Poisson, Albert

Poisson, Albert. Cinq Traites d Alchimie des Plus Grands Philosophes Albert le Grand,... 

Traditional Alchemy cannot be confused with some other roads that lead to a different realm, and these can lead anyone who wishes to travel upon them, particularly if he lacks the proper preparation and an experienced guide, only towards consumption and madness, whether or not these maladies may be erotically induced. The procedures of psychic magnetism are equally senseless more than one student has made of these a deceptive experience, after having been lead to believe that he had indeed found the key to the alchemical enigma, with the transfusion of his own living essence into the hermetic vessel. Besides being wholly useless, such techniques are not to be achieved without great personal risk. And I would go so far as to state that this was just the procedure that directly contributed to the premature demise of Albert Poisson, who did employ these means. 

More importantly, as he confided in his Note 35, his real modus operandi was devoted to instigating a new reality based on an anarchic system of playful physics which was to be created by slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry. That, as told in different terms than by Jarry, namely by Albert Poisson and Antoine-Joseph Pemety, was exactly what I Alchirnie had already done. 

But what was, after 1911 and Printemps, the inner significance of I Alchimie for Marcel Duchamp Since his was a modem, and certainly not at all a medieval, nor even a particularly scholarly, mind, it seems most logical for us to turn for explanations in popularized introductions to alchemical practices and ideas. If one chooses to pursue the elusive matter of Duchamp s literary sources in a logical and methodical manner, one finds the best solutions to the perennial riddle of Duchamp s art provided in writings by other contemporary, equally French and modernist, minds. In this case, our most convenient spokesman for statements characterizing a stricdy modem range of alchemical ideas is a specific author, whom I have already proven to have been once well known to Duchamp, namely Albert Poisson. To the... 

Therefore, a Duchampian apparition is, strictly speaking, the manifestation of certain symbolic colors which are solely brought into being by the physical applications of certain teintures, tinctures. Any object emanating such tinctured colors becomes an apparition. All this, nonetheless, had been stated by Albert Poisson somewhat earlier, and much more clearly ... 

As we already saw, Albert Poisson also illustrated the hermetic wheel motif Thiories, 43 Planche 111. See fig. 6), also observing, besides the odd existence of those notorious metaux voisins, how la generation des metaux est circulaire on passe facilement de I un a I autre suivant un cercle (23). 

This strictly pictorial kinship was first recognized by Arturo Schwarz, but he had only illustrated the print as it appeared in its initial publication, in J. C. Barckhausen s Elementa Chemiae (Leyden, 1718), which Francis Naumann curtly dismissed as some obscure eighteenth-century alchemical treatise. In short, neither author recognized that the source for Duchamp s figure of L Enfant Enferme dans I Oeuf was precisely as Barckhausen s motif had been reprinted in 1891 by Albert Poisson, that is, in a modern publication correctly described by Jean Suquet as rep-resenting the Bible for Alchemists around 1900 (Naumann and Suquet, as quoted in Duve, Definitively Unfinished MD, 73-74). 

Musaeum Hermeticum, 648-99. As attributed to Philalethe, this treatise—cited as the Entree ouverte au palais — was mentioned several times by Albert Poisson (Theories, 68, 88, 92, 99, 117, 145). A modem translation appeared in 1970 see Philolethe. 

The editor of this translation has preserved in the text the notes of Pemety himself, and has introduced, as foot-notes, annotations borrowed from other works of Pemety, from Albert Poisson, the Champollion of Alchemy, Dr. Papus, Jollivet-Castelot, de Guaita, etc., in the very few places where the text seemed to allow a complementary explanation. These annotations are always followed by the name of the author to whom the translator is indebted. 

The work contains also a table of Alchemical Characters which are so frequently met with in spagyric works and a short Dictionary of Hermetic Symbols, compiled by the lamented Albert Poisson for his Theories et Symboles des Alchimistes, 4 which will afford great help in the reading of alchemic pentacles. E. B. 

Pernety - Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermetique - Paris, 1779 Albert Poisson - Theories et Symboles des Alchimistes, - Paris, 1891 id. - Cing Traites d Alchimic - Paris, 1890. 

In the Alchemical Theory, says Albert Poisson, the four Elements, not any more than the three Principles, represent particular substances they are simply states of matter, simple modalities. Water is synonymous with the liquid state, Earth with the solid Air with the gaseous and Fire with that of a very subtle gaseous state, such as a gas expanded by the action of heat.. . Moreover, Elements represent, by extension, physical qualities such as heat, (Fire) dryness and solidity, (Earth) moisture and fluidity, (Water) cold and subtility, (Air) Zosimus gives to their ensemble the name of Tetrasomy. 

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