The Rosarium Philosophorum. Magic through symbols

Recently I have been reading an excellent book called “Alchemy and Mysticism” from Alexander Roob, and I felt attracted by certain beautiful images that are part of a Book that I have never heard in my life before, and this book is called the “Rosarium Philosophorum” or “The Rosary of the Philosophers”. I started investigating about this book and there is actually not too much information about its content, but there is plenty of information about the author, Arnaldo De Villanova.

De Vilanova (1240-1311) was born in Catalonia, Spain. He was a doctor and an astrologist (a bad combination in this century by the way), and he knew French, Hebrew, Arabic and Greek that he learned on his multiple journeys around the world. De Villanova was a very controversial person, mainly because of his multiple complaints against the abuse of the clergy and because he used the name of God on Hebrew and Latin, something that was considered heresy, and so he end up in prison. It is believed that The Rosarium Philosophorum was one of the many books written by De villanova. This book is divided in two sections. The first section is composed by 10 chapters that described the theoretical principles of art, and the second part consist on 36 chapters that describe how to achieve the transmutation of different physical and chemical elements.

The Rosarium Philosophorum describes different elixirs to heal different diseases, how to stay healthy and how to attain strength for the elderly, some sort of Dr. Oz, but smarter. Despite of being so controversial, he was an amazing doctor. He was able to help Pedro de Aragon the third with his health, and he received in exchange a castle in Tarragona, Spain and a space to teach at the University of Montpellier, France. When he was imprisoned, he was called by the Pope Boniface the VIII because he suffered from a hepatic disease. He was able to heal him, and he was set free from prison, and of course, as a present he acquired a new castle with one condition from the Pope, he should drop off theological issues and concentrate in medicine sciences.

One of the most important elements of the hermetic beliefs of De Villanova was the fact of believing on the healing properties of images, especially from the astrological and magical seals. He also believed that the stars have an influence on the general health of human beings, so he used to make calculations to identify when it was the best time for someone to have a chirurgical procedure or when to start a treatment.

Going back to the Rosarium Philosophorum, it is known that this book was published on 1550 in Frankfurt, Germany. The term Rosary is not related with the Catholic Prayer Beads, and it comes from the term “Rose Garden”. The book has 20 main captions that have been praised and analyzed by different psychoanalysts and philosophers. Actually, Carl Jung (famous psychoanalyst) brought this book back to life by analyzing different archetypes, and establishing the similarities between the Rosarium Cycle with the Assumption and Coronation of Saint Mary.

This book is available online if you wish to buy it, and you can also find the images of the book if you google them. I think that these images are beautiful and full of mystery, but do you think that they might be able to heal people with different illnesses? Are these images telling us a story that we do not know anything about the mankind? It is a complete mystery. It is very strange that there is not much information about this book available online, despite everything; the author was an incredible character with an incredible story that hasn’t being studied as frequent as it should be. Do you believe that images can heal? I would like to know your opinion!