Influence For Hermit?

Abrac

I found this unusual picture today in the book, The History of Magic and the Occult, by Kurt Seligmann. It is called: The Alchemist Pursuing Nature, Michael Majer, Scrutinum Chymicum, Frankfurt, 1687.

I've read that The Hermit is supposed to be Father Time, Diogenes, or a monk, but have never considered the possibility that he may be an alchemist. Interesting indeed.
 

AJ

I hope that woman has a whistle or mace in her pocket, she appears to be followed by a dirty old man.
Funny how we all see different views of the same image. That is what makes reading fun though. Thanks for sharing.
 

willowfox

The alchemist seems to have other things on his mind here, following a young woman at night or is she a professional lady who has hooked a client.
 

jmd

It is strange how we see things differently - here is a seeker in the dark who seeks the allegory of the secrets of nature, never seeing her, but merely following the imprints left in the sands of time, mere shadows of the truth that produce them, illumined but darkly by the poor light of his mind, rather than by the brightness of the Sun.

Personally, I do not think that this has been an influence on the Hermit, but rather another depiction that has image similarities - and admittedly similarities of allegorical worth: each is seeking truth by a light seemingly insufficient.

...perhaps, on the other hand, this as alchemist does seek the alchemical union })
 

moderndayruth

I begun seeing the alchemist in The Hermit after studyng the Tarot of
Prague's Hermit; he is walking in the Pragues Alchemist's street and on the top of the card is all the " alchemical equipment" .
Abrac, thanks for sharing the picture :)
 

Abrac

jmd said:
never seeing her, but merely following the imprints left in the sands of time, mere shadows of the truth that produce them
Thanks jmd, I hadn't even noticed the footprints.
 

venicebard

jmd said:
It is strange how we see things differently - here is a seeker in the dark who seeks the allegory of the secrets of nature, never seeing her, but merely following the imprints left in the sands of time, mere shadows of the truth that produce them, illumined but darkly by the poor light of his mind, rather than by the brightness of the Sun.
This must be how the serious alchemist saw himself in times when the tools of science were yet so primitive. Another way of putting it might be that he seeks Sophia (wisdom) by her footprints in nature: from this perspective, wisdom could be described as 'the science of the possible', of which nature (aka logic, or progression) is the ultimate arbiter.

I think of the entire sequence of trumps as an exposition of alchemy of course, the deck as a whole being a model of the universe of the alchemist. For the 'bardo-Kabbalistic' (i.e. Qabbalistic) structure of number-letter-sign ultimately yields the columns of the planetary metals in the alchemical vessel, from which (as opposed to vice versa) the planetary rulership of signs (in astrology, one branch of the Hermetic tree) derives. Indeed in the fundamental polarity of this scheme -- 9, or -1 valence but 0 numerically, versus 10, or 0 valence but +1 numerically -- VIIII L'Hermite is on the side of nature (9 months of human gestation to produce a body), and X LaRoue deFortune is on the side of inner reality (10 digits of human intervention in nature). So the former is pursuing the secrets of nature ultimately, whilst the latter encapsulates the message that one is oneself the ultimate cause of one's fortunes. [It is this polarity that is expressed in action (i.e. the Great Name yod-heh-vav-heh, which governs the pattern of action) in the polarity yod-vav, or 19 (+1 both in valence and numerically) versus 17 (-1 both numerically and in valence). These are their bardic numeration, of course, not the derivative (hence later) Greco-Hebrew numeration most are familiar with, where yod reverts to the 10 it expresses and vav becomes 6, the directions of space (since -1 represents the space left for 1, both numerically and valencewise).]

[Lest one object that valence was not generally known back then, I have elsewhere on this site explained how the structure certainly of the first 21 atom-types can easily be deduced from the tension between numerological structure (1, 2, 3, 4, -4, -3, -2, -1, -0, 1 again, etc.) and the situation created by the Fall, wherein duality (2) rebels against unity (1) thus pulling against or subtracting itself from 1 rather than adding itself to 1 valencewise (meaning in the way it acts, improper action being what precipitates the Fall): this makes 2-helium inert (0) and crunches +4 and -4 together in both 6-carbon and 14-silicon, thus establishing the pattern of the periodic table.]
 

Abrac

venicebard said:
I think of the entire sequence of trumps as an exposition of alchemy of course, the deck as a whole being a model of the universe of the alchemist.
I'm starting to wonder lately if this is not the case. Alchemy was developing at the same time as the Tarot during the Renaissance, and was very influential. It seems totally conceivable that the Tarot, while not necessarily originating as Alchemical art, may have morphed into it.
 

Melanchollic

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venicebard

Abrac said:
I'm starting to wonder lately if this is not the case. Alchemy was developing at the same time as the Tarot during the Renaissance, and was very influential. It seems totally conceivable that the Tarot, while not necessarily originating as Alchemical art, may have morphed into it.
Both Tarot de Marseille and alchemy were late medieval, not Renaissance, phenomena, the intense faith of the Italianists notwithstanding (just looking at the clothing in the TdM should be enough!): alchemy began surfacing in earnest in the 12th century, if I remember correctly. But I have come to believe that Western alchemy -- whose roots extend to ancient Egypt apparently, and whose most ancient revered sage seems to be Maria the Jewess -- owes a great deal also to insular Keltic tradition, specifically the mysteries of the goddess Brigit, whose three faces were poetry, healing (medicine), and metallurgy, the last two also combined in alchemy.

The term pferyllt in Britain meant one who dealt in the mysteries of fire, whose central symbol was the Cauldron. And the numbers applied to letters in British bardic tradition (and TdM's trumps), refined according to stimpulations of Sefer Yetzirah (a pre-Kabbalistic Ma'aseh Merkavah [Work of the Chariot] text from the closely kin Judaic tradition) but using calendar-order rather than alef-bet order, show an underlying knowledge of chemistry and physics rivaling (I would say surpassing) ours expressed as columns of planetary metals in the alchemical vessel (whence derives astrological planetary rulership of signs).