',_.

« n ^r Science and
""• Medicine
BRILL Early Science and Medicine 18-1-2 {2013) 45-86 www.brill.com/csm

Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos:

George Ripley's Wheel of Inferior Astronomy

Jennifer M. Rampling*
University of Cambridge

Abstract
Alchemical images take many forms, from descriptive illustrations of apparatus to com-
plex allegorical schemes that link practical operations to larger cosmological structures,
i argue that George Ripley's famous Compound of Alchemy (1471) was intended to be
read in light of a circular figure appended to the work: the Wheel. In the concentric
circles of his "lower Astronomy," Ripley provided a terrestrial analogue for the planetary
spheres: encoding his alchemical ingredients as planets that orbited the earthly ele-
ments at the core ofthe work. The figure alludes to a variety of late medieval alchemical
doctrines. Yet the complexity of Ripley's scheme sometimes frustrated later readers,
whose struggles to decode and transcribe the figure left their mark in print and manu-
script.

Keywords
alchemy, George Ripley, Wheel, astronomía inferior, pseudo-Lull, diagrams, alchemical
imagery

* Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2
3RH, United Kingdom (jmr82@cam.ac.uk). This research was funded by a Darwin Trust
of Edinburgh Martin Pollock doctoral scholarship and a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral
research fellowship [090614/Z/09/Z]. Further support for archival visits was provided
by the British Society for the History of Science and the award ofthe 2008 Richard III
Society Bursary of the Institute for Historical Research. I am grateful to all these bod-
ies for their generous support. My warm thanks also to those institutions which, by per-
mitting self-service digital photography for research use, have made the task of
comparing different versions of Ripley's Wheel possible and affordable: the Bodleian
Library, Oxford; Cambridge University Library; Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford;
Edinburgh University Library; The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; and
Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

(c) Koninklijke Brill NV. Leiden, ¿ovi 1)01; io.ii«3/i57:«823-ooo3Ai)oo3

46 J.M. Rampling /Earfy Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

Introduction
The heavenly bodies of medieval Aristotelianism moved in circles, incor-
ruptible and immutable. Far below in the terrestrial sphere, European
alchemists pursued change. Whether seeking to transmute base metals
into silver and gold, or sick bodies into firm and healthy ones, exponents
of alchemy sought to achieve remarkable physical transformations,
which they sometimes strove to represent in pictorial form. These forms
varied, as did the range of alchemical theories and practical procedures
that coexisted in late medieval Europe. In this variety, we can witness
the efforts of diverse practitioners to represent phenomena inaccessible
to the eye alone: the hidden principles and structures of matter, and the
means by which these might be manipulated and brought to fruition.
Yet one recurring feature of alchemical iconography is its frequent depar-
ture from earthly realms, through the evocation of astronomical figures
and cosmological schemes.
Alchemical writing often develops the idea of a physical or analogical
correspondence between heaven and earth: a relationship most fre-
quently and conveniently expressed by the use of the seven planetary
symbols (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to denote
the seven metals (usually gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin and
lead respectively). Such correspondences need not have immediate prac-
tical implications.' Rather, the presentation of alchemy as a "terrestrial"
or "inferior" analogue to celestial astronomy suggested a framework
within which alchemical transmutation was both possible and compat-
ible with an established world view.^ The description of alchemy as

" For instance, astrological timings seldom feature in alchemical practicae: Joachim
Telle, "Astrologie und Alchemie im 16. Jahrhundert. Zu den astroalchemischen Lehrdich-
tungen von Christoph von Hirschenberg und Basilius Valetinus," in August Buck, ed..
Die okkulten Wissenschafien in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden, 1992), 227-53, at 230-31;
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, "Introduction: The Problematic Status of
Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe," in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and
Alchemy in Early Modem Europe, ed. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Cam-
bridge, MA, zooi), 1-37.
^' On alchemy as astronomía inferior, see Julius Ruska, Turba Philosophorum: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Alchemie. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaf-
ten und der Medizin, 1 (1931), 80; Teile, "Astrologie und Alchemie," 238-40; Newman and
Grafton, "Introduction," 18. On these correspondences more generally, see Michela
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine i8 {2013) 45-86 47

"astronomia inferior," although better known in early modern contexts

through the usage ofthe Benedictine Abbot Johannes Trithemius, astrol-
oger-mathematician John Dee, and astronomer Tycho Brahe, was previ-
ously developed in medieval treatises, including the Lumen luminum (or
De perfecto magisterio), discussed below.^ These macrocosmic relation-
ships could also be represented as figures or diagrams, allowing diverse
philosophical and practical allegiances, capable of supporting multiple
levels of exegesis, to be condensed into a single image.**
A variety of genres and types of alchemical illustration developed
alongside one another in Latin Europe. While recognising that medieval
pictorial forms elude strict typologies, the historian Barbara Obrist has
usefully distinguished between verbal and non-verbal figures.^ To the
former belong lists, tables and associated diagrammatic constructs.^ The
latter vary from plain, descriptive pictures of furnaces and apparatus, to
the elaborate sequences of figurative illustrations that have become
characteristic—one might even say emblematic—of modern compen-

Pereira, "Heavens on Earth. From the Tabula Smaragdina to the Alchemical Fifth
Essence," Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 131-44.
3> Nicholas H. Clulee, "Astronomia inferior: Legacies of Johannes Trithemius and John
Dee," in Secrets ofNature, ed. Newman and Grafton, 173-233; Jole Shackelford, "Paracel-
sianism and Patronage in Denmark," in Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology
and Medicine at the European Court, 1500-1/50, ed. Bruce Moran (Woodbridge, 1991),
88-109, at 95-105.
*' The eponymous glyph of Dee's Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564) and its imita-
tions, including the "hieroglyphic star" of Philipp à Gabella, provide well known early
modern examples: Clulee, "Astronomia inferior."
5> Barbara Obrist, "Visualization in Medieval Alchemy," Hyle. Intemationaljoumalfor
Philosophy of Chemistry, 9 (2003), 131-70; online (unpaginated) at http://www.hyle.org/
journal/issues/9-2/obrist.htm (Accessed 20 April 2012). On the problems associated
with classification of medieval diagrams, see John North, "Diagram and Thought in
Medieval Science," in Viltard's Legacy: Studies in Medieval Technology, Science, and Art
in Memory of Jean Gimpel, ed. Thérèse Zenner (Ashgate, 2004), 265-87; Christoph Lüthy
and Alexis Smets, "Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific
Imagery," Early Science and Medicine, 14 (2009), 398-439, at 420-24.
''' "Diagram" is used throughout in its modern sense. For early modern use of "diagram-
mata," see Ian Maclean, "Diagrams in the Defence of Galen: Medical Use of Tables,
Squares, Dichotomies, Wheels, and Latitudes, 1480-1574," in Transmitting Knowledge:
Words, Images, and Instruments in Early Modem Europe, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa and Ian
Maclean (Oxford, 2006), 135-64, at 135.
48 J-M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86

dia of alchemical art.^ As Obrist notes, images were almost entirely

absent from Latin alchemical texts until the second half of the thirteenth
century.^ When they do appear, figures usually accompany treatises
whose function is, at least in part, to situate alchemy within an author-
itative framework, particularly that of Aristotelian natural philosophy.^
The pictorial elements of these works often refer to larger cosmological
structures, striving towards the legitimation of alchemy as both scientia
and as ars. One ofthe earliest surviving attempts, a sequence of images
accompanying the Book ofSecrets of Constantine of Pisa, grafts alchem-
ical material onto pre-existing pictorial forms. In this case, the appro-
priation is both philosophical and theological, as part of an attempt to
relate the qualities of metals to the six days of Creation within a peda-
gogical context.'"
While Constantine's figure offers one of the earliest medieval exam-
ples, in this essay I shall focus on an image from the very close of the
middle ages. This is a circular figure attached to the Compound of
Alchemy, or "Twelve Gates," of the English alchemist George Ripley,
Canon of Bridlington (d. ca. 1490)." This late fifteenth-century diagram.

^* In practice, 'non-verbal' figures may include text, and vice versa. For a scholarly
analysis of the substance and context of several medieval sequences, see Barbara Obrist,
Les débuts de l'imagerie alchimique:XIV^-XV siècles (Paris, 1982).
*' Obrist, "Visualization." An important exception is analysed in Obrist, "Cosmology
and Alchemy in an Illustrated 13th Century Alchemical Tract: Constantine of Pisa, 'The
Book of the Secrets of Alchemy,'" Micrologus, 1 (1993), 115-60. Earlier Greek alchemical
works sometimes included both verbal and non-verbal figures, although these were less
frequent in Arabic works; cf. Obrist, "Visualization."
^' On thirteenth-century attempts to establish alchemy's status as an academic disci-
pline, see Constantine of Pisa, The Book ofthe Secrets ofAlchemy: Introduction, Critical
Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. Barbara Obrist (Leiden, 1990); William R.
Newman, "Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages," Isis, 80 (1989),
423-45; William R. Nev/man, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the. Experimental Ori-
gins ofthe Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2006).
'"' Obrist, "Cosmology and Alchemy"; Constantine of Pisa, The Book ofthe Secrets.
"' On Ripley, see Jennifer M. Rampling, "Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and
His Alchemical Sources," Ambix, 55 (2008), 189-208; eadem, "The Catalogue of the Rip-
ley Corpus: Alchemical Writings Attributed to George Ripley (d. ca. 1490)," Ambix, 57
(2010), 125-201 (henceforth CRC); Lawrence M. Principe, "Ripley, George," in Alchimie.
Lexikon einer hermetischen Wissenschafi, ed. Claus Priesner and Karin Figala (Munich,
1998), 305-6-
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86 4g

embellished with English and Latin texts, is a curious hybrid: combining

pictorial representation, discursive text and allegorical verse, and encom-
passing a remarkable range of earlier material in terms of both pictorial
form and alchemical doctrine. Thanks to the interest and frustration it
evoked in subsequent copyists and publishers, it also teaches us a good
deal about techniques for interpreting and the mechanics of producing
figures of elaborate design and elusive meaning in the early modern
period.
Ripley's Compound is one of the best known works of English alchem-
ica. Dated by colophon to 1471, the year of King Edward IV's restoration
to the throne of England, this Middle English poem enjoyed a wide cir-
culation from the late fifteenth century onwards, in English, Latin, and
European vernaculars.^^ In an engaging structural conceit, the alchemi-
cal work is represented as a twelve-gated castle, each gate corresponding
to a chemical process. Ripley outlines these in twelve chapters, from the
outer gate, "Calcination," to "Projection," the final test of the elixir's trans-
mutational efficacy. However, he makes little reference to his architec-
tonic device within the actual text, instead focusing on the processes
themselves. This neglect stems from the fact that Ripley had appropri-
ated the twelvefold structure and much of the content of individual gates
from another work, the Scala philosophorum ("Ladder of the
Philosophers").^^ While the twelve rungs or gates offer a convenient tax-
onomy, throughout the poem Ripley reaches for another device to con-
vey the subtleties of his art: a "wheel" or "figure," also referred to as the
Coelum philosophorum ("Philosophers' Heaven"). It is this figure, rather
than the twelve taxonomic gates, that provides the clearest model for
understanding Ripley's work, through its representation of alchemy as
"lower Astronomy."

