ATALANTA FUGIENS (EMBLEM #21)
36" X 36," acrylic on canvas, 2000.
Commentary by John Eberly
"Recourse to Authority:" Count Michael Maier
Early in his medical career, Michael Maier (1568-1622) witnessed a miraculous cure through the use of Paracelcian medicinal alchemy. In the course of exploring alchemy as an art holding the keys to the "universal medicine," Maier made a thorough study of mining techniques in order to intimately understand the alchemical evolution of metals. (For more on the sketchy highlights of Maier’s life and career, consult Craven’s Count Michael Maier-Doctor of Philosophy and of Medicine,. Alchemist, Rosicrucian, Mystic, 1568-1622; Yates’ The Rosicrucian Enlightenment; Evans’ Rudolf II and His World; Godwin’s Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens; and White’s The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited.)
Alchemical texts uniformly reject "vulgar gold," that is, the refined product one thinks of when one visualizes gold, in favor of the latent potential of gold found in various ores.
Medieval painters often elaborated their own pigments out of metallic ores. Examples include Naples Yellow (lead antimoniate Pb3(SbO4)2), Vermilion (cinnabar HgS) and Orpiment (yellow arsenic sulfide As2S3).
-Joseph Caezza ("An Interview with a True Son of Hermes (Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola)," The Stone-The Journal of the Philosophers of Nature, Issue 32 May-June 1999, p. 3.)
In chemistry and mineralogy, a polymorph is a substance that may crystallize in two or more different forms. Michael Maier was a polymorphous philosopher: who moved easily between classical alchemy, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, mythology, music, and the visual arts synthesizing as he went along, producing marvelous works "very useful to possess and pleasant to read." He deftly applied Egyptian and Greek mythological antecedents to his multi-leveled structures, weaving alchemical "hints" through works combining poetry, musical composition, and engraved emblems as in the marvelous Atalanta Fugiens (1618). This work combines fifty emblematic engravings and fifty accompanying Latin epigrams with their translation in German verse, along with fifty fugues which musically correspond to both artwork and text.
It is common for the reader of alchemical texts to observe consistent references to the practice of al-Kimia as "our art" "this art" or "the art," or descriptions of the way to accomplish an alchemical process: "by art" or "with art." This use of the term art refers to the alchemist’s understanding not only of the concepts and theories of all the Arts, but also implies the knowledge of the plastic applications involved in undertaking any actual work of art. This is the Ars magna in which there is no context concerning the word art that cannot be applied also to the whole concept of Alchemy. The Arts in the modern world have become specialized and separated into arbitrary categories; whereas the art of al-Kimia, which encompasses these categories and beyond, has remained all-inclusive. -John Eberly (al-Kimia: The Mystical Islamic Essence of the Sacred Art of Alchemy, Anamnesis, Hutchinson, 1995, p. 92.)
This crystallization of substance (thought into action) into many forms perhaps reflects a late response to Renaissance thought, blurring distinctions between mediums in order to reveal an underlying unity. It certainly mirrors the promise of the red powder of the alchemists in its reputed power of projection and multiplicity.
It was possible for a man of Micheal Maier’s intellect to conceive of an idea as an arena of infinite potential where the right word as symbol and sound utilized under correct circumstances virtually holds the force needed in order to change the world. In his alchemical understanding of the evolution of metals, he came, through the expression of his art, to realize how this microcosmic work might affect the macrocosmic evolution of human consciousness. Throughout his life, Maier not only defended in print the utopian Rosicrucian precepts of charity and medical aid gratis to the unfortunate, he also lived and operated under those principles. He "deepened" the popular conception of Rosicrucian philosophy by emphasizing and articulating its underlying alchemical nature. (See M. Maier, Themis Aurea, The Laws of the Fraternity of the Rosie Cross. London: printed for N. Brooke at the Angel in Cornhill, 1656. It is interesting that Maier invokes the "Golden" Themis, the Greek Goddess of Justice, daughter of heaven (Uranus) and earth (Gaea) as his clavicula to Rosicrucian Law. The modern Rosicrucian Order of the Golden Dawn through its "sister" organization the Stella Matutina and subsequent offshoots request at the onset of initiation that the neophyte integrate Themis as his/her guide, balancing the psyche and acting as intermediary between the elementary forces the initiate will encounter).
