On Alchemy and the Symbolics of Color

About the Author

Brian Cotnoir is an alchemist, artist and Emmy award-winning filmmaker. His books include Alchemy: The Poetry of Matter, Practical Alchemy: A Guide to the Great Work, Alchemical Meditations, On the Quintessence of Wine and the Emerald Tablet. His film work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, HBO, PBS and other international venues.

Description

Alchemy and the Symbolics of Color looks at the role of color in alchemical practice. Alchemical practice entails physical laboratory work with minerals and metals as well as a more Neo-Platonic meditative practice concerning the ascent of the soul and union with the One.

Color is used to express the processes and stages in both of these aspects.

This zine, working with the idea that a symbolics is “contained within sensory images,” looks at how our experience of color arises. It begins with the cosmos and alchemical theory and moves to the physics and biology of color and color vision, early theories of color perception, psychology, and spiritual frameworks. The zine touches on the writings of Grosseteste, Newton, Goethe, Kandinsky, Florensky and others. Also found in the zine are recipes for purple of Cassius and red ruby glass.

By no means exhaustive, the zine is a source, a collection of trailheads into the question of how to create a symbolics of color.

ΝΟΤΕ: This is Not a color symbol codebook.