The Yale University Library collections of alchemical literature reflect the continuing presence of alchemical works in any well-furnished library, from the first donations of the alchemically inclined Bishop George Berkeley to a fledgling Connecticut college, to the gift to Yale in 1965 of Mary Conover Mellonirs"s collection of alchemical books and manuscripts.
In his ability to discuss at length how little he knew about alchemy, Stiles was a characteristic reader of early modern European alchemical literature. By 1777, when Stiles was writing, alchemy was a commonplace of British and European popular culture. From the sixteenth century, books of alchemical secrets were published in almost every European language, and were bought, read, annotated, mocked, discussed, and collected by an audience of skeptics and believers alike. Terms such as the philosopher’s stone entered into the popular understanding, as did the names of alchemical authorities such as Raymond Lull.
Book of Secrets explores the curious centrality of alchemy in the European imagination from the late middle ages through the present. The Yale Library collections of alchemical literature reflect the continuing presence of alchemical works in any well-furnished library, from the first donations of the alchemically inclined Bishop George Berkeley to a fledgling Connecticut college, to the gift to Yale in 1965 of Mary Conover Mellon’s collection, inspired by her treatment by Jung, of alchemical books and manuscripts.
Secrecy is often publicly performed in alchemical literature. Emblems—the sun, the moon, the King, the Queen, the green dragon—symbolically enact chemical processes, in the elaborate engravings by which alchemical literature was so often illustrated. Authors also consistently admonish the reader never to speak of alchemy in mixed company, where the knowledge might be misunderstood or misused. The books themselves were shared by readers, as can be seen in the annotations, the exclamations in the margins, the passages underlined in successive inks by successive hands. Whether read or written, practiced or displayed, alchemical literature took secrecy as one of its central and very public tenets.