As court physician to King Rudolf II in Prague, Maier was exposed to the Prague school of Mannerism in the artwork of Arcimboldo, Sadeler, and Savery which featured various flights of hermetic fantasy. This artwork favored the depiction of human beings as symbols, rather than particular individuals. Heightening them to the level of icons, they have been related to traditional Christian Orthodox chant, and (musical) polyphany, such as the fugue. The fugue structure incorporates a multiplicity of sounds, combining a number of individual harmonizing melodies. Jocelyn Godwin describes the musical composition found in Atalanta Fugiens as, "fifty fugues in two canonical parts over a cantus firmus, which is one of the most challenging exercises in counterpoint." (White, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited, p. 120.) Once again, in the combination of artistic modes we see the unity of purpose in works such as Atalanta Fugiens.
The task of the musician and painter was not self-expression...but the comprehension and reproduction of heavenly songs, the recreation of divine images that were transmitted by means of ancient religious archetypes...In icon painting, as in religious chant, there existed collections of patterns called podlinniki-prototypes. These prototypes and the pattern melodies served to preserve the artistic canon, a collective creation...The work of the medieval icon painter and the composer-musician-chanter began with the solving of identical problems: The painter ‘designs’ his panel, tracing and outlining the canonic forms of the future icon, while the singer-musician broke up his text...into the required number of fragments to correspond to the number of musical lines in the model...[applying] the musical formula of the pattern melodies as cliches to the new text, varying details where necessary. -Tatiana Vladyshevskaia ("On the Links Between Music and Icon Painting in Medieval Russia," William Brumfield and Milos M. Velimirovic (eds.), Christianity and the Arts in Russia, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 14-29.)
Maier also made a careful study of the Emblematum liber of French archeologist Jean-Jacques Boissard (1528-1602), a work engraved by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598). For over one hundred years, the de Bry family of artists of Frankfurt, and later also of Oppenheim, dedicated themselves to the production of quality engravings, including emblematic alchemical works by Maier and his English contemporary, Robert Fludd, the brilliant student of John Dee. (Fludd was intimately associated with the Rosicrucian movement, and authored, among many other works, The Rosicrucian Brotherhood (1629). This artistic dynasty began with Theodor de Bry, and included his sons Johann Theodor (1561-1623, who engraved Atalanta Fugiens), and Johann Israel (d. 1611, married to the widowed mother of Lucas Jennis (n.d.), a leading publisher of alchemical works in his own right); and finally, his son-in-law Matthaus Merian (1593-1650), an outstanding artist, who among other masterworks produced his own "Atalanta" style (however mute, in it’s own way it sings!) version of the Bible, the Iconum Biblicarum, with the stories told in verse (in Latin, German, French, and English text) opposite the descriptive engravings, overall, an enormous undertaking. (A modern edition of this work is available in a reasonably priced, well-bound edition from AVB Press, 1981. For those left wanting more, another available volume containing little-seen Merian engravings is the Martyrs Mirror-The Story of Fifteen Centuries of Christian Martyrdom From the Time of Christ to A.D. 1660, by Thieleman J. van Braght. It should be noted also that the Rosicrucian founded Ephrata community in Pennsylvania produced the first American publication of Martyr’s Mirror in 1748. For other obtainable examples of the de Bry family’s alchemical productions, see Stanislas Klossowski de Rola’s The Golden Game; and of course, Godwin’s Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens).
The house of de Bry adhered to the mannerist style of the Prague school of artists surrounding the court of Rudolf II with the addition of certain naturalistic elements in the depiction of (primarily) background landscapes. These landscapes were perhaps influenced by the elder Theodor de Bry’s engravings of America based in part on his collection of John White’s drawings made in Virginia during an expedition of the area by Sir Walter Raleigh (1585-86); and drawings made by Jacques Le Moyne of Florida during the Laudonniere expedition (1563-65). The de Bry "style" consists of a symbolic depiction of the human form joined with a classical sense of sacred architecture and a sublime sensibility of landscape translated through the detailed medium of copper-plate engraving. The choice of arcane subject matter, and the exclusive use of etching and engraving, subjects this work to the substratum of Art History, while it simultaneously elevates the occult study of alchemy and its kin to the level of fine art.
