A new 'Library of Esoterica' brings the occult to your coffee table


Steffie Nelson
December 15, 2020·

The High Priestess: Manzel Bowman, "Manzel's Tarot," 2017 (detail) An image from "Tarot. The Library of Esoterica." (Manzel Bowman / Taschen)

Not so long ago, the discovery of esoteric knowledge was a rite unto itself, requiring research and travel, as many dead ends as discoveries. Today, these quests are as simple as a Google search, a glance at an astrology app or a scroll through Instagram, where the hashtag #witchesofinstagram will lead you to nearly 6 million posts.

The democratization of the arcane is a welcome development, but the mystery of the occult will never lose its allure. The Library of Esoterica, a new series from the art book publisher Taschen, acts as a bridge between the dark halls of history and the vast data at our fingertips. Created by a team based in Los Angeles, the series debuted in August with “Tarot”; volume two, “Astrology,” just landed in bookstores. “Witchcraft” is slated for September.

Edited by author, journalist and filmmaker Jessica Hundley, the series speaks the universal language of symbolism. “The idea,” says Hundley, “was to create a super introductory, very inclusive and seductive way into these practices, which is through the art.” Taschen, with its lavish art production, made the ideal partner “because that's what they do best.”


When Taschen founder Benedikt Taschen suggested to managing editor Nina Wiener that the topic of “secret knowledge” was worth exploring more deeply, “Jessica was one of the first people I thought of to go to,” says Wiener.

Metaphysics and the counterculture are a through line of Hundley’s work, including a number of Taschen collaborations — most notably an overview of Dennis Hopper’s photography enriched by hours of interviews with the actor.

Vladimir Manzhos Waone, "The Magus," Ukraine 2012-14. From "Astrology: The Library of Esoterica." (Vladimir Manzhos Waone)

Hundley has been fascinated by alternative spiritualities and the occult since she was a goth-punk teenager on the East Coast, “listening to Siouxsie Sioux and reading tarot cards.” She moved to Los Angeles in 1998, drawn to the city’s legacy of esoteric exploration and its renown as a place where dreams are made manifest and identity is mutable. “The freedom to define your own identity also means defining your own spirituality,” Hundley says, “and that's built into so much of the ethos of Los Angeles.”

L.A.’s homegrown institutions helped get the Library off the ground. The Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, a library and research center founded in the 1930s by scholar, mystic and collector Manly P. Hall, has been the team’s primary research partner. The Getty, with its collection of alchemical art and texts, was another important local resource. But contributors ranged far and wide, from the Met and the British Museum to artists in Tokyo and Kenya.

For the series’ designer, Nic Taylor, one “formative moment” was a visit to New York City’s Morgan Library, which houses J.P. Morgan’s collection of occult art and books — including the oldest existing tarot cards, the gold-leafed Visconti-Sforza deck from 14th century Italy.

In conceiving an overarching series design, Taylor, co-founder of L.A.-based Thunderwing Studios, incorporated elements common to antiquarian books, aiming to “take the gestures that are historic to bookmaking and update them and make them feel fresh.” Every detail, from the series logo — a key formed by the letters T, L, O, E — to the sacred geometric gold foil designs along the spines, feeds into the reader’s experience of these books as objects of beauty and, yes, magic.

The Empress: Sebastian Haines, "The Tarot of the Golden Serpent," 2013 (detail) (Sebastian Haines)

Cards on the Table

“Tarot,” written by Hundley, sets the tone for the series. “I wanted to come at it from a journalistic, academic viewpoint and not get mired in the dogma,” she says. This meant consulting with numerous specialists and quoting foundational texts while still allowing her passion to shine through. The book is organized by card, not chronology, inviting us to consider personal journeys. The first in the 78-card deck is the Fool, “full of blissful ignorance and blind optimism,” Hundley writes, “as he takes his first step into the abyss.”

This archetypal character then encounters different aspects of himself in the form of the High Priestess, the Hermit, the Devil. He meets the world with innocent joy (the Sun) and explores his subconscious (the Moon); he confronts destiny (the Wheel of Fortune), destruction (the Tower) and, finally, liberation (the World). Is it any wonder that artists are consistently drawn to these symbols?

There are about 20 historical examples of each "major arcana" card in “Tarot,” creating a tapestry of interpretations. More than 100 featured decks include work by fine artists such as Salvador Dali, Francesco Clemente, Pedro Friedeberg, Niki de Saint Phalle and Penny Slinger, the feminist-surrealist who wrote the book’s foreword. The best-known deck, from which most modern tarot evolved, is the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, created by Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur Edward Waite, who met in England as members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. (“It was essentially an artist collective,” says Hundley of the secret society, which included William Butler Yeats.)

