Azoth
Azoth was considered to be a universal medication or universal solvent, and was sought for in alchemy. Similar to another alchemical idealized substance, alkahest, azoth was the aim, goal and vision of many alchemical works. Its symbol was the Caduceus. The term, while originally a term for an occult formula sought by alchemists much like the philosopher's stone, became a poetic word for the element mercury. The name is Medieval Latin, an alteration of ''azoc'', being originally derived from the Arabic ''al-zā'būq'' "the mercury," even if it is a common misconception of the era to link azoth as mercury alone rather than the addition of mercury, salt and sulfur when it comes to the senses and symbols. Basis Azoth was believed to be the essential agent of transformation in alchemy. It is the name given by ancient alchemists to mercury, the animating spirit hidden in all matter that makes transmutation possible. The word occurs in the writings of many early alchemists, such as Zo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Basil Valentine
Basil Valentine is the Anglicised version of the name Basilius Valentinus, ostensibly a 15th-century alchemy, alchemist, possibly Canon (priest), Canon of the Benedictine Priory of Saint Peter in Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany but more likely a pseudonym used by one or several 16th-century German authors. According to John Maxson Stillman, who wrote on the history of chemistry, there is no evidence of such a name on the rolls in Germany or Rome and no mention of this name before 1600. His putative history, like his imaginary portrait, appears to be of later creation than the writings themselves. During the 18th century it was suggested that the author of the works attributed to Basil Valentine was Johann Thölde, a salt manufacturer in Germany who lived roughly 1565-1624. Modern scholarship now suggests that one author was Thölde, but that others were involved. Thölde published the first five books under Valentine's name. Whoever he was, Basil Valentine had considerable chemical kn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philosopher's Stone
The philosopher's stone or more properly philosophers' stone (Arabic: حجر الفلاسفة, , la, lapis philosophorum), is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (, from the Greek , "gold", and , "to make") or silver. It is also called the elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and for achieving immortality; for many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosopher's stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosopher's stone were known as the Magnum Opus ("Great Work"). History Antiquity The earliest known written mention of the philosopher's stone is in the ''Cheirokmeta'' by Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 AD). Alchemical writers assign a longer history. Elias Ashmole and the anonymous author of ''Gloria Mundi'' (1620) claim that its history goes back to Adam, who acquired t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paracelsus
Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He was a pioneer in several aspects of the " medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom. He is credited as the "father of toxicology". Paracelsus also had a substantial influence as a prophet or diviner, his "Prognostications" being studied by Rosicrucians in the 1600s. Paracelsianism is the early modern medical movement inspired by the study of his works. Biography Paracelsus was born in Egg an der Sihl, a village close to the Etzel Pass in Einsiedeln, Schwyz. He was born in a house right next to a bridge across the Sihl river (known as ''Teufelsbrücke''). The historical house, dated to the 14th century, was destroyed in 1814. The ''Restaurant Krone'' now stands in its pl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paracelsianism
Paracelsianism (also Paracelsism; German: ') was an early modern medical movement based on the theories and therapies of Paracelsus. It developed in the second half of the 16th century, during the decades following Paracelsus' death in 1541, and it flourished during the first half of the 17th century, representing one of the most comprehensive alternatives to learned medicine, the traditional system of therapeutics derived from Galenic physiology. Based on the by then antiquated principle of maintaining harmony between the microcosm and macrocosm, Paracelsianism fell rapidly into decline in the later 17th century, but left its mark on medical practices. It was responsible for the widespread introduction of mineral therapies and several other iatrochemical techniques. Spagyric Spagyric, or spagyria, is a method developed by Paracelsus and his followers which was thought to improve the efficacy of existing medicines by separating them into their primordial elements (the : sulph ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart during the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His fame rests chiefly upon ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'', ''The Science of Logic'', and his lectures at the University of Berlin on topics from his ''Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences''. Throughout his work, Hegel strove to address and correct the problema ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Absolute (philosophy)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart during the transitional period between the Enlightenment and the German Romanticism, Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His fame rests chiefly upon ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'', ''The Science of Logic'', and his lectures at the University of Berlin on topics from his ''Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences''. Throughout his work, Hegel strove to address and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coincidentia Oppositorum
The unity of opposites is the central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense. V.T.JMcGill and W.T. Parry, ''Science & Society'', vol. 12 no. 4 (Fall 1948), pp.418-444] See for a discussion of the development of the unity of opposites in Hegelian dialectical theory. Lincoln, Charle The Dialectical Path of Law 2021 Rowman & Littlefield. It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet depe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Omega
Omega (; capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" (''ō mega'', mega meaning "great"), as opposed to omicron, which means "little O" (''o mikron'', micron meaning "little"). In phonetic terms, the Ancient Greek Ω represented a long open-mid back rounded vowel , comparable to the "aw" of the English word ''raw'' in dialects without the cot–caught merger, in contrast to omicron which represented the close-mid back rounded vowel , and the digraph ''ου'' which represented the long close-mid back rounded vowel . In Modern Greek, both omega and omicron represent the mid back rounded vowel or . The letter omega is transliterated into a Latin-script alphabet as ''ō'' or simply ''o''. As the final letter in the Greek alphabet, omega is often used t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the other modern European languages. With modifications, it is also used for other alphabets, such as the Vietnamese alphabet. Its modern repertoire is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Etymology The term ''Latin alphabet'' may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case, fo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aleph
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of ''*ʾalp'', the West Semitic word for ox (compare Biblical Hebrew ''ʾelef'', "ox"). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А. Phonetically, ''aleph'' originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well as Syriac, the ''aleph'' is an absence of a true cons ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |