Transcription
Books of alchemy are infamous for their highly stylized, often purposely enigmatic style, the profusion of code-like symbols for substances and the processes they undergo, the so-called technoman, and the highly complex allegorical symbolism that fill their pages. Thus, alchemical literature can often feel as much like decoding a puzzle than even reading a highly technical modern textbook.
However, it was during the twilight of alchemy itself that there appeared an alchemical book which virtually issued written text all together: the Mutus Liber, or the Silent or Wordless Book. First appeared in 1677 and was nearly completely composed of a series of 15 richly detailed plates seeming to describe the production of alchemical gold and silver. Yet, through an otherwise previously attested alchemical technique, that technique, it appears, followed in the Via Humida alchemical tradition and specifically focused in on the use of dew, do, as in the dew from the earth, as a prima materia for producing the Stone of the Philosophers. While remaining enigmatic to this day, the Mutus Liber would go on to become one of the last great classics of alchemical literature and would have a decisive impact, especially on the French uptake of this classic occult science and Jungian psychoanalysis.
If you're interested in magic, hermetic philosophy, alchemy, Kabbalah, or the history of the occult, make sure to subscribe here to Esoterica and check out my other content on topics and as a terrorism, including curated playlists. Also, if you want to support my work of providing accessible, scholarly, and free content here on topics and other terrorism here on YouTube for free, it'll be considered supporting my work on my Patreon, perhaps with a one-time donation with the Super Thanks option down below, or you can actually buy a shirt from our merch store. But now, let's turn to the Mutus Liber, the silent book, and alchemical volume that despite its very title, is still producing dozens of commentaries, including this episode, down to this very day. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the Arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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Foreign of what I like to think of as well, Alchemy Day, the anniversary of the translation of the Liber de Compositione Alchemiae, or the Book of the Composition of Alchemy, from Arabic to Latin on the 11th of February, 1144. My birthday is also February 10th, the day this episode goes public, and the study of alchemy was actually what got me into studying Western other terrorism more generally. But enjoy February the 11th as Alchemy Day by perhaps taking a look at some of my alchemy playlists on the channel, including an episode on that very first translated text, the Liber de Compositione Alchemiae, or the Book of the Composition of Alchemy.
But today, we're celebrating the history, theory, and practice of alchemy by turning to the Mutus Liber, or the Silent Book, first published in 1677 by Pierre Savoret in La Rochelle at the behest of Jacob Salud, whose Royal copyright of the text was appended to an early edition of the book and claimed that the work was a book of high hermetic chemistry that had fallen into his hands. I wish some books of high hermetic chemistry would just fall into my hands. No doubt that copyright reflects the very high initial investment by the printer to render the very complex plates that comprise the volume itself. The work itself, as we'll see, only names its author as Altus, the elevated, the profound, perhaps the elder one. And aside from these hints, the authorship of the text remains mostly inconclusive, probably having been produced by French Paracelsian physicians or iatrochemists around that time.
Aside from less than a single paragraph of text, the volume contains a series of 15 very complex plates detailing an alchemical procedure for the production of alchemical silver and gold using dew as the prima materia. However, in his introduction to his edition and commentary, Adam McLean, one of the foremost authorities in alchemy, notes that the 1677 edition contains actually only 13 plates. However, I have to say that every copy of the 1677 edition that I've looked over, including the one owned by no less than Carl Jung, along with the famed bibliography of alchemy of Duveen, all list a total of 15 plates, even in the 1677 edition. Now, this is a bit confusing to me, and I'm quicker to admit that I've made some error than a true authority on the matter, so it's a bit perplexing to me. Regardless, the original 1677 edition didn't receive a very large print run and thus quickly became very rare and very sought after. It remains both of those things today.
