Work in Progress Spring 2025 - Magical Transmutations: Mutual Influences of Alchemical and Grimoire Imagery in Early Modern Manuscripts
- Event type
- Lecture
- Series
- Warburg Work in Progress
- Address
- Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB
- Event dates
- Contact
- warburg@sas.ac.uk 020 7862 8910
Sergei Zotov (Frances Yates Fellow): 'Magical Transmutations: Mutual Influences of Alchemical and Grimoire Imagery in Early Modern Manuscripts'
Could alchemical images permeate magic and occult manuscripts, challenging the common perception of these practices as distinct and unrelated? Evidence suggests that this might indeed be the case. A recently discovered German paper amulet includes a ciphered quotation from the 1616 alchemical work Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, positioned alongside a six-pointed cross from the Spanish city of Caravaca and the well-known magical incantation ‘abracadabra’. This instance is not unique: during the early modern period, alchemical imagery and texts frequently appeared in magic books and grimoires.
Such cases imply a fusion between alchemy and magic during this era, a phenomenon that was not characteristic of earlier periods. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, alchemical treatises were often incorporated into collections of magical writings, particularly within the miscellanies of secret societies. Investigating the acquisition, reproduction, and contexts of these images — whether talismanic, scientific, magical, or spiritual — offers valuable insights into their adaptability and underscores the dynamic interplay between alchemy and adjacent fields of knowledge in the early modern period.
Dr Sergei Zotov is a is a historian of science in medieval and early modern Europe, specializing in the iconography of alchemy and magic. He holds a DPhil in Renaissance Studies from the University of Warwick and has previously worked on alchemy projects at the research library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. After receiving his doctorate, Sergei is currently a Frances Yates Long-Term Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London. His research focuses on the iconography of alchemical manuscripts produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
