The Cosmic Virgin in Seventeenth Century Alchemy

A new type of alchemical imagery appeared in the late 14th century, far more complex than

the earlier abstract cyphers used by Hellenistic and Arabic alchemists. For the first time,

figurative and narrative elements were used in an untitled alchemical treatise by one

Gratheus, La Sagesse de Salomon (ca. 1370),1 and in another work located in the same

manuscript by a French alchemist, Constantinus, Le livre des secrets de ma dame alchimie

(ca. 1370).2

In her investigation of the origins of alchemical illustration, Barbara Obrist has argued that

the function of these new visual forms was rhetorical.3 They were a strategy devised to outwit

the scholastics, university men, who were raising objections to the alchemists' contention that

metals could change species in the process of transmutation. The scholastics were in

agreement with Aristotle in maintaining that ‘species’ constituted distinctive orders which

could not interchange their formal qualities. Since this argument completely invalidated the

alchemical enterprise, in response, the alchemists produced a rhetorical device which

permitted them to ignore such objections. They simply ‘proved’ the truth of alchemy (in

Obrist’s argument) by means of pictures that confused reality with its painted simulacrum. In

particular, alchemical illustrators such as Constantinus appropriated Christian iconography in

order to give their own imagery the sanctity of the visions experienced by the saints. In this

1
Gratheus, La Sagesse de Salomon, Vienne Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 2372, f. 57v ff.
2
Constantinus, Le livre des secrets de ma dame alchimie, Vienne Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 2372.
3
Barbara Obrist, Les debuts de l’imagerie alchimique (XIV-XV siècles), Paris: Le Sycomore (1982), pp. 55-65, 248-49.
manner, the alchemists moved their ideas from the ground of scholastic debate to that of the

unquestionable truths of the Christian faith.

In the further elaboration of such Christianised alchemical emblems, other Roman Catholic

Marian icons were employed such as the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This phenomenon in which Renaissance alchemists used traditional Mariology has been little

remarked by scholars until the recent monograph by Roberta Albrecht which has examined

the Catholic mysticism of the poet John Donne and his alchemical metaphors referring to the

Virgin Mary.4

This image of the Immaculate Conception in Catholic art is generically related to two other

types (which similarly re-appear in an alchemical context), namely, those of the Assumption

of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Apocalyptic Woman in the Revelation of St. John. I

have designated these particular Marian icons, as well as their alchemical derivatives, as

generic types of the “Cosmic Virgin” in reference to the depiction of Mary as elevated into

the heavens amidst sun, moon, stars and planetary spheres. This iconography describes her as

belonging simultaneously to the human and divine realms, as both the image of material

Nature and God’s handmaiden. Mary is Co-Redemptrice with Christ in the work of rescuing

humanity and the Cosmos from eternal damnation. Such traditional Mariology provided an

important resource for certain alchemists, most especially Michael Maier (1568-1622),

Robert Fludd (1574-1637) and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). It offered them the means to

express their concept of Nature as mother and nurturer and also as the light of Divine

4
Roberta Albrecht, The Virgin Mary As Alchemical And Lullian Reference In Donne, Susquehanna University Press (2005-
09).
Wisdom (Sophia). In their ideas, Mary in the guise of Nature becomes the alchemist of a

transfigured earth that has become a ladder to the Divine.

The alchemical versions of popular icons of Mary appear in illustrations located in the

various manuscript copies of the Book of the Holy Trinity (late 15th-16th centuries), Michael

Maier’s Symbola Aureae Mensae Duodecim Nationum (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1617), Robert

Fludd’s, Utriusque Cosmi … Historia (Oppenheim: Johann Theodore de Bry, vol. 1, 1617),

Johann Daniel Mylius, Opus Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1618), as well as in

the same author’s Philosophia Reformata (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1622, Jacob Boehme’s

Aurora Signatura Rerum oder Morgenrothe in Anfang 1612)5 and in pseudo-Nicholas

Flamel’s manuscript, Traité des figures hiéroglyphiques d’Abraham le juif (Mellon

Collection, Yale) (ca. 1750).

