Lambsprinck’s De Lapide Philisophico

In 1625, the Frankfurt-based publisher Lucas Jennis published an alchemical emblem-book entitled De Lapide Philisophico, ‘Of the Philosophical Stone’. This was based on a text that had been translated into Latin from a German manuscript by one Nicolaus Barnaud, and which had been published, unillustrated, in Leiden, in 1599. The identity of the original author, given pseudonymously as Lambsprinck (Lamb-Spring), is unknown. Jennis, who published numerous alchemical, ‘Rosicrucian’ and Paracelsan titles, breathed new life into the work by illustrating it with fifteen beautiful engravings, eight of which I’ve reproduced here.

The symbolism of these images is such that they can support multiple interpretations which, singly, may be straightforward & specific enough, but which collectively blur into a rather vague & enigmatic whole. In the text accompanying the second of the images (above), for instance, we read that the forest represents the Body, the unicorn the Spirit and the deer the Soul. At the same time, however, we are told that ‘within the Forest of the Work are found the twin Natures, Mercury the Stag and Sulphur the Unicorn’.

The four images that follow belong to the book’s final sequence, and feature three distinct figures: the Father, the Son and the Angel, or Guide. While these three again abstractly represent the Body, the Spirit and the Soul, they are also shown to be enacting what we would consider to be purely chemical reactions, or physical processes such as sublimation, absorption and solution. For example, in the image below, ‘Taking the Son (extracted from the Body) to the highest Mountain—i.e. to the top of the Vessel, where he receives the celestial influences from above and is metaphorically purified from the ignorance of matter—the Angel sublimates the Fixed.’

My source for the present images is Stanislas Klossowski de Rola’s book The Golden Game, a fascinating volume that presents hundreds of 17th-century alchemical emblems and illustrations. The complete set of emblems from De Lapide Philisophico can also be seen here, and, coloured in, here, at Adam McLean’s alchemy website. McLean also presents an interesting essay about this book.