I am devoting much of my time now to trying to enthuse people to explore with me this symbolic language of alchemical transformation. I have spend many years researching and discovering these emblems in early printed books and manuscripts. Many of the emblems I have been researching are entirely unknown to people.

Sadly there is very little interest in this material, despite my trying to bring these incredibly beautiful, enigmatic and powerful images to people's attention. Most people seem to rely on the few selected images in popular books, which often give an uninformed and misleading commentary to the symbolism of the emblems. The writers of these books have not seen the mass of material which I have been able to explore, so their views are entirely limited, uninformed and more than often completely wrong. Locked up in these emblems is a language of alchemy that is awaiting for people to explore.

The only way people can come to appreciate alchemical symbolism is for them to study all the material of the tradition. Merely selecting out a few items that appeal to them aesthetically will not lead them to a true encounter with this symbolic material. Of course it is difficult for the modern eye, educated by television and the constant bombardment of sophisticated imagery in magazines and books, to appreciate and read the clumsy lines of a woodcut or the tangles of hatching in an engraving. To make these images more approachable today, I have been making coloured versions of emblems for many years, but have accelerated this work recently and now have made over 830 (as of August 2004). Thus I have created a resource of alchemical imagery that has never been seen before, which will be found essential for anyone wishing to understand the richness of this entirely neglected ocean of symbolism. Thumbnails of these images are provided on the alchemy web site in my Galleries of Emblems and you will find these have migrated out onto other peoples websites all over the internet.

These are examples of common symbols for the elements known to the alchemists. As you can see, relatively few elements were known. These are primarily elements which could exist in a free state or could be readily prepared. Many minerals and compounds were used by alchemists as well. Some medieval alchemists believed that all elements were in essence the same element, found in differing degrees of purity. Gold was most pure, followed by silver. Gold and silver belong to a class of metals known today as 'noble metals', which are not very reactive and thus less susceptible to tarnishing or degradation than 'base metals'.


Antimony


Arsenic 


Bismuth


Copper


Gold 


Iron 


Lead 


Magnesium 


Mercury 


Phosphorus 


Platinum 


Potassium 


Silver 


Sulphur 


Tin 


Zinc


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