Tarot evolves alongside art and culture, Hundley says: “You had a surge of decks made in the 1960s and ‘70s that were aligned with the counterculture … and then with the New Age movement of the ‘80s you had another surge … I think with each movement, the circle comes back around.”

Spread from "Tarot. The Library of Esoterica." Left: Strength: Michael Eaton & A. A. Khan, "The Black Power Tarot," 2015. Right: Hy Roth, Linweave Tarot, 1967. (Michael Eaton & A. A. Khan/Hy Roth)

Every decade hosted brilliant additions to the canon; witness Julia Turk’s Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea from 1994, whose vibrant Sun card shines from the cover of the book. But it was the 2012 self-publication of Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown deck, inspired by the natural world, that Hundley points to as the launch of a new era. Working in all media, contemporary artists continue to evolve the form, drawing from a prismatic array of philosophies, traditions and cultural movements — from ecofeminism and shamanism to Mexicayotl and Black Power. (The last one features Billie Holiday and Tina Turner as figures.)

Which brings us to the democracy of the web. Many of these self-published decks were discovered online. Browsing eBay, Hundley happened upon an exquisite deck of Afro-futurist digital collages by the artist Manzel Bowman. Not only are several of Bowman’s cards included in “Tarot,” his art graces the cover of “Astrology.”

The Return of the Stars

Alphonse Mucha, Zodiac, Bohemia/France, 1896. From "Astrology: The Library of Esoterica." (The Art Institute Chicago)

Technology also democratized the age-old practice of seeking guidance from the cosmos, as Susan Miller writes in her forward to “Astrology.” One of the first in her field to flourish online (she launched her popular site Astrology Zone in 1995), Miller describes how computer-generated charts have made complicated calculations accessible to a new generation.

“Astrology” focuses on what we know as the Western horoscopic system, codified in 539 BC when the Babylonians created and named the wheel of the zodiac. By charting the movements of five planets plus the sun and moon in relation to this wheel, they gave us a way to talk about our identities, our instincts, how we love and communicate.

Andrea Richards, the book’s author, is the first to say that she is not an astrologer but a journalist and scholar, interested in examining “the beliefs around beliefs.” She dismisses the notion of astrology as “fortune-telling”; instead, it’s about “patterns and stories and the transmissions of stories between generations.”

One revelation of this volume is that astrology and astronomy were once sister sciences. Cambridge University even had an astrology chair. But after the Enlightenment, shame was cast upon matters of the spirit. And yet, as Richards attests, the practice never went away: world leaders from Queen Elizabeth I to Winston Churchill to the Reagans have relied on the counsel of their personal astrologers.

John Alcorn, Sagittarius, from Sydney Omarr's "Astrological Revelations About You" series. (John Alcorn)

As with “Tarot,” one comes away with an understanding of astrology’s place in history, pop culture, art, mythology and psychology. Included are 15th century frescoes, 18th century etchings, Mucha posters, cigarette ads, assemblage work by Betye Saar in the 1960s, a 1970s psychedelic calendar, ’80s fantasy art, scientific charts and telescopic space photographs. Each chapter is anchored by the words of respected scholars and younger stars like Chani Nicholas and Jessica Lanyadoo.

In Richards’ opinion, we are experiencing a new kind of spiritual awakening, in which intellectual rigor can coexist with the metaphysical. While writing the book, she recalls, “At one point I had this remarkable day. I had spoken with a scientist at NASA, an astrologer and a historian, and I was like, ‘that confluence of people is exactly what this book is.’ … Finally, I think people are ready to recognize that there are multiple paths to truth.”

So it will be for the next book in the series. Author, podcast host and professional witch Pam Grossman, who is co-editing the upcoming “Witchcraft” with Hundley, believes those multiple paths have always been key to witchcraft’s appeal. “There is no pope of witchcraft,” she says. “Everyone’s practice is extremely personal.”

What Grossman finds unique about this cultural moment (in which, for example, witchcraft is exploding on TikTok) is that “more previously marginalized people are in positions to make decisions — queer people, people of color who have a history of being othered by the white cis patriarchy.”

Vasko Taškovski, Pisces, Macedonia 1998. From "Astrology: The Library of Esoterica." (Vasko Taškovski)

By virtue of this intersection with cultural shifts and the long association of the witch archetype and feminism, “Witchcraft” will likely be more political than the first two volumes — which does not mean it will be any less aesthetically striking. Grossman was a consultant on Zoe Lister-Jones’ recent revamp of “The Craft,” and she is “deeply interested in how cinema, fashion, music and television have helped us to evolve the image of the witch.” She also shares with Hundley a love for fine artists, including Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, “who use their art practice as a form of magic making.”