"2' For a census of extant manuscripts, see CRC. On the Compound's European recep-
tion, see Jennifer M. Rampling, "John Dee and the Alchemists: Practising and Promoting
English Alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire," Studies in History and Philosophy of Sci-
ence, 43 (2012), 432-36; eadem, "Transmission and Transmutation: George Ripley and
the Place of English Alchemy in Early Modern Europe," Early Science andMedicine, 17
(2012), 477-99-
" ' Rampling, "Establishing the Canon." Ripley attributed the Scala to Guido de Mon-
tanor.
50 J-M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86

The Stuff Extremes Are Made Of

Wheels and circles are familiar tropes of medieval alchemy, often denot-
ing the "squaring of the circle"—the transformation of the four Aristo-
telian elements. An element changes when its previous form is destroyed
and it assumes another, through substitution of its primary elementary
qualities. Thus earth (cold and dry) becomes water (cold and moist) by
losing its dryness, while water in turn becomes air (hot and moist) as
coldness yields to heat. In alchemy, these revolutions map conveniently
onto certain observed processes, most obviously the dissolution of a
solid into a liquid, and its volatilisation by distillation or sublimation.
The theory prohibits an element from transforming into its contrary
without intermediate transition through a middle term. A concern with
cyclical transformations is also characteristic ofthe influential alchem-
ical doctrines pseudonymously attributed to Raymond Lull.^'* For exam-
ple, the Testamentum, the foundational work of the pseudo-LuUian
corpus and one of Ripley's major sources, describes the reduction of
material compounds into their constituent elements:

Before [Nature] can pass right through by the circular wheel of elements, it is nec-
essary she be divided into four parts, so she can cross by the four elementary qual-
ities, namely from dryness into cold, and from gross into simple, and from cold into
moist, and from heavy into light, and from moist into hot, and from bitter into
pleasant and sweet.'^

'•" On pseudo-LuUian alchemy, see Michela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus attributed
to Raymond Lull (London, 1989); eadem, "Prima Materia. Echi aristotelici e avicenniani
nel Testamentum pseudolulliano," in Aristoteles Chemicus. It IVLibro dei Meteorológica
nella tradizione antica e médiévale, ed. Christine Viano (Sankt Augustin, 2002), 145-64;
Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Alchemy of George Ripley, 1470-1700" (Ph.D. dissertation.
University of Cambridge, 2009), ch. 2.
'5' "[N]atura, priusquam poterit pertransire per rotam circularem elementorum,
necesse est quod dividatur in quattuor partes, ut possit transiré per quattuor qualitates
elementares, videlicet de sicco in frigido, et de grosso in simplum, et de frigido in humi-
dum, et de ponderoso in leve, et de humidum in calidum, et de áspero in suave et dulce."
Ps. Lull, // Testamentum alchemico attribuito a Raimondo Lullo: Edizione del testo latino
e catalano dal manoscritto Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 244, ed. Michela Pereira and
Barbara Spaggiad (Florence, 1999), 1:248. Translations are mine unless stated otherwise.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 {2013) 45-86 51

The elemental wheel, able to turn both forward and back, also provides
an elegant analogy for the metallogenetic framework of the Testamen-
tum, in which substances can be 'rewound' to an earlier state, digested,
and set in motion once more. The author suggests that, although com-
pleted by nature, metals may still be undone, allowing nature to begin
her work afresh. An analogy is made with the biological function of
ingestion:

Metals are generated by vapours of the said 'sulphurs' and 'mercuries' by succes-
sive decoction, which are true extremes without mean, with a perfect closure in
the work of nature. However, when they are [taken from] their mines. Nature con-
trives through corruption to go back by circular motions, undoing and generating
them a second time, and with another turn, such that they attain a new generation
through digestion in their mines ... and there they are dispersed by its movement
until they attain a better kind, just as the generation of flesh happens in the body
of an animal through digestion of food and drink.'^

This process assumes a natural evolution of metals, whereby the less

perfectly digested bodies, such as lead, are gradually improved through
renewed digestion. The possibility of such material retractions encour-
ages the alchemist to ape nature's processes: to reduce a metal to an
earlier extreme, then rebuild it in a purer and more valuable form. The
reversibility of these circular motions was also important to Ripley,
describing the decomposition of metals: "Thys done, go backward,
turnyng thy Wheele againe."'^
This complex material Odyssey also had theological connotations. In
the alchemical cosmology of the Testamentum, the four Aristotelian ele-
ments are described as being formed from the fifth essence: a primordial

">' "[G]enerata per vapores dictorum sulphurum et argentorum vivorum per succes-
sivam decoccionem sunt metalla, que sunt vera extrema sine mediocritate cum perfecta
clausura in opere nature, sed per corrupcionem, quando sunt extra suas mineras, inten-
dit natura ad redeundum per motus circulares, illa corrumpendo et iterum generando;
et ista altera vice terminantur in novam generacionem per digestionem in suis mineris
... et illic per suum motum digeruntur, doñee terminentur in speciem meliorem, sicut
generacio carnis fit in corpore animalis per digestionem comedendi et bibendi." Testa-
mentum, I: 22.
''' "Calcination" 18. George Ripley, "The Compound of Alchymie," in Theatrum Cheml-
cum Britannicum, ed. Elias Ashmole (London, 1652), 107-93 (hereafter TCB), at 133.
52 J-M. RampUng /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

substance from which God created the heavens, the angels, and terres-
trial matter.'^ All matter originally shared in the purity of its parent sub-
stance, "until the time of sin" when Creation was corrupted by the Fall
of Man.'^ Post-lapsarian nature, stripped of her unsullied building
blocks, lost the ability to generate true perfection: "For, by reason of her
gross and corrupt matter. Nature cannot make a thing as perfect as she
did at the beginning."^"
While this situation will be ultimately and catastrophically remedied
in the refining fires ofJudgement Day, in the meantime both human and
divine intervention are necessary to achieve material perfection. By help-
ing nature regain her lost status, the alchemist therefore contributes to
a very serious enterprise: the absolution of matter. While Ripley clearly
regarded his alchemy in terms of material processes, his work is invested
with this additional, spiritual dimension. Thus, in the Compound, the
perfection of matter is continually related to the soul's journey through
the fires of purgatory, and on to paradise:

For lyke as Sowles after paynys transytory

Be brought into paradyce where ever ys yoyfuU lyfe;
So shall our Stone after hys darknes in Purgatory
Be purged and joynyd in Elements wythoute stryfe.^'

'^' Testamentum, 1:12-14. For a 'corpuscular' reading of this passage, see William R.
Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, An American Alchemist in the
Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1994), 98-103; for a contrary view, see Pereira, "Prima
Materia," 155-59-
'ä' "Ista quattuor elementa sic creata remanserunt pura et clara racione clare partis
nature ex qua erant creata usque ad tempus peccati, quod exivit a natura et adhuc est
ad tempus indulgencie post peccatum. Sed postquam mortui sunt homines et animalia
et nascentia terre desiccata cum destruccione generacionis, veniendo de corrupcione
in generacionem et de generacione in corrupcionem, sic quod de corporibus impuris
resolutis mutantur elementa in id, quod contagiat et corrumpit elementa, per quam
corrupcionem omnis res viva est parve duracionis." Testamentum, 1:14.
2o> "[Q]uoniam natura non potest faceré rem tam perfectam, racione sue materie grosse
et corrupte, sicut fecerat in suo principio. Sed natura in operando imperfeccionis par-
ticipât cum magna corrupcione propter materiam elementorum minus purorum, quam
quotidie ipsa invenit." Testamentum, 1:14.
21' "Putrefaction" 14. TCB, 151.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine ¡8 (2013) 45-86 53

This attractive analogy recurs more powerfully in the Compound's con-

cluding "Recapitulation." The protagonists are a couple familiar in medi-
eval alchemical literature, the "red man and his white wife." Together,
they traverse the wheel of seasons, from marriage in the west, purga-
torial eclipse in the north, spring-like resurrection in the east, and tri-
umphant ascension in the south:

Then to wyn to thy desyre thou need'st not be in dowte.

For the Whele of our Phylosophy thou hast tumyd abowte.^^

Ripley often describes the motions ofthe philosophical wheel through-

out the course ofthe "Twelve Gates."^^ At certain points he also advises
his audience to consult an accompanying figure, which provides the key
to understanding the whole poem:

Have thou recourse to thy Whele I councell the unto.

And stody tyll thou understond eche Chapter by and by.^

Although no fifteenth-century version ofthe figure survives, numerous

sixteenth and seventeenth-century manuscripts testify to the complex-
ity of Ripley's design: a quadripartite wheel, composed of concentric
spheres with captions and verses (see Fig. l).^^ This has been little stud-
ied, yet its design closely matches the instructions provided in the text.^^
Ripley himself refers to a figure, for instance at the tenth gate, "Exalta-
tion":

Tbis circulation beginne thou in the west.

Then into the south, till they exalted bee,
Proceede duely, as in thy figure I haue taught thee.

22) "Recapitulation" 5. TCB, 187.

