By Salomon Trismosin
The 22 Colored Plates depicting the 22 Alchemical Stages of
Salomon Trismosin's "Splendor Solis" are available for browsing from this
page. The original manuscript of these plates is in the British Museum, and
dated 1582. Though the earliest version is considered to be at
Kupferstichkabinett in the Prussian State Museum in Berlin, and dated
1532-35. The text of this famous work have been translated by Joscelyn
Godwin and printed by Phanes Press. A Yogi Publications edition also
contains a biography of Trismosin, with his quest for and eventual
attainment of the Philosopher Stone written in 1498. The only colored plates
ever printed were by James Wasserman's fine work "Art and Symbols of the
Occult", Greenwich Editions, London, 1993. More information on the Splendor
Solis can be obtained from Adam MacLean's magnificent Virtual Alchemy site .
The Virtual Alchemy also have the 22 color plates with comments, but the
pictures at our site are of high resolution, they may take a long time to
open, but will offer much detail detail for study and appreciation.
S.L. MacGregor Mathers is credited with an early work on the
Splendor Solis, his notes on the obvious Kabbalistic and Arcana Major Tarot
implications of 22, not to mentioned the alchemical symbolism, would have
proved of interest had they survived. Ithell Colquhoun writes in the Sword
of Wisdom, MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn, G.P. Putnam's Sons,
New York, 1975: " Besides Egyptian Symbolism, another book by
Mathers which no one seems to have seen is his edition of the Splendor Solis by the
fifteenth-century alchemist Salomon Trismosin, reputed occult teacher to
Paracelsus. Edward Garstin valued this work highly and cited it several
times in his own alchemical writings, especially the unpublished
Alchemical Glossary. Trismosin was also the author of The Golden
Fleece, one of the treasures of the British Museum?s manuscript library,
its coloured illustrations even rivalling the miniatures of Les Très Riches
Heures du Duc de Berry.
"Mathers passed his manuscript to F. L. Gardner, perhaps in
part-payment of financial obligations, and Gardner published it about 1907
in the hope of recouping expense on some of Mathers' other work for which
he had agreed to be responsible. But he did not let Mathers know what he had
done, and the latter (understandably) protested. It must have been a very
small edition and copies are scarce, if Ellic Howe has not seen one, who has?
Again, there is no trace of it in the British Museum catalogues. Mathers'
introduction and notes, if such there were, would be worth reading as his
insight into alchemy is scarcely recorded elsewhere and would illuminate the
Order's teaching on the subject."
More information on G.D. affinities to the Splendor Solis can be
obtained from Jean-Pascal Ruggiu's fascinating article "Rosicrucian Alchemy
and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" at the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
website.
Below is the first plate of the Splendor Solis, to see the
others please click the respective plate numbers, or "next" button below.
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