Growing up in the analog era, Grossman spent hours in her local library poring over a series called “Man, Myth & Magic.” She considers the Library of Esoterica to be “an updated, more stylish version of that.” The prospect, Grossman says, “makes the 14-year-old in me levitate with joy.”

Nelson is the editor of Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light" and the co-author of "Judson: Innovation in Stained Glass."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Why the ancient promise of alchemy is fulfilled in reading

Elisabeth Gruner, Associate Professor of English, University of Richmond
June 27, 2021·
In this article:
Nicolas Flamel
French scrivener


The potions classroom at the Making of Harry Potter Studio. Alex Volosianko

Within a 20-minute walk from Notre Dame Cathedral, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, is the oldest house in the city: the house of Nicolas Flamel. If the name rings a vague bell, perhaps it’s because you read J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” or, as it’s known outside the U.S., “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Nicolas Flamel creates the philosopher’s stone of the title – and he was, in fact, a historical person.

The philosopher’s stone, the magical goal of alchemical research, was reputed to be capable of transmuting lead into gold and – of importance to Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter — brewing an elixir of life. Flamel, a wealthy Parisian bookseller and scribe, built his house in the early 15th century, and it is now associated with his legendary status as an alchemist. The menu at the restaurant on the first floor – Auberge Nicolas Flamel – promises patrons to “Transform banal reality into poetic, miraculous fiction and perfect the material. That is alchemy.”

While I’m neither chef nor chemist, I’m fascinated by alchemy, by the magical transformations that Rowling and others write of. In my study of fantasy literature, I have found that writers return again and again to alchemy – but why?

The roots of modern chemistry


As far as we know, neither Flamel nor anyone else ever did in fact create a philosopher’s stone. But in the history of alchemy lie the roots of modern chemical science. While for centuries alchemy was derided as a pseudoscience practiced only by charlatans and cheats, some contemporary historians of science recognize that in a pre-modern world, alchemy laid the groundwork for what later became empirical science. But alchemy never went away.

Rather than fading into the background of the history of science as yet one more discarded pseudoscience, alchemy retains a powerful hold on the imagination. While phrenology (the “science” of reading personality from bumps on the head) and the theory of the humors (which suggested that liquids in the body such as phlegm and bile were associated with both emotions and the four elements of earth, air, water and fire), have mostly disappeared, alchemy remains. And it recurs especially in fantasy literature such as the Harry Potter books.

Why is alchemy so fascinating? I think it’s because it suggests that there’s something magical in the lab: the possibility of utter transformation, of turning something worthless into something valuable. We know in our bones that lead isn’t gold – that they are unalterably separate. That’s why they appear in the periodic table, after all: Each is an element, one of the irreducible components of matter. We know they can’t change – but what if they could?
The magic of transformation


The magic of alchemy is the magic of books, especially of the fantasy books that entrance so many young readers. Like alchemy, fantasy novels promise a kind of transformation: the bullied kid becomes a hero, the servant girl becomes a princess, lead becomes gold. In novels like “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” or the more recent “Strange the Dreamer” by Laini Taylor, alchemy serves as a promise that true transformation is possible, even if it requires great sacrifice. The alchemist in “Strange the Dreamer” uses his own blood in the elixir, though reputedly the historical alchemists resorted to a more dispensable bodily fluid, their own urine.

But there’s a sleight-of-hand in the stories of transformation as they come down to us in fantasy. The transformations of fantasy stories are not, it turns out, quite so fantastical as they may seem. When Harry Potter becomes a hero, or Cinderella a princess, these are just outward revelations of their inner selves. The qualities that make them special have always been there – they just haven’t been recognized.

Most fantasy novels operate this way, it turns out: The quest hero needs to be revealed, not essentially transformed. To extend the chemical metaphor, perhaps they need to be distilled or refined through ordeals and sacrifice – to discover their true essence. Or maybe they need to come into contact with others and bond with them, as Harry does with his friends, or Cinderella does with her godmother and the prince, in order to become something even greater than their original self.

In either case, while some kind of chemical process may take place, it’s not an alchemical transformation, but rather a clarification, a refinement, a revelation.
The alchemy of reading

The magic of reading. Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com

The only example I know of alchemy in the real world is reading. When we read, brain circuitry designed to process visual, linguistic and conceptual information is activated simultaneously and letters on a page become ideas and even pictures and sounds in the mind almost at once.

Learning to read is hard work, but the process, once mastered, is really almost like magic. It’s no surprise, then, that alchemy is a controlling metaphor, or a fundamental goal, in so much fiction. Alchemical transformation is the goal of literature itself.

