Lapidary of King Alfonso X - Lapidario del Rey Alfonso X

Lapidary of King Alfonso X - Lapidario del Rey Alfonso X

1250

Author: Alphonse X de Castille, Yehuda Mosca

Spain

Subject: Occultism, Astrology, Medicine

This important lapidary preserved at the Library of the royal site of Saint-Laurent-de-l'Escurial, richly illustrated and taken from Greek and Arabic sources, was translated from Arabic and perhaps augmented for Alfonso X of Castile by his medicine and astrologer Yehuda Mosca. It was originally, at least in its original form and if we are to believe the explanations in the first chapters, written in Syriac.

It contains a number of considerations on the magico-medical influence of stones in connection with astrology and as with Pliny, many of the references mentioned are not easy to identify. A compilation of four distinct treatises, the work offers as many stones as zodiacal degrees which are each associated with unique stars .









































































































Quote of the Day

“And therefore our ultimate, or highest secret is, by this our water, to make bodies volatile, spiritual, and a tincture, or tinging water, which may have ingress or entrance into bodies; for it makes bodies to be merely spirit, because it reduces hard and dry bodies, and prepares them for fusion, melting and dissolving; that is, it converts them into a permanent or fixed water. And so it makes of bodies a most precious and desirable oil, which is the true tincture, and the permanent fixed white water, by nature hot and moist, or rather temperate, subtile, fusible as wax, which does penetrate, sink, tinge, and make perfect the work. And this our water immediately dissolves bodies (as sol and luna) and makes them into an incombustible oil, which then may be mixed with other imperfect bodies. It also converts other bodies into the nature of a fusible salt which the philosophers call "sal alebrot philosophorum", better and more noble than any other salt, being in its own nature fixed and not subject to vanish in fire. It is an oil indeed by nature hot, subtile, penetrating, sinking through and entering into other bodies; it is called the perfect or great elixir, and the hidden secret of the wise searchers of nature. He therefore that knows this salt of sol and luna, and its generation and perfection, and afterwards how go commix it, and make it homogene with other perfect bodies, he in truth knows one of the greatest secrets of nature, and the only way that leads to perfection.”

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