Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Rebis and the Two Mountains in Maier
Mercury and Venus provide a double origin for the two-headed figure Maier calls Rebis.
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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.
44 entries · A–Z
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Mercury and Venus provide a double origin for the two-headed figure Maier calls Rebis.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Maier reads Saturn’s swallowed stone through blackness, whiteness and redness in Emblem XII.
Historical talisman traditions
Interlaced triangles interpreted as the joining of spiritual and material principles.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
A circle, square and triangle explain the transformation of a divided body into a renewed unity in Emblem XXI.
Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic
Self-creation and the emancipation of the will within Hermetic transformation.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
King Duenech’s enclosed bath connects an alchemical allegory with historical theories of digestion, sweat and purification.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
A fixed lion and flying lioness picture the difficult union of contrasting alchemical qualities.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
A tree, an enclosed house and an ageing man form Maier’s allegory of renewal in Emblem IX.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Coral supplies Maier with an image of growth, hardening and red colour in the philosophers’ stone.
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The egg, fire and sword of Emblem VIII form Maier’s allegory of generation and the appearance of new life.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The potter’s handling of earth, water, air and fire becomes a model for Maier’s account of transformation.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The salamander in the flames represents the resistance to fire that Maier calls fixation.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Light and shade work together in Maier’s forty-fifth emblem, linking an astronomical image with alchemical transformation.
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
Atalanta, Hippomenes and the delaying apple name the three musical roles printed beside Maier’s first fugue.
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The feathered and unfeathered birds through which Maier pictures the relation between lightness, weight and restrained flight.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
A hot fountain and a cold fountain picture Maier’s account of opposed qualities becoming one philosophical water.
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
The household washing scene through which Maier connects cleansing with the varied operations of the chymist.
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618)
An eastern wolf and a western dog turn the opposed forces of sulphur and Mercury into a struggle of mutual dependence.
Historical talisman traditions
A funerary emblem of the helping gesture of Horus.
Egyptian funerary religion
The funerary judgment scene that balances the heart against truth.