What can you deduce about the person who wrote this passage? Would you be willing to hazard a guess as to his identity?
In Saturn is hid an immortal soul. Untie its fetters which do it forbid to sight for to appear then shal arise a vapour shining like pearl orient. To Saturn mars with bonds of love is tied who is by him devourd of mighty force whose spirit divides Saturn's body & from both combined flow a wondrous bright water in which the sun doth set & lose its light.
No, not some obscure mystic. Would you believe Sir Isaac Newton? Here's an excerpt from a Nova interview with Bill Newman, a scholar who has studied Newton's alchemical writings:
NOVA: Why are people surprised when they hear that Isaac Newton—the grand patriarch of physics—was an alchemist?
NEWMAN: Well, I think it's because alchemy has been portrayed as the epitome of irrationality and a sort of avaricious folly.
NOVA: Sinister, dark-robed sorcerers trying to turn lead into gold. Is that an accurate picture of alchemists in Newton's time?
NEWMAN: It's accurate for some alchemists. But we now know that most of the great minds of the period were involved in alchemy, including Robert Boyle, John Locke, Leibniz, any number of others.
You can read more about it at the link. The image is a handpainted woodcut, William Cuningham The cosmographical glasse, 1559, from Adam McLean's Gallery of Alchemical Images
Ayn Rand?
Posted by: Jake | June 01, 2007 at 05:35 PM
That would make sense with the picture. But no, not Ayn Rand.
Posted by: gail | June 01, 2007 at 05:37 PM
Sounds William Blake-ish.
Posted by: Melissa | June 01, 2007 at 05:46 PM
It sure does, but it's not William Blake.
Posted by: gail | June 01, 2007 at 06:13 PM
It was whoever discovered that smoking various substances could provide lugubrious insight...
Posted by: MC | June 01, 2007 at 08:02 PM
Valentin Weigel (1553-1588)?
Posted by: Major John | June 01, 2007 at 09:24 PM
Sir Isaac was a great man. his dabbling in alchemy should not surprise us, given his life-long pursuit of knowledge and truth.
My favourite Newton quote is this one, which neatly sums up the man:
"I seem to have been only like a small boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Newton had a firm belief in God too. He saw no conflict between the pusuit of science and belief. Indeed, the more scientific knowledge unfolded the mysteries of the universe, the more it confirmed for him the complexity of Creation.
What a contrast with Richard Dawkins, a charmless "rational" scientist and atheist who seems not so much to disbelieve in God as to be genuinely annoyed that He might exist.
Posted by: JJM | June 02, 2007 at 06:35 AM