Cryptography fascinated Maier, and often anagrams and other sophisticated word play enter into his works, weaving a secret subtext that requires a certain intellectual dexterity of the reader. It has been mentioned above that he employed classical mythology in his multi-dimensional alchemical presentations, and in Atalanta, -and many of his other works- this synthetic approach is distilled to perfection. Maier believed that classical tales contain the formula of the alchemical art, disguised as argot, a language the adept Fulcanelli would describe as "peculiar to all individuals who wish to communicate their thoughts without being understood by outsiders...a spoken cabala." (Fulcanelli Master Alchemist, p. 42; the author goes so far as to call it (in cant) ar got: art gothic, implying the transmission of sacred knowledge through architectonics, ie; a facade, something that stands for something else).
Far away you remain, O you profane ones! (The inscription found on the keystone of the arch in the emblem entitled "The Portal to the Ampitheatre of Eternal Wisdom" by Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605)
In his "Preface To The Reader" to Atalanta Fugiens, Maier emphasizes the antiquity of the intellectual sciences of Poetry, Optics (visual arts), and especially Music, citing it’s importance in the works of Themistocles, Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras. (See Godwin, Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, pp. 101-104) "Therefore in order to have as it were in a single view and embrace these three objects of the more spiritual senses, namely of sight, hearing, and the intellect itself, and so as to introduce to the soul that which is to be understood at one and the same time, we have joined Optics to Music and the sense to the intellect, that is, rarities for the sight and hearing with the chemical emblems that are proper to this science."
He reveals that this allegory of Atalanta and Hippomenes, a love story between Nature and Art, is "engraved on ‘Venus’ or copper," (it is Venus who gives Hippomenes the golden apples) yet another level of occult meaning. (ibid., p. 103) Love bestows upon Art the means to win over Nature. In another place Maier describes the "philosophical chariot" as running on four wheels: nature, reason, experience, and the study of specialist writings. Alchemy is the science of the imitation of nature by art, or artifice, and in the tale of Atalanta, it is by trickery that Hippomenes overcomes her. Nature accomplishes the miracle of the One Thing in her own time, the alchemist desires to complete the Magnum Opus in his lifetime, which requires an acceleration of events in order to succeed.
In his work Wisdom of the Ancients (1609), Francis Bacon describes this situation in his examination of the tale of Atalanta. In this essay he explains how Art can indeed be swifter than Nature,
For this may be seen in almost everything; you see that fruit grows slowly from the kernal, swiftly from the graft; you see clay harden slowly into stones, fast into baked bricks: so also in morals, oblivion and comfort of grief comes by nature in length of time; but Philosophy (which may be regarded as the art of living) does it without waiting so long, but forestalls and anticipates the day. (Dick, Francis Bacon - Selected Writings, p. 417)
The Work is in fact timeless, "immortal" -the realization of the Philosopher’s Stone is the alchemist’s lifetime! Maier sees in the stories of myth the same tales told over and over again in various permutations of circumstance and particularity.
In his first work, Arcana Arcanissima, Maier explains the evolution of the twelve Greek Gods and Goddesses from Vulcan and Mercury, and the Egyptian Gods Osiris and Isis and their myths to be philosophical, alchemical, and medicina allegories. In the second book of the six books which make up the Arcana Arcanissima, he reviews the "golden legends" found in these stories, all of which revolve around the tale of the Golden Fleece and the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.
Jason and his argonauts obtained the Golden Fleece by drugging the dragon guarding it as it hung in a sacred grove in Colchis and through the aid of Aetes famous enchantress daughter, Medea. (For an excellent related study see Antoine Faivre, The Golden Fleece and Alchemy. SUNY, New York, 1993.)
In the legend of the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, Gaea gave the tree with the golden apples (growing in a garden owned by Atlas) to Hera, who gave it to Zeus as a wedding gift. The Hesperides (the three daughters of Atlas and Hesperis), and Ladon the dragon were charged with guarding the apples. Completing his eleventh labor, Heracles tricked Atlas and slayed Ladon taking the apples to Eurystheus, who eventually returned them to the garden. At the wedding of argonaut Peleus and the Goddess Thetis, Eris, Goddess of discord and strife, rolled in a golden apple marked for the fairest that Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera all claimed. Rather than decide between them himself, Zeus gave Paris the power to award the apple to one of the three Goddesses. In the famous Judgment of Paris, he chose Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, to receive the inscription-bearing fruit.