23> "Calcination" 17-18, "Solution" 11-13, "Congelation" 29, "Cibation" 5, "Fermentation"
15, and "Exaltation" 8-9.
2*' "Recapitulation" 10. TCB, 188.
25) These manuscripts are discussed below; cf. CRC.
26) The authenticity ofthe Wheel has not been previously establisbed: hence, a recent
edition of the Compound notes only that "some manuscript copies of the Compound
also included a visual, astronomical 'figure,' the counterpart of the engraved 'Wheele
mentioned in his Worke' that appears in the 1591 edition": Stanton J. Linden, "Introduc-
tion," George Ripley's Compound ofAlchemy {1591), ed. idem (Aldershot, 2001), xix.
54 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

Figure 1: Wheel. Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, MS Anonyma 2, vol. 5, 28V.

(By kind permission of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh)

In which processe clearely thou mayst see.

Fro one extreame how to another thou mayst not go.
But by a meane, since they in qualities contrarious be.^^

^'^' "Exaltation" 9-10 (my emphasis). TCB, 180. In most copies of the Wheel, the direc-
tions appear upside down (at 90° in some cases) in relation to modern compass points.
Thus "West" is usually placed at the right side of thefigure,while "South" appears at the
top, being approached clockwise through North and then East
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine ¡8 (2013) 45-86 55

One ofthe functions of Ripley's Wheelis thus to model the shift of ele-
mentary qualities between extremes, via a mean. The figure efficiently
incorporates the four elements and their secondary qualities, the com-
pass points, seasons, dimensions (height, depth, and two 'sides,' or lati-
tudes), signs ofthe zodiac, and, from medicine, the four administering
virtues (digestive, expulsive, retentive and attractive) into the single,
circular image.^^ Using this figure, one may calculate in an instant that
a cold, moist temperament is the mean between a cold, dry one and a
hot, moist one; that the expulsive and attractive virtues are the extremes
of the digestive virtue; and that to pass from north to south one must
first traverse the east. The Wheel therefore provides a digest ofthe range
of transformations detailed throughout the "Gates."
Ripley also drew upon earlier pictorial forms for the design of the
figure itself The wheel of elements lends itself very well to diagrammatic
representation, particularly in the form of a roía, or wheel. Such use of
circular figures to classify knowledge, including calendrical, geographi-
cal and astronomical information, was characteristic of natural philo-
sophical treatises from the early middle ages onwards.^^ In De natura
rerum, Isidore of Seville described several such rotae, including a quad-
ripartite wheel ofthe year, in which each ofthe four seasons was assigned
an appropriate pair of secondary qualities, suggesting the passage
between seasons as one of continual motion rather than discrete stages.
These figures were valuable in depicting contrariety: thus, in the wheel
of seasons, summer (hot and dry) faces its opposite, winter (cold and
wet). Such quadripartite wheels might also group information on the
four cardinal directions, elements, bodily humours, and signs of the
zodiac (the latter divided into four groups of three).^° Another advantage

2^' In the Testamentum, the four administering virtues are reinterpreted as qualities
resulting from the dissolution into one substance of two "quicksilvers," active and pas-
sive. Testamentum, 1:154.
^^' For the medieval use of rotae, particularly for quadripartite systems, see John E.
Murdoch, Album ofScience: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984), 52-61,356-
58; Wesley M. Stevens, "The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's 'De natura rerum,'" Isis, 71
(1980), 268-77; Barbara Obrist, La cosmologie médiévale. Textes et images I Les fonde-
ments antiques (Florence, 2004), 50 and passim; cf. Maclean, "Diagrams in the Defence
of Galen," 140,158.
3°' On the significance of the number four in ancient and medieval cosmologies, see
g6 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine t8 {2013) 45-86

of the rota, besides its usefulness in illustrating contraries and suggesting

rotation, is that it may be divided into concentric circles: a feature which
provides the basis of many medieval cosmological diagrams.
The value of wheels both in tabulating and manipulating information
is also apparent in the geometric diagrams of the historical Lull and his
alchemical followers. By allocating letters of the alphabet to particular
ingredients and processes, the authors of Ripley's main pseudo-Lullian
sources, the Testamentum and Liber de secretis naturae, represented the
combination and reiteration of letters in complex schemes, usually cir-
cular (see Fig. 2).^'
While Ripley was probably influenced by suchfigures,his own Wheel
differs from these Lullian models in aiming to condense the entire
alchemical opus into a singlefigure.^^Its quadripartite design looks back
to Isidorean models, incorporating the elements, secondary qualities,
seasons, and cardinal directions, each quarter accompanied by verses
and scriptural references. Four grades of perfection (origin, imperfection,
perfection, plusquam perfectum) are also accommodated.^^ At the same
time, the Wheel mimics cosmological schemes, comprising an inner
circle nested within ten concentric spheres. In this version, the 'stars'
depicted are not the heavenly bodies, but their terrestrial equivalents:
the four metallic bodies used in Ripley's alchemy. These are the Sun,

Anna C. Esmeijer, Divina Quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application
of Visual Exegesis (Assen, 1978).
3" The alchemical diagrams are not combinatorial in the manner of authentic Lullian
figures: Pereira and Spaggiari, Testamentum, cxxxix-cbciii; Pereira, "Le figure alchemiche
pseudolulliane: u n indice oltre il testo?," in Fabuta in Tabula. Una storia degli indici dal
manoscritto al testo elettronico, ed. Claudio Leonardi, Marcello Morelli and Francesco
Santi (Spoleto, 1994), 111-18, at 115-16. On combinatorial figures, see Murdoch, Album of
Science, 60.
32) On this point I disagree with Urzula Szulakowska, who construes the Compound's
wheel references as an attempt to represent pseudo-Lullian computational circles as
"a castle with twelve doors which had to be negotiated by a circular sea-voyage":
Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance Alchemical
Illustration (Leiden, 2000), 21; cf. Pereira, "Le figure alchemiche pseudolulliane," 115-16.
Unlike another populariser of pseudo-Lullian writings, Christopher Parisiensis, Ripley
seems to have been less interested in reproducing Lullian wheels or alphabets; I also
find no reference to a sea voyage in the body of the Compound.
33) These terms are also represented in other contexts, for instance in rotae designed
to assist with syllogistic reduction. See Murdoch, Album of Science, 59.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86 37

f- 'Tím-í

Figure 2: Ps. Lull, Testamentum. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 244, 55a. (By kind
permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

Moon, Venus, and Mercury, equating to gold, silver, copper, and mercury.
This correspondence is noted in the accompanying verse:

Our heaven this Figure called is

Our table also ofthe lower Astronomy
Which vnderstood thou may not misse
To make our Medicen parfetly
On it therefore set thy study
And vnto God both night and day
For grace and for ye Author pray.^*
58 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

In astronomical terms, the stars are here presented out of order. Indeed,
towards the centre of the scheme the function of the circles changes,
from representing space, in the form of the heavens, to providing it, as
cells in which relevant information can be tabulated. Rather than plan-
ets, the three inner circles contain the names of colours and primary
and secondary qualities associated with various stages of material trans-
formation. Ripley's Coelum philosophorum depicts an alchemical rather
than astronomical cosmos: a true "lower Astronomy" that describes the
generation of heavenly perfection from mutable, terrestrial elements.
Yet, significantly for our understanding of Ripley's alchemy, his celestial
orbits conceal practical information on the proportions of substances
to be used. Within the four planetary spheres, Roman numerals indicate
the relative proportions of ingredients to be used: one part of the Sun
for three of the Moon, eight of Venus, and twelve of Mercury (see Fig. 3).
The correct proportion of his ingredients is one of the secrets that
Ripley alludes to but does not state explicitly within the body of the
poem. Another is the identity of his famous "Green Lion," an imperfect
metallic body that provides a mean between the two perfect bodies, gold
and silver. Ripley never discloses the Lion's nature within the text of the
"Gates," except to emphasise that it does not signify vitriol.^^ The Wheel
reveals all:

The sphere of Venus is 8, the goddess of love, which is the mean ofjoining the tinc-
tures between Sun and Moon, and it is a body easily converted to either, and there-
fore it is put in the work for an imperfect body, and it is called the Green Lion.3^

The Green Lion therefore denotes eight parts of copper. Yet to unpick
these puzzles, text must be read in light of image, as Ripley warns:

Diligently looke thou, and to thy figure attend.

Which doth in it containe these secrets great & smalL^'

35) "Congelation" 24, "Admonition" 4. TCB, 167; 190.

36) "Sphaera Veneris VIII deae amoris, quae est medium coniungendi tincturas inter
solem et lunam, et est corpus de facile couertibili ad vtrumque et ideo ponitur in opere
pro imperfecto corpore et dicitur leo viridis." TCB, 117. On Riple/s use of copper in the
Compound, see Rampling, "Establishing the Canon," 205.
37) 'Recapitulation' 1. TCB, 186.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86 59

Figure 3: Wheel (detail of planetary spheres). Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.23,

32Ar. (Reproduced by kind permission ofthe Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

Creating Heaven on Earth

Thus far, Ripley's appropriation ofthe language and diagrammatic forms
of astronomy is relatively straightforward: as a means of encoding prac-
tical information. However, the diagram invokes the heavens in another
sense: as a context for explaining how celestial perfection—the phi-
losophers' stone—can be generated within the sublunary sphere.
While the reduction of alchemical prime matter into its elemental
components is framed in terms of division, the opposite process, or 'cir-
cling of the square,' is constructive: a single, fifth element is created
through repeated cycles of elemental transitions. The ultimate object of
the Wheel is not to square the circle, but to illustrate how a 'square' of
paired, contrary qualities (most obviously, those of the four elements)
may, by continual rotation through their means, generate a fifth, perfect
6o J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine i8 {2013) 45-86

substance: the quintessence. This precept is inscribed in the innermost

ring of the Wheel, encircling its central axis:

When thou hast made the quadrangle round

then is all the secrett found.^^

The notion of generating a single substance from the 'quadrangle' of

elements was a well established alchemical doctrine by the late four-
teenth century.^^ The Wheel's alternative appellation, Coelum philosoph-
orum, leads us to another of Ripley's most influential sources, the
pseudo-Lullian Liber de secretis naturae, seu de quinta essentia ("The
Book ofthe Secrets of Nature, or ofthe Quintessence").*" Most of this
treatise was in turn derived from the Liber de consideratione quintae
essentiae ofthe Spiritual Franciscan John of Rupescissa, who described
the manufacture of a medicinal 'quintessence' by repeated distillation,
or 'circulation,' of spirit of wine. John hailed his quintessence as "our
heaven": a homogeneous substance whose incorruptibility provided an
analogue for the immutable fifth element ofthe heavenly bodies.'*' This

y -phg ]^y{j itself usually contains either a cross, with the four elements
labelled (Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, Vol. 5), or a motto:
"centrum lapidis" (University of Edinburgh MS Laing III.164; Cambridge, Trinity College
Library MS O.2.16, Pt 3; Cambridge University Library FRii.23), "lapis noster" (British
Library MS Sloane 2580A; Lambeth Palace, Sion College MS Arc.L.40.2/E.6, Pt. 1), or
simply "centrum" (Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1445, Pt. 1).
^8' See, inter alia, the Rosarium philosophorum of John Dastin (inc. "Desiderabile desi-
derium") in Theatrum chemicum, prœcipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemice
et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, prœstantia et operationibus..., ed. Laza-
rus Zetzner, 6 vols. (Ursel and Strasbourg, 1602-1661) (henceforth TC), III: 663-98, at
682: "Aped & claude, solve & nota, extende & plica, ablue & dessica, hoc facito continue
donee in quadrangulum vertatur & in rotundum."
''o) Ripley draws upon the Liber de secretis naturae particularly in his Preface to the
Compound: see Rampling, "The Alchemy of George Ripley," ch. 2.
*" On John of Rupescissa (Jean de Roquetaillade) and the quintessence, see F. Sher-
wood Taylor, "The Idea of the Quintessence," in Science, Medicine and History,
ed. Edgar A. Underwood, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), I: 247-65; Robert P. Multhauf, "John of
Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry," Isis, 45 (1954), 359-67; Robert Halleux,
"Les ouvrages alchimiques de Jean de Rupescissa," Histoire littéraire de la France, 41
(1981), 241-77; Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time:John of Rupescissa
in Medieval Europe (New York, 2009). Although Ripley's aim in the Compound is gener-
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86 61

reading informs the alchemy of another Ripleian poem associated with

the Compound, the Epistle to Edward IV\

We have an Heauen yncorruptible of the Quintessence,

Ornate with Elements, Signes, Planetts, and Starrs bright.*^

The separation of sub- and supralunary regions in Aristotelian physics

ultimately prevented John's attempt to link the celestial and the alcoholic
quintessence from becoming more than an analogy.*^ In Ripley's alchem-
ical cosmos, however, the coelum provides the unifying premise for a
compilation of other analogies between earthly elements and "Heaven"
in all its senses—perfected matter, celestial region and Christian para-
dise.
The IV/zee/illustrates the attainment of terrestrial perfection in rela-
tion to another interesting theoretical position, distinct from the pseudo-
Lullian corpus: the notion oiplusquam perfectum, or "more-than-perfect"
This explanation for the transmutational efficacy of the philosophers'
stone is encountered in Ripley's main source text, the Scala philosopho-
rum, and, given its importance for reading the Wheel, is worth consider-
ing in more detail here.
The first rung of the Scala, "Calcinatio," describes the aims of the
alchemist's work:

We are seeking to operate spiritually on the above artificial operation, in a contrary

sense, namely by killing the live and spiritually reviving the dead, and disposing
outwardly to something more-than-perfect.**

ally chrysopoetic rather than medicinal, in "Fermentation" 8 he does refer to the

"Quyntessens... whych helyth Dysesys all."
'*^' Epistle 21. TCB, 114. The Epistle also refers to "Our lower Astronomy" (stanza 20) and
instructs, "And of the Quadrangle make ye a Figure round" (15). On the relationship
between the Epistle and the Compound, see CRC.
*3' On John's difficulties in this regard, see DeVun, Prophecy, ch. 4. John's "Heaven" was
later echoed in the title of Philipp Ulstad's popular Coelum philosophorum seu de secre-
tis naturae liber (Fribourg, 1525).
**' "[A]d artificialem operationem superiùs à sensu contrario spiritualiter operad niti-
mur: natura tamen imitando, scilicet vivum occidendo, atque spiritualiter mortuum
resuscitando, & ad plusquam perfectum exterius disponendo." Jean-Jacques Manget,
Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1702) (hereafter ßCC), II: 138.
62 J.M. RampUng /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

This notion of 'super-perfection' is encountered in several alchemical

texts from the early fourteenth century onwards. It is set out with par-
ticular clarity in the influential Rosarius philosophorum, attributed to
Arnald of Villanova.*^ The Rosarius argues that, in order to raise imper-
fect metals to the perfection of gold and silver, the elixir must itself be
more perfect than the precious metals. Imperfect metals cannot perfect
themselves, nor can they be improved using the perfect bodies, gold and
silver, since such a dilution would serve only to diminish the perfection
of the latter. By the same reasoning, any transmuting agent would have
to be better than the perfect bodies:

It is necessary that that which is Elixir is made more purified and digested than
gold or silver; therefore, that the Elixir itself has to turn all imperfect diminished
bodies to another perfection, into gold and silver, which can hardly complete them-
selves ... And for this purpose the working will be made in our stone, so that its
tincture may be improved in it more than in its [own] nature.*^

The conclusion that the elixir must be "more than perfect" is even more
explicitly stated in the Speculum alchimiae, sometimes attributed to
Roger Bacon. The author of this fourteenth-century treatise employs
similar reasoning to the Rosarius, reiterating that base metals cannot be
improved simply by adding precious ones:

If this perfection might be mixed with the imperfect, the imperfect should not be
perfected with the perfect, but rather their perfections should be diminished by
the imperfect, and become imperfect. But if they were more than perfect, either in

*^' A large number of pseudo-Arnaldian texts carry this or a similar title. I refer to the
text with the incipit "Iste namque Liber vocatur Rosarium," printed as the "Thesaurus
thesaurum, et Rosarium philosophorum" {BCC, I: 662-76). On the difficulties posed by
the various Rosarii, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science,
8 vols. (New York, 1934), III: 55-66; Antoine Calvet, Les Oeuvres alchimiques attribuées à
Arnaud de Villeneuve. Grand oeuvre, médecine et prophétie au Moyen-Âge (Paris-Milan,
2011).
**' 'Quoniam est necessarium, quod illud quo est Elixir, magis fit depuratum & diges-
tum, quàm aurum vel argentum, eô quod ipsum Elixir habet convertere omnia imper-
fecta alia perfectione diminuta corpora in aurum vel argentum, quod ipsa minime
perficiere possunt: quia si de perfectione sua alteri darent, ipsa imperfecta existèrent:
eó quia non possunt tingere, nisi quantum se extendunt Et ad hocfietoperatio in lapide
nostro, ut melioretur ejus tinctura in eo plus quàm in sua natura." BCC, 1:665.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine i8 {2013) 45-86 63

a two-fold, four-fold, hundred-fold, or larger proportion, they might then well per-
fect the imperfect••'

This concept of plusquam perfectum provides a natural complement to

the pseudo-Lullian doctrine of means, whereby passage from one
extreme to another is only possible through an intermediate stage or
substance. By conceiving of imperfection, perfection, and super-perfec-
tion as steps on a ladder of means, the alchemist obtains theoretical
space in which to contemplate restarting the process of metallic evolu-
tion. This task would otherwise be frustrated by the workings of nature,
or, more accurately, its lack of working. In nature the state of perfection,
once achieved, provides the terminus of the scale, since the evolution
of metals ceases with the accomplishment of gold and silver. However,
by considering the perfect metals as means, with imperfection at one
extreme, it becomes not only possible but necessary to infer the exis-
tence of a super-perfect state at the opposite extreme. This conclusion
provides powerful support for the role of the artificer in improving on
natural processes.
Such speculations mark a point of departure from the pseudo-Lullian
corpus. In the post-lapsarian state of decay described in the Testamen-
tum, nature can no longer achieve material perfection unaided. Only
through a painstaking removal of the corrupt outer layers can the pure,
original substance of the elements be extracted, then recombined to
recreate the quintessence from which all matter ultimately derives. In
the Testamentum, the emphasis is therefore upon reclaiming a lost per-
fection rather than attempting to surpass it. Indeed, the concept of
plusquam perfectum maybe seen as contravening the salvific dimension
of the Testamentum's alchemical philosophy.
Ripley's Wheel accommodates the existence of a state beyond ter-
restrial perfection, relating it to the notion of material redemption. Two
sets of accompanying verses make this point explicitly, comparing the
redemptive power of the stone, which must be reborn in the womb of
mercury, with the incarnation of Christ. In the first sequence of four
verses, one positioned at each of the Wheel's 'corners,' Ripley recounts

'"' I use the 1597 English translation in Ps. Roger Bacon, The Mirror ofAlchimy composed
by the Thrice-Famous and Learned Fryer, Roger Bacon, ed. Stanton J. Linden (New York
and London, 1992), 8 (my emphasis).
64 J-M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86

the passion, death and resurrection of Christ as an analogy for the death,
purification, and exaltation ofthe stone."*^ These begin:

as holy scriptur maketh mención

in the wome of a virgin immaculat
cryst dessendyd for our redempcyon
hom hys hye trone to be encarnat
So here the son dessendyth from hys estate
forth from the south passyng in to the west
thorow the occean lahoryng w/t/z out rest.*^

Each verse has its secular equivalent within the outer sphere of the
Wheel: four couplets which together chart the Journey ofthe materials
ofthe work, the red man and his white wife, from their first dissolution
to the attainment of a state higher than gold:

Here the Red man & the wyffe

I-spowsed viiih the spyrit off lyffe.
Here to purgatory must hem goo
There to purged by payne And woo.
Here the[y] be purged off ffilthe originall
& maid ressplendent as is the cristal.
Here from paradise they go to [wo]nn
Bryhter maid nor is the Son.^"

Both sets of verses reinforce the notion of progressive, clockwise move-

ment around the Wheel: a dynamic and teleological circulation from
imperfect prime matter into super-perfect quintessence. In Ripley's
Wheel, scriptural authority, proportions of ingredients, the pseudo-

'•8' When reproducing text from manuscdpt, I have retained odginal spelling and cap-
italisation, using italics to denote the expansion of contractions. "|" denotes a line break.
Information necessary to convey the sense of a word or passage is included within
square brackets.
*^'' Trinity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3,127V. This version (like those in Ashmole's edition
and several other early copies) differs substantially from that printed by Rabbards: "As
Christ the Scripture making mention, | In the holy wombe descended of Marie: | From
his high throne for our redemption, | Working the holy Ghost to be incarnate, | So here
our Stone descends from his estate, | Into the womb of our Virgin Mercuriall, | To helpe
his brethren from filth odginall." Rabbards' version thus provides a more overtly alchem-
ical reading, besides introducing the third person of the Trinity.
5o> RCP of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, vol. 5,28V.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86 65

LuUian theory of means, Rupescissa's "heaven" and the notion of

plusquam perfectum combine in a single, complex figure: a remarkable
'state-of-the-art' of late fifteenth-century English alchemy.

