Historical talisman traditions
Abraxas on Gnostic Gems
A cock-headed, serpent-legged figure interpreted through divine emanations.
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Historical writers give magic and alchemy many purposes, from material transformation to spiritual development. Explore their terminology, symbolic objects and explanations alongside the books in which they appear.
Choose a question, then follow the entry to its original sources.
Start with the history, materials and spiritual interpretations of alchemy.
Alchemy, H. Stanley Redgrove's historical accountFollow the sought-after agent of transformation in Redgrove’s account.
Alchemy, H. Stanley Redgrove's historical accountExplore a protective object and the source that describes its role.
Historical talisman traditions44 entries · A–Z
Historical talisman traditions
A cock-headed, serpent-legged figure interpreted through divine emanations.
Alchemy · History, symbols & spiritual interpretations
Explore alchemy’s history, the philosopher’s stone, symbolic imagery and spiritual interpretations, with original book passages and scholarly sources.
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Maier’s alchemical emblem book brings engraved images, epigrams, prose and three-voice music into a single sequence.
Historical talisman traditions
A Roman amulet container worn as a sign and safeguard.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Maier pairs the nurture of Triptolemus and Achilles with the gradual strengthening of his philosophical stone.
Egyptian funerary religion
The amulet called Tat, associated with stability and Osiris’s backbone.
Historical talisman traditions
A protective eye emblem whose divine associations vary within the compilation.
Welsh customs as described by Wirt Sikes
The charitable distribution of bread and cheese across a coffin before burial, described and illustrated by Sikes.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Nature, reason, experience and reading become a guide, staff, spectacles and lamp in Maier’s image of inquiry.
Historical talisman traditions
An open-hand charm interpreted through protection and sacred family memory.
Egyptian funerary religion
A protective beetle amulet connected with the heart and judgment.
Historical talisman traditions
A household and occupational charm whose position is explained through retained luck.
Egyptian funerary religion
The red buckle amulet invoking the protective power of Isis.
Theosophical astral cosmology
Repeated sound interpreted as a source of occult action.
Theosophical astral cosmology
Séance communication treated as interaction with several possible kinds of agent.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Two Mercuries and a furnace introduce Maier’s distinction between the subject’s inward qualities and the heat applied from outside.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The biblical washing in Jordan becomes Maier’s analogy for the purification of the philosophers’ brass.
Egyptian funerary religion
The deceased’s declarations before forty-two assessors, denying wrongs involving violence, falsehood, theft and misuse of shared resources.
Egyptian funerary religion
Funerary rites intended to restore the deceased person’s capacities.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Pallas’s birth and a shower of gold at Rhodes become an explicitly allegorical reading of myth and alchemical wisdom.
Alchemy and medicine, Redgrove's historical account
The physician and alchemical author whom Redgrove associates with studying metals and preparing medicines.
Ceremonial magic literature, A. E. Waite
The varied inscribed and geometric designs reproduced in Waite's Book of Black Magic and of Pacts.
Alchemy, H. Stanley Redgrove's historical account
The proposed agent of metallic transmutation whose aims and attributed powers Redgrove discusses.
Historical talisman traditions
Binding forms whose auspiciousness depends on what they hold or hinder.