In Taylor’s “Strange the Dreamer,” the hero isn’t the alchemist. That character is actually something of a cheat, even though he does manage to perform the transmutation of lead into gold. He follows a recipe, spills some blood and makes something new, but (spoiler alert!) he himself remains selfish and opportunistic even after he achieves his greatest success.

The hero, though, is a librarian. Reading in the dusty depths of the archive, he puts together the story of a lost civilization, reclaims its language and then joins a band of travelers in their quest to restore that world. He takes the raw materials he has found on the shelves of the library, in the pages of ancient books, and turns them into stories – and then into a new life. Auberge Nicolas Flamel is right: That is alchemy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Elisabeth Gruner, University of Richmond.

Read more:

Cosmic alchemy: Colliding neutron stars show us how the universe creates gold

The politics of the periodic table – who gets the credit and why

Lightweight of periodic table plays big role in life on Earth

Elisabeth Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Historical Lessons Embedded In Alchemical Recipes

10th Century Lab Report From Historian Pamela Smith

By Mark Riechers

An original page from a manuscript in the "Secrets of Craft and Nature" project, which offers English and French translations of alchemical recipes and texts.
Bibliothèque nationale de France (CC0)

Published:
Saturday, September 26, 2020

Science history students at Columbia University don’t have to imagine what it was like to be an alchemist. If they take one of historian Pamela Smith’s courses, they can spend a semester reading medieval alchemical manuscripts describing recipes for making emeralds or turning silkworms into gold. Then they re-create the experiments in a lab.

Smith said recreating ancient experiments is less about transmutation for credit and more about exploring the headspace of people living in a very different time and in a very different world.

"I think that realizing those different understandings and not putting them on a hierarchy from primitive to modern is very important," Smith told Anne Strainchamps of "To the Best of Our Knowledge."

She argues that because of their different relationship to the world — as we understand it through some of these recipes — we can infer that they might handle the issues of our time, like catastrophic climate change, very differently.

"The worldview that saw humans as a part of nature might have led to a different kind of attitude toward nature that would not have landed us in this crisis," she said. "To be aware that different ways of understanding the universe might have value, I think, is important."

Among the translated alchemical recipes, some true panacea do exist. Smith cited a literature professor at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom who, in re-creating a cure-all potion for eye infections, discovered a solution that could fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But for the most part, she and her students are attempting to create riches mainly to understand the scientific minds of another era.

Here are two recipes Smith and her students tried to replicate, along with their findings.

The transcript highlights below have been edited for clarity and length.
Emeralds

Take ground rock crystal (mainly silica and red lead, which is powdered bright orange). Then take a little copper to add the green. Then add some salts, and heat it all together.

Results: "The grad students and the post-doc who was working with them tried it about 10 times and just got ash," Smith said. "Then they got black glass. Finally, on about the eighth try, they got green. Beautiful green emeralds."

Conclusion: "The interesting thing about these very ancient recipes for imitation gemstones is that they don't refer to them as imitation. The value is in the actual skill that goes into the imitation. (And) it really does take skill."
Gold

Acquire silkworm eggs. You can grow silkworms in a vessel of horse dung, Smith said.

"(It) sounds very exotic, but that's a very, very common thing that you see in recipes at this time, because horse dung and cow dung actually are host to thermophilic bacteria," Smith said. "It stays a constant temperature as long as the bacteria stays alive. So actually, it's a very good way to keep something warm at a constant low temperature."

One you have silkworms, feed them mulberry leaves until they are big enough to fight each other to the death. Then feed the victor gold leaf, and heat the vessel, killing the victor. Finally, use the resulting powder to make gold.

Results: "We found a supplier in Long Island or somewhere who could get us silkworm eggs," Smith said. "The student grew the silkworms — he had to keep the silkworms at a constant temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. We even called up the stables in New York City, but there was no way that we could actually have a pile of manure or composting anywhere on campus. And besides, it was winter and it wouldn't have worked. So what the student did was (find a nice warm spot) at the top of the boiler in his apartment building.

"He was finally able to buy mulberry chow, silkworm chow, on the internet, and they grow bigger," she said. "You continue to feed them egg yolks, and they grow bigger. And then you feed them gold leaf. And eventually the recipe says they will kill each other off and there will be one kind of 'super' silkworm left."

"The whole vessel is sealed, then you're supposed to put a ring of coals around that vessel, You're supposed to heat it to kill the silkworm and turn it into powder (that is) supposed to be able to make things gold."

Conclusion: "I don't think it could ever actually work... the importance of this recipe is in its symbolism and in its antiquity," Smith said. "These people have the focus on the same kinds of questions we have, like what generates life, what can regenerate growth, like growth of a limb or growth of an organ. So the focus is the same. But the way they're answering them is often different within a different cosmic understanding."