The immortal fame of the text, however, would be secured by its inclusion in the two-volume 1702 Bibliotheca Chimica Curiosa, printed in Geneva. There, at the very end of the first volume in this edition, not only would the reproduction of the plates be, I think, substantially improved artistically, though no discussing over art, though I will say no real change to the fundamental symbolic expression from the 1677 plates occurred between the two. Following the 1702 edition and another really rare edition printed sometime in the 18th century, apparently again with slightly different plates, the Mutus Liber became a mainstay in alchemical reprints and, as we'll see, it continued to play a role, a central role if not the central role in a place of alchemy and French occultism.
But I want to spend the bulk of this episode just walking through the plates of the Mutus Liber one by one in some detail. Now, I say in some detail because there's simply no providing an exhaustive analysis of the plates themselves, much less what they might possibly mean. Answers from which run the gamut from straightforward and straightforward might look us straightforward instructions for producing alchemical gold and silver from dew as the prima materia to the highly complex unity of cyclical opposites by which the psyche itself is individuated, ala Carl Jung, to somehow both of these and neither at the same time. I mean, I'll speculate a bit here and there, but my speculation will just be a bit more to throw onto the heap, the mountain of speculation this book has generated over the couple of centuries that it's existed. Also, I'll be working with and displaying the 1702 version of the plates in my discussion, but up to this point in the episode, I've been showing mostly the plates from the 1677 version. I'll include links to both in the description if you want to go full-blown Club Dumas Ninth Gate on them. Why wouldn't you? Also, for funsies, the 1677 edition I'll link to was the one actually owned by Jung himself, so there's that.
Again, I'm not going to go much into the way of trying to drive much in the way of secondary meaning to the plates themselves, rather focusing on what the plates themselves are apparently detailing in their symbolic logic as a process. I think that's more important in some ways because the Mutus Liber does present a logically coherent process, and understanding that symbolic mechanism is fundamental, it seems to me, to the veracity of any secondary interpretation. You can't have a secondary interpretation if you don't get your primary interpretation correct to begin with. Again, what that process means is, well, it's anyone's speculation, but getting the process itself wrong surely seems to foreclose on the possibility of getting any any secondary analysis correct. So that said, let's turn to the Mutus Liber, the silent book, the wordless book, plate by plate.
The first plate seems to place the setting just at the breaking of dawn, with the bulk of the scene surrounded by thorny roses, with one bud facing the viewer and the other facing down. Roses, of course, are typically symbols of secrecy. At this time, two angels are seen descending or ascending or both, down and up Jacob's Ladder, blowing horns, apparently to wake the sleeper on the bottom right. Like the biblical Jacob, he's resting his head upon a stone, perhaps in the same vein, and doesn't know that the area he's sleeping in is holy, thus mistaking the sacred for the mundane. All around him, there's also water rushing in all around him. We'll come back to that.
The central text is the longest string in the whole book, with the Latin reading something like: "The Silent Book, in which nevertheless the entire hermetic philosophy is provided in hieroglyphic characters, sacred to the God most merciful, Thrice Great, and Best, dedicated to the Sons of Art alone. The name of its author is Altus." Now, that's a rather bold claim on the part of the text, and it's also a nice little wordplay there on God being Thrice Great, seemingly a reference to both the Christian Trinity, but also, of course, through the Thrice Greatness of the patron sage of alchemy, the Thrice Great Sage Hermes Trismegistus.
Just beneath and to the left of the title rhyme is a kind of maybe a little Kabbalistic warm-up puzzle, just to get you in the mood to decode some alchemy. The string of numbers and letters there seem odd at first, but when read backwards, or perhaps in the direction of Hebrew, it's clear their references to the Bible, that is to say, Genesis 28:11 and 12, Genesis 27:39, Deuteronomy 33:18 and 28. The first is appropriately a reference to Jacob's Ladder, thus setting up the Mutus Liber as a kind of divine revelation, again, awakening us from our slumber. The other references are also appropriate, as we'll see, are references to the Talhashamim, the Dew of the Heaven. And that reference there to the tribes of Zebulun and Issachar might also be because of the verse that follows the one listed here by the Mutus Liber: "for they draw from the riches of the sea and the hidden hordes of the sand." Again, imagery about sort of extreme interacting, some kind of treasure from nature itself. It's imagery that populates the silent book. It's also worth noting here that these verses represent some of the only biblical or Christian imagery more generally. The rest, of course, of this text is populated with classical Greco-Roman symbolism, an interesting contrast between the two, but not really at all unusual since the late 15th and especially the 16th century in alchemical literature.