The reader will recall that it was Aphrodite who gave the three golden apples to Hippomenes to distract Atalanta into losing the race. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, tells how after the wedding of Art and Nature, the happy couple race (again) to the nearest enclosure to consummate their marriage. The enclosure is, however, an ancient temple honoring Cybele, the "Mother of the Gods." The disrespect for the temple of Cybele exhibited in their animal passion and profanity incites the Goddess to change them forever into lions. (For related alchemical symbols see The Book of Lambspring, plate 4; J.D. Mylius, Philosophia reformata, second series, plate 2, in Alchemy -The Secret Art by Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Thames and Hudson, London, 1973, p. 103, top right.)
Antoine-Joseph Pernety, whose alchemical studies of Greek and Egyptian mythology in such works as Fables egyptiennes et grecques devoilees (1758) echoes that of Maier’s, identifies the lion as the fixed, while the lioness represents the volatile, together as one, "In fine, it is the symbol of the Stone." (From the Dictionary of Hermetic Symbols from Albert Poisson’s Theories et Symboles des Alchemists, "Addenda" to Pernety’s An Alchemical Treatise on The Great Art., p. 225.)
The only emblem in the entire collection of fifty found in Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens identified directly with the Philosopher’s Stone is emblem #21, the basis for the painting in the present exhibition. Next to the identification of the emblem reads, "Make a circle around man and woman, then a square, now a triangle; make a circle, and you will have the Philosopher’s Stone." The epigram reads,
"Around the man and woman draw a ring,
From which an equal-sided square springs forth.
From this derive a triangle, which should touch
The sphere on every side: and then the Stone
Will have arisen. If this is not clear, Then learn Geometry, and know it all." (Godwin, Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, p. 147.)
The reconciliation of opposites through their mutual attraction brings man and woman together symbolizing the One thing, the dot or circle. Although they are one, they are also two, equaling by addition three they become the triangle and their multiplicity produces four, the square. From this progression from dot to line to triangle and square, they return again to one, the larger circle, from the union of corporeal love to all-encompassing spiritual Love. Spheres within spheres, a Jacob’s ladder, a golden chain.
As the One thing, the man and woman alchemically join as "our fruitful hermaphrodite," the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, to produce the philosopher’s stone in new life. The joining creates the tetractys: two heads, four arms and four legs. To perfect a body in the animal, plant, or mineral realms, the alchemist must separate the one into the four elements of Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. These elements are again separated and refined by fours. Air is divided into the "Air of Air," "Water of Air," "Fire of Air," and "Earth of Air." Divide the 4 by 4 four times to get the three: 4x4x4=48: 4+8=12:1+2=3. Once these separations are completed, they are recombined into one again to be separated by three principals, sulphur, mercury, and salt. The three principals, once separated, are recombined and subjected to a maximum of seven slow distillations (the one becomes four+three= seven: the circle articulated as square and triangle). Finally, the three purified principals are joined together as One in the form of the universal medicine, the philosopher’s stone, the Miracle of the One Thing, the large circle surrounding all of the work of the one, four, and three in the emblem.
The master in the emblem points his compass from circle to circle, or as it has been interpreted, from square to circle, demonstrating the squaring of the circle, the quintessential symbol of the marriage of heaven and earth. This puzzle was originally posed by the Delphic Oracle, to construct a square with a perimeter equal to the circumference of a circle.
Measures, to plot the sky...I use a ruler, thus, until at length the circle has been squared, and in the midst a market place is set, from which the streets are drawn, to radiate as from a star, the beams of which, itself a circle, shine straight forth to every point.-Aristophanes (c.450-c.388 B.C.)
The actual visual image of the squaring of the circle on these terms depict both the circle and the square overlapping each other, with the four tips of the square being the only part to emerge outside the circle. Draw two vesicas pisces at right angles to each other and approximate this image in the center. It is not worked out geometrically in the part of the emblem which shows the circle completely inside the square. It is generally accepted that the problem cannot be solved with the aid of the geometer’s tools of compass, straightedge, and pencil, two of which are apparent in the emblem while the third (the pencil) is implied by the sheet of drawings.
