History of attributions of authorship
Mutus Liber clearly indicates the names of its author and of its inventor. The former is Altus, a "scholar in high chemistry of Hermès". The latter is Jacob Saulat, Sire of Marez. However, these assertions were soon proven to be fictitious, thus the authorship of Mutus Liber has long been in doubt.
Rev. Arcère, a noted historian of La Rochelle, claims that Jacob Tollé is the author though his very existence was even put in doubt. [3] Tollé was in fact a Rochelais doctor reputed for using chemistry and mastering perspective. [4] These two qualities account for the fact that he was acknowledged as the author for a long time. However, ever since the article by Jean Flouret, it has been established that the author of Mutus Liber is in fact Isaac Baulot.
Using clues in Mutus Liber and contemporary documents, Patrick Sembel suggests three people were involved with Isaac Baulot. Abrahaim Thévenin probably worked on the plates, as the presence of his monetary symbol on the first illustrated page of Mutus Liber indicates. Elie Bouhéreau and Elie Richard must have contributed to the conception of the book. As doctors and scholars who used chemistry, they would have had many contacts who would facilitate publishing the book. Elie Richard studied at Groningen with Des Maretz, a philosopher whose name is used to designate the person who discovered Mutus Liber. Elie Bouhéreau knew Valentin Conrard, a secretary of the Académie française, as well as many major authors and philosophers of the time. It is he who attributed authorship of Mutus Liber to Isaac Baulot.
Interpretations
The form of Mutus Liber means that is open to various interpretations. Four ways of reading the book may be distinguished.
The most widespread reading is that of 'initiated alchemists', started off by Pierre Dujols, [5] under the pseudonym of Magophon. It is carried on by Eugène Canseliet [6] and Serge Hutin. [7] These authors say that Mutus Liber shows how to proceed to achieve the magnum opus , whose ultimate purpose is to obtain the philosopher's stone.
Carl Gustav Jung studied Mutus Liber, and owned a copy of the 1677 edition. He used it namely to illustrate his work entitled Psychology and Alchemy . [8] In this book Jung explains how alchemy is speculative thinking looking for the spiritual equilibrium whose metaphorical form would be the philosopher's stone. This process is accompanied by the creation of a repertoire of mental pictures, or archetypes, which would gradually lead to a collective unconscious.
More recently Lee Stavenhagen worked on the narrative structure used to illustrate Mutus Liber. [9]
In their research Jean Flouret and Patrick Sembel have been trying to define the contents of Mutus Liber by putting it into its religious, intellectual and scientific context.
Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.
Basil Valentine is the Anglicised version of the name Basilius Valentinus, ostensibly a 15th-century alchemist, possibly Canon of the Benedictine Priory of Saint Peter in Erfurt, Germany but more likely a pseudonym used by one or several 16th-century German authors.
The philosopher's stone is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold or silver. It is also called the elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and for achieving immortality; for many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosopher's stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, divine illumination, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosopher's stone were known as the Magnum Opus.
The Emerald Tablet, also known as the Smaragdine Tablet or the Tabula Smaragdina, is a compact and cryptic Hermetic text. It was highly regarded by Islamic and European alchemists as the foundation of their art. Though attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, the text of the Emerald Tablet first appears in a number of early medieval Arabic sources, the oldest of which dates to the late eighth or early ninth century. It was translated into Latin several times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Numerous interpretations and commentaries followed.
Zosimos of Panopolis was a Greco-Egyptian alchemist and Gnostic mystic who lived at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, and flourished ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, which he called "Cheirokmeta," using the Greek word for "things made by hand." Pieces of this work survive in the original Greek language and in translations into Syriac or Arabic. He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Constantinople in the 7th or 8th century AD, copies of which exist in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria is another.
Adam McLean is a Scottish writer on alchemical texts and symbolism. In 1978 he founded the Hermetic Journal which he published until 1992 during which time he also started publishing the Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, a series of 55 editions of key source texts of the hermetic tradition. From 2004 he began collecting tarot cards in order to document tarot art and built up a collection of 2500 items. In 2016 he set up the Surrealism Website in order to document surrealist painters. This currently shows the work of 100 surrealist artists. He also created a series of 20 video lectures on many facets of surrealist paintings. In 2017 he set up an art gallery The Studio and Gallery in Kilbirnie in North Ayrshire in order to promote the work of emergent and lesser-known artists. In 2023 McLean began publishing, in book form, his Alchemical Translations Series of translations of 16-18th Century German, Latin and French alchemical works previously unavailable in English. This project is intended to expand the public's perception of the richness of alchemical literature.
Jacques Élie Faure was a French medical doctor, art historian and essayist.
Colette Peignot was a French writer and poet. She is most known by the pseudonym Laure, but also wrote under the self-chosen name Claude Araxe, derived from a phase in Virgil's Aeneid.
Jean de Roquetaillade, also known as John of Rupescissa, was a French Franciscan alchemist and eschatologist.
Khālid ibn Yazīd, c. 668–704 or 709, was an Umayyad prince and purported alchemist.
Denis-Nicolas Le Nourry was a French Benedictine scholar of the Congregation of St-Maur, an ecclesiastical writer.
"Je voudrais pas crever" is a collection of poetry by French author Boris Vian, published posthumously in 1962.
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum first published in 1652, is an extensively annotated compilation of English alchemical literature selected by Elias Ashmole. The book preserved and made available many works that had previously existed only in privately held manuscripts. It features the alchemical verse of people such as Thomas Norton, George Ripley, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Lydgate, John Dastin, Abraham Andrews and William Backhouse.
Eugène Léon Canseliet, was a French writer and alchemist. He was a student of the mysterious alchemist known as Fulcanelli. He wrote the preface for each of his master's books. Later in his life after his master died, he took a quiet life in France and continued to study and practice what Fulcanelli taught him, taking on students.
Fulcanelli was the name used by a French alchemist and esoteric author, whose identity is still debated. The name Fulcanelli seems to be a play on words: Vulcan, the ancient Roman god of fire, plus El, a Canaanite name for God and so the Sacred Fire.
The Liber de compositione alchemiae, also known as the Testamentum Morieni, the Morienus, or by its Arabic title Masāʾil Khālid li-Maryānus al-rāhib, is a work on alchemy falsely attributed to the Umayyad prince Khalid ibn Yazid. It is generally considered to be the first Latin translation of an Arabic work on alchemy into Latin, completed on 11 February 1144 by the English Arabist Robert of Chester.
Ortolanus, also known as Hortulanus, was a medieval alchemist. Little information exists about his life and identity. He is best known for his influential commentary on The Emerald Tablet entitled Liber super textum Hermetis. It was composed before 1325, and the original work has two sections.
René Schérer was a French philosopher and professor emeritus of the universite de Paris VIII.
Jean-Louis Faure was a French sculptor, painter and writer. He is best known for his work as a sculptor, which began in 1979, and consists of 112 sculptures, which Faure himself referred to as "narrative carpentry handiwork".