The iconography of the Assumption, Immaculate Conception and the Apocalyptic Woman is

intertwined with that of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Trinity, the

same idea being present of the elevation of the Virgin body and soul into heaven.6 This

compositional type was also pilfered by the alchemists, most notoriously in the German Buch

der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit whose illuminations are all drawn from Christian iconography to

the absolute scandal of many contemporaries.7

5
The Aurora was circulated in manuscript only from 1612 and was first published in the compendium of Boehme’s work as
Jacob Boehme Theosophisches Wercken (ed. by Gichtel), Amsterdam, 1682. It can be found in Will-Erich Peuckert,
Boehme. Samtliche Schriften (Stuttgart: Frommanns Verlag, 1, 1955): ‘Aurora Signatura Rerum oder Morgenrothe in
Anfang,’ pp. 263-84.
6
Mirella Levi d’Ancona, The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,
College Art Association in conjunction with the Art Bulletin (1957), pp. 28-43.
7
Obrist, pp. 117 ff.
The primary alchemical process is the unification of the male and female principles believed

to be imminent in prime matter. In the figurative imagery of the female she is variously

identified with the moon, earth, silver and mercury. After she has been ritually purified, the

female figure represents the reborn, virginal alchemical tincture, daughter of sun and moon

and the product of distillation. The tincture is one of the final stages in the creation of the

Philosopher’s Stone.

There is considerable variety in the manner in which this alchemical female is depicted,

including types derived from Catholic Mariography which are quite distinctive from the rest

of the alchemical repertoire of female symbols. For example, Michael Maier’s sole Marian

image is an aberration from his customary use of the classical figure derived from antique

sculpture.

A remarkable aspect of alchemical Marian iconography is that it is used by adepts who were

members of the Lutheran Church. The sole exception is an image which appears much later

in a Catholic context in ps. Flamel’s Traite des figures hieroglyphiques d’Abraham le Juif

(1750). The argument by Frances Yates concerning the inter-relationship of the occult

sciences with religiously and politically radical Lutherans is well-known.8 She refers to the

17th century alchemical texts and imagery of John Dee (1527-1609), Heinrich Khunrath

(1560-1605), Michael Maier and Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654) in the context of the

war by the Calvinist Frederick, Elector Palatine against the Holy Roman Emperor.

Another issue, however, far less considered by scholars, is the continuing appropriation of

Roman Catholic doctrine by these same radical Protestant alchemists. It could be argued that,

8 Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1st ed. 1972), passim.
due to the conceptual imperatives of their own alchemical programme, alchemists were

obliged to take recourse to Catholic iconography, specifically imagery associated with the

Virgin Mary and the Eucharist. Albrecht has argued for the influence of the remaining traces

of Roman Catholicism in English culture, such as those which inspired Donne’s Marian

imagery in the same period. These were difficult to eradicate since they were so deeply

engrained in western culture. Catholic ideas and imagery did not obediently disappear from

human consciousness at the imperative of the governing authority of a newly Protestant

country. 9

I have also put the case elsewhere for the ecumenical leanings (openly evidenced and

expressed in print) of 16th and 17th century Protestant alchemists, such as John Dee and

Edward Kelley, Jacob Boehme and Abraham von Franckenberg (1593-1652).10 Similarly, I

have made a case for the loss of Roman Catholic icons as one reason for the emergence of

richly illustrated, alchemical treatises in the Lutheran context of the late 16th century.11 These

commenced with Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Hamburg: 1595).

Even though, Luther did permit a visually archaic type of religious imagery to be used, the

overall antagonism to images and the iconoclasm of the reformers may have precipitated a

spiritual and conceptual crisis. The ensuing void in religious practice was partly alleviated, if

only subconsciously and in an unspoken manner, by the development of elaborate engravings

in alchemical and other magical books which were hugely popular, sold well and were

published in large, if expensive, print-runs.

9
Albrecht, pp. 21-24.
10
Urszula Szulakowska, The Sacrificial Body and the Day of Doom: Alchemy and Apocalyptic Discourse in the Protestant
Reformation, Leiden: Brill (2006), pp. 95-120.
11
Urszula Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light, Leiden: Brill (2000), pp. 5ff.
Perhaps other Protestant doctrinal reforms were also being compensated for in 17th century

alchemy by recourse to Catholicism. The alchemists who published such elaborate visual

imagery were hardly straight-forwardly Protestant in their belief system since their

conceptual programme was an eclectic mixture of paganism and Christianity, being grounded

in the alchemical medicine and pagan theosophy of Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim

(1493-1541). In this atmosphere of relative free-thinking, some alchemists were also

reviewing aspects of Catholicism, not with a view to conversion to a religion which they

probably regarded as obsolete, but in a selective and probably subconscious manner

according to their conceptual needs.

The evidence suggests that Robert Fludd, for example, was attracted to the Catholic doctrine

of transubstantiation in which bread and wine of the Eucharist became the real physical body

and blood of Christ.12 The other theological casualty of the Lutheran reform had been the cult

of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and other saints) in their role as spiritual intercessors for

humanity with God. In the fully-developed Lutheran theology, the Virgin lost her status in the

hierarchy of heaven and prayers were no longer directed to her as the container of God’s

special grace. Yet, these three defunct aspects of religious practice (the visual icon, the

doctrine of transubstantiation and the cult of the Virgin Mary) were indispensable to alchemy

since they gave credence to the alchemical concept of the transmutation of base matter. The

composition of the Philosopher’s Stone shared in the nature of both the Eucharistic wafer as

the body of Christ, as well as the body of the Blessed Virgin which had been elevated into

heaven.

12
See the argument in Szulakowska, The Sacrificial Body (2006), pp. 121-40.
The belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary had originated in the Greek Church from

where it had travelled to the west. A popularised account is given in the Proto-Evangelium of

James and in another apocryphal text, the Gospel of the Infancy of the Virgin and Christ.13 It

was the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus (1266-1308) who formulated the doctrine of the

Immaculate Conception in his Scriptum Oxoniense (ca. 1300).14 The concept was promoted

in Spain from 14th century by the Franciscan Order and the Spanish Habsburg dynasty,

although the Papacy and the Dominican order resisted this popular cult until the 19th

century.15

The iconography of the Immaculate Conception developed between the 13th and the 18th

centuries. The image of the Virgin as elevated into heaven, with or without the Child,

appeared in three inter-related forms. The first of these depicted the Assumption of Mary

bodily into heaven (always alone, without the Child) and this type provided the composition

for the Immaculate Conception which by the 17th century depicted her on her own.16 The

iconography described the popular view that, as a gift of God’ grace, Mary was created free

from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve. In the image of the Immaculate Conception Mary

was the New Eve, the new mother of humanity.17

Both of these elevated, cosmological Marian types draw their form and spiritual importance

from an older icon, found universally within the churches of both east and west, that of the

Apocalyptic Woman. She is found either seated in the sky, or on the earth, or standing in both

realms. The Woman always carries the Child and her attributes are strictly those of the

account in the Revelation of St. John 12: 1-6, 13-17. In this text there appears a woman

13
Levi d’Ancona, pp. 43ff.
14 Levi d’ Ancona, p. 10
15 Suzanna L. Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-39.
16
Stratton, pp. 39ff.
17
Stratton, p. 10.
clothed in the sun, standing on the moon and crowned with twelve stars. She gives birth to a

child and is pursued by her enemy, the Dragon, who desires to devour them. The woman

flees into the desert where God takes them both up bodily into heaven. This allegory was

interpreted from the earliest times by the Roman Church in reference to the Virgin Mary. The

Lutheran Church later interpreted the same story as a prophecy concerning the future

persecution of the reformed Church by the Papacy. (fig. 1).18

Fig.1 Lippo Memmi, Virgin of Humility (with attributes of the Apocalyptic Woman –halo of twelve stars,
clothed in the sun and with a crescent moon at lower right) (1390-1400)
Picture supplied by the National Gallery, London, with permission to reproduce in print.

By the 17th century the allegory of the Apocalyptic Woman had been identified with the

doctrine of the Immaculate Conception for which painters appropriated the cosmic attributes

of the Woman in Revelation. The first image recognisable to modern eyes as that of the

Immaculate Conception was created by Diego Velzquez (1465-1524) (fig. 2), but the most

familiar type was developed by the Spanish artists Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682)

and Juan de Nisa Valdés Leal (1622-1690), an image that continues to be popularly venerated

18
Levi d’ Ancona, pp. 26-28.
three centuries later.19 The Virgin is painted as a radiant figure, standing alone on the moon

which can take either crescent or round form. She is crowned with twelve stars and is often

surrounded by angels within a deep sky-scape. 20

Fig. 2 Diego Velazquez, The Immaculate Conception (1618-19)

Picture supplied by the National Gallery, London, with permission to reproduce in print.

In fact, prior to the 17th century the visual iconography of the Immaculate Conception had not

been related to that of the Apocalyptic Woman. Earlier there were other compositional types

which were tentatively floated by artists but which had fallen out of favour and largely out of

memory by the 17th century. Surprisingly these extinct variants of the Immaculate Conception

do put in an appearance in alchemical illustration. One of these was the re-use of the late

medieval portrayal of the Old and New Eves in which the sinful Eve and Mary, free of

Original Sin, stand one each side of the Tree of Life, as in an well-known example from the

19
Stratton, p. 130.
20
Stratton, p. 126
Missal of Bernhard von Rohr, Archbishop of Salzburg (ca.1481).21 This kind of composition

may have influenced Fludd’s Cosmic Virgin who incorporates in her form the iconographical

attributes of both the Old Eve and of the Immaculate Conception.

In the search for the definitive image of the Immaculate Conception, artists had worked with

another composition in which the standing Virgin Mary was flanked by her parents, Joachim

and Anna.22 Their presence refers to the popular view that Mary was conceived like Christ

without sexual agency.23 This same imagery also re-appears in an alchemical context - in an

engraving found in Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata (1622) (fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Johann Daniel Mylius, emblem from Philosophia Reformata (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1622).