Let us look closely at two of the drawings on the sheet: we find a hexagram within a circle. If we were to place a smaller circle within the inner hexagon, that circle’s circumference would be exactly half of the outer circle. The hexagram itself contains the square and compass symbol of Freemasonry, which can be overlaid upon the image of the squared circle with the four tips of square and compass touching the outlying tips of the square. The other drawing is of an octagon. If we count the inner surfaces of the squared circle we come up with eight. In other words, the octagon is the perfect symbol of the actual image of the squaring of the circle.
The square, turning upon itself, produces the circle equal to itself, and the circular movement of the four equal angles turning around one point, is the quadrature of the circle.-Albert Pike (Morals and Dogma, p. 771.)
Manley P. Hall, in his monumental work The Secret Teachings of All Ages (PRS, Los Angeles, 1988) discusses the squaring of the circle in the architecture of the Great Pyramid:
The entire pyramid is an example of perfect orientation and actually squares the circle. This last is accomplished by dropping a vertical line from the apex of the Pyramid to its base line. If this vertical line be considered as the radius of an imaginary circle, the length of the circumference of such a circle will be found to equal the sum of the base lines of the four sides of the Pyramid. (p. XLII)
In his extraordinary geometrical study of the temple of Luxor entitled The Temple of Man, (Inner Traditions, Rochester, 1998) R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz describes a diagram dissecting "The Naos of Alexander and the Geometric pi" and concludes, after demonstrating that the architects used.." an already perfect pi of 3.141595, compared to pi as it is presently calculated, 3.1415927...We thus have a method of drawing an almost exact pi in a straight line, which makes a geometric squaring of the circle possible." (p. 947)
An examination of the diagram in question in The Temple of Man reveals a relationship between the angle used to get the exact pi and the triangle surrounding square and circle (which are also present in the diagram of "The Naos of Alexander") in Maier’s emblem 21 if it is turned upside down.
The squaring of the circle has figured into the sacred architecture of temples and cathedrals for thousands of years. It is no coincidence that the demonstration of this spiritualization of matter found in Atalanta Fugiens, Emblem 21 takes place on the side of a building. We see that the edifice is cracking and falling away to reveal the secret of its design: we have not really run into a brick wall of mystery, rather, we are instructed by what it reveals. And there is more.
The Sun and its shadow complete the work. - Atalanta Fugiens, Emblem 45 (p.. 195)
In her Introduction to Jocelyn Godwin’s translation of Atalanta Fugiens, Hildemarie Streich reminds us that, each fugue is an analogy of the race between Atalanta and Hippomenes. This is demonstrated in the fugues where we find the lead voice to be that of Atalanta, with that of Hippomenes following. The Golden Apples, the Pomum morans, also sing a part. Michael Maier, in constructing the multi-leveled, overlapping symbolism found throughout Atalanta Fugiens, recognized the interwoven relationships between Musica coelestis vel divina (heavenly or divine music); Musica mundana (music of the spheres) and Musica humana (music of the harmony of the human soul/humankind). In the 21st epigram accompanying the 21st emblem, the last line advises "Then learn Geometry, and know it all." Considering the 21st fugue, epigram, and emblem, and once again concerning the squaring of the circle, we find this harmonia, or "fitting together." By placing a circle within a square, as Maier does around the man and woman in the emblem, representing the earth (relative diameter = 7,920 miles), we again overlay a circle with the approximate circumference equaling the perimeter or area of the square. At the middle of the top arch of the outer circle is the center of a circle whose bottom just touches the top of the square. This smaller circle represents the moon (diameter: 2,160 miles).
The relationship between the diameters of the large circle of the moon’s path and the circle of the earth come close to the ratio of nine to eight, the basic interval of the "tone" on which the musical scale is built...The ratio of the areas of the circles is close to Phi, the golden ratio of natural growth. The dynamic cosmos was worshipped as visible, living music, its celestial dimensions revealing an expanding music scale, the Pythagorean "music of the spheres." -Michael S. Schnieder (A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe, New York, 1994, p. 214.)
In his book Jesus Christ Sun of God (Quest Books, Wheaton, 1993), under the chapter sub-heading "The Harmony of Apollo: The Pythagorean Science of Mediation," author David Fideler illustrates by means of an expanding diagram (which he notes is adapted from a monograph entitled Means and Music, by Siemen Terpstra, unpublished) using circles and triangles reminiscent of emblem 21, why Clement of Alexandria in his Exhortation to the Greeks "referred to the power of Jesus, the Logos, in musical terms: "Behold the might of the New Song!"..It has "composed the universe into melodious order, and tuned the discord of the elements to harmonious arrangement, so the whole world might become harmony." (Jesus Christ Sun of God, pp. 87-100.)
