Stanislas Klossowski de Rola

I started writing a very negative review as I found little in this book to recommend it to anybody....including myself. In fact, unlike most books, there is even nothing about the author ....who he is; what else he has written; what position he holds, etc. So I googled him and found that he is basically an artist of sorts and is probably most famous for being the offspring of a (distinctly strange....maybe weird) artist father, who specialised in painting young women in eroto-masochistic sorts of positions. That's not to denigrate the author of the current book but merely to set the stage for a, distinctly, unusual family. So Stanislas has established himself as a kind of guru on Alchemy and tries to make the point that Alchemy is far more than trying to transmute lead into gold: it's more about unlocking "the hidden reality of the highest order which constitutes the underlying essence of all truths and religions". The perfection of this essence is termed the absolute; it can be perceived and realised, as the Beauty of all Beauty, the Love of all Love and the high Most high".
Ok: let's stop right there, because this kind of illustrates the emptiness of this work for me. It's language made into gobbled-gook ...posing as being profound. If you start to unravel this language he's saying that there is some kind of universal beauty (all kinds of beauty .....so one could imagine the beauty of a sunset, or the beauty of a young woman, or the beauty of an equation ...to a mathematician.......but what about the beauty of a foul smelling plant (to humans) but which is attractive to blow flies....presumably the blow flies find something beautiful in it.
So it seems to me, that right from the start, there is inconsistency in this Alchemical claim. How can something be both repulsive (to humans) and beautiful (to blow flies) yet possess the same universal of beauty? The project seems hopelessly enmeshed in an anthropomorphic perspective of reality. ....which is clearly not universal.
What I found most fascinating, however, were the alchemist's tricks for refuting criticism of their writings or works. Basically they seem to take the line that everything that is written is in code and not to be read as it appears. You have to know the decoding key. However, even if you have this key, they have another trick up their sleeves. Even if you decode the message there will be traps set and mistruths to set people off in the wrong direction. "The texts invariably contain elaborate devices to deter the unworthy. They are couched in a language, often so obscure and so impenetrable that their study requires years and years of devoted attention, of reading and re-reading before their exegesis may even be attempted. For secrecy is inextricably woven into the fabric of alchemy, and is still involved by modern alchemists". OK ....one might grant this but ask the question ..why bother? As an aside, this is the same kind of technique that the Gnostics used in the early Christian era...you had to be part of an elite to understand the secrets and the texts were all coded so that only the elite knew how to "correctly" interpret them. (They didn't win-out in the battle for dominance with Christian doctrine).
We are told that there is true alchemy and false alchemy.....so, it seems to me, that whenever something inconsistent shows up or something is clearly a failure ...the claim can immediately be made..."Oh that is not TRUE Alchemy!"
The alchemists were mocked by Chaucer and the retort by Artephius was "Poor fool! Will you be simple enough to believe that we teach openly and clearly the greatest and most important of all secrets".
Stanislas plays down the relationship between chemistry and Alchemy but it's pretty clear to me that Alchemy fed into chemistry (though the pathway was never straightforward and was probably confounded by the philosophical pretentious of Alchemy).
He does describe in some detail the "Great work of the Alchemists" ....and there are three "stones", or three works, or three degrees of perfection" (take your pick) with the Great Work.
And much of the production of these "stones" seems to involve sealing stuff in bottles, heating, cooling distilling, re-heating etc etc. multiple times .....and it can all be confounded by the weather or the timing etc., etc.,....so there are plenty of "cop-outs" for things that don't work.
Stanislas talks about "Armand Barbault, a contemporary Alchemist who achieved , after twelve years what he calls in his book L'Or du millieme matin (Paris 1969) the "vegetable gold" or Elixir of the first degree. ...This elixir was thoroughly analysed and tested by German and Swiss laboratories and doctors. It proved its great value and efficacy, especially in the treatment of very serious heart and kidney aliments. But it could not be fully analysed nor therefore synthesised. It's preparation required such peculiar care and took so long , that eventually all hopes of commercialisation were abandoned. The scientists who examined it declared that they were in the presence of a new state of matter". Well this sounds to me just fanciful (at best) and untrue. (Scientists would be most unlikely to declare that this was a "new sort of matter"...that is patently ridiculous ......but, of course the Alchemists have all their cop-outs ready. I notice that there is no reference to a published paper detailing the testing that this elixir was subject to. And it was "efficacious in treating both serious heart and kidney aliments"....Well it would be most unlikely to do both. Most unlikely to do one. And in the absence of double blind trials one can say nothing about effectiveness.
I'm also a little unsure about Stanislas' claims to true knowledge. After all, we are given no information about how he came to acquire this true knowledge..and maybe he is just practicing false Alchemy. What is the source of his authority? And why should any one trust him...given that the alchemists are laying all these traps for the "unworthy"....and, presumably most of the readers (like me) are unworthy.
There are a lot of pictures extracted from a (relatively small) number of mediaeval documents. ...seemingly from around the 11-14th centuries. (Didn't they learn anything after this?) One thing is pretty clear and that is that they were not great at drawing.
Fortunately we have Stanislas to interpret the obscure coding in all the pictures ....which seem a confabulation of ancient greek mythology with contemporary ideas about witchcraft and Chinese/Greek ideas about air fire water and earth as the fundamentals.
I would not recommend reading this book. It's pretty much a waste of space except for the delightful expose about how to dodge criticism and obscure everything under a fog of words. Clarity is clearly not a virtue when it comes to the Alchemists explaining themselves.
I give it two stars because at least the obfuscating tactics were interesting.… (mere)