Plate two is divided into two altitudes, perhaps reflecting the good old hermetic principle, as above so below, the relationship, of course, of the macrocosm and the microcosm. In the top altitude, two angels are standing upon an ocean, holding aloft the Hermetic Egg containing Poseidon Neptune, flanked by gold and silver respectively. One of his feet rests upon a watery dolphin, and the one is elevated into the air. The water imagery here, perhaps Mercurial and its symbol, but also probably perhaps representing the Via Humida in the book in general, the way of wetness in alchemical theory.
In the lower altitude, flanked by heavy drapes and a windowless room, the alchemists kneel before the transformatory furnace, or the athanor, in prayer. His alchemical companion, the famed Soror Mystica, seems a bit more animated. She's actually reaching up to touch the foot of the angel on the right, perhaps in a kind of prophetic or sibylline ecstasy. The furnace itself is divided into three sections: the lower flame, here a mere lamp, perhaps preheating the vessels in general, above which sits the funnel, another watery symbol, then the terrestrial hermetic vestal mirror, the celestial vessel itself, divided into two altitudes, and the top of the castle-like athanor features three flues. Again, nothing's accidental in this imagery.
Plate three provides us an image of the Mutus Liber's general cosmology, descending from the celestial world dominated by the sun, moon, and Zeus. Jupiter is the airy world of Juno with her peacock, a favorite image of the color transformation in the alchemical process, which we don't see a ton here in this text book, along with tin birds which fly near the sun. Below which, a mermaid slams in the primordial waters, again, perhaps the Mercurial Materia Prima. In the next circle is the terrestrial world, flanked by bull and ram, the astrological importance of which will become a bit more clear in a moment, but again, we find here celestial symbols upon the earth and vice versa. Recall that alchemy is sometimes referred to as astrologia inferior, that is to say, lower astrology. Church and castle also flank each other, further representations of transformatory earthly power. A similar motif can also be found on the frontispiece of Hobbes's famous book, Leviathan, above a female figure sits with five potted flowers and five flowers growing out of the earth, again, perhaps a union of art and nature in the alchemical process.
At the bottom, a man and a woman attempt to capture the watery mermaid with a Neptunian trident and a fishing rod, perhaps again to establish the fixedness of the volatile Mercurial substrate. The center is oddly enough another watery scene, again emphasizing the Via Humida. The man in the boat is rowing while the woman is attempting to catch something from the sea. All the while, they're connected by a rope or a lashing to Poseidon Neptune, a bond that will need to be broken in the alchemical process, as we'll see again in a later plate. Again, the cosmology is one of upper and lower realms, inner and outer realms, all interacting, reflecting one another, but also being captured and transformed by the alchemical art. It's a very hermetic world in which all these elements are echoed as like a fractal within and without, without a doubt.
Plate four is the most famous and thus the most reproduced plate of the Mutus Liber. Here, the alchemists are wringing out large sheets of fabric which have been suspended just above the ground to collect morning dew. There are six such cloths, probably arranged like a triangle. There's some Pythagorean vibes here, all flanked by a bull and a ram, likely the astrological period in which the dew should be collected, roughly from March the 20th, or the start of spring, through May 20th. Sun and moon also appear on the right and left, and this may be further astrological timing with the sun and Aries and Luna and Taurus, but it's not quite clear how to read it. But the center is dominated by the celestial radiation, the stellar rays pouring down upon the earth, infusing one side of those cloths with those stellar rays, or pseudo-out candy as it might turn out, while the underside of the cloths are absorbing the terrestrial dew. Again, the flow of the dew up from the earth and the stellar rays down to infuse the higher and lower worlds, and this Neptunic liquid, perhaps the kind of Mercurial premium materia, we have both being reflected here.