Reinventing the Wheel

One curiosity of the Wheel's design is that, although the Compound
encapsulates a variety of pseudo-Lullian doctrines, the figure is closer
in appearance and function to traditional Isidorean models than the
diagrams employed in his Lullian sources. Given the extent of Ripley's
borrowings from another authority, the Scala philosophorum, we might
expect to find in this work the source for his rota. Indeed, the Scala is
replete with the language of purgatory and seasonal change: metaphors
which inform the Compound as a whole, and the Wheel in particular.^'
In stanzas 11-13 of his second gate, "Solution," Ripley explains that all
bodies have three dimensions: altitude, latitude, and profundity. "Our
Whele" must rotate through these dimensions, using a seasonal analogy:
beginning in the West, then proceeding through the dark, wintry eclipse
ofthe North ("In darknes of Purgatory wythowten Lyght") before rising,
spring-like, in the East, where blackness gives way to "Colours passyng
varyable." As the Wheel turns through the East and into summer, the
white work is attained, "For there the Sunne with daylight doth vprise."
Finally it ascends to the autumnal "Chayre of Fyre" in the South, when
the fruits ofthe harvest will be gleaned:

For there ys Harvest, that ys to say an end

Of all thys Warke after thyine owne desyre:
Ther shynyth the Son up in hys own sphyre.

And after the Eclyps ys in rednes wyth glory

As Kyng to rayne uppon all Mettalls and Mercury.^2

Printed versions of the Scala offer no obvious parallel to Ripley's vivid

account.^^ The "Recapitulatio" does compare winter and summer to the

5" BCC, II: 141,143,145-46.

52) "Dissolution" 13. TCB, 138.
53) On t h e print history of t h e Scata, see Ramphng, "Establishing t h e Canon,"
198-200.
66 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

Works of the Moon (silver) and Sun (gold) respectively.^'* However, Rip-
ley's Wheel instead takes "hyems" (winter) to signify a process: putrefac-
tion.^^
Fortunately, an unabridged version of the Scala survives in a late fif-
teenth-century copy: Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.8.9. Here,
the chapter on "Solutio" includes a lengthy passage that describes the
transformation of one form into another, via a series of spiritual qualities
"with infinite means."^^ These qualities correspond to the third and high-
est order of 'medicine' described in the influential Summa perfectionis
of pseudo-Geber,^^ as well as the three spatial dimensions of length,
breadth, and depth (longitude, latitude and profundity). Furthermore,
the Scala explains that the three may be combined into the fivefold
{quinario), "Just as appears in the displayed figure."^^
Sadly, no copy of this^i^ura, or tabula, survives. However, the text of
the Scala enables us to partially reconstruct it. Thus, the first quality is
said to be found at the entrance to the work, related to the secondary
qualities of the element of earth (coldness and dryness) and to the west
{occidentalia). This corresponds to the first side "of our table of Inferior
Astronomy."^^ The correspondence with Ripley's own figure "of the lower

^ ' "[S]ic autem opus Lunae nimis album, & opus Solis nimis nibeum: quia album opus
est hyemis, rubeum vero aestatis," BCC, II: 146. Purgatorial language is invoked in "Ciba-
tio" and "Fermentatio," BCC, II: 143; 144.
55' The seasons appear as analogies for alchemical processes in a variety of fourteenth-
century treatises, including the Studio namquefiorenti [TC, IV: 941-54, at 943-44) and
Practica vera alkimia [TC, FV: 912-34, at 917); see Thomdike, History ofMagic, III: 182 n.24,
184,189.
56' Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.8.9, nr.
5" On the three orders, see The Summa Perfectionis ofPseudo-Geber. A Critical Edition,
Translation and Study, ed. William R. Newman (Leiden, 1991), 546-48; 752-53. Ripley's
Wheel^Nas later interpreted in light of the Geberian orders by Eirenaeus Philalethes, "A
Breviary of Alchemy," printed in Ripley reviv'd: or, an exposition upon Sir George Ripley's
Hermético poetical works... (London, 1678); cf. Newman, Gehennical Fire, figure 3F.
58' "Omne totum ponitur in tribus, | scilicet terminis dimensionalibus, in quibus moue-
tur terra, quorum com|plecio latet in quinario, sicut apparet in figura proposita... Altera
vero I spiritalis, celestina, cum infinitis medijs, que tercio ordini | medicinarum per
Geberum expressatarum ibidem comparatur, quarum vtramque conti|net tres dimen-
siones relatiuas, videlicet longitudinem, latitudinem, | & profunditatem." Trinity College
MS 0.8.9,13v-i4r.
59> "Vnde prima qualitas spiritalis scilicet pnmi lateris longi|tudinis, latitudinis tabule
 J.M. Rampling / Early Science and Medicine 18 {2013) 45-86 67

Astronomy" is even more apparent when we compare the Scala text to

the first side of the Wheel: "The fyrst side or west latitude of the stone
and the entry into the practice, earthy in qualitie, occasionate,
occidental."««
The second side of the Scala's figure, opposite the first (and hence
third on Ripley's Wheel), denotes "the quality of causing airiousness, the
easterly, the perfect, and the entrance of this speculative table, or our
art." Between these two sides—the starting point and the attainment of
perfection—lies the mean of imperfection, characterised as depth, or
profundity:

For the quality of profundity, or dark secrecy, is called watery, northerly, and imper-
fect. And Just as one cannot pass from extreme to extreme except through a mean,
so neither may one pass from the imperfect to the more-than perfect except
through the perfect. Upon which perfection ... a much higher thing is indeed
worked by nature."»'

Accordingly, altitude, the fourth and final point on the table, corresponds
to the attainment of a super-perfect state of matter, plusquam perfectum:

But the more-than-perfect quality, which is the highest dimension, resplendent,

fiery, autumnal, is called altitude, the clear summit, and also the spiritual longi-
tude, which in the fourth step has to finally stand fast.*^

While Ripley's treatment is not identical to that of the Scala, the latter
evidently supplies the foundation of his Wheel. The Scala text also explic-
itly unites the doctrine of means with the concept of super-perfection,
positing the attainment of a more-than-perfect state from an imperfect

nosire inferioris astronomie, dicitur | qualitas causati ten-ei, frigidi, sicci, occidentalia,
& introitus experieK|cie nosire artis." Ibid., mr.
«<" TCB,wj.
^" "Qualitas enim profunditatis, seu obscuri occulti, dicitur aquatica | aquilonaris
imperfecta. Et sicut non est transitus de extremo ad ex|tremum, nisi per medium, sic
nee de imperfecto ad plusquam perfectum, | nisi per perfectum. Ad quam quidem per-
fectionem, ac eciam posi preparaciones | superius, multum operatur natura." Trinity
College MS O.8.9, nr.
^^' "Serf plus quam perfecta qualitas, que est di | mensio suprema,fiilgens,ignea, autump-
nalis, dicitur altitudo, | manifestum cacumen, atque longitudo spiritalis, que in quarto
gradu I finaliter habet consistere." Ibid.
68 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86

Starting point. The same concept is illustrated by Ripley's Wheel, which,

starting with the "entry to the practice" in the west, proceeds from the
imperfect (north), via the perfect (east) to, finally, the "altitude of the
stone in the south ... shining more than perfect... the end of practice."
In both works, the four elements are rotated into a single, fifth essence:
a fixed and super-perfect substance with the quality of transmuting
imperfect bodies to the perfection of precious metal. Rather than rolling
fully-formed from Ripley's imagination, the Wheel owes its origins to the
same source as his "Twelve Gates": the Scala philosophorum.
It is possible that Ripley even had an image to work from: the "table
of Inferior Astronomy" alluded to in the Scala. Yet, although allusions to
the Scala's figure survive (including a reference earlier in the chapter to
"secundum figuram"), the actual table has long since parted company
from its text. From what remains, we cannot establish whether the figure
was intended to be circular or rectangular.
An initial search for comparable figures yields several possibilities.
One treatise in a late fifteenth-century manuscript, British Library MS
Harley 3528, does include a rectangular figure.^^ Attributed to "Orthola-
nus" by the scribe, this short, illustrated text provides a Christianized
commentary on the second part of the Lumen Luminum minus etperfecti
magisterii ("The Lesser Light of Lights and Perfect Magistery"), a thir-
teenth-century work pseudonymously ascribed to either Aristotle or
Al-Razi, which offers some Aristotelian underpinnings for alchemical
theory and practice.^"* The Ortholanus commentary begins in a similar
vein, explaining that all bodies within the sublunary sphere possess four
qualities, humours, complexions, odours, and colours, and exist within
three dimensions: longitude, latitude, and profundity.^^ These fourfold
principles are illustrated not by a rota, but by an Aristotelian square of

