ALCHEMY - ROSARIUM PHILOSOPHORUM - SUBLIMATION A much printed alchemical series, the Rosarium Philosophorum consists of a complex text around 20 highly distinctive woodcut prints. The imagery is alchemical, but well disguised behind the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, sexuality and various Christian symbols.They each relate to the alchemical stages, viewed from a Christian standpoint - perhaps written in the late 15th century by one of the early Rosicrucian schools. Although the text and related images appeared in mediaeval manuscripts, it was not printed until 1550, in a German edition, as part of the De alchimia opuscula, by which time it consisted of 20 woodcuts. The authorship has always remained uncertain, though it has been suggested that it was compiled by Arnold of Villanova, in the 13th century. Jung has argued, from iconographic points relating to the four distinctly religious images, that, in its present form at least, the illustrations do not go back beyond the 15th century. The book was reprinted, with different cuts, many times: a great deal of the meaning of text and images may be gleaned from the later version of the images, and a truncated text, published as part of Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622 (the 22 engravings based on the cuts begins at the 29 engraving in the series, though the old numbering is adopted- that is to say, after the 28 engravings the Rosarium series are numbered in sequence from 1 to 22). Plate 9. 'Rejoicing of Soul, or Sublimation' is the first of the series to use specific alchemical symbols. On the earth, in front of the sarcophagus bearing the hermaphrodite, is a black crow, and the Caput Corvi, or 'head of the black', which must be putrefied in the earth. The blackness which is sometimes said to be 'more black than black', is to be cleansed away - this is the stage of alchemical Sublimation. The imagery suggests that this cleansing has something to do with the returning anima, or soul, *** Local Caption *** which [we presume] is now ready to descend into the womb of the hermaphrodite.