Further, the dew of May is linked with Mercury in contemporary text and digested for two weeks in the heat of horse tongue, then distilled, and it's actually said to have the power to reduce metals to their primal states. Again, this is a simple image, but one rich, rich in hermetic symbolism, if not a minority position in the alchemical literature for the production of the materia prima.
Plate five takes us back into the alchemical lab. Note now windows and columns are now present, at least this part or this area of the alchemical laboratory. The windows being the connection between inside and outside, and the columns perhaps connecting the higher and lower worlds. Now, as a kind of alchemical strip cartoon, the companions pour the collected dew into an alembic which is subjected to a rather intense fire. Again, the intensity of a fire is always of concern in alchemical practice. That liquid is then driven off and collected by the man, while the woman spoons out the residue with a spoon into a flask marked by what looks a bit like cloud signs. This vessel is then given over to lunar Saturn, standing upon a clot of earth, holding the child that he will, of course, devour. This terrestrial dominated compound is perhaps a chemical salt, as conceived in the Paracelsian tradition, but not clear it's going to be reintroduced, however, near the end of the total alchemical process, so it's not going to be abandoned. They're going to combine all of this at the end.
The bottom altitude shows the male alchemist pouring the dew distillate into a complex reflux still, as the Soror Mystica effects and loots all the still heads, all four of the still heads. The roaring fires probably heating a very elaborate water bath, or bain-marie, again developed thousands of years earlier by the Alexandrian alchemist Maria the Jew. So, a lot of alchemical tradition in this text. This process of circulation will probably continue for 40 days, so famed alchemical month, as noted by the number just below the apparatus.
Plate six has the alchemical companions retrieving the results of the 40-day circulation process before placing it into another alembic for distillation. Within that alembic, a flower appears, probably a specific change in the color, although these plates aren't colored, and when they are colored, the colors don't seem to have alchemical significance, before the distillate is collected and the residue of this process is again gathered by the solar or mystica. This residue, marked by the flower sign, is put into a round bottom flask, which is in turn given over to solar Apollo. This solar residue is perhaps the Paracelsian sulfur, or the active principle. Meanwhile, the residue captured in the cloud flask is being shown as evaporated and pulverized.
In the first scene of plate seven, after being reduced to powder, it's then washed with the previous distillate, apparently gathered on plate six, which is then itself heated to dry and then collected by the silver armistica in a vessel marked by star shapes. Note that in the first step, the Soror Mystica is holding the funnel first found in the transmutation furnace, the athanor, possibly indicating that it might need to be filtered somehow, or there's some watery process that we're not seeing.
The bottom most theories on plate seven detail the entire hitherto alchemical process, though in allegorical form. Because, because alchemy, Saturn is subjected to purification by fire, washed with purified distillate, before the pure starry extract is presented over to Divine Luna. Note that the core between himself and the final essence is being cut. That's the very cord we saw back at the center of plate three, the cosmological plate. Plates two and four through seven, not counting the cosmological plate, seem to represent a distinct process, with plate eight starting a further one, or plate eight capitulates symbolically the previous ones. Not clear, but here on plate eight, similar to plate two, we find the angels now suspended well above the water, high into the air, and flanked by two sets of five birds. The left bearing the symbol for sulfur, and the other the star symbol, perhaps the result of the previous process.
Now, Hermes is within the Hermetic Egg, standing on top the earth of gold and silver, bearing up a somewhat unusual 10-snake caduceus. The snakes extending from it laterally rather than wrapped around it as is more normal. Down in the terrestrial world, however, the alchemical companions are in the same postures, though the Soror Mystica's hand doesn't quite reach all the way to the upper world any longer. However, the heavy drapes have now been pulled back, revealing two windows, and they are now flanked by columns. The window and the columns probably functioning here as alchemical symbols themselves. The same athanor, or furnace of transmutation, is present, though no flame of any kind is lit beneath it.
