Splendor Solis: Alchemical Treatises of Solomon Trismosin, Adept and Teacher of Paracelsus, Including 22 Allegorical Pictures Reproduced from the Original Paintings in the Unique Manuscript on Vellum, dated 1582, in the British Museum
available for download here
According to the Introduction (written by “J.K.”), the text refers to Physical Alchemy and the plates (illustrations) are allegories referring to Spiritual Alchemy. J.K. considers the meanings of the 22 plates to be “identical with that of the 22 keys of the Tarot, and they observe the same order.” (In my opinion, some of the text does refer to Spiritual Alchemy and the 22 plates do not follow the same order as a Marseille Tarot deck.)
Marie Smolej has created a PDF of the Splendor Solis plates, intended to be printed on letter-sized paper and available for free for personal use. You can download the PDF from this page. (The page is in Czech and I found it easier to navigate by opening in Chrome and allowing Chrome to translate.) The link to the PDF is the ‘here’ after Download file. It isn’t underlined, but it is a link.
I also found other resources relating to Splendor Solis, which I will list and link below and include in the Alchemy Bibliography. But I wanted to point out one author in particular. While researching and reading and meditating on Splendor Solis and other occult texts, I realized that no matter how long I searched, I would not find a complete explanation by anyone. Different authors disagreed on some pretty basic concepts (hence my Vocabulary page). To develop my own understanding, I would have to pick and choose what ideas I would include in my understanding. That means I would have to discard some ideas… ideas promulgated by occultists who have studied Alchemy much longer than I have. Who am I to disagree with those Adepts?
I struggled with this quandary until I read Oswald Wirth’s The Tarot of the Magicians. In his Conclusion, he states, “In order to renew Occultism let us not be afraid of ‘killing’ the old masters.” In doing so, we purify their teachings and improve our understanding. Picking and choosing ideas to keep and ideas to discard (and then combining the kept ideas into a new understanding) is Alchemy.
It seems quite appropriate that the only way to understand Alchemy is to do Alchemy. If you are ready to start doing some Alchemy on the plates, click here.
If you’d rather do some background reading first, my recommended reading list is below.
- The Canon: An Exposition of the Pagan Mystery Perpetuated in the Cabala as the Rule of All the Arts, by William Stirling:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924028956262 - The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus:
https://archive.org/details/papus_the_tarot_of_the_bohemians_english - The Tarot of the Magicians, by Oswald Wirth:
https://archive.org/details/TarotOfTheMagiciansByOswaldWirth - The Tarot: An Alchemical Journey,
https://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/2010 - The Seven Operations of Alchemy,
https://www.alchemyguildohio.org/seven-operations-of-alchemy - Splendor Solis: Plate 1,
https://mythcrafts.com/2016/12/25/1663/
(a link to the next plate is at the end of each page) - What is the Splendor Solis?,
https://www.medievalists.net/2014/10/splendor-solis/ - Splendor Solis,
https://www.moleiro.com/en/miscellanea/splendor-solis/miniatura/4f63546d0cacb
(a link to the next plate is on the right side of each page) - AlchemyWebsite.com:
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/splensol.html
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/s_splend.html
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