'Splendor Solis' translation?

I ran across a book titled 'Splendor Solis', with 22 paintings of alchemical and philosophical import. Has anyone else here had experience with this group of works? They're European, apparently done during the 1700's; the name associated with them is Salomon Trimoisin, translation by Joselyn Godwin, publisher Phanes Press.

Of course the fact that they represent a progression and the fact that there are 22 of them caused my interest to perk up. I'd like to hear anyone else's thoughts about this group of images.

In case you need a translation of Splendor Solis, it means "the splendour of the sun."

The 22 plates of Splendor Solis can be seen here. I recognise the name of Joscelyn Godwin, also, from the translation of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. This is one of my favourite books to look at, though the text must be taken in small doses if at all.

Thank you for the tip on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. I never knew it existed. Now I'll have to find a copy to peruse.
("...though the text must be taken in small doses if at all." Why, I wonder? Would it drive me mad, like Lovecraft's 'Necronomicon'?)
At a quick glance it reminds me of Mozart's 'Magic Flute'.


But to get back to Splendor Solis: the sequence of 22 paintings of alchemical symbolism seems thrillingly close to the sequence of 22 Major Arcana in the Tarot. Doesn't it seem as though there ought to be some scholarship on this point? They even seem to date from the same general era. I've tried to study these images with a magnifying glass to see whether they matched up with our familiar 22, but they don't seem to exactly correlate. Maybe someone here knows something about this? If so, I'm hungry to hear what you have to say.

rota said:

Thank you for the tip on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. I never knew it existed. Now I'll have to find a copy to peruse.
("...though the text must be taken in small doses if at all." Why, I wonder? Would it drive me mad, like Lovecraft's 'Necronomicon'?)
At a quick glance it reminds me of Mozart's 'Magic Flute'.

Click to expand...

It will drive you mad, though not quite as dramatically. The allusion to Mozart's Magic Flute seems quite appropriate, BTW. It's very much the same sort of thing: very pretty, and requiring a stiff dose of classical education to untangle its many references.

I don't know enough about alchemy to grasp the significance of the Splendor Solis, though I did have a link to it in my "intriguing" file. This may well pay some further study. I don't know of anyone after Eliphas Lévi who has done a lot of work directly connecting original texts of alchemy with Tarot. It may well pay attention.

Thanks for the LOVELY link. I know somebody who knows a teeny tiny bit of alchemy. I'll see what I squeeze out of him. Don't bet on anything useful even if I can get him to write it down. More than like, he'll insist on blathering a few unrelated things off faster than I could write, won't go back over it, and then say he doesn't have time for this now.

I work with someone who studies the historical contexts of alchemy, and she's having me read some things about it. I'll see what references I can dig up for you.

Kes