We are then taking back to the fields in plate nine, probably a whole year later, while the first essences digest in the furnace of transmutation, probably being heated by the ohm stellar rays that they captured in the very beginning of the process. But now, six large vats arranged again in a triangular order, flanked by the bull and the ram, sun and moon are also present again, while all the astral rays stream down. But here, rather than the cloths absorbing the dew rising up from the earth, these vats seem to be for capturing precipitation falling to the earth from above. Again, the classic hermetic balancing act of the terrestrial and stellar realms, all infused with astral celestial power.
The collected contents of these are then gathered over and given to Hermes back in the alchemical lab. The star and flower essences are measured to equal parts, combined into one flask, before the Mercurial Waters, just collected, are then added and combined with them. With these three elements combined into the alchemical egg, again, the three here, the three elements, speaks to the underlying Paracelsian roots of this alchemical theory at work in the Mutus Liber. The neck of the glass egg is sealed with a blowtorch. Blowtorch he's blowing into that's where blowtorch before being placed into the transmutational furnace. In the lower panel, again, we see the entire process symbolically represented in an allegory. The solar and lunar principles are bound in the alchemical egg with the number 10 close to both. Just to the left is a small rendition of the cosmology from plate two, showing how the Hermetic Egg contains the all within the one, the one within the all, the upper and lower realms both represented in the sealed world of the alchemical process itself. Again, it's such beautifully balanced imagery.
Plate 11, similar to plates two and eight, show us the angels brought up even higher. The birds flanking them now bear the sign of sublimated sulfur on the left, that is to say, sulfur removed of all of its impurities, perfected philosophical sulfur, often connected with philosophical gold, along with a star sign on the other side. Within the egg, Hermes no longer stands on the earth; he's elevated. He now stands upon pure silver and gold, the gold and silver of art rather than nature. Below, the alchemical companions take similar gestures as before. A gentle fire now burns in the furnace of transmutation, while the drapes and the columns are now totally absent, though two new oval windows have appeared. Even their world is undergoing transmutation now.
It seems that a near repeat of the previous cycle is undertaken. Plate 12, at least in the 1677 edition, is very virtually a reprint of plate nine, though in the 1702 edition, rocky soil has now been replaced with vegetation. But again, the vats are decanted and presented over to Hermes, just the same.
Again, plate 13 is similar to plate 10. But here, a star and sun essence is placed into the balance pans, combined, and then mixed with the Mercurial addition. Again, another hermetic egg apparently is again sealed with the blowtorch and placed into the athanor, the furnace of transmutation. The allegory below is again similar to plate 10, though the cosmological globe is larger, and the single tin beside the figures now shows orders of magnitude from 10. Admittedly, the addition of these two plates is a bit perplexing to me, more perplexing than the rest of the perplexing things. They seem to represent a third final process of gathering, but that would be weirdly offset the balance achieved previously that I just mentioned. Further, once the egg is sealed, hermetically sealed, it can't be opened, otherwise it would botch the whole process. Are there several hermetic eggs at work in the process here? Again, these plates never show if the hermetic egg is to be opened or how the products of plates 13 and 10 are supposed to really interact, if at all. What do the orders of magnitude mean? Are they additions or are they dilutions? As McLean points to the projective power of the stone produced, that is to say, often a very small amount of the Philosopher's Stone is actually used to produce huge quantities of gold and silver. Are these those ratios? And why is the cosmological diagram larger in the second representation? Again, I don't have any great answers to this, but this is, you know, classic Club Dumas Ninth Gate territory, so have fun with your interpretations.
