Hamburg edition Salomon Trismosin, Aureum Vellus, oder

Engraving from the 1708 Hamburg Printed Edition. (Salomon Trismosin, Aureum Vellus, oder Guldin Schatz und Kunstkammer, Hamburg) 

FIGURE 8 A Medieval Apothecary s Shop. From an early fourteenth-century French manuscript. Hanging from a hook on the ceiling is the plate used for mixing ingredients. (Sloane MS 1977, f. 49v, by permission of the British Library) 

We do not offer a definitive interpretation. A symbol by its very nature cannot be interpreted definitively, and it will evoke different associations and meanings in each person and in the same person at different times. To give but one example early in his analytic work, a man reported an energy-filled dream from his youth, and he referred to it often as he recalled the suffering of his childhood. Later in his analysis, he wrote about the way its meaning for him had changed  

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE first painting of the Splendor Solis, which is the frontispiece of the illuminated manuscript, informs us that this work does not concern itself with methods for the practical, concrete transformation of base metals into gold. For the author of the Splendor Solis, alchemy was a practice for the healing and transformation of the human soul. 

The world of this beautiful painting is full of the unexpected and the paradoxical, challenging our ordinary assumptions a coat-of-arms proclaims weakness and disintegration, animals play musical instruments and show generosity to other species, and a two-dimensional image on a banner becomes three-dimensional, swirling out into the scene. As we look at it carefully, we may begin to feel unsettled. 

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