Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter

Description

172 pages, illustrated ( 8vo ) 5.25 ? x 8.25 ? Two-color printing throughoutnNew Translations of the Emerald Tablet This Enlightening Book on Alchemy is the Fruit of 30 Years Work with the Emerald Tablet.

Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter is an alchemical book rather than a book about alchemy. It is full of practice and experiment and perhaps a puzzle or an enigma. Its intent is to inspire curiosity about another way of knowing.

Alchemy is the art and science of bringing something to its final perfection, or its completion, much as a work of art is completed or perfected. And so, at heart it is about creation, creator, and creativity. Rooted in the Alexandrian alchemical tradition and working from a new translation of the Emerald Tablet, Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter is the Author s personal exploration of the union of material and non-material alchemical practice, that is of physical alchemy and i er alchemy.

Engaging the Way of the Philosopher, and through direct experimentation, several areas are investigated in light of the Emerald Tablet ? Chrysopoiea, the Green Lion, the Quintessence and Aurum potabile. Unique to the book are five new translations of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Emerald Tablet, as well as translations of John of Rupescissa s and Arnald of Villanova s writings on the quintessence of wine and gold.

Author Brian Cotnoir Author Info Brian Cotnoir is an alchemist, artist and award-wi ing filmmaker. Author of Practical Alchemy: ?Guide to the Great Work, The Emerald Tablet, ?a series of ?Alchemical Zines, ?Alchemical Meditations, Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter and most recently ?On Alchemy: Essential Practices and Making Art as Alchemy. He has presented seminars and workshops around the world on various aspects of the alchemy.nKhepri Press was started in 2014 as a place to organize and distribute my work.

It is a very small press dedicated to alchemical book arts. Some of this work is publishable and others may exist only in manuscript or object form ? alchemical results or talismans.nArtist s StatementnI create in order to know, and to this end I attempt to engage all ways of knowing and seeing.

My work is alchemical in that it comes from my research and actual practice of early alchemy.nAlchemy, whatever else we may think it is ? gold-making, enlightenment, medicinal, self-actualization, etc. ?

is, at its very heart, the study and practice of creation. The Emerald Tablet, a foundational alchemical text, states that all creation, large or small, regardless of the medium or time, follows from the same principles and processes.nCreation ? intent, a consideration, silence, a space, a body and then a rupture, a mark, a cut.

For every act the work acts back.nAlchemy operates on several aspects of reality along with the observation that creation arises within the play of opposites. The alchemical understanding of being is that there are no hard boundaries; that it is more a spectrum of awareness from ignorance to wisdom. Alchemical practice actively engages both outer ?

physical processes and i er ? practices such as meditation, visualization, and dream work. It is not a question of either/or ?

but both/and. ? This unity is like the experience of seeing a stereographic photo: each image of the pair is a fair representation of the world.

However, no explanation can convey the startling experience of 3D perception when the images are seen through a viewer. And with this union, we gain an insight more than either of the two photographs alone could provide. Working with both i er ?

and outer ? engenders a process of discovery and invention that informs the work. And the resulting union of i er and outer is manifested in the end result, whatever form it may take, or how ephemeral it may be.nMy starting point is the question, ?

or image, ? which may be of any material, sound, idea, model, etc. Sometimes traditional symbols are the starting point, as well as images ?

from dreams or initiatic flashes. All aspects of the question ? are taken and, as an action meditation, I work with material as a dialogue.

Images that repeat and develop sometimes take on a life of their own, and that thread is followed.nThe objects resulting from the work may have the appearance of art, they may even be made of the elements and materials of art, but the intent is to open the worlds, to dissolve and reconfigure, to explore the imagined boundaries, finding its fleeting locations. The result is a trace, fragments of a map, joining the i er and outer dimensions of the work. And finally, it is a composition that can act upon the world.nMore concretely my work consists of image series in books, graphic poems, kine-poems, documentary film, pin-hole photography, and drawing.

Often the compositions or results are mixed media and key phrases and images spread throughout the works in a rhizomatic fashion. In a very real sense it is one work flowing through various media. ISBN-13 978-0999313404 Publisher Khepri Press Publication Date 2017 Edition 1st Binding Hardcover Condition Used – Very Good Page Count 172 Pages