PANTEO, Giovanni Agostino

by Giovanni Agostino Panteo

£29,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

First edition of great rarity (Duveen) of this early printed alchemical work by a Venetian Catholic priest, this copy annotated and augmented with extensive manuscript tables by a contemporary reader, possibly a medical student. Panteo s work was concerned with the alchemical transmutation of metals into gold. He attempted to identify numerical secrets in the Cabbala, which could be used to determine proportions of metals to be used in the processes of transmutation, which he divided into putrefaction, generation and alteration. In a second preface to the reader he promises to elucidate completely the transmutation of metals. Actually he only succeeds in making the matter more mysterious by various charts, diagrams and columns of letters and numbers as well as the Tetragrammaton and Greek and Hebrew characters In additional to all this mystic reckoning, such tremendous secrets are imparted as that the first principle of nature is matter and that the second principle is heat It is explained that air is generated from the heat of fire and the moisture of water, while earth comes from the dryness of fire and the coldness of water combined (Thorndike, p. 538). The second part, addressed to a Polish nobleman, Gulielmus Hyerosky, contains recipes for the transmutation of silver and gold, with numerical tables giving the proportions of each metal to be used, as well as instructions for the preparation of pestles, etc. Panteo was the first Christian author who attempted to blend the

• Binding: Hardcover

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