Like the tarot, the alchemists used Greco-Roman myth as well as Christian imagery. Their numerous arrays in the form of trees, with circles placed on them designating planets or alchemical stages. Robert O'Neil (Tarot Symbolism pp. 264-291) found points of contact between alchemy and tarot in every one of the trumps. I will be following in his footsteps.
Some surviving alchemical texts antedated or were contemporaneous with the first tarot. The Turbo Philosophorum, an anthology of Arabic sources, was part of the Visconti Library in Milan. A so-called "Arnaldian" work (from Arnald of Villanova) called the Rosarium Philosophorum existed in manuscript by the end of the 14th century. Urszula Sculakowska, in The Alchemy of Light (2000), says that illustrated versions circulated by 1400, called “Rosarium cum figuris” (p. 25, at http://books.google.com/books?id=ZJox8E ... um&f=false). Unfortunately, the earliest surviving version is from 1550 Frankfurt. In miniature, here is the whole series.(from http://www.alchemywebsite.com/roscom.html). It is a sequence with a beginning, middle, and end.
Before 1400, Chaucer spoke ofalchemy, and in anthropomorphic terms, in his “Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale” (late 14th century). In the “Rosarie” of “Arnold,” the Yeoman tells us, Sol and Luna are said to be the father and mother of the dragon Mercury and his brother "brimstoon" (lines 1418-1447, at (http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl- ... an-can.htm). This is not the plot of the Rosarium, but of some other Arnaldian work; but the passage shows how early and widespread the Rosarium and other Arnaldian works were known, and the metaphors they used.
A German work called the Heilege Dreifaltigkeit (Holy Trinity) existed by 1408 and survives in several early 15th century manuscripts. A copy was owned by the father of the Duchess of Mantua, Barbara of Brandenburg; she in turn was a close friend of Bianca Maria Sforza, who is intimately connected with the early Milanese tarot.
Another set of alchemical illustrations occurs in a book that doesn't even discuss alchemy, a commentary on the early Christian writer Fulgentius. It is nominally about the Greco-Roman gods; but as Stanislaus de Rola analyzed them in his 1973 Alchemy: the Secret Art, the images are unmistkably alchemical in character.
The people who did the alchemical illustrations were the same as those who did the tarot, namely, illuminators or miniaturists who did detailed small work on paper. It would have been natural for imagery from one to cross over to the other. The people for whom the works wer done were also the same, early on, namely, the elites, whether nobles, businesspeople, or clergy, of cities such as Milan and Florence.
Lynn Thorndike, in his multi-volume History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923-1928), cites numerous 15th century Italian alchemical manuscripts. Some, purporting to be copies of 14th century works, are discussed in a chapter called "The Lullian Alchemical Collection." It starts at
http://books.google.com/books?id=IbvlQFj4YfUC&pg=PR5&lpg=PR5&dq=Thorndike+lullian+alchemical+collection&source=bl&ots=gspg7qU9VQ&sig=bgKaObsWUO4pP2MeP9K-r8ECKq4&hl=en&ei=ZTcxTYOtFo24sQOnpqHSBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.
If you skim this chapter, you will see that many of these manuscripts, all of the so-called Lullian school, date from the 15th century.
Another chapter is devoted to fifteenth century alchemy as such, "Alchemy Through the Fifteenth Century" (starting at http://books.google.com/books?id=IbvlQFj4YfUC&pg=PA332&lpg=PA332&dq=Thorndike+alchemy+through+the+fifteenth+century&source=bl&ots=gspg7qWaTM&sig=msT6c9eQ53PXD5ySsRH88bQMK7I&hl=en&ei=gT8xTbD4EoK6sQPeydyvBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.)
The alchemical writings in this chapter are not by any well-known alchemists; but at least they exist. One (p. 342ff) is by the physician to anti-Pope Felix V, Filippo Visconti's father-in-law, answering Felix’s questions about alchemy. Of more interest--because it says more--is a purported letter between Cosimo di Medici and Pius II. While spurious, it was copied in a manuscript authentically before 1475. Thorndike writes (p. 346f)
In relation to the tarot, the last two stages might correspond to the Moon and Sun card. Black might relate to Death, and the other colors to cards in between Death and Moon; it is hard to say more. After the elixir is made, it is suitable for the regeneration of body and spirit, i.e. the resurrection portrayed in the Judgment. But I am projecting backwards from the tarot. In itself this description is quite mechanical.The most holy father is advised to take water of gold and place it without division into the elements in a spherical glass so that it may circulate and be reduced to the true fifth essence and finally converted into the elixir...The vase is to cook for 170 days continuously over a slow fire until the contents turn successively black, red, yellow, green, the color of a peacock, and that whitest of appearance which indicates the elixir for silver. The fire is then augmented and the elixir for gold is finally obtained.
LULLIAN TEXTS AND THE SOLA-BUSCA TAROT
From the large number of Italian manuscripts that Thorndike mentions in the chapter on “The Lullian Collection,” we at least know one variety of alchemy that was admired in Italy throughout the 15th century and probably a little earlier the "Lullian" and “Arnuldian” schools (they are sometimes differentiated). Lullian works used diagrams and wheels, just as the real Lull used wheels with words on them, from which he generated interesting associations (Roberts, Mirror of Alchemy p. 40, confirmed by examples in Thorndike, "The Lullian Alchemical Collection," p. 41f).
There are also "philosophical trees," another species of diagram. Otherwise, illustrations were of the apparatus to be constructed: furnaces, cauldrons, flasks, etc. There do not seem to have been the colorful tarot-like illustrations, showing people and mythological figures, that became popular later. However Tarotpedia does cite one Lullian manuscript for its picture of a king (, in which it finds a dragon similar to one in a Sola-Busca trump (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sola_Busca_Cards:_Nabuchodenasor). They also note wings on another trump (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sola_Busca_Cards:_Ipeo) similar to those in another alchemical work, the Rosarium, which I will discuss later.
Several of the SB pips also suggest alchemical apparatus and operations: the Nine of Coins has a man lying on top of flames (an alchemical reference noted by Tarotpedia); the Seven of Coins has a man apparently adjusting the flame of an oven (per Di Vicenzo, p. 75 of Sola-Busca Tarot); the Eight of Batons has its arrows in a container topped with red flowers that resemble flames; and the Five of Swords has its swords in a pot, as though to melt them down;
Tarotpedia also relates alchemy to three other cards, pictured below.
A more conventional interpretation, which does not exclude the alchemical, might be that the one on the left represents the Old Testament God the Father, always disppointed in his people; the center one would be Christ, triumphing over death by means of life his life and death; the one on the right would be the Holy Spirit, conventionally associated with the white dove..
Tarotpedia also relates the Three of Swords (above middle) to Ripley’s alchemical Scrowle, written c. 1460-70 (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Three_of_Swords_Sola-Busca), where he first says:
The Blood of mine heart I wishAnd 13 lines or so later ends:
Now causeth both joy and blisse
And dissolveth the very Stone
And knitteth him ere he have done...
Many a name he hath full sureBut there is no mention of swords in the poem, and no parting of anything in three parts on the card..
And all is but one Nature
Thou must part him in three
And then knit him as the Trinity.
Ripley is said to have been a Lullian. Its illustrations, in cruder form, might go back to the 15th century. One part has symbols of the Sun, Moon, and Earth in a triangular configuration similar to the coins on the Three of Coins (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Three_of_Coins_Sola-Busca)
I find these parallels to alchemy less persuasive than in the case of the Ace of Coins, since there are other explanations that more closely fit the cards. The Three of Swords seems to me to relate to a vision of St. Augustine's depicted at that time in various Augustinian churches, most notably one by Lippo Lippi in Florence (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=621&p=9839&hilit=augustine#p9839). And the array of three coins might simply be a way of representing three as a Pythagorean "triangular number,"a configuration commonly shown in the arithmetic texts of the day:
.The Lullian texts, before Ripley, were mainly concerned with apparati and diagrams, as well as describing how by means of them operations on some obscure material could be performed: dissolving, vaporizing, scraping residue off the sides of containers, condensing, burning, grinding, etc. Here is a sample of the type of illustrations that we mostly see, in an authentic 15th century Ripley manuscript (Jennifer M. Rampling, “Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and his alchemical source,” on the Web).
There is not much here that relates to the usual tarot, as opposed to the Sola-Busca. Even when representing a specific stage of the work, e.g. the nigredo, all we see is a piece of apparatus painted black.
No tarot-like grinning skeletons or old men with scythes here.
RIPLEY AND THE HUMANIZATION OF ALCHEMY
Perhaps we will find tarot-like imagery in the alchemical texts’ words more than the pictures. In Ripley’s case, he gives a sample of the writing. It is a short poem called A Vision . We know it only from a 16th century manuscript; it may or may not be actually by him, but it is consistent with Ripley’s known 15th century works. In it a toad secretes poison, dies, and turns various colors; from its transformed body comes the elixir (Thorndike, p. 353 of his chapter on 15th century alchemy, http://books.google.com/books?id=IbvlQFj4YfUC&pg=PA353&lpg=PA353&dq=%22When+busie+at+my+booke%22&source=bl&ots=gspg9kXgWJ&sig=Hbwelx0CW7BbX-fIpHjnwf3Ab_w&hl=en&ei=u2gzTdqrMJO6sAPD5bzPBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22When%20busie%20at%20my%20booke%22&f=false). All of this would seem to refer to substances in a laboratory rather than to the human psyche. Yet the toad, art historian Laurinda Dixon tells us, was a symbol of human sinfulness (Bosch, p. 224):
In this tradition, Hieronymus Bosch's Adoration of the Magi shows as one of the gifts a small golden sculpture of the sacrifice of Isaac. The sculpture is supported by toads. You can make them out on the ground in the reproduction at http://www.lib-art.com/artgallery/7274-adoration-of-the-magi-hieronymus-bosch.html.. Below is the detail itself (Dixon p. 208).Chemical theory relegated toads to the lowest sphere of creation, for they were believed to arise spontaneously form the action of heat on rotted substances. Their low nature is also reflected in Christian iconography, which associated toads with sin and heresy. Chemical texts picture them as symbols of nigredo, upon which the entire process rests. Like Christ, they must be killed before their resurrection into perfected substance.
The sacrifice of Isaac was seen as a precursor to the Crucifixion. Hence the sculpture symbolizes the redemption of the toads beneath. A similar redemption is implied in the alchemical transformations described by Ripley: the end result of the toad's transformation is the elixir. If the toad is human sinfulness, the alchemical sequence could also be an "imitatio Christi” within the human soul.
It is this image that I will start with in considering the Fool.
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