![]() ![]() In his work AION he criticized the purely concretist interpretation of the term sexuality by Sigmund Freud. Jung who first mentioned the idea of a more universal aspect of sexuality. It concludes with a discussion of the somewhat surprising approval of Dee’s enigmatic work from one who was utterly antagonistic to Paracelsian and Rosicrucian philosophy, the chemist Andreas Libavius, who openly admitted to using the hieroglyphic monad as the basis for the ground plan for his ideal laboratory. The article also notes how the Monas Hieroglyphica appealed to purveyors of both physical and more theosophical forms of alchemy, such as the Rosicrucian Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz. ![]() It shows how Dee’s work was read by alchemists influenced by Trithemius’s exposition of the Emerald Tablet, including major promulgators of Paracelsian thought such as Gerard Dorn, Oswald Croll, Joseph Duchesne, and Heinrich Khunrath. This article considers Dee’s reputation as an alchemist, in particular the reception of his Monas Hieroglyphica, in Latin, French, and German texts published in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and examines two themes: first, discussion of the Monas Hieroglyphica in the context of cabbalistic calculations and Pythagorean symbolic numbers and second, references to, and appropriations of, the hieroglyphic monad in the context of chemical notation. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the Kabbala Denudata.īrian Vickers once described John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica as “possibly the most obscure work ever written by an Englishman,” asking whether there were even ten references to it in the seventeenth century. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation to chemical medicine. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their work. This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth century. ![]()
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