With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

21 This image has been published on the front cover of Roger Cook, The Tree of Life, New York: Thames and Hudson
(1974).
22
Stratton, p. 49.
23 Stratton, p. 21-24. See the painting by Joan de Joanes, The Virgin Tota Pulchra, Sot de Ferrer, Castellon parish church,

fig. 30, p. 49.

Mylius depicts a young woman, clothed in antique wet-look garments, with the unbound hair

of a virgin girl. She is crowned with four stars and stands on the surface of the sea. The girl is

both the Star of the Sea (an attribute of the Virgin Mary in the Litany of Loreto) and the

alchemical elixir. To the left of the girl there appears a male figure with the face of the sun,

dressed in antique armour and, to the right, a clothed woman is shown with a moon face in

contemporary dress. In the sky above the Virgin are thirteen stars.

More common in the context of alchemy are the later iconic Marian images. The most

elaborated image of the Apocalyptic Woman appears in a treatise by Michael Maier, the

Symbola Aureae Duodecim Nationum (1617) (fig. 4).

Fig. 4 Michael Maier, Symbola Aureae Mensae Duodecim Nationum (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1617), p. 509.

With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Maier was a Lutheran and a famous alchemist and physician to the Emperor Rudolf II. The

engraving of the Woman accompanies his account of an early 16th century treatise written by

the Hungarian alchemist Melchior Cibinensis.24 In this work Cibinensis had appropriated the

Catholic Eucharistic rite as a metaphor for the art of alchemical transmutation.25 Cibinensis

dedicated his work to King Ladislas II of Hungary to whom he was a chaplain and astrologer

from 1490. He also dedicated his treatise to the reform of the Church, although his original

manuscript pre-dates Luther’s revolt in Wittenberg in 1517. Cibinensis was executed by the

Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I in 1531 for his Protestant beliefs. Jung thought that he

could be identified with Melchior Szebeni of Hermannstadt (Hung. Sibiu or Cibiu).26

Maier had commissioned the engraving from the artist Mathieu Merian who was on the

permanent staff of the publisher Johann Theodore de Bry with his radical Lutheran

connections. In spite of this, the alchemical mass of Cibinensis was entirely Catholic in

character and the illustration accompanying it was similarly Catholic in iconography. In the

picture a woman with flowing hair feeds her child. She hovers in the air and the rays of the

sun surround her in an aureole. She is seated in a throne formed by the upturned horns of the

moon. This Marian icon is used as an allegory of the alchemical process of ‘cibatio’, the re-

incorporation of the purified liquors into the calcinated materials of the prime matter.27

24
Michael Maier, Symbola Aureae Mensae Duodecim Nationum (Oppenheim: Johann Theodore de Bry, 1618: reprint Graz:
Akademische Druck, 1972), p. 509.
25
The text was published as Lazarus Zetzner (ed.), “Addam et processum sub forma missae, a Nicolao Cibinensi,
Transilvano, ad Ladislao Ungariae, et Bohemiae regem olim missum” [in:] Theatrum Chemicum, I, Basel: Lazarus Zetzner
(1602), pp. 853ff.
26
Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1993), pp. 396-404.
27 Merian’s engraving has not received any substantial study on the part of contemporary scholars. The pcitre is mentioned in

Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), pp. 115-116. Klossowski states that
the image refers to the mercurial water. Hereward Tilton has also mentioned the image in his The Quest for the Phoenix,
New York: Walter de Gruyter (2003) but he is more concerned with the textual content and does not examine Maier’s
illustrations in any detail.
In fact, the Apocalyptic Woman had appeared earlier in an alchemical context, in the German

manuscript of the notorious Das Buch von der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (“Book of the Holy

Trinity”) of the late 15th century. This almost certainly provided the model for Merian. In the

manuscript Christ is shown crucified on a verdant cross, while the Virgin Mary stands

beneath him in an aureole of sun’s rays. Beneath her feet is the face of the incumbent moon.

In other copies of this treatise, the Virgin is sitting beneath the lily-cross on which Christ is

crucified on a crescent moon with its horns turned downwards.28

In Merian’s engraving the association with the Catholic mass is overtly stated in the

additional scene on the right where a priest stands before an altar. Clad in a rich cope with the

image of the crucified Christ embroidered on his back, he opens his hands in prayer, in the

customary “oramus,” or “let us pray” pose. Before him, on the altar lies a round communion

wafer. The crucified Christ on the chasuble indicates that the priest’s rite is a sacrifice, since

Christ had sacrificed himself on the cross on Good Friday. Through the ritual of the Catholic

mass the priest and congregation participate in eternity with that one singular sacrifice. In the

Lutheran and Calvinistic reforms the sacrificial aspects of the communion were de-

emphasised, or denied, in favour of the idea that the communion was an “abendmahl,” an

evening meal recalling the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday.