63' British Library MS Harley 3528, ioiv-io3r (inc. "Omnia corpora que et sum/wo opi-
fice"; expl. "Item vocant mundum medium. Deo gracias").
6*' Printed as Aristode's De perfecto magisterio: TC, III: 76-127. The text in MS Harley
3528 also shares some similarity with the Practica vera alkimica attributed to Ortholanus
in TC, IV: 912-34. The author of the Practica has sometimes been equated with the Hor-
tulanus who authored a famous commentary on the Emerald Tablet. On the difficulty
of identifying and dating Hortulanus/Ortholanus, see Thomdike, History ofMagic, III:
176-B3.
*5> "[Q]ue omnia compre|henduntur sub tribus dimenc/onibus Ita quod omne corpus
dimencio|naturque sit longitudo latitudo & profimditas." MS Harley 3528, loiv.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine i8 {2013) 45-86 69

opposition.^^ The commentary also relates the alchemical work to the

transition from purgatory to earthly paradise in a style highly reminis-
cent of Ripley's treatment in the Compound. The late fifteenth-century
dating makes it hard to determine whether the commentary was a source
for the Scala, or was in fact derived from it Either way, the Scala's descrip-
tion of its figure as a "table" is perhaps more appropriate for a square
than a rota.
While Ripley's choice of a circularfiguremay represent his innovation,
another related rota does survive in a manuscript also dating from the
second half of the fifteenth century, British Library MS Sloane 3747 (see
Fig. 4). It illustrates a short Latin treatise, entitled Sphaera inferioris
astronomiae. This "Sphere of inferior astronomy" has many similarities
with Ripley's Wheel, including four smaller circles at the 'corners' ofthe
figure, each assigned a season, dimension, and secondary quality.^^ The
Sphaera is also divided into concentric circles. Rather than suggesting
planetary orbits, these are numbered to denote the three Geberian
orders of 'medicine,' mo-ving inwards from the first to the third order
and finally the quintessence (represented by "E") in the centre.^^ Yet the
influence ofthe 'true' heavens is more conspicuous here than in Ripley's
Wheel, for the outer circle indicates which astrological house rules each
of the three orders, in each quarter.^^
Other influences are harder to map. The accompanying treatise offers
little clarification regarding date or origins, once more leaving open the
question of whether it derives from the Lumen commentary, the Scala,
or even Ripley's own Wheel. The aim ofthe figure, stated at the beginning
ofthe text, is to demonstrate how the four elements may be transformed:

s"*' Ibid.,
^•'^ The two rotae have several captions in common ("Sol tenet ignem," etc.), text which
also appears in MS Harley 2407 (15th cent), 54r.
^^' "Quinta autem | litteia scilicet E ponitur in centro spere coloris | rubei ad designan-
dum quintam essenciam | ex 4 elementis ortam & per circulac/onem eleuatam | in
incoruptibilitatem" ("And the fifth letter, namely E, is placed in the centre ofthe sphere,
of a red colour, to denote the quintessence, born out ofthe four elements and through
circulation elevated into incorruptibility"). MS Sloane 3747, 8iv.
^3' For instance: "In primo ordine aquarius In 2 geminis In 3" libra & hie digestiua" in
the third quarter The travails of the alchemical couple are described in the two inner
circles, e.g. "hie purgant maculas proprias." A detailed table of proportions completes
the sphere: "de notât hac spera que sit proporcio vera." Ibid., 8ov.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86

Figure 4: Sphaera inferioris astronomiae. The British Library, London, MS Sloane 3747,
81V. (© The British Library Board)

From elementary quadrangularity into the centre, inducing roundness by the cir-
culation of one into another until they be made altogether fire: simple, pure, sub-
tle, tingeing and fixed, which is called the quintessence or quinary, temperate and
free of repugnance.™

This text reminds us of Ripley's goal, to "make the quadrangle round."

Throughout the treatise, the resonance with Ripley's own views is strik-

'"' "[Q]uadrangularitate | elementari in centralem producuntur rotunditatem | per

circulacionem vnius in alterum donee fiant toíaliter ignis | simplex purus subtilis tingens
& fixus qui dícííur | quinta essencia seu quinaritas temperata tocius | repugnancie
vacua." Ibid., 8ir.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86 71

ing, and adds to our sense that both the image and text must be somehow
linked to Ripley's oeuvre.'''' Although this question is unlikely to be defin-
itively resolved, the Sphaera remains, to my knowledge, the earliest sur-
viving witness ofa "wheel of inferior astronomy." Besides representing
an original and integral part of the Compound, it is clear that Ripley's
own Wheel exemplifies ideas and images which were already circling—
both literally and figuratively—in fifteenth-century England.
The example of the Scala reveals Ripley's role as a late medieval
alchemical commentator, who reshaped the Latin prose treatise into one
of the most distinctive examples of English alchemical poetry. Rather
than adapting the text alone, Ripley extended his programme to include
the reinvention ofthe Scala's quadripartite figure, with the addition of
verses and clues to his own alchemical methodology. The Wheel also
marks the climax ofa series of sustained analogies throughout the poem:
allegorical readings of scripture; the posthumous adventures of the red
man and his white wife; the revolutions ofthe philosophical wheel itself.
The result is an extraordinary, multi-purpose figure: a practical hiero-
glyph which later generations would use to unlock the secrets of Ripley's
poem. Indeed, it is the Wheel, rather than the famous twelve gates, which
encapsulates the alchemy of the Compound.
The importance ofthe Wheel in Ripley's alchemical thinking is under-
lined by its reappearance in his influential Mec/w/Za alchimiae ("Marrow
of Alchemy") of 1476.^^ Ripley includes the process for an aqua com-
posita, in which he describes the sequence of anticipated colour changes.
While its contents are presented as part ofthe recipe, we have no diffi-
culty identifying the source of this purple passage:

And between blackness and future whiteness there shall appear a green colour,
with so many colours afterward as can be thought of by human wit. But when a
white colour begins to appear, like the eyes of fishes, it may be known that sum-
merisnear; whom autumn will auspiciously follow with ripe and long-awaited red-
ness, after ashy and citdne colour. For then, first descending in due course ñ"om his
southern seat, perfect, natural and shining by gross solution, into the pale west,
imperfect, lateral; then into the north, dark, purgatorial, changeable and watery;

' " This manuscdpt is a member ofthe "Corthop Group" discussed in Rampling, "The
Alchemy of George Ripley," ch. 4; CRC, 128,137.
'2> On the Medulla, see CRC.
72 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

and thence into the east lateral, bright, past, perfect white and crystalline, para-
disiacal and summery; andfinally,the fiery chariot taken into the south, empirical,
fiery, preceding redness, celestial, autumnal, highest, and more-than-perfect, com-
pleting the circle, it passes through the philosophical wheel.^^

It seems that George Ripley, one of alchemy's great recyclers, could not
resist giving his wheel a final turn.

The Wheel in Circulation

Thus far, various meanings of the Wheel have been unpicked, and likely
sources suggested. The question remains of how Ripley's complicated
figure was read and used by its eventual audience. Was it perceived as a
vital key to understanding, oran awkward appendage to be skimped or
omitted? And, given the problems posed for copyists by this unwieldy
figure, did mistranscription contribute to the Wheel's appearance and
meaning over time?
Although no fifteenth-century copy of Ripley's Wheel survives, relics
of its presence are discernible in several early copies of the Compound.
Southampton City Record Office MS SC15/97, dating from around 1500,
includes Latin and English verses and captions extracted from the Wheel
(i6v-i7r). The verses also appear in a manuscript of the early sixteenth
century, British Library MS Sloane 3170 (46V-49), in which the Latin and
English texts are grouped together to denote their position relative to
the Wheel: an arrangement suggestive of transcription directly from the
figure.

^3) "Inter ni|gredinem autem et futuram albedinem color viridis apparebit cum tot
postmodum colori|bus quot ab humano ingenis potenint excogitad. Sed cum color
albus instar ocu|lorum piscium inceperit apparere: sciri poterit quam prope est estas
quam post cine|ricium et citrinum cum matura et expectata rubedine autumpnus pros-
pere in|sequetur. Tune enim debito cursu primo ab australi sua sede, perfecta, naturali,
et I fulgida descendens per solucione grossam in occidentem pallidam imperfectam
lateralem | deinde in [septemjtrionem nigram tenebrosam purgatorialem alterabilem
et aquosam, abindeque | in orientem, lateralem, luminosum, preteritum, perfectum,
album, cristallinum, paradisidieum et | estiualem ae demum aecepto curru Ígneo in
meridiem, empiricam, igneam, pre rutilam, | celestinam autumpnalem, supremam et
plusquam perfectam circuiens rotam pertrawsist [sic] p/zí7osophalem." Cambridge, Trin-
ity College Library MS R.14.58, Pt 3, 3V.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86 73

The earliest extant copy ofthe figure itself may be the large, coloured
version in Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh MS Anonyma 2, vol.
5, dating from the turn of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth
century (see Fig. 1). The earliest dated figure is from the "Liber Georgii
Golde" in Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS O.2.16. The significance
ofthe Wheel—or, as it is described in Golde's manuscript, the "Sphere"—
is emphasised on the Compound's title page, where the scribe notes, "In
the Year of our Lord 1539 was this little book written, all the way up to
the Sphere" {"Anno Domini 1539 scriptus erat libellus iste vsque ad
spheram").'''* Sure enough, the Sphere has been placed at the end ofthe
tract, under the heading, "thys ffygure conteynyth all our secretts both
gret & small."''^
By the mid-sixteenth century, the Wheel had become a commonplace
addition to manuscript Compounds. In 1545, Thomas Knyvet included a
handsome version on a fold-out parchment sheet inserted between the
"Recapitulation" and "Admonition" in his copy; similar in design to Gol-
de's (see Fig. 5).^^ The London haberdasher Rychard Walton, whose own
copy dates from the 1560s, also seems to follow the Golde model.^^ MS
Ashmole 1445 includes an even more detailed copy, incorporating four
English headings which are not found in the other copies so far men-
tioned, but which were printed by Ralph Rabbards in 1591.^^
Of these copyists, Walton is known to have been a practising alche-
mist, who also had an interest in collecting alchemical texts, including
many of Ripley's works.^^ Whether he regarded the Wheel as a source of
practical information, a connection to a preferred authority, or an object
of antiquarian interest, is unclear in the absence of further clues—prob-
ably, it was a combination of all these. Although there is some evidence

''*> Trinity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3, 82r.

