#mythoalchemy

I’m breaking this post into two to avoid a superlong post.  Part 1 is here:

https://argentvive.tumblr.com/post/697962912031064064/alchemical-emblem-books-atalanta-fugiens-part-1

Emblem XIX If you kill one of the four, instantly all will die.  (The image shows personifications of the four elements--fire, air, water, and earth.  GRRM uses this idea in ASOIAF as a way for the men of the Night Watch to kill the Others.)

Emblem XXIV  The Wolf devoured the King and, cremated, restored him to life. (This may turn out to be the inspiration for the resurrection of Jon Snow, if GRRM ever writes it.)

Emblem XXVI The Fruit of Human Wisdom is the Tree of Life  (A person who has completed the Great Work and achieved Wisdom--personified by a woman-- will be rewarded with “health and length of days” and “glory and infinite riches,” the words on the banners she is holding.  In a story, this is the Happy Ever After, or, in Tolkien’s invented word, the Eucatastrophe.)

Emblem XXIX Just as the Salamander lives in the Fire, so does the Stone. (The salamander is a symbol for Sulphur, the Male Principle of the Work, who corresponds to fire and air)

Emblem XXXI The King swimming in the sea, crying out in a loud voice, “Whoever saves me will have a great reward”

Emblem XLVII The Wolf from the East and the Dog from the West savaged each other.  (I’ve suggested that Malcolm channels “wild dogs” in his struggle with Bonneville in La Belle Sauvage.)  

A recent essay, “Michael Maier and Mythoalchemy,” explores Maier’s alchemical readings of  Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology in Atalanta and his other works.  For example, Maier sees alchemical meaning in Egyptian mythology when Osiris the Sun god marries his sister Isis the Moon goddess and gets dismembered by Typhon.  

https://furnaceandfugue.org/essays/forshaw/