Aurora consurgens
[1][2]: §38–44 While in the last century, the text has been more commonly referred to as "Pseudo-Aquinas", there are as well arguments in favour of Thomas Aquinas,[2]: §591f., §616 to whom it has originally been attributed in some manuscripts.
The passionate style of being gripped could result from an intrusion of the unconscious, which – as psychological experience tells - might have compensated a rather intellectual consciousness dominated by logic.
[2]: §590–616 Aurora consurgens is a commentary on the Latin translation of Silvery Waters by Senior Zadith (Ibn Umayl).
[4] These illustrations incorporate some of the earliest Greek alchemical symbols known, found in the Authentic Memoirs of Zosimos of Panopolis.
The visuals found in Aurora consurgens are regarded by B. Obrist as alchemical metaphors that relate to human and animal procreation, procedures like calcination and putrefaction and other motifs.
[4] The manuscript also contains pictorial metaphors combined with glass vessels which depict the stages of the alchemical art of transformation.
[4] Another illustration combines the motifs of Mercury decapitating the sun and the moon with a vase filled with silver and gold flowers.
The ouroboros biting its tail has been stylized into a medallion of three concentric circles with inscriptions referring to the unity of everything and two natures attracting and dominating each other.
[4] Further, the unification of the opposite principles female/male, passive/active, cold/hot, moist/dry finds expression in the coupling of the sun and the moon, a cosmological motif of central importance since it symbolizes the generation of all things.
Both illustrations show a wise old man, sitting within a sanctuary, which has two rooms, and holding a tablet with symbolic pictograms.
This illustration may have inspired a rather similar depiction in Theatrum Chemicum (Basle, 1660) and in J.J. Mangets Bibliotheca Chemica (Geneva, 1702).
Their child is shown sleeping in a small rocking cradle, along with a young servant boy standing at the foot of the bed.
3), the artist concealed her genitals under her skirt and reduced the blood flow, which obscures the meaning of the menstrual cloths she is holding up.
