JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 594 Blog Bookstore
Well. There’s a simple ton of complexity going on in this difficult, famous print by the
great Mathias Merian—its like a moving puzzle to me, complicated by the
virtually changing size of its pieces. There’s
just too much in it that I don’t understand, too much archaeo-religico-alchemical
bubbly going on for me to make much deep sense of it all. I do like that it is all coming from the sky,
though, which is why I’ve selected it for this continuing series
The engraving, Tabula Smaradina (“Emerald Tablet”) is
Merian’s interpretation of the alchemical cosmology, a schemata and representation of the order of
things. It appears (first) in Johann
Daniel Mylius Tractatus III Seu Basilica Philosophica… (1618) and makes
subsequent appearances in other works by the author, as well as in Lukas Jennis’
Musaeum Hermeticum (1625, see below).
Basically, the Emerald Tablet shows the opening of a
complex heaven and the delivering of the philosopher’s stone to the earth. It is a magnificent effort and no doubt has a
great power to alchemists, and I can understand only a bit and a piece here and
there. For example, in the bottom right,
we see a couple of people holding a((n) eclipsed?) Moon, standing on the wings
of an eagle which protects a double hemispheric representation of the
constellations. The figure on the right
is a naked woman, who may well represent Luna: her right breast is a star, and from her
armpit is a streaming torrent of stars which comes close into contact with
shrubs labeled with the astrological signs of the planets. The cluster of grapes in her right hand and
the stream that she is straddling must indicate a generation, or a birth, or
rebirth, or time, or the universe. Luna
is connected via something to the heaven-element which in turn is connected on
the left sign of the print to a man holding a sun, who I guess must be Sol. Heaven and Earth, Brother Sun and Sister
Moon, and so on. From here it all gets
away from me, no that it isn’t gone already.