ALCHEMY - ROSARIUM PHILOSOPHORUM -CONCEPTION A much printed alchemical series, the Rosarium Philosophorum consists of a complex text around 20 highly distinctive woodcut prints. The imagery is alchemical, but well disguised behind the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, sexuality and various Christian symbols.They each relate to the alchemical stages, viewed from a Christian standpoint - perhaps written in the late 15th century by one of the early Rosicrucian schools. Although the text and related images appeared in mediaeval manuscripts, it was not printed until 1550, in a German edition, as part of the De alchimia opuscula, by which time it consisted of 20 woodcuts. The authorship has always remained uncertain, though it has been suggested that it was compiled by Arnold of Villanova, in the 13th century. Jung has argued, from iconographic points relating to the four distinctly religious images, that, in its present form at least, the illustrations do not go back beyond the 15th century. The book was reprinted, with different cuts, many times: a great deal of the meaning of text and images may be gleaned from the later version of the images, and a truncated text, published as part of Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622 (the 22 engravings based on the cuts begins at the 29 engraving in the series, though the old numbering is adopted- that is to say, after the 28 engravings the Rosarium series are numbered in sequence from 1 to 22). Plate 6. The couple lie together in the waters: already they are merged, for they have taken on the unified form of a two-headed hermaphrodite. They have descended fully to the material realm, for the watery bed in which they lie is now a sarcophagus (literally, a flesh-eater), both a symbol of the death which attends all physical life, and a Christian symbol of resurrection. The sarcophagus is also the empty tomb - the altar, over which the Christ hovers. This Christian symbolism is hinted at in the fact *** Local Caption *** that the couple lay their hands across their single navel, to form the Cross