"People understood nature through religious texts and practices," she continued. "So it's not surprising that something that gave rise to new life or gave rise to the ability to a noble a metal or some other material would be compared to Jesus's resurrection."

Bible apocalypse: Burnt Pyramid notes reveal Newton's ‘astonishingly complex’ occult study

SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S fascination with biblical apocalypse, pyramids and the occult have been revealed in burnt fragmentary manuscript notes.

By TOM FISH
PUBLISHED:  Dec 8, 2020 


Legendary English mathematician, physicist, astronomer Sir Isaac Newton is rightly considered one of the greatest scientific geniuses ever. However, his wide-ranging research also led to an interest in alchemy, religion and even divine biblical apocalypse prophecies – now laid bare in some of his stranger papers.

Newton’s surviving notes, and manuscripts contain approximately 10 million words.

These notes are part of Newton's astonishingly complex web of interlinking studies – natural philosophy, alchemy, theology – only parts of which he ever believed were appropriate for publication

Sotheby’s

And among reams of scientific and mathematical brilliance is evidence of another side of Newton, one his descendants were determined to shield from the public.

Much of these mystical leanings would have been considered heretical-thinking in the 17th century.


The texts, which are available at auction house Southeby’s, are literally fragments.

Bible apocalypse: Burnt Pyramid notes reveal Newton's ‘astonishingly complex’ occult study (Image: Getty)

The fire was reportedly started by a candle that was inadvertently felled by Newton's dog, Diamond (Image: Getty)

At time of writing, the pages have attracted a leading bid of £280,000 ($375,000).

They are the scorched remnants from a fire, reportedly started by a candle that was inadvertently felled by Newton's dog, Diamond.

The scorched correspondence concerns Newton's obscure occult theories which would today be categorised as pseudoscience.

They reveal Newton’s thought about ancient Egypt's Great Pyramid, which he believed was designed using an Egyptian unit of measurement called the royal cubit.

At time of writing, Newton's pages have attracted a leading bid of £280,000 ($375,000) (Image: Sotheby's)


By quantifying this royal cubit, Newton believed he might be able to refine his own theories on gravitation.

And through this he may even arrive at an unerringly accurate measure of Earth’s circumference.

At the same time, Newton suspected he could gain far weirder geometrical insights, including predicting the apocalypse as forecast in the Bible.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's manuscript specialist, told The Observer: ”He was trying to find proof for his theory of gravitation, but in addition the ancient Egyptians were thought to have held the secrets of alchemy that have since been lost.

"Today, these seem disparate areas of study – but they didn't seem that way to Newton in the 17th century."

But although pyramidology now lies outside the bounds of real science the study consumed the attention of one of the greatest minds on the planet.

Sotheby’s auction listing states: ”These notes are part of Newton's astonishingly complex web of interlinking studies – natural philosophy, alchemy, theology – only parts of which he ever believed were appropriate for publication.

"It is not surprising that he did not publish on alchemy, since secrecy was a widely-held tenet of alchemical research, and Newton's theological beliefs, if made public, would have cost him (at least) his career."

The notes reveal Newton’s thoughts about ancient Egypt's Great Pyramid (Image: Express)

The imminent auction coincides with the news historians have uncovered copies of Newton’s first edition in 27 countries, more than double the amount previously known.

New research has identified 386 copies, while it may be possible an additional 200 of them exist somewhere in private and public collections.

Mordechai Feingold, one of the historians and lead author of the study, said: “We felt like Sherlock Holmes.

"One of the realisations we've had is that the transmission of the book and its ideas was far quicker and more open than we assumed, and this will have implications on the future work that we and others will be doing on this subject.”

Isaac Newton's Secret Alchemy
A Founder Of The Scientific Revolution, And Perhaps 'The Last Of The Magicians'

By Steve Paulson

Photo illustration by Mark Riechers. Original images by Godfrey Kneller (CC0) and Johnny McClung (CC0)

Published:
Saturday, September 19, 2020, 9:20am

Was alchemy science or magic? Perhaps both, depending on whom you ask. Medieval alchemists sought to transmute base metals into gold. Their holy grail was the "philosopher’s stone," a kind of wondrous substance that promised great riches and miraculous healing powers.

Today, alchemy is the stuff of legend and fantasy. But for historians, alchemy offers an intriguing glimpse into the origins of modern science.

Take Isaac Newton, one of the founders of the Scientific Revolution. He wrote more than a million words on alchemy over his lifetime, conducting decades' worth of alchemical experiments. But he did it all in secret. For centuries after his death in 1727, few people knew the extent of Newton’s alchemical work.

Finally, in 1936, most of Newton’s alchemical papers came up for auction. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes bought them and later declared that Newton "was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians."

So why was Newton obsessed with alchemy?

The question fascinates Bill Newman, a professor of history and the philosophy of science at Indiana University. For decades, he's studied Newton’s alchemical notebooks and has even reproduced some of his experiments. Newman is the author of "Newton the Alchemist."

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Steve Paulson: Why are you so interested in Newton's work on alchemy?

Bill Newman: There are a couple of different reasons. Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that Newton was possibly the greatest scientist who ever lived, and yet he spent upwards of three decades in a sort of obsessive alchemical quest. This is the guy who discovered the law of universal gravitation, co-invented calculus with (Gottfried Wilhelm) Leibniz and was the first person to figure out that white light is actually a mixture of unaltered spectral colors. The fact that he was so deeply involved in alchemy struck me as rather amazing.

SP: Why did he spend all this time on alchemy when it may not have contributed to his larger scientific project?

BN: I should point out that the term "alchemy" meant something different in the 17th century than what it means today. It wasn't just about the transmutation of base metals into gold — (it was) synonymous with chemistry, at least in this archaic 17th century spelling "chymistry."

One thing you have to bear in mind is that chymistry offered tremendous promise to people in the 17th century because they hadn't yet figured out the distinction between nuclear reactions and chemical reactions. So alchemy presented itself as a discipline that could make fundamental changes to matter — the most fundamental change to matter.

So for a man of Newton's intellect and desire to get to the bottom of nature, it really made perfect sense for him to be involved in alchemy.

SP: Yet he seemed to be very secretive about his work in alchemy.

BN: Well, it was considered dangerous to be an alchemist, particularly if word got around that you were successful at it. There are lots of stories about how alchemists were locked up by vindictive rulers who wanted to extract their secrets and wouldn't hesitate to use torture. And some of these stories are actually true.

For example, there was an alchemist in the early 18th century named Johann Friedrich Bottger, who was locked up by a Saxon ruler named August the Strong. And August actually managed to turn him away from his transmutation efforts so that he invented porcelain — at least the Western world's variety of it.

There were also alchemical charlatans who were playing the noble courts of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries for all they were worth. And if they were exposed, the consequences could be quite grisly — they would typically be executed.

SP: Was alchemy considered a kind of magic?

BN: That’s an interesting question, which can get complicated and nuanced. But to Newton, at least, alchemy and magic were distinct. In his mind, I think magic was associated mostly with demonic magic.

There is yet another feature, though, which comes out in a letter that he wrote to Henry Oldenburg in 1676, who was the secretary of the Royal Society. Newton is very concerned about the fact that Robert Boyle, who is sometimes called the father of modern chemistry, was a devoted alchemist himself. Newton is concerned that Boyle has revealed too much about a so-called "sophic mercury," a kind of initial ingredient of the philosopher's stone. So Newton tells Oldenburg that he would like to commend Boyle to "high silence." He's really worried that word will get out.

Why? Because he's worried that scientific secrets of a really radical sort are going to be loosed upon the world and tremendous damage could occur.

SP: What was the "philosopher's stone"?

BN: It meant essentially two things. On the one hand, it was an agent that was thought to be able to transmute base metals into gold. They even have descriptions of it; it was typically thought to be a sort of ruby red material that was fusible in the heat. You added it to a molten metal and it would instantaneously transmute it into gold or, in some cases, silver.

Many people also thought the philosopher’s stone was a panacea and could also cure the human body of any sort of illness.

SP: What did Newton actually do in his alchemical experiments?

BN: It's a very complicated issue because we have more laboratory notebooks than we really know what to do with. They're also extremely difficult to understand because he never really tells you exactly what he's trying to do in the experiments.

For example, he refers to something that he calls the "green lion" in his experimental notebooks. Nobody's been able to figure out exactly what that meant to him. He talks about the "two serpents." He also talks about something called "sophic I've found is that Newton was trying to create more and more volatile compounds. He was trying to replicate processes that he believed to be taking place under the surface of the Earth. He had a theory that metals are being generated within the Earth. He calls it a sort of "cosmic vegetable." So the Earth is literally a living being and metals are constantly being produced within it. It involves heating up materials, vaporizing them and producing reactions in vaporous or even gaseous form.

SP: Was Newton successful in his experiments? Did he produce the results he hoped for?

BN: He clearly never found the philosopher's stone. But he produced extremely interesting compounds, and it looks like some of these materials have not been reproduced since Newton's day. So he was, in fact, finding really interesting stuff and he knew it.

SP: I get the impression that there was a whole culture of alchemy, with the riddles and the secrecy. Was it like a secret club?

BN: They certainly presented themselves as a sort of a secret club. The term "adept" was used for someone who had actually attained the philosopher's stone. They were considered to be a kind of superhuman — to be "the chosen sons of God."

SP: We haven't talked about Newton’s rather strange personality. Wasn’t he pretty arrogant? Apparently, he was not the nicest person to be around.

BN: Yeah, probably one of the least nice people to be around. Newton was a loner of an extremely unpleasant sort. When you got close to him, it was dangerous because he could turn on you.

Some of Newton's personality traits can be explained if you think of him as somebody trying to become an adept — an alchemical master — because the adepts were themselves the ultimate loners. They couldn't trust anyone because anyone you trusted might reveal that you have knowledge of the philosopher's stone, and then you'd wind up strangled in your bed because somebody wanted to steal it.

SP: So the fact that Newton didn't like a lot of people actually fit pretty well with this secretive life in alchemy.

BN: Yes, exactly. Also, the alchemist was supposed to be smarter than everybody else.

SP: And Newton had no doubt that he was smarter than everyone else.

BN: And he was right, actually! (laughs)

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Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler among Kennedy Center honorees
Agence France-Presse
July 21, 2021

Joni Mitchell (AFP)

Folk legend Joni Mitchell and beloved actor Bette Midler are among this year's class of Kennedy Center honorees, one of America's most prestigious arts awards

Along with Motown icon Berry Gordy, opera singer Justino Diaz and Lorne Michaels, creator of the acclaimed comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, they will be celebrated at the center's annual gala.

The night of red-carpet glitz in Washington in December will end up being the center's second set of honors this year.

Having been forced by the pandemic to cancel the gala last winter, the center held a more subdued series of smaller socially-distanced events and tributes in spring for the 43rd class of honorees.

"After the challenges and heartbreak of the last many months, and as we celebrate 50 years of the Kennedy Center, I dare add that we are prepared to throw 'the party to end all parties' in DC on December 5th, feting these extraordinary people and welcoming audiences back to our campus," the center's president Deborah Rutter said in a statement.
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The honors are normally a major fundraiser for the Kennedy Center, Washington's performing arts complex that serves as a living monument to president John F. Kennedy.

The center had said it expected to lose an estimated $45.7 million in potential revenue during the 2020-2021 season, after the pandemic forced the cancelation of much of its programming.

December's bash will likely be the first attended by a sitting US president since Barack Obama's tenure, should Joe and Jill Biden renew what was once a traditional outing before the presidency of Donald Trump.

Trump is unpopular in the culture and entertainment communities and several of the honored artists threatened to boycott if he attended during his first year in office.

What’s tribal sovereignty and what does it mean for Native Americans?

This short explainer provides an introduction to tribal sovereignty and its importance to tribal nations and the daily lives of Native Americans in the U.S.

by Denise-Marie Ordway | July 18, 2021

(NRCPR from Pixabay)

Tribal sovereignty, often viewed as a legal term, sits at the center of almost every issue affecting tribal nations existing within the United States’ geographical borders.

In its most basic sense, tribal sovereignty — the inherent authority of tribes to govern themselves — allows tribes to honor and preserve their cultures and traditional ways of life. Tribal sovereignty also is a political status recognized by the federal government, protected by the U.S. Constitution and treaties made generations ago, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although the concept might seem relatively straightforward, there has been considerable disagreement between Indigenous groups and American government agencies over what tribal sovereignty actually entails, its implications and how tribes and states can or should work together to serve their constituents.

States and tribes continue to battle over land and jurisdiction in areas such as law enforcement. Government officials still are trying to understand all the ramifications of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark tribal sovereignty case McGirt v. Oklahoma.

Supreme Court justices affirmed that a giant swath of land in eastern Oklahoma the U.S. gave the Muscogee (Creek) Nation through treaties in the 1800s is, in fact, an “Indian reservation” and that the state of Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to prosecute Jimcy McGirt, an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation, for serious crimes that occurred on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land.

Attorneys and policymakers across the country predict the ruling’s impact will extend well beyond Oklahoma and criminal prosecutorial matters.

Journalists planning to cover those impacts and tribal nations in general should have a basic understanding of tribal sovereignty and its significance to Indigenous people living in the U.S. Below, we provide important context.

We do not intend for this explainer to be exhaustive, but it is a starting point — and the first in a series of tip sheets, explainers and research roundups we’ll publish over the coming year to help journalists improve their coverage of Native Americans. In our next piece, we’ll take a much closer look at McGirt v. Oklahoma.

It’s worth noting that while federal government officials and documents often refer to Indigenous people in the U.S. as “Indians” or “American Indians,” the Native American Journalists Association has created a guide on Indigenous terminology.