Plate 14 appears to bring the whole drama, the whole process, to an end, but the symbolism here is rather obscure, more obscure. We now find three furnaces of transmutation, or one with varying degrees of heat. It's not terribly clear, but also notice the drapes have reappeared, perhaps symbolizing the conclusion of this matter, as if we're on a stage and the show's coming to a close, or perhaps the drapes represent something being obscured from us or something going on behind the scenes, so to speak.
Below, three figures are seen: the male and female alchemists, but also now a child, mocked off by his tennis racket and ball, perhaps a child here is a representative of the fusion of the principles at work, or even the Philosopher's Stone itself. Though all are appear to be trimming their wicks, or either pouring the contents of their flasks into something, or filling them, Schrodinger's flask, perhaps with oil. All flanked by Roman numerals, again, perhaps representation of durations. Also, Roman numerals and Arabic numerals may have some distinction we don't understand. Below them, a mortar and pestle marked by a shell and a snake, along with crucibles and a balancing pan, or a raid in the center. Lunar and solar vessels are sealed within blast furnaces with four parts solar to one part lunar and vice versa. And its blasting furnace, it's likely given other alchemical texts that this would have been the moment where a small amount of philosophical gold and silver are actually added as seeds in the process of multiplication and projection. But it's anyone's guess. I'm thinking what that's what the mortar and pestle is there for. These are then perhaps combined in the balance pans below, gathered together in this in the center vessel denoted by the sign of the Philosopher's Mercury, the great stone that is not a stone, the stone of transmutation, but the alchemic companions are not of much help to us here. They gesture above their lips are sealed, and they urge only to pray, read, read, read again, labor and discover. While prayer comes first, it's noticed that it's bested by a four to one ratio of reading, so Godspeed and good luck.
The final 15th plate brings us back full circle. The sun now sits at midday. The angels laying a wreath upon the Zeus figure as he sails into the air. He holds the previous spiny roses with them. Now a floral border hath replaced the outer side border of the first plate. The alchemical companions hold the rope in his hand while clutching one another's announcing. Provided with eyes, you depart, no longer in the need of Jacob's Ladder. It's now lying horizontal in the rear, below which maybe the dying Hercules, clad in the Nessus shirt that killed him, has the sun and moon rising above him. Other authors have taken this character to be Hermes, although I think it could just as well be the sleeping Jacob figure from the first image. Recall in that first image, water was rushing in as he slept. Perhaps he wasn't awakened and had drowned, a lesson to those who do not listen to the lessons of the Mutus Liber. Regardless, midday has come, sight has replaced sleep, the ascent has been made, spiny roses are transformed. The singular dead Hercules, or Hermes, or Jacob, are now united, masculine and feminine, all backed and smiling, solar radiance. While enigmatic, the Mutus Liber concludes on a note of balance, joy, triumph, and deep pleasure, and it's no wonder it's proven as popular as it has.
So, that's at least something of an explanation of what the Mutus Liber depicts, at least in its symbolic procedure. Of course, the natural question here is, well, what does all this mean? Well, I have no idea, and I'm glad I don't have to even pretend to be obligated that I do. Interpretations have ranged from a very literal reading of how the text is describing how literal dew and earth can be purified and used as the materia prima for growing seeds of gold. In fact, this Herculean effort, Herculean effort, was performed over a dozen years by Armand Barbault, who published his findings in his 1969 Gold of a Thousand Mornings. He even worked with his wife in the process, much like we see in the Mutus Liber. The text is fascinating, and his experiments are very interesting. In fact, a lineage of initiated alchemists in the French occult tradition have claimed that the text contains deeply encoded procedures for the production of the Philosopher's Stone, though despite a lot of big claims and tall tales and an unending amount of obscure autism, 20th-century French people seem to be good at unending text of obscurantism, looking at you, Deleuze. No evidence for these claims has ever surfaced, and yeah, I'm, I'm looking, looking at you, Fulcanelli, whoever you were.
