jmd
Alