Alchemy and Chemistry as Vessels for Cultural Discourse

Online / New Seminar Room (St John’s College, University of Oxford)

14th January 2025

For those attending in person, please meet at the St John’s College lodge at 8:30.

If you wish to attend in person, please email Josh Werrett at studentrep[at]ambix.org

Zoom details will be released closer to the time of the event.

Welcome: 9:00 – 9:05

Session 1: 9:05 – 10:20

• Josh Werrett, University of Oxford / Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Baptism and the Reborn Body: Zosimos’ Alchemy in a Pre-Nicene Context

• Paulina Gennerman, Marburg University

The Complex Shades of ‘Drug’: Psychoactive Substances as Part of Cultural and Social Discourse

• Lea Elisabeth Hinterholzer, Georg-August-University

John of Teschen’s Lumen Secretorum: Poetry Inside or Outside the Laboratory?

Break: 10:20 – 10:35

Session 2: 10:35 – 12:15

• Brian Li, University of Cambridge

The Material and Moral Cultures of Living Alchemy in the Paracelsan Tradition

• Ellen Hausner, University of Oxford

Comprehending Characters: Keys to Abstract Notations in Early Modern Alchemical Texts

• Elena Morgana, University of Oxford

From Elixir to Alkahest: The Evolution of a Panacea in the Kingdom of Naples, 1620-1670.

• Sergei Zotov, University of Warwick

Vomiting the Sea of Blood: Unique Image Series in CG Jung’s Alchemical Manuscripts

Lunch: 12:15 – 13:15

Session 3: 13:15 – 14:30

• Johannes Chan, York University

Bounded Life and Imperial Metabolisms: The Mechanics of Mills and Labouring Bodies

• Sajdeep Soomal, University of Toronto

The Looping Effects of Settler Colonialism: Agrarian Expansion in the Canadian North-West and the Chemical Utilization of Industrial Waste, 1874-1910

• Silvia Perez Criado, University of Valencia

From Laboratory to Society: DDT and Public Health in Franco’s Spain

Break: 14:30 – 14:45

Session 4: 14:45 – 16:00

• Christopher Halm, Deutsches Museum Munich

Seeking Refuge in Earth’s Deepest Time: Cosmochemistry and How to Escape the Tragedies of World War II

• Robert Slinn, University of York

Vocational Education and Training in the British Chemical Industry, 1945-1995

• Sofiya Kamalova Rogova, University of Valencia

Tracing Toxicity: The Chemical Product Cycle in the Ardystil Case

Break: 16:00 – 16:15

Session 5 (Keynote): 16:15 – 16:45

• Justin Sledge (Esoterica) – Title TBC

Closing Remarks: 16:45 – 17:00

Post-conference drinks for those attending in Oxford.

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Professor Matthew Daniel Eddy (University of Durham) who will present:

‘A Very Curious Subject’: Jane Ewbank, Public Lectures and Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian York

This will be live on Thursday, 21 November 2024, beginning at 5.00pm GMT (6.00pm CET, 12 noon ET, 9.00am PT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following Ticket Source link:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-rpojrkg 

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube at

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry 

‘A Very Curious Subject’: Jane Ewbank, Public Lectures and Experimental Philosophy in Late Georgian York

Matthew Daniel Eddy

In September 1809 the artists Thomas Rowlandson and Auguste Charles Pugin published a popular print depicting the audience which had recently attended the public experimental philosophy course given in London’s Surrey Institution. Every seat was full and the audience stared with anticipation at the lecturer. Notably, at least half of the attendees were women and girls.  Though historians have observed that this was a common phenomenon at the time, studies which address the motivations and reactions of female attendees to the scientific ideas presented in such lectures have received less attention. This paper sheds new light on the subject by exploring the 1804 diary entries written by Jane Ewbank of York about the lectures of the traveling experimentalists Henry Moyes and Charles Sylvester. Ewbank’s notes represent one of the fullest known handwritten accounts of a woman who attended experimental lectures during the Regency period. The entries offer noteworthy examples of how Ewbank used scribal media to process and remember scientific information through recounting experiments from the lecture and related conversations that occurred later over tea with friends.  Overall, the paper reveals how these and other instances in the diary offer insight into how women learned to connect experimental philosophy to topics ranging from climatology to vitalism.

I look forward to you joining me at the seminar.

With Best Wishes

Frank James

SHAC is sponsoring this session at the ICHC meeting in Valencia (Spain) next year. Please find the call for papers attached below.

We are looking forward to your contributions!

The SHAC Spring meeting

To be held on Saturday 29 March 2025 at University College London

on the subject of

The  Biographies of Alchemists and Chemists.

Over the last few years a number of excellent biographies of alchemists and chemists have been published and more are in preparation. So, now seems an appropriate juncture to consider the genre and content of such biographies as well as how they relate to the evolving historiography. In addition to reflective papers devoted to specific people, offers on topics, such as, for example, collective biographies of alchemists and chemists, autobiographies, the market for such texts, and the value of the biographic genre and so on will be welcomed.

As 2025 marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of SHAC, there will be an associated round table at this meeting where members will be able to recollect their connection(s) with SHAC.

Offers of papers with a short description should be sent to the SHAC chair, Professor Frank James (frank.james[at]ucl.ac.uk), by 17 December 2024.

Best wishes

Rob Johnstone

Hon Treasurer, SHAC

The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC), in collaboration with the Allard Pierson of the University of Amsterdam and the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP), will hold its Annual Autumn Meeting at the Allard Pierson, Amsterdam, on 11 October 2024, starting at 9:30 am and ending at 16:30 pm. The meeting will be hybrid, although we strongly encourage in-person attendance.

You can register here: https://allardpierson.nl/en/events/en-autumn-meeting-shac/

The emphasis will be on the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica State collection, one of the extensive collections housed at the Allard Pierson. This library holds approximately 4,400 rare manuscripts and printed works related to the hermetic tradition, assembled by the Dutch entrepreneur Joost Ritman.

The keynote of the day is Professor Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London):
‘Thomas Harriot and the alchemy of the Northumberland Circle’

Speakers and topics will include:
Sergei Zotov: ‘An image series in the Traumgedichte der siebe Säulen’
Tjalling Janssen: ‘Elemental beings, discourses of nature, and Paracelsian reception in Georg von Welling’s Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum’
Corey Andrews: ‘Alchemy in the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians), with reference to an ‘extended’ 20th-century manuscript’
Kyra Gerber: “Es komt alles und allein” – Marginalia in a rare early edition of Kunrath’s work
Amber Richter: ‘The Fruit that Blossoms from the Daughter: The Hidden Dryads in Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens’
Peter Forshaw: ‘Abraham Le Juif’s Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques’
Jennifer Rampling: ‘George Ripley’

Symposium Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be given by Joshua Werrett (University of Oxford) who will present:

Imitatio Christi and the Aesthetics of Martyrdom in The Visions of Zosimos of Panopolis

This will be live on Thursday, 19 September 2024, beginning at 5.00pm BST (6.00pm CEST, 12 noon EST, 9.00am PDT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour.

As with recent seminars the Zoom link can be freely accessed by anyone, member of SHAC or not, by booking through the following Ticket Source link:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/society-for-the-history-of-alchemy-and-chemistry/t-dvqkvvg

The seminar will be also accessible live on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/live/CELBazvrfeQ

Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/SocietyforHistoryofAlchemyandChemistry

Imitatio Christi and the Aesthetics of Martyrdom in The Visions of Zosimos of Panopolis

Joshua Werrett

The alchemical practice of Zosimos of Panopolis is not just about the transformation of metals; it is about the transformation of the self. This double meaning is found throughout Zosimos’ works, but is perhaps most noticeable in his Visions. In this text, Zosimos uses alchemy as a theurgic practice to understand salvation, a practice which is allegorised as having four major stages: baptism; violent punishment; the separation of body and soul in death; and rebirth as a spiritual entity. These steps, taken by several characters throughout the text, clearly mimic major points in the life and death of Christ. In this talk, I present the argument that the imitation of Christ and the imitation of early Christian martyrs, themselves imitating Christ, are key motifs in the violent, redemptive, sacrificial aesthetics of Zosimos’ text. Analysing the main ideas, images, and phrases in The Visions, I conclude that themes from the New Testament and martyrological literature are pervasive. Overall, I hope to demonstrate that those being reborn as spirits throughout Zosimos’ text are not being reborn in a vacuum; rather, Zosimos suggests that, in being reborn, they follow in the footsteps of alchemists and Christian martyrs before them, in a long imitative line of suffering and transformation, which ultimately starts with Christ.