

Spanish alchemical texts
German alchemical texts
French alchemical texts
Russian alchemical texts
Italian alchemical texts