'5) Ibid., 127V.
'"'' Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.23,32Ar.
'''') "Her folowith the fygure contaynyng all the Secretes | of tbys tretes bothe great and
Small." Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1479,3ir
'*) These are excerpted from scripture: for instance, "he brought water out of ye stone
and oule from ye most hard rocke," Bodleian Library MS Asbmole 1445, Pt. 1, 3or (cf.
Exodus 17:6; Deuteronomy 32:13).
•^9) On Walton, see Charles Webster, "Alchemical and Paracelsian Medicine," in Health,
Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge, 1979),
301-34; Rampling, "The Alchemy of George Ripley," ch. 6.
74 J.M. Rampling /Earty Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

^ "^m

Figure 5: Thomas Knyvet's Wheel. Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.2.23, 32Ar

(Reproduced by kind permission ofthe S)Tidics of Cambridge University Library)

that the Wheel was viewed as having practical relevance, such clues tend
not to accompany copies of the figure itself. For instance, the scribe of
MS Ashmole 1426 (Pt. V) composed a practical commentary on the Com-
pound in the first third ofthe sixteenth century, in which "the spere of
this auctor" is singled out for praise. Besides the matter to be used, one
must know the correct proportions. The Wheets Latin verses follow, cor-
rectly interpreted: "This that foloweth declareth bothe the mattre | and
the Right proporcyon. Ye most haue of [venus] | .8. mercury: 12 lune .3.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86 y^

[sol] .1."*° A century later, a seventeenth-century reader used a verse

from the Wheel to gloss a recipe in the (pseudo) Ripleian Breviation, in
MS Sloane 83.^' An even more enticing connection has been proposed
by the Thomas Harriot scholar, John Shirley, who argues that the English
mathematician used the Wheel as a guide to his meticulous alchemical
practice, although this argument rests on a manuscript of uncertain
provenance.^^
While evidence for practice is slight, the careful transcription of Rip-
ley's difficult figure does indicate a concern with authenticity and antiq-
uity. Thus Thomas Potter, updating his "very falsse corrupte copy" of the
Compound in 1580, was pleased to find in a new exemplar the "astrono-
mycall tables also, | that were lackinge in my said firste | copye."^^ One
of these tables is Ripley's Wheel—although, unusually. Potter provides
all the verses in English. It is even possible to identify Potter's exemplar,
thanks to a note attached to the figure: "Here followeth a figure contayn-
inge all the secrettes | of thys treatyse, greate & small, which treatise
begynnethe, fol. i. and | endeth fol. 27."^'^ These folio numbers correspond
to the placing of the Wheel in Knyvet's copy, making this the likely exem-
plar for Potter's "true copy, which I gott. anno. 1580."^^

»"' Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1426, Pt. 5, 9.

*" British Library MS Sloane 83, 2r. On the Breviation, see CRC.
*2> Lambeth i'alace Library, Sion College MS Arc.L.40.3/E.6, discussed in John W. Shirley,
Thomas Harriot: A Biography (Oxford, 1983), 282-87. Shirley reproduces several of the
Wheel's verses (although he does not connect these with Ripley or the Compound). His
reading is supported by Stephen Clucas, "Thomas Harriot and the Field of Knowledge
in the English Renaissance," in Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man ofScience, ed. Rob-
ert Fox (Aldershot, 2000), 93-136, at 126. However, an inscription on the manuscript
flyleaf, "The gift of Henry Holland, Citizen & Stationer of London, 1644," throws doubt
on the Harriot connection, which relies on the manuscript having passed to Harriot's
literary executor, Nathaniel Torporley, and hence to Sion College.
^3' British Library MS Sloane 3580A, i4or. On Potter, see also George R. Keiser, "Preserv-
ing the Heritage: Middle English Verse Treatises in Early Modern Manuscripts," in Mys-
tical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, ed. Stanton J. Linden
(New York, 2007), 189-214.
8*' MS Sloane 3580A, 238.
^5' ¡bid., i4or. As supporting evidence. Potter mentions finding Ripley's "tables" in his
exemplar. Although Potter's codex contains four figures, only one of these—the sec-
ond—is Ripley's, as Potter himself knew, noting elsewhere that some verses "shoulde
be added to | Ripleyes table, w/zich is ye seconde | table here" (237r). Potter's exemplar
76 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86

Part of the interest in these varying copies is the effort entailed in

producing them. The difficulty offirstdraughting the concentric spheres,
then compressing various verses and captions into restricted space, has
left its mark on many surviving copies. Rychard Walton, who initially
left a gap between the "Recapitulation" and "Admonition," eventually
relocated his Wheel to a full sheet at the end ofthe work, leaving a note
for any readers who might have expected to find it earlier: "The spere |
Is at the ende of thys | boke."^^ Thomas Knyvet, however, had already
commenced filling in the verses when lack of space forced him to aban-
don his half-drawn Wheel, and start again on a larger sheet, folded and
stitched to one of the original pages (see Fig. 6). In Golde's copy, two
blank pages are left between the Compound and the Wheel, tantalisingly
inscribed, "Sequitur Sphera" ("The sphere follows").^''
The awkwardness of copying the large figure is doubtless responsible
for the dearth of Wheels in early manuscripts. Although the functional-
ity of the Wheel is impaired by translating its contents into linear form,
as in MS Sloane 3170, ease of transcription is greatly improved. An exam-
ple of compromise is provided in the Wheel in MS Ashmole 1445, where
the scribe has recorded the Latin contents of the spheres within the
Wheel itself, then devoted the next two pages to comparing two English
translations.^^ This activity points to some antiquarian interest in col-
lating surviving copies, an interest which underlies Thomas Potter's
vigilance in updating his own copies of texts. We can guess that Potter's
satisfaction in obtaining a true copy of Ripley's "table" was slightly damp-
ened by his later discovery of an even more complete one:

This table is vnperfect & wanteth muche | as I perceyved by a perfect & larger table,
which I afterward I gott, conteyninge a great deale | more matter than this which
later table I haue | copied out also, and is set at the ende of this booke.^*

must therefore have included more than one figure, and Knyvet's does, indeed, contain
two copies of the Wheel (see Figs. 5 and 6).
^^' Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1479, 29r.
8" Tdnity College MS O.2.16, Pt. 3,126v-i27r.
^^' MS Ashmole 1445, Pt. 1, 3ov-3ir. A note to the four 'sphere' verses on 30V—which
vary considerably from the usual versions—mentions that "This 4. speres be after
another bocke."
89' MS Sloane 3580A, 238r.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 {2013) 45-86 77

Figure 6: Incomplete Wheel. Knyvet has used the empty space to sketch a partial
human figure, and added a note about a bay horse "with a Blacke eye and hasall eye."
Cambridge University Library, MS. Ff.2.23,32AV. (Reproduced by kind permission of the
Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

It is likely that this and other copies of the Wheel—usually placed in a

vulnerable position towards the end of codices—have become detached.
Such losses may explain the Wheel's tendency to haunt even those cop-
ies where it no longer exists. In MS Ashmole 1485, a wheel-less Com-
pound, we still find a deleted note after the colophon: "And within one
leafe followenge is his wheele or figure | mentioned before in his
78 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 {2013) 45-86

Recapitulación."^" Although the Compound in MS Ashmole i486

also fails to provide a Wheel for its intended reader, the early sixteenth-
century scribe urges him, in the letter that follows, to "Above All
thing[s] I haue profounde Regard vnto the Spere of Rypla."^'
As these examples reveal, hand-copied Wheels varied in size, accuracy
and level of detail. Variations proliferated when the figure was prepared
for print publication. The two English editions of the Compound, pub-
lished in 1591 and 1652, differ markedly, both in textual redaction and
the Wheel's design.
In 1591, the Compound became the first English alchemical work to
be published in English: edited by Ralph Rabbards, a magistrate and
former engineer, printed by Thomas Orwin, and dedicated to the Queen,
Elizabeth 1.^2 Rabbards placed the Wheel at the end of the book, after
the Compound and Epistle to Edward IV, titled "George Ripleys Wheele
mentioned in his Worke" (Fig. 7).^^ The transition into print has resulted
in a rather stripped-down version compared to manuscript copies, per-
haps reflecting the difficulty of accommodating the complex figure
within a single sheet. Rabbards himself seems to have anticipated criti-
cism, and Justifies the design in "A briefe note to the Readers":

The Wheele that is placed (Gentlemen) last, as the period of this secret Worke may
of some be challenged (through the diuersitie of Copies) to differ from the first. But
herein I assure you I haue obserued no lesse care than counsaile, and that of
knowen Practisers, whose censures (made more certaine by experience) haue
determined all doubts, and made me bolde to publish what followeth for the most
auncient.^*

Comparison with the earliest extant manuscripts suggests that Rabbards'

confidence in the antiquity of his exemplar was misplaced. His simple
woodcut omits the captions from the inner spheres, which are present
in all hand-drawn copies of the Wheel from the 1530s and earlier

90' Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1485, Pt. 3,46r.

91) Bodleian Library MS Ashmole i486, Pt. 3, 72V.
32) George Ripley, The Compound of Alchymy... Divided into twelue gates... Setfoorth by
Raph Rabbards Gentleman, studious and expert in archemicall artes, ed. Ralph Rabbards
(London, 1591). Rabbards' text is reproduced with some spelling emendations in George
Ripley's Compound ofAlchemy, ed. Linden.
83) Ripley, Compound ofAlchymy, M3r.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86 JQ

(see Fig. 7). These include the Latin notes containing the correct propor-
tions of Sol, Luna, Venus and Mercury—essential if the figure is to be
read in any practical sense. Indeed, the symbol for Venus has been omit-
ted altogether, while the other three are doubled up, each appearing
twice. The sense of the Wheel is altered further by a striking addition:
the symbols for the seven planets, from Moon to Saturn, have been
attached to respective circles, starting from the central hub. Yet the graft-
ing of this conventional cosmological ordering onto the alchemical fig-
ure makes nonsense of Ripley's original scheme. The outer
ring contains both Saturn and Sol; Jupiter now shares his sphere with
Luna; and the double Mercury has intruded into the realm of Mars.
Without having access to Rabbards' "most auncient" exemplars, we
cannot know whether these changes were accurately reproduced from
an unusual manuscript version, reflect Rabbards' own amendments, or
simply demonstrate the erratic nature of Elizabethan editorial and print-
ing practices. In the absence of further evidence, we might speculate
that the adjustment betrays a scribe or printer's decision to bring Ripley's
erratic orbits in line with the 'correct' astronomical order. The outcome
has nevertheless left its mark on several seventeenth-century manuscript
copies of Rabbards' Wheel. These include a version by Brian Twyne
(1581-1644), archivist of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which repro-
duces the full complement of planets (see Fig. 8).^^
The fluidity of the print-manuscript relationship and the practical
awkwardness of transcribing complex figures coincide in the form of
Edinburgh University MS Laing IIL164, a sixteenth-century copy ofthe
Compound with a complete Wheel.^^ A first attempt has clearly gone
awry, and the sheet with the half-finished figure now furnishes the outer
leaves ofthe quire. A later owner has added various amendments to the
Wheel and Compound, besides recording some opinions on the interpre-
tation ofthe Wheel at the end ofthe work. These focus on the planetary
spheres, correctly identifying the necessary proportions to be used. Latin
instructions on drawing the Wheel then follow ("Rota fabrica"), which

3^' Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 172: Twyne has added copies of the Wheel, the
Epistle to Edward IV, and Rabbards' title page to this fifteenth-century Compound. See
also Bodleian Library MS Rawl. poet 121 (7or), in the hand of George Lideatt merchant
tailor.
96) CRC 9.6, in CfiC, 152.
8o J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 {2013) 45-86

Figure 7: Wheel. George Ripley, The Compovnd ofAlchymy (London, 1591), M3r. Wren
Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, Grylls.3.412. (By kind permission ofthe Master and
Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge)

begin with the marking out of a large circle ("Describatur circulus

Edinburgh University MS Laing III.164,120.