In spite of these doctrinal changes, Merian’s depiction of the communion rite is as a Roman

Catholic Eucharist. In contrast, Cibinensis in his text had lacked the same audacity to openly

correlate alchemical transmutation and Eucharistic transubstantiation. In fact, his alchemical

mass stops short prior to the rite of transubstantiation. As Jung has shown, Cibinensis places

28The latter illumination is published in Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, “Signa Hermetis” [in:] Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins
fur Kunstwissenschaft, 4 (1937), pp. 93-162, on p. 110, fig. 8.
his own alchemical transmutation, not in the place of the consecration of the wafer in the

Catholic mass at the Words of Institution, but earlier, near the Credo. Nor does he identify

Christ with the stone of the philosophers as Heinrich Khunrath was to do in his Amphiteatrum

of 1595. In the real mass, after the reading of the Gospel there follows the Eucharistic rite

which Cibinensis has replaced with a Marian hymn, ‘Ave Praeclara.’ The second line of the

hymn refers to the Woman of Revelation and praises her as the Queen of Heaven. Cibinensis

adds a note that this Marian hymn is the testament of the whole art. He also cites the

eschatological texts of Isaiah, 65: 17 and 1 Enoch, 72: 1, as well as the apocalyptic reference

in Revelation 21: 1 to the new heaven and new earth which would be inaugurated by Christ

after the Universal Judgement. It is this hymn which Merian is illustrating but he also adds

the communion rite which is absent from the text.

Merian’s engraving was copied only once by another alchemical author in a treatise by

Johann Daniel Mylius who was a creative copyist. He was a great publicist and money-

spinner, on the look-out for the most striking visual motifs which he appropriated and had his

artists reconstruct in a highly inventive manner. In his Opus Medico-Chymicum (1618),

Mylius copied Fludd's illustrations from the ‘Macrocosm’ (Utriusque Cosmi … Historia, I

(1617)), while in his Philosophia Reformata (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1622) he reproduced in

detail Maier's emblems from the Atalanta Fugiens. For his Opus Medico-Chymicum Mylius

designed an emblem to represent the ideas of the Catalan philosopher Raymundus Lullius of

the late 13th century (fig. 5).

 Fig. 5 Emblem of Lullius in Johann Daniel Mylius, Opus Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1618),
n.p. With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Lull had created an art of memorisation, as well as a complex system of calculation using

elaborate diagrams, but he was also a theologian who had played a significant role in the

development of Catholic Mariology. He was a great devotee of the Virgin Mary and this is

why Mylius chose this particular image to represent Lull’s falsely-attributed alchemical

works (Lull had not practised alchemy). In Mylius’ emblem Lull himself appears, dressed as

a gentleman of the 17th century. He salutes the Virgin in her Apocalyptic form, seated on the

crescent moon as in a boat and carrying her child. She is fully clothed and the dazzling rays

of the sun obliterate her facial features. The composition is clearly taken from Merian. Lull is

quoted in the frame of the image:

Corpus Infantis ex masculo et foemina procedit in Actum.

(tr. The body of the Infant proceeds from the male and female in the [sexual] act).

This is a reference to general alchemical theory and hardly surprising news.

Prior to examining the Marian image employed in an alchemical work by Robert Fludd

(1574-1637), it is necessary to ascertain his specific religious affiliations. These were

unequivocally Anglican Protestant as is evidenced by his position as physician to King James

I of England. Nonetheless, he was accused by critics of having Roman Catholic inclinations

since in his alchemical treatises he describes a distillation of wheat which is transformed into

a blood-like elixir, an act that recalls the rite of transubstantiation in the Catholic mass.29

Fludd’s dominating theme through-out his Medicina Catholica (Frankfurt: William Fitzer,

1629-31) is that of the healing power of the heavenly bread, both common wheat and

Eucharistic. In his account of the production of the blood-red elixir, he describes how it is

created in the rays of the sun which is the throne of Metattron, the Messiah Christ in his

kabbalistic angelic form. Fludd’s alchemical and kabbalistic ideas were influenced by

Catholic doctrine. Even so, it is clear from the absence of any such evidence that Fludd had

no intention of converting to Catholicism.30 However, in 1598-1604/ 5 after his studies at

Oxford, he had undertaken an extended period of travel on the continent where he had

worked as a tutor to the children of Roman Catholic nobility in southern France. He also

spent a winter with some Jesuits who tutored him in the arts of magic in the mountains on the

borders of Spain and France.

In contrast to his extensive Christology, Fludd’s Marian imagery consists of only one

important engraving located within an elaborate cosmological diagram (figs. 6, 7).