Toward the bottom of this piece, we’ve gathered a variety of resources we think will help journalists, including links to academic papers on tribal sovereignty and a new website created by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and the Native Nations Center at the University of Oklahoma.

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Some key things journalists should know about tribal sovereignty:

• There are 574 federally-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native nations in the U.S., according to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Each is a government entity with its own policies, processes and system of governance.
  
  “Sovereignty for tribes includes the right to establish their own form of government, determine membership requirements, enact legislation and establish law enforcement and court systems,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

• Tribes vary in size. The largest in terms of both population and territory is the Navajo Nation, which stretches across 27,000-plus square miles in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and, as Indian Country Today reports, had nearly 400,000 tribal members in May 2021. The Navajo Nation’s comprehensive budget for Fiscal Year 2021 is $1.25 billion.
  
  The Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians in California, on the other hand, had just 12 members in late 2019, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reports.

• Tribes set their own rules for who can join, so enrollment criteria vary from tribe to tribe. “Tribal enrollment criteria are set forth in tribal constitutions, articles of incorporation or ordinances,” according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
  
  Tribes often require evidence of tribal lineage. For example, a tribe might require documentation demonstrating that the person seeking to enroll is related to a tribal member who descended from someone named on the tribe’s base roll, or original list of members. Tribes may also require evidence of blood quantum. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs issues what’s known as a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood, computed based on family lineage.

• Knowledge of treaties is important to tribal coverage. The U.S. Constitution calls treaties “the supreme Law of the Land.” Although they were negotiated generations ago — Congress stopped making treaties with tribes in the late 1800s — they remain relevant because they, among other things, outline the property rights and federal protections the U.S. agreed to give tribes in exchange for ceding millions of acres of their homeland.
  
  The U.S. acquired much of its land through treaties, which “rest at the heart of both Native history and contemporary tribal life and identity,” Kevin Gover, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, writes in 2014 in the museum magazine. “Approximately 368 treaties were negotiated and signed by U.S. commissioners and tribal leaders (and subsequently approved by the U.S. Senate) from 1777 to 1868. They enshrine promises our government made to Indian Nations.”

• The U.S. Constitution outlines the federal government’s relationship with tribes. “The Constitution gives authority in Indian affairs to the federal government, not to the state governments,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Just as the United States deals with states as governments, it also deals with Indian tribes as governments, not as special interest groups, individuals or some other type of non-governmental entity.”

• Attorneys commonly cite three historic court cases in legal challenges and legal analyses related to tribal sovereignty. In the 1832 case Worcester v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Cherokee Nation was not subject to state regulation. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the court, explains that the Cherokee Nation “is a distinct community occupying its own territory … in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves …”
  
  Today, states have no authority over tribes unless Congress gives it to them. In 1953, for example, Congress enacted Public Law 280, allowing six states — Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin — to begin prosecuting most crimes occurring on tribal land. The federal law let other states decide whether they also wanted to make the change.

Additional resources

• McGirt and Rebuilding of Tribal Nations Toolbox:This website, created by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and University of Oklahoma Native Nations Center, provides a broad array of resources, including a series of briefing papers examining the ramifications of the McGirt decision in areas such as taxation, criminal justice and child welfare.
• Indigenous Data Sovereignty: This explainer, created by the Global Investigative Journalism Network and Native American Journalists Association, “explores what investigative opportunities exist for journalists regarding the bundle of issues known as ‘Indigenous data sovereignty.’”
• Shaawano Chad Uran, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and former professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington, explains sovereignty and its importance in Indian Country Today, September 2018.

Law journal articles, academic papers worth reading

• Who Is an Indian Child? Institutional Context, Tribal Sovereignty, and Race-Making in Fragmented States
  Hana E. Brown. American Sociological Review, August 2020.
• Genetic Ancestry Testing with Tribes: Ethics, Identity & Health Implications
  Nanibaa’ A. Garrison. Daedalus, March 2018.
• Indian Education: Maintaining Tribal Sovereignty through Native American Culture and Language Preservation
  Nizhone Meza. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, March 2015.
• Myths and Realities of Tribal Sovereignty: The Law and Economics of Indian Self-Rule
  Joseph P. Kalt and Joseph William Singer. Harvard University Faculty Research Working Paper Series, March 2004.

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway
She joined The Journalist’s Resource in 2015 after working as a reporter for newspapers and radio stations in the U.S. and Central America, including the Orlando Sentinel and Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work also has appeared in publications such as USA TODAY, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post. She has received a multitude of national, regional and state-level journalism awards and was named as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013 for an investigative series she led that focused on hazing and other problems at Florida A&M University. Ordway was a 2014-15 Fellow of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She also serves on the board of directors of the Education Writers Association. @DeniseOrdway