Twelve-year-old science genius Zachary Jones resembles an overgrown leprechaun and thinks the worst of his troubles are enduring the teasing from his fellow classmates at Da Vinci's Middle School for Achievers in Salem, Massachusetts. But Zack has no idea he is about to become an unwilling pawn in a dangerous and epic game of magic, deceit, and world domination. After Zack's parents mysteriously disappear, an oddball pair of Irish grandparents who Zack believed to be dead show up with pets in tow even stranger than themselves. Suddenly Zack is propelled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with ancient and dark forces with one thing in mind to recover a valuable Celtic amulet entrusted to Zack. As the stakes grow more desperate, Zack is introduced to his rich and wondrous magical heritage at Dragonbane. As he embarks on an adventure to save the world, he soon discovers himself in ways he could never have imagined. Alchemy Jones and the Source of Magic is an action-packed fantasy tale that paints a rich and mesmerizing backdrop of a world on the flipside of reality a place populated with wizards, creepy creatures, and luscious landscapes.

This is a book about sacred symbols from all over the world. All told by beings protected by the Great Mother, she who once was the very Heart and Soul of every godchild. And still is! Tumbling through the tale, the Little people, will share their gifts with the readers. Here you will find the mystical quintessence, the treasures, the alchemical gems, long sought in many legends, lores and mysteries created on Earth. The great plunge into the wet is a great lesson for Heart to redefine her positions, while she highlights the pollution of Mother Earth. The Great Mother is Mother Nature, the archetypal woman in God and the long lost Goddess. Her story, with the wee folks illustrious wits and zealous labours, is personally and magnificently told Time Lords, shape shifters and animals will speak; a Sun master will rise above the horizon. A Star temple will emerge from the very land of the Grail, the land of Merlin, and also, of a mystical David Jones! Readers will be given insight into the craft of rolling the rocks, or true Masonry, as it has never been done before. The question may arise, did one half of soul miss out on something vitally important while stuck head-long on working the physical gold?

A 400-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. In medieval and early modern Europe, the practice of alchemy promised extraordinary physical transformations. Who would not be amazed to see base metals turned into silver and gold, hard iron into soft water, and deadly poison into elixirs that could heal the human body? To defend such claims, alchemists turned to the past, scouring ancient books for evidence of a lost alchemical heritage and seeking to translate their secret language and obscure imagery into replicable, practical effects. Tracing the development of alchemy in England over four hundred years, from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, Jennifer M. Rampling illuminates the role of alchemical reading and experimental practice in the broader context of national and scientific history. Using new manuscript sources, she shows how practitioners like George Ripley, John Dee, and Edward Kelley, as well as many previously unknown alchemists, devised new practical approaches to alchemy while seeking the support of English monarchs. By reconstructing their alchemical ideas, practices, and disputes, Rampling reveals how English alchemy was continually reinvented over the space of four centuries, resulting in changes to the science itself. In so doing, The Experimental Fire bridges the intellectual history of chemistry and the wider worlds of early modern patronage, medicine, and science.

Spanning from the inauguration of James I in 1603 to the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Stuart court saw the emergence of a full expression of Renaissance culture in Britain. Hart examines the influence of magic on Renaissance art and how in its role as an element of royal propaganda, art was used to represent the power of the monarch and reflect his apparent command over the hidden forces of nature. Court artists sought to represent magic as an expression of the Stuart Kings' divine right, and later of their policy of Absolutism, through masques, sermons, heraldry, gardens, architecture and processions. As such, magic of the kind enshrined in Neoplatonic philosophy and the court art which expressed its cosmology, played their part in the complex causes of the Civil War and the destruction of the Stuart image which followed in its wake.

Reissuing seminal works originally published between 1916 and 1995, Routledge Library Editions: Alchemy (7 volume set) offers a selection of scholarship covering various facets of alchemical traditions. Some texts examine alchemy itself while some offer insight into the motives for alchemical research and others outlay portraits of people such as Giordano Bruno and John Dee.

A comprehensive illustrated reference guide with more than 400 entries on the subjects of magic and alchemy.

This book began with a simple question: when readers such as us encounter the term magic or figures of magicians in early modern texts, dramatic or otherwise, how do we read them? In the twenty-first century we have recourse to an array of genres and vocabulary from magical realism to fantasy fiction that does not, however, work to read a historical figure like John Dee or a fictional one he inspired in Shakespeare's Prospero. Between longings to transcend human limitation and the actual work of producing, translating, and organizing knowledge, figures such as Dee invite us to re-examine our ways of reading magic only as metaphor. If not metaphor then what else? As we parse the term magic, it reveals a rich context of use that connects various aspects of social, cultural, religious, economic, legal and medical lives of the early moderns. Magic makes its presence felt not only as a forms of knowledge but in methods of knowing in the Renaissance. The arc of dramatists and texts that this book draws between Doctor Faustus, The Tempest, The Alchemist and Comus: A Masque at Ludlow Castle offers a sustained examination of the epistemologies of magic in the context of early modern knowledge formation. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

In early modern Europe precious and semiprecious stones were valued not only for their beauty and rarity but also for their medical and magical properties. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Philip II of Spain, and Popes Leo X and Clement VII were all treated with expensive potions incorporating ground gems such as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Medical and magical/astrological lapidaries, texts describing the stones’ occult and medical qualities as well as their abilities to ward off demons and incantations, were essential resources for their use. First published in Venice in 1502, Camillo Leonardi’s Speculum Lapidum is an encyclopedic summary of all classical and medieval sources of lithotherapy. In describing the natural, manifest, and occult properties of precious and semiprecious stones as well as their graven images and applications, the Speculum Lapidum provides tremendous insight into the role that medical astrology and astral magic played in the life of an Italian court in the early modern period. Liliana Leopardi’s English translation, complete with critical apparatuses, gives unprecedented access to this key text within the magical lapidary genre. A vital addition to the existing canon of lapidaria in translation, Leopardi’s work will be of special importance for students and scholars of the history of magic, medicine, religion, and Renaissance humanism, and it will fascinate anyone interested in the occult properties of precious and semiprecious stones.

"The only short and acceptable summary and analysis of the five Renaissance occult sciences." - Times Literary Supplement This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979. "The only short and acceptable summary and analysis of the five Renaissance occult sciences." - Times Literary Supplement This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to se