Frater Albertus and the plant alchemists of Salt Lake City
A Dresden poet, a Rosicrucian laboratory class, a thin handbook from 1960 and the Utah school that taught plant alchemy to the modern world.
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Albert Hofmann: ergot, Eleusis and the alchemist’s vision
A Swiss chemist, a poison fungus on rye, a bicycle ride in 1943 and a Greek mystery cult. The life of Albert Hofmann, the second of our modern alchemists.
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Sasha Shulgin, the modern alchemist
A chemist in a hillside shed, a cactus at the root of his work, two strange books written with his wife, and why people keep calling Sasha Shulgin an alchemist.
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Yarrow stalks and the I Ching: fifty sticks and a question
Fifty dried stalks, a bowl of incense and a three-thousand-year-old book. How yarrow became the plant of the I Ching, and how the old count works.
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Agrippa’s planetary herbs: seven gardens in one book
In 1533 Cornelius Agrippa gave every plant a planet. Here are his seven lists, the logic behind them, and his rule for which part of a plant goes to which star.
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Planetary hours, and what happens to them down south
The old magicians split each day into twelve unequal hours, each ruled by a planet. How the scheme works, and why European tables go wrong in Australia.
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I thirst: Barbara Thiering and the sponge of sour wine
A Sydney scholar said Jesus wrote John’s Gospel and survived the cross on a drugged drink. What could a sponge of sour wine really do?
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Drug: how a word for dried herbs became a dirty word
The word drug began as a merchant’s label for dried roots, barks and resins in a cask. Six hundred years later people swear a plant can’t be one. Here is how that happened.
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Picatrix herbs: laurel, myrtle and the mandrake shelf
A tenth-century Arabic book of astral magic sorted plants by the planets. Here is what it says about laurel, myrtle, saffron and its darker shelf.
Photo credits on each article.