The infamous alchemists...
Hi!
In a few moments I'll also post the finalists in this week's vocabulary contest -- and I'll post the winner of List 7 as well... So come back soon!
But before you go, I want to spend some time today looking at alchemy and the alchemists that Victor Frankenstein was studying in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, namely Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus. (Now, lest you fret, be aware that the last time I taught this book, I had my students write a 500-word essay on those three. So count your blessings!)
We need a good definition of alchemy and great explanations of who each of these individuals are. Who are they? What did they study? When did they live? What did they write or purport to be true? What were the consequences of being an alchemist? How many alchemists were there? What interests and occupations did they share? Are there still alchemists today? You should each be able to find some tidbit of information about these guys that would explain why Frankenstein found them so appealing and his father found them so unworthy of study. Share it with the rest of us!
If for some reason we run out of available information about alchemists, it would be perfectly acceptable to write about "pure science" and the appeal Frankenstein found in it (albeit a short time).
That should cover it!
Love,
Mrs. D
posted by Sister Sara @ 9:19 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
First post. Yeah.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was born on September 14, 1486 in Cologne. He died in Grenoble or Lyons in 1534 or 1535. Unlike Marsilio Ficino, for example, Agrippa never had the benefit of long term patronage. He was never able to stay long in one place and pursued many different professions serving as a soldier, physician, ambassador, and university lecturer. He was made a knight by the Emperor Maximilian.
Agrippa's thought unites the streams of classical Neoplatonic
and Hermetic philosophy, Jewish Kabbalah and Christianity. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, his most famous work, is a systematic exposition of the occult, in the sense of hidden, knowledge extant in Renaissance Europe. It is an encyclopedic work of Renaissance magic providing information on such diverse topics as planetary rulerships, occult virtues, sympathies and enmities of natural things, enchantments, sorceries, types of divination, the scales of numbers and their significance, astrological talismans, the divine Trinity, the Kabbalistic Names of God and the orders of evil spirits.
Sounds like my kinda stuff... I copied and pasted this lovely information from http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/agrippa.html
Here's some stuff on all three of them. Cornelius Agrippa was a German mystic and alchemist. He wrote against the science of his time and in support of a science that combined magic, alchemy, mysticism and astrology.
Albertus Magnus was a Christian Saint and scientist, teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas. He established the study of nature as a legit area of study within the Christian tradition. He attempted a systematic explanation of all creation in his Physica, the purpose of which he explained as, "to make . . . intelligible to all Latins all branches of natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics and metaphysics.
Paracelus was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist. He was drawn to new ways of seeking scientific knowledge he tired of the University declaring, "the universities do not teach all things so a doctor must seek our old wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers and such outlaws and take lessons from them. A doctor must be a traveller . . . . Knowledge is experience."
I got all of this from
http://www.thebakken.org/Frankenstein
which even told the excerpts from the book where these guys were mentioned. It was pretty cool.
Graded.
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