Of course, Carl Jung was also deeply attached to the Mutus Liber, as I mentioned. He owned one of the very rare 1677 first editions, and this was an important site for his theory of psychological individuation and the archetypal symbols of the collective unconscious. And as I said at the start of this episode, whatever interpretation one wants to pick up or develop, they all have to be built upon the inner logic, the inner symbolic logic of the book itself, which, while enigmatic, remains relatively systematic. Well, kind of systematic, but, you know, it's alchemy, so what do you expect? Though not really an interpretation of the text, I do think it's very important to locate this book within the historical context of alchemy more generally. Again, it was published in 1677, and the Mutus Liber is firmly in the twilight of alchemy. Paracelsus had already been dead 130 years when it was published, and while Paracelsianism had been hailed as a great innovation in the chemical arts by this point in history, it had failed to deliver on the bombastic, sorry, the Paracelsus pun, the bombastic claims made by its inheritors. Just as the classic Mercury-Sulfur theory had failed to produce transmutation, so did the new Sulfur-Salt-Mercury theory of Paracelsus. And worse, worse, can criticisms from post-Paracelsians themselves, especially in France. But at least in the old Mercury and Sulfur theory, Mercury meant Mercury and Sulfur meant Sulfur. You could rely on that to some degree. Whereas in Paracelsianism, all those terms, along with the endless host of neologisms they constantly introduced, could mean virtually anything, and thus they meant nothing. Sufficiently equivocal terms are indistinguishable from nonsense. At least the old Mercury-Sulfur theory was just demonstrably false. At least it was demonstrably false. This Paracelsianism, on on their read, was just fashionable pseudochemical nonsense. And again, those criticisms are coming from iatrochemists, post-Paracelsians, they used to be Paracelsians working more on the medical front of things, than having abandoned chemical transmutation as a goal altogether. And while the Mutus Liber is seemingly to be interested in extracting the three Paracelsian elements from dew rather than using a metallic prima materia, again, pointing in the direction of alchemy as spagirics, to use the Paracelsian language, and thus iatrochemistry, or French iatrochemistry of the time, would have actually viewed this book as quaint, old-fashioned, even out of touch with actual developments in chemistry at the time, especially in France. That's chemistry with two y's. Indeed, Bacon had already published the Novum Organum in 1620, setting the stage for the scientific method as we know it, and Boyle had just published The Sceptical Chymist in 1661, before Mutus Liber, establishing, at least in theory, the notion of elemental chemistry 16 years prior to the publication of Mutus Liber.
Now, of course, the publication of these texts didn't represent some instant intellectual or technical shift, or a paradigm shift, as it's fashionable to talk about. Boyle continued his work as a chemist-alchemist while subjecting the Paracelsians to ferocious criticism. He was himself an avant-garde alchemist, not a chemist or analytic chemist in the modern sense. Thus, put into the light of the post-Paracelsian natural chemist over there in France, and the theoretical and experimental developments in England and beyond, frankly, all over Europe, the Mutus Liber, while interesting for its dew-based Via Humida method of Paracelsian alchemy, was, let's face it, it was destined for the Romantic occult world, as the sun was rapidly setting on alchemical theory in practice. Again, ironic, considering how the Mutus Liber ends. Of course, that's no excuse not to study it. But again, to make this point, any interpretation of it should rest on understanding both its inner logic on its own terms, but also the historical, theoretical, and experimental developments of its own day. It's the result of historical processes, and moving it away from that promises of its message. So by placing it into its historical circumstances, we better understand it. We don't rob it of its meaning.
Aside from the vast amount of literature and French on this text, I think the best study edition to pick up is, of course, by Adam McLean, to whom I owe a debt of eternal gratitude. His works making alchemical texts available on the internet fueled my own interests since I was a teenager, and I was still so interested in alchemy, and still am now, and God willing, I will be for many years to come. Of course, more alchemical content to come. And enjoy Alchemy Day. Until next time, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the Arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.