ALCHEMY - ROSARIUM PHILOSOPHORUM - LUNAR TREE A much printed alchemical series, the Rosarium Philosophorum consists of a complex text around 20 highly distinctive woodcut prints. The imagery is alchemical, but well disguised behind the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, sexuality and various Christian symbols.They each relate to the alchemical stages, viewed from a Christian standpoint - perhaps written in the late 15th century by one of the early Rosicrucian schools. Although the text and related images appeared in mediaeval manuscripts, it was not printed until 1550, in a German edition, as part of the De alchimia opuscula, by which time it consisted of 20 woodcuts. The authorship has always remained uncertain, though it has been suggested that it was compiled by Arnold of Villanova, in the 13th century. Jung has argued, from iconographic points relating to the four distinctly religious images, that, in its present form at least, the illustrations do not go back beyond the 15th century. The book was reprinted, with different cuts, many times: a great deal of the meaning of text and images may be gleaned from the later version of the images, and a truncated text, published as part of Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata, 1622 (the 22 engravings based on the cuts begins at the 29 engraving in the series, though the old numbering is adopted- that is to say, after the 28 engravings the Rosarium series are numbered in sequence from 1 to 22). Plate 10 is now completely an alchemical imagery (we saw this begin to insert itself in the previous plate). The Caput Corvi, or Head of the Raven has been whitened, or sublimated, and the implication is that this whiteness is of a lunar kind - at all events, from the earth into which the raven's head had been planted, as though it were a seed, has grown the 13 branched Tree of the Moon. It has thirteen branches because this is the number of lunations in a year. The hermaphrodite has risen from the tomb, and *** Local Caption *** stands on the crescent Moon (the Queen has completely subdued the nature of the King). In alchemy, this is the stage of Lunar Perfection, sometime called the First Silver Perfection, which can be attained only at the end of the stage of Putrefaction. This is the plate numbered 10 - the hermaphrodite stands upright [the figure 1] facing the circles of the Moon [the figure 0].