29
Szulakowska, Sacrificial Body, pp. 124-25, 127-28.
30
See Allen G. Debus, Robert Fludd and the Philosophicall Key, New York: Science History Publications (1979). Godwin
has produced an interpretation of the main engravings but from the point of view of twentieth-century theosophy and
Jungian psychology. See Joscelyn Godwin, Robert Fludd, Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds, London:
Thames and Hudson (1979). The most extensive discussion of Fludd's intellectual development has been provided by
Huffman, though he disregarded the illustrations. See William H. Huffman, Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance,
London: Routledge (1988).
Fig. 6 Robert Fludd, Cosmological Image in ‘Macrocosmos,’ Utriusque Cosmi … Historia, vol. I, Oppenheim:
Johann Theodore de Bry (1617).With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Fig. 7 Robert Fludd, detail, ‘Macrocosm,’ Utriusque Cosmi … Historia, vol. I,Oppenheim: Johann Theodore de

Bry (1617). With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

This shows a naked woman with Marian attributes. The engraving is entitled by Fludd

‘Integra Naturae Speculum Artisque Imago.’31 Fludd in the text reveals that the woman

represents Nature, who is a virgin of the sub-lunar world of the four elements. She is not

herself a divine goddess, but, rather, she is the most intimate minister of God, at whose

command she governs the sub-celestial worlds.

In the engraving she is shown as joined by a chain to the Empyreum in which there appears

the Hebrew name of God - the Tetragrammaton ‘Yahweh’, ‘YHWH’ (Hebr., ‫)יהוה‬. The Virgin

in Fludd’s image is the soul of the world, the ‘anima mundi,’ who turns the spheres of the

stars and nourishes all creatures. The sun is shown resting on her right breast, with one

crescent moon on her left breast, while another moon lies on the Virgin’s belly. Her hair is

loose like that of an unmarried girl. The closest Marian association, in fact, is in the halo of

stars which are twelve in number in Marian iconography. This number was associated by the

Spanish Franciscans with the number of Mary’s virtues. Fludd’s Virgin seems to have only

eleven stars– with maybe another one hiding behind her hair on the right. Fludd refers to the

mercurial spirit living in the Virgin’s womb, while her heart gives light to the stars. This

mercurial spirit whom the philosophers call the Spirit of the Moon is sent down to the centre

of the earth to quicken it into life. The right foot of the Virgin stands on the earth, while her

left foot is in water which signifies the conjunction of sulphur and mercury in the alchemical

art. Another figure shown in this diagram is that of an ape. It is Nature's assistant in the realm

of creative human activity and it symbolises the concept of art (including the art of alchemy)

as artificially aping, or imitating, nature. The circles below refer to the three realms of

animal, vegetable and mineral activity on the earth in which artificial creativity takes action.

31
Fludd, UCH, I, pp. 4-5.
Fludd’s Cosmic Virgin has been modified to accord with his alchemical theories, but her

origins as an image lie in the icon of the Assumption of Mary, though the figure’s nakedness

relates it also to imagery of Eve. Fludd has, in fact, created a unique type of Cosmic Virgin,

naked like Mother Eve, but crowned with eleven (possibly twelve) stars and adorned with the

crescent moon in the manner of the Immaculate Conception. In another of his works, the

Tractatus Theologo-Philosophicus (Oppenheim: Johann Theodore de Bry, 1617) Fludd

describes the virgin Psyche, daughter of Nature, as a pure bride. She is described in the

context of the Holy Trinity as being a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, an important attribute of

the Virgin Mary.

… this noble and most pure Virgin is decked with such divine light ... this splendid Nature, this Psyche.
Minister of life to all creatures ... the airy virtue of the admirable Father and Son, or the Holy Spirit of
intelligence, has placed its tabernacle in her ... 32

An imaginatively re-worked copy of Fludd’s Cosmic Virgin is found in Mylius’ Opus

Medico-Chymicum (Frankfurt: Luca Jennis, 1618) (figs. 8, 9).

32
Godwin’s trans., p. 15.
 Fig. 8 Johann Daniel Mylius, Cosmological Emblem in Opus Medico-Chymicum, Frankfurt: Luca Jennis
(1618). With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Here the Virgin is accompanied on the left by the naked figure of a man who holds the sun in

his right hand, while she holds the moon in her left hand. Both are tied by chains as in

Fludd’s original image to the circling spheres of the stars and constellations above in their

alchemical versions and above them is the Empyreum of God. The man is supported by a

heraldic lion rampant, while she is supported by a stag-headed man, an image of Actaeon

who spied on the goddess Diana in antique myth and was hounded by her nymphs in the form

of a stag.
 Fig. 9 Detail of Johann Daniel Mylius, Cosmological Emblem in Opus Medico-Chymicum, Frankfurt: Luca
Jennis (1618). With the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Hence, Fludd’s image of the Divine Natura with her Marian connotations has been paganised

in Mylius’ version to take the form of Diana. Yet the Marian cosmic symbols are still present.