EL JUEGO AUREO : 533 GRABADOS ALQUIMICOS DEL SIGLO XVII

PREFACIO

Este libro reúne por primera vez una selección exhaustiva de los
ejores emblemas alquimicos grabados del siglo XVI

Todo el material reproducido procede de obras que se conservan en
bibliotecas de investigación, por lo que están fuera del alcance de
cualquier profano interesado. Además, las escasas reimpresiones de
alguno que otro de los títulos más célebres casi siempre están agotadas
o no poseen una calidad satisfactoria. También hay veces en que ni
siquiera el especialista tiene más suerte, pues, por ejemplo, en la
Bibliothèque Nationale de París no existe un solo título de Goossen van
Vreeswijk. Por consiguiente, este volumen, a la vez que llena un
evidente vacio, se plantea el ambicioso propósito de ser placentero y útil
a un tiempo.

Durante los años que he invertido en este trabajo he contraído una
deuda con las muchas personas que me han ayudado y apoyado.
Algunas no han querido ver su nombre citado, pero de todas formas
debo darles las gracias por la extraordinaria paciencia y comprensión de
que hicieron gala.

Antes que nada, me gustaría darle las gracias de manera
especialisima a mi editor, el señor David Britt, por sus muchos años de
colaboración, paciencia y comprensión más allá de lo exigible, años
de intrépido vadear a través de un verdadero laberinto de materiales
con demasiada frecuencia «prolijos y recónditos»; quisicra agradecer
su amabilidad y eficiencia al personal de la British Library, al señor
C. D. Blockhuis, bibliotecario, y al resto del personal de la Bibliotheek
der Rijksuniversiteit de Leiden por enviarme una valiosa información
sobre Goossen van Vreeswijk, y a Marc Sursock por prestarme su
prístino ejemplar de Amphitheatrum sapientiae y permitirnos gentilmente
que lo fotografiásemos. Me siento agradecido hacia Bernafd Renaud de
averie por mostrarme un artículo que describía los tesoros de la
Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica de Amsterdam, donde me recibió
con gran amabilidad su personal, presidido por su erudito conservador
F. A. Janssen y su propietario J. R. Ritman, un moderno mecenas
ilustrado. Le estoy enormemente agradecido a la señorita
Patricia Tahil por haber puesto amablemente a mi disposición su
traducción de los 160 lemas que circundan los «Sellos de los Filósofos
del Opus medico-chymicum de Johann Daniel Mylius.

Asi mismo, debo dar las gracias a las señoritas Venetia Spicer, Anna
rew, Patrizia Brouwer y Shireen Al-Hayderi por su inestimable
sus ánimos y su apoyo táctico, sin los cuales nunca hubiera
ayuda, podido culminar mi tarea.… (mere)

ALQUIMIA:EL ARTE SECRETO

Más que el arte de convertir plomo en oro, la alquimia es un sistema de Símbolismo Cósmico que puede muy bien entenderse como un medio para conseguir la unión con el Mundo.El alquimista aprende a crear dentro de un recipiente cerrado el modelo del Universo o de la Conciencia Humana , dentro del cual las fuerzas opuestas son complementarias simbolizadas por lo masculino y lo femenino, azufre y mercurio, tierra, agua , fuego y aire , todas juntas alcanzan la síntesis perfecta: el oro.… (mere)

El juego áureo, quizá uno de los libros más bellos e importantes de los dedicados a la alquimia, reúne una exhaustiva selección de los mejores emblemas alquímicos que fueron grabados en el siglo XVII, procedentes de las mejores bibliotecas del mundo y comentados por Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, que consagró toda su vida al estudio de la tradición alquímica y que aquí investiga los orígenes de esta tradición visual, interpreta los símbolos y ofrece una detallada información sobre diversas autoridades en el tema, por ejemplo Mylius, Lambsprinck, Maier o Böhme, entre los autores; obras como Mutus Liber; y grabadores e impresores de la talla de la familia De Bry, Merian o De Hooghe.… (mere)