One concludes that the alchemical, musical, geometrical and various symbolism found in Emblem 21 of Michael Maier’s masterwork Atalanta Fugiens is virtually inexhaustable. Everywhere one turns, it seems, a new door opens, a new connection arises. For example, a whole treatise could be based solely on the geneology of the characters in the fable. Consider Hippomenes, whose great grandfather was Neptune (no wonder Aphrodite, who originally emerged from sea foam, came to his aid), whose grandfather was Apollo (the harmonious, whose little brother Hermes is the father of Alchemy, and creator of the lute), and whose father was the argonaut Megareus.
What Maier has accomplished in this work, especially pointed out in Fugue/Emblem/Epigram 21, is how the Philosopher’s Stone has the power of infinite projection upon the basic matter of our understanding, with the potential to heal and perfect bodies in all of the various kingdoms and realms contained within the imagination.
If anyone will not acknowledge the force of reason, he must needs have recourse to authority. -Michael Maier, "The Secrets of Alchemy."
Atalanta Fugiens (Emblem #21)
Painting Research Bibliography
Craven, Rev. J.B. Count Michael Maier-Doctor of Philosophy and of Medicine,. Alchemist, Rosicrucian, Mystic, 1568-1622. William Peace & Son, Kirkwall, 1910.
de Rola, Stanislas Klossowski. The Golden Game - Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century. Thames and Hudson, London, 1988.
d’Espagnet, Jean. The Hermetic Arcanum. The Alchemical Press, Edmonds, 1988.
Dick, Hugh G. Francis Bacon - Selected Writings. Random House, New York, 1955.
Evans, R.J.W. Rudolf II and His World. Thames and Hudson, London, 1997.
Evola, Julius. The Hermetic Tradition - Symbols & Teachings of the Royal Art. Inner Traditions, Rochester, 1994.
Fabricius, Johannes. Alchemy - The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art. Diamond Books, London, 1976.
(Maier) Godwin, Jocelyn (trans and ed.) Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens - An Edition of the Emblems, Fugues, and Epigrams. Emblem, Epigram, and Fugue #21, Phanes, Grand Rapids, 1989, pp. 146-147.
(Maier) A Context for Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, by Jocelyn Godwin. The Hermetic Journal, Issue Number 29, Autumn 1985, pp. 5-10.
(Maier) Micheal Maier, Intellectual Cantilenae in Nine Triads upon the Resurrection of the Phoenix. Translated with an Introduction by Mike Dickman, Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, 25 (Glasgow: Adam McClean, 1997). Cauda Pavonis: Studies in Hermeticism. Washington State University, Dept. of English, New Series Vol 17, Nos.1&2, Spring & Fall 1998, pp. 23-24.
McIntosh, Christopher. The Rosicrucians-The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order. Weiser, York Beach, 1997.
Pernety, Antoine-Joseph. An Alchemical Treatise on The Great Art. Weiser, York Beach, 1995.
Roob, Alexander. The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism. "Hermetic Yantras," Taschen Books, Koln, 1997, p. 466.
Sworder, Mary (trans.) Fulcanelli Master Alchemist-Le Mystery des Cathedrales-Esoteric Interpretation of the Hermetic Symbols of The Great Work. Brotherhood of Life, Albuquerque, 1984.
Waite, A.E. The Hermetic Museum - Containing Twenty-Two Most Celebrated Chemical Tracts. Weiser, York Beach, 1991. Volume II, Tract VI., "A Subtle Allegory Concerning the Secrets of Alchemy, very useful to possess and pleasant to read" by Michael Maier, pp.199-223.
White, Ralph (ed.) The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited. Chapt. 4: "The Deepest of the Rosicrucians: Michael Maier," by Jocelyn Godwin. Lindisfarne, Hudson, 1999, pp. 99-123.
Yates, Frances A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. Chapt. VI, "The Palatinate Publisher: Johann Theodore DeBry and the publication of the works of Robert Fludd and Michael Maier," Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972, pp. 70-89.