The sun and crescent moon adorn the female’s breasts and a crescent moon is laid across her

genitals to signify her untouched and sealed virginity. A shower of stars floods out of her

right breast as in the pagan myth of the infant Hercules attempting to suckle Juno, whose

milk floods out to form the stars of the Milky Way. It also recalls the imagery of the lactating

Virgin Mary who feeds humanity with divinely-gifted grace. Between them Mylius has added

a new figure - that of the alchemist clad in starry robes, half-light, half-dark and bearing

starry axes that will cleave apart the prime matter in the form of the double-bodied lion

beneath.

There exists one other, very unusual, textual account of a Cosmic Virgin in Lutheran

alchemy, although she is not pictured in an illustration. This entity is encountered as a

mysterious and somewhat inexplicable presence in the ideas of Jacob Boehme whose unique

theological system is removed drastically from the doctrines of the Lutheran Church to which

he belonged. His cosmology is a non-Christian structure, unique among his contemporaries

and it is problematic to find another conceptual parallel among his peers.

Boehme describes Nature as a Virgin in his Aurora Signatura Rerum oder Morgenrothe in

Anfang (1612). Specifically he calls her the ‘Celestial Virgin of Divine Wisdom’ as Eve, or

Sophia.33 She is the personification of the kabbalistic attribute of God, ‘Hochmah’ (Wisdom).

According to Weeks, Boehme’s Noble Virgin is based on an allegory of Wisdom in Proverbs

8: 22-24, 30-31.34 This was interpreted by Catholic theologians as an allusion to the Virgin

Mary and in the Litany of Loreto she is called the ‘Seat of Wisdom.’ Visual imagery of Mary

as enthroned is referring to this attribute. Boehme stated that his Noble Virgin as Wisdom

was present both in Christ and in Nature and he regarded her as a Person of the Godhead in

the same sense as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He also identified the Virgin with the

alchemical tincture. Boehme’s image of the Noble Virgin has come to him via Catholic

Mariology. This is evidenced by the manner in which he has personified Wisdom as a Virgin

and related her to the Holy Trinity in the same manner as did the Catholic Church. Boehme’s

elevation of the Virgin into the Godhead as a Person, however, transgresses the dogma of all

the Christian Churches.

Finally in a century later in a Roman Catholic alchemical context in France there exists one image of

the Immaculate Conception, without any subtext of sexual innuendo. She is fully-dressed and stands

33
Peuckert, 1 (1955), pp. 263-84.
34
Andrew Weeks, Boehme. An Intellectual Biography, New York: State University of New York Press (1991),
p. 83.
upright, praying with her eyes raised heavenwards (fig. 10). There are no esoteric additions, save that

her gown is coloured red to signify the alchemical tincture. This picture appears in an apocryphal

text opportunistically attributed to Flamel, but actually written in 1750, Traité des figures

hiéroglyphiques d’Abraham le juif (Mellon Collection, Yale). Supposedly authored by the late 14th

century scribe Nicolas Flamel, The Figures of Abraham the Jew were a fabrication dating from the

mid-17th century.35 These emblems were supposedly derived from a manuscript found by Flamel,

although no such book exists in the literature of the Jewish kabbalistic tradition, nor can the

Abraham of the title be identified with any of the medieval Jewish authorities.

The original seven illustrations supposedly found by Flamel in his book were created in Paris

in the 17th century and were issued in a treatise as Les Figures d’Abraham le Juif. This was

copied in manuscript form, as well as being published and re-published in various editions.

Each picture was accompanied by a written description. Apocalyptic in tenor they illustrated

biblical stories from the Old Testament.36 It is not the original 17th century set of seven

illustrations that includes the image of the Virgin Mary, but a different treatise dated to

ca.1750, namely the Traité des figures hiéroglyphiques d’Abraham le juif. 37 The older

emblems have been recopied by an amateur hand in more or less their original form, but new

illustrations have also been added depicting scenes from Revelation. 38 On one folio Mary