 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86 81

- , " • • • • •

"^Cr- .":--''/-^.,^

. f..

íf:í^¿:a"3iía.'
.^. _ , _ , , , ^ - , , , y.,.

Figure 8: Wheel. Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library MS 136. (By kind permission of
the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

Intriguingly, the scribe must also have been familiar with Rabbards' edi-
tion, for the Latin guide has been supplemented with English notes on
the reproduction of a Wheel, "In forme as in the printed copye." Here,
the artist should start by drawing the Sphere of the Moon, "as bigg as
that which touch the fower inward circles." To delineate the outer limits
82 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86

of the Wheel, one should "then make another paper as bigge as the circle
of [Saturn], which fix | in the center of the former and fasten at ye crosse."
Rather than simply leaving the spheres empty of text, as in the print
exemplar, the Latin verses appropriate to Sol, Luna, Venus and Mercury
should be added to the "fower quarters thereof."^^ Guidance is also given
on completing the other spheres.
If followed, the result would be a curious fusion of scribal and printed
sources, in which the omissions of the Rabbardian Wheel are corrected
with reference to a manuscript exemplar. Yet, perversely, not all manu-
scripts reflect this striving for accuracy. Around 1606, the dedicated copy-
ist and compiler of alchemical treatises, Thomas Robson, transcribed
two almost identical versions of "The philosophers heaven," an ano-
nymised version of the Wheel in which the large, single figure is broken
down into smaller circles and disembodied verses. Alternative English
translations of the Latin verses are provided, yet the original scale and
context of the figure are lost; traces surviving only in such enigmatic
headings as "The first Cirkell w/t/zin the great Cirkell."^^
In Robson's neat copies, the deconstructed Wheel becomes just
another illustrated alchemical treatise. Elsewhere, solitary Wheels began
to orbit independently of the Compound, as illustrations in unrelated
compendia.'"" In at least one instance, an isolated Wheel appears with
verses and captions fully Latinized—all the more surprising given that
the Liber duodecim portarum (the Latin version of the Compound) seems
to have parted company from its figure before arriving in continental
Europe.'"' By the mid-seventeenth century, the Wheel had acquired a
modest life of its own, in which the substance of its verses and propor-
tions became increasingly divorced from practical considerations that
made sense only when grounded in its source text.
The Wheel's evolution culminates in an otherwise-unidentified

98> ¡bid.
88' British Library MS Sloane 1744, 76V; Glasgow University Library, MS Ferguson 133,
14V (dated 1606).
lo") Canterbury Cathedral, CCA-LitMs/A/14 (August 1590); Royal College of Physicians
of Edinburgh, MS Anonyma 2, vol. 4 (17th cent), 269.
101) British Library MS Sloane 1255 (ca. 1587-1600), 260b. A later copy of the Liber duo-
decim portarum, in Bodleian Library MS Canon. Misc. 223, does include the Wheel ("Rota
philosophica," accompanying Latin Compound), 258
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 (2013) 45-86

Ati Akh.vnnVal or Philosophic.viL llcavcu, o r VMiccl.

/// tJtcSun hc/mi> ///> la/i.rriudf t/t,r,;/;'n Sun tuuf. lAv/i 07(pYd fit" J/f.

/ / , • /'niii/it'H<t/,r fut

/ill./ f 'i//. f'n/ 0/ th^ tnj*/f^i'irt

Figure 9: An Atchymical or Philosophical Heaven, or Wheel. Glasgow University Library,

MS Ferguson 238, innerflyleaf.(By kind permission of Glasgow University Library, Spe-
cial Collections)

engraving of'An Alchymical or Philosophical Heaven, or Wheel," found

pasted to theflyleafof Glasgow University Library MS 238 (see Fig. 9).'°^

),as apparently been cut from a work of the English physician and occultist
writer Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799), which I have yet to identify. The sheet includes the
names of "WrightenJ.C." and the artist "Sibly." On Sibly, see Allen G. Debus, "Scientific
Truth and Occult Tradition: The Medical World of Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799), Medical
History, 26 (1982), 259-78; Debus, "A Further Note on Palingenesis: The Account of Eben-
ezer Sibly in the Illustration of Astrology (1792)," Isis, 64 (1973), 226-30.
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine t8 {2013) 45-86

Here followetli the Tifui'c Lomey

rWfecritj of iticTÎ-MliicIiotll^reat

Our luetven this'flaurt caUtd. Lf

"•"JJ- -I-, .-ftUUnrr/sTrsnimr
• •• U» „,«y ,„rm;/r '
— __. Pit firjttly
On tt mtreJùtF ftt Sf.y .¡-lujy
.imi ftile Ijpti ectfi rttu/tt o'lui iÍa\
'Tor ifTace ar\i{J-pr Y''jltithor pr-ft

Figure 10: George Ripley, "Figure conteyning all the secrets of the Treatise both great
& small." Elias Ashmole, ed., Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652), 117. (By
kind permission of SSPL/Science Museum)

This image presents a late and unattributed version of Ripley's Wheel,

from which most alchemical content has been removed. Startlingly, the
four elements at the centre of the scheme have been replaced by the
sun, from which the planets recede in their correct, post-Copernican
 J.M. Rampling /Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013) 45-86 85

order. Rather than celebrating the alchemical quest to achieve heavenly

perfection on earth, Ripley's cosmos has been reinvented as an analogue
for human capacity, expressed by a new slogan:

Man know thyself is the greatist Wisdom for all Magick is found in Man.
Man is the Epitome of the Creation the World in Miniature.'^^

Conclusions
When the VV7zee/was published for the second time in 1652, by the anti-
quary, alchemist and founding member of the Royal Society, Elias Ash-
mole (1617-1692), it appeared engraved on a fold-out sheet immediately
before the Compound in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (Fig. lo).'""*
The Theatrum, as the first printed compendia of English alchemical
verse, was essentially an antiquarian enterprise, reflecting Ashmole's
concern to preserve through his efforts the Jewels of England's alchem-
ical heritage, "being almost quite shrouded in the Dust oí Antiquity."^^^
Ashmole's attention to detail reflects his own striving for authenticity,
which also led him to commission magnificent engravings from Robert
Vaughan, based on a manuscript exemplar, to accompany the first work
in the collection, Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy.^^^ The simpler
geometrical structure ofthe Wheel was entrusted to John Goddard, and
the resulting figure preserves all the material familiar from early manu-
script copies, including the fine detail ofthe inner circles.

103) Flyleaf, Glasgow University Library MS 238.

'"a) Ashmole, "Prologomena," in TCB, B3V. On Ashmole's antiquarian project in relation

to alchemy, see Lauren Kassell, "Reading for the Philosophers' Stone," in Books and the
Sciences in History, ed. Madna Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine (Cambddge, 2000), 132-50;
Bruce Janacek, "A Virtuoso's History: Antiquarianism and the Transmission of Knowl-
edge in the Alchemical Studies of Elias Ashmo\e," Journalfor the History of Ideas, 69
(2008), 395-417-
•06) Elias Ashmole (161J-1692). His Autobiographical and Historical Notes, his Corres-
pondence, and Other Contemporary Sources Relating to his Life and Work, ed. Conrad
Hermann Josten, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1966), V: 585-86; M.K. Corbett, "Ashmole and the Pur-
suit of Alchemy: the Illustrations to the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652," Aníí-
quariesJournal, 63 (1983), 326-36.
86 J'M. Rampling /Early Science andMedicine 18 [2013) 45-86

In cycling back to an earlier stage in the Wheel's evolution, Ashmole

and Goddard pursued the pristine knowledge of a revered authority: an
attempt that necessarily obscures the intervening efforts of early modern
people to read, decode and tinker with their exemplars. The circularity
of alchemical production is not expressed merely in the procedures and
philosophies that its texts and images evoke. It is manifested by a con-
tinual process of recycling and reinterpretation, as successive readers
applied their practical knowledge to its puzzles, or employed its conceits
to front new treatises for presentation elsewhere.
The Wheel illustrates a series of stages in an active process of compi-
latio and exegesis that, Obrist's work aside, remains little studied within
the context of alchemical imagery. From the thirteenth century, alchem-
ical authors re-spun earlier material to create colourful analogies and
graphical forms. Often preserved only in textual hints and scattered early
copies, these have been largely overshadowed by successful adaptations,
like the Wheel, which have in consequence been treated in isolation from
their medieval context. Fifteenth-century alchemical figures evolved
from well-established texts and forms, and evoked a slew of recognisable
alchemical, medical and natural philosophical positions, even as their
own forms slipped between print and manuscript, picture and prose,
illustration and commentary. While aspiring to the immutability of the
heavens, the Wheel embodied an earthly astronomy, and hence remained
subject to its own terrestrial revolutions.
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