4-week class, taught online via zoom

Thursdays, January 30 - February 20, 2025
7-9 pm Eastern (NYC) time
$125 Paid Patreon Members / $145 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Throughout the practice of western alchemy, myths, the stories of the gods and goddesses, were used to explain the forces at work in alchemical transmutation. It was thought that these stories cloaked deeper meanings that would, if understood properly, reveal the way forward in the work of perfecting matter and the soul.

Of interest are the sources of myth used by renaissance artists like Durer and alchemists like Maier in their depictions of the dieties. We will look at texts such as Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Cartari's Images of the Pagan Gods, and the work that started the Emblem Books, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo.

This will prepare us to better understand the 50 emblems in Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens a most remarkable alchemical text of image, music, and poetry in the service of alchemical transmutation.

This four-part course will examine the use of myth, its origins and development into a symbolic language of alchemy and will trace a few examples of myth and show how it is interpreted as not just a metaphor but as an actual physical process.

Part One – Overview of Myth, the classical sources and subsequent interpretations such as the neo-Platonic view of myth as an allegory for the soul’s ascent to the One.

Part Two – The Transmission. This talk examines how the iconography of myth moved and developed in medieval and renaissance Europe. We will touch on Michael Maier’s Arcana Arcanissima (1614) the first and most explicit work in its interpretation of myth as an allegory for the alchemical process.

Part Three – Atalanta Fugiens (1617). This work of Michael Maier’s is his follow up to Arcana Arcanissima in which he develops the myth of Atalanta as an allegory for the process of alchemical transmutation. Composed of 50 emblems, 50 pieces of music, and 50 texts, Atalanta Fugiens is one of the most remarkable of alchemical texts – tonight’s talk will provide an initial look at Maier’s use of myth and his textual strategies to convey its meaning.

Part Four – Dom A.-J. Pernety (1758). In this talk we will examine the works of Pernety, such as Les fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées and Mytho-Poetic Dictionary. They reflect the culmination of this process of understanding myth exclusively as allegories of the alchemical process.

Brian Cotnoir is an alchemist, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. A contributor to Frater Albertus’ Parachemy, he is also theauthor of a series of Alchemy Zines. His books include Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter (2017), The Weiser Concise Guide to Alchemy, Alchemical Meditations,On the Quintessence of Wine, and the Emerald Tablet, his translations of and commentary on, the earliest Arabic and Latin versions of this seminal text. His Emerald Tablet was part of the Language of the Birds: Occult and Art show in 2016 in New York City.

He occasionally gives talks and has presented workshops and seminars around the world on various aspects of alchemical theory and practice based on his research.

His film work has been screened at Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, HBO, PBS and other international venues.

Khepri Press, launched in 2014 with the publication of the Emerald Tablet, is the vehicle and portal for his alchemical work.

Image: Atalanta fugiens, emblem 11