35 Kenneth Rayner Johnson, The Fulcanelli Phenomenon, St. Helier, Jersey: Neville Spearman (1980), pp. 126-41.
36The oldest manuscript of these figures is Arsenal Library, Ms. 3047, belonging to the mid-17th century, particularly
famous for being the text which inspired Andre Breton’s Second Surrealist Manifesto (1929). The original Flamel had made
his wealth through his work as a scrivener and advocate to the Jewish community in Paris. In the later enduring myth, he is
said to have discovered a copper book illustrated with emblems of a violent character. On journeying to Spain its meaning
was explained to him by a member of the Sephardic Jewish community.
37 Claude Gagnon, ‘Le Livre d’Abraham le Juif ou l’influence de l’impossible’ [in:] Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton (eds.),
Alchimie art, histoire et mythes. Actes du 1er colloque international de la Société d’Etude de l’Histoire de l’Alchimie (Paris,
Collège de France, 14-15-16 mars 1991), Paris: SEHA ; Milan : ARCHE (1995), pp. 497-506.
38Mellon Collection, Yale University Library MS. 103 (ca. 1750), ‘Abraham Juif, Prince, Prêtre, Lévite, Astrologue (et)
Philosophe... Livre des Figures hiéroglyphiques’ (13 watercolour illustrations inserted on parchment). Originally it was in
the possession of the 19th century occultist Stanislas de Guaita, then it passed to the Duveen collection and it is currently in
the Paul and Mary Mellon collection at Yale.
appears in something like her authentic form as the Immaculate Conception, with a crown of

twelve stars and within a shining aureole of light. It is the only alchemical Marian image in

which she is shown praying. The difference is in the alchemical colour of her robes which are

red since she represents the transmuting tincture. There is another Marian allusion in the

three-headed dragon which is a traditional feature of medieval apocalyptic iconography in the

depictions of the Apocalyptic Woman.

Fig. 10 Mellon Collection, Yale University Library MS. 103 (ca. 1750), ‘Abraham Juif, Prince, Prêtre, Lévite,
Astrologue (et) Philosophe... Livre des Figures hiéroglyphiques’ (13 watercolour illustrations inserted on parchment).

It remains to ask the important question as to whether these alchemical Marian images were intended

to subvert the authority of the Roman Catholic Church by their appearance in an alien, alchemical
context. One could deduce from the nakedness of the female figure in Fludd’s and Mylius’ emblems

that some sexual connotation is inferred in the stripping of the Immaculate Virgin. This

interpretation demands some caution since 17th century concepts concerning the acceptability of the

nude figure were quite different from those of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in a high culture

influenced by classical learning and art. A nude female figure in that historical epoch is not

necessarily automatically sexualised. Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that this certainly has to be

the case in the erotically-charged atmospheric of alchemy with its sexual metaphors and its

comparison of the alchemical process to the act of coition. Most particularly, Boehme’s alchemical

universe explodes in a sexual dynamic of desire, passion and violence. The alchemist plays the role

of an obstetrician in the delivery of the Philosopher’s Stone. This sexual discursive context

inevitably results in the eroticisation of the Cosmic Virgin. In short, the Virgins illustrated by Fludd

and Mylius and described by Boehme are clearly maidens ripe for the alchemical marriage-bed. In

his own engraving, Mylius does no more than award Fludd’s virginal maid with her rightful consort.

In contrast, Roman Catholic paintings of the Immaculate Conception are almost entirely chaste, with

the exception of Rubens’ blooming Virgins, bursting out of their wet-look drapery. The maid in

Velazquez image is a very young girl, barely in puberty and completely removed from the taint of

earthly matter. Other images of the Immaculate Conception have the same character of ethereality.

Hence, there is a case to be made that there is a subversive text in the deviant alchemical

appropriation and stripping of the Virgin Maid. In fact, the alchemical illustrators collapse the

discursive text of Marian doctrine and cause her figural type to regress and implode into the

iconographic form of Eve. It is Eve, the mother, wife of Adam, pregnant with the human race, to

whom the alchemists award the stars, clothe in the sun’s rays and adorn with the crescent moon.

Whether this is intended to be derogatory of Roman Catholic doctrine, or, indeed, supportive of it is

a question impossible to answer in the present state of scholarly research.

The image of the Apocalyptic Woman, whether in the context of the Book of the Holy Trinity,or

Maier’s allegory, or Mylius’ emblem, always asserts her role as the Queen of Heaven through-out

the vagaries of the alchemical text, maintaining her full regalia. The Apocalyptic Woman as a type is

essentially a picture of protective parenthood and is associated with the image of the Virgin Mary,

not as Bride, but as lactating mother. The Book of Revelation also held a particular position of

importance among hermeticists such as the alchemists who were also radical Lutherans. There was

an anticipation of the Day of Judgement which was said to be imminent in the early 17th century.

Prophecy was a common practice in the circles in which these alchemical texts were written and

prophets based their own proclamations on those of the Book of Revelation as the superlative

guiding authority. Hence, alchemists presented an image of the Apocalyptic Woman whose physical

appearance on earth was likely to take place in the immediate future.39

39
See Richard Bauckham, The climax of prophecy: studies on the Book of Revelation, Edinburgh: T & T. Clark (1993),
passim.