ABSTRACT
AMONG THE ‘RENAISSANCES’ of the Renaissance one of the most important was the renaissance of alchemy. Like the occultist movement in general, the alchemical movement involved a return to ancient sources, in this case an intense interest in, and revival of, medieval writers on alchemy. The fascination of, for example, the obscure works of the medieval alchemist George Ripley for the intelligentsia of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries can be seen as a form of prisca theologia, a return to Hermetic sources. ‘Hermes Trismegistus’, the secret patron of Renaissance Neoplatonism, was associated with the ‘Egyptian’ science of alchemy, as the supposed author of alchemical texts.
