Royal Art Society

        PART II: A Brief History of the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati   The European Womb   In Part I of this lecture we made a general and all too incomplete survey of who joined the ranks of the Bavarian Illuminati. In Part II of this lecture we will make a […]

        PART I: An Introduction to the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati       Origins   The original order of the Bavarian Illuminati was founded on the First of May in the year 1776. The founder of the order was Adam Weishaupt (1748 – 1830), who was raised by his godfather, […]

  Alchemy in Medieval Literature   The alchemist of the Middle Ages was usually a professed Christian, often a monk or clergyman, who studied what he could of Hermetic alchemy, Greek philosophy, the Jewish Kabbalah, and his own native and foreign magic. The Great Work of the alchemist, in emulation of the “Great Architect,” was […]

  The Vitruvian Tradition   The liberal arts were based upon the Hellenistic education called enkyklios paideia, taught by fifth century BCE Sophists to the upper classes, and promoted by Roman luminaries like Cicero. The Classical Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (80 BCE – 15 CE), who was raised in the early liberal arts tradition, […]

      The Nestorians   In the fifth century a Christian sect called the Nestorians, who followed Nestorius, a Patriarch of Constantinople, were declared heretical and broke with the established church. This sect migrated to Persia with Greek manuscripts and translated Greek texts to Syriac Aramaic, monopolizing medicine and incidentally bringing alchemical literature to […]

    Alchemy Rising   I found it strange that in my research I found no short, simple introduction to the first known alchemists in the Western world. A future blog article in Science Abbey (in progress) will address the rise of operative alchemy in context of the beginnings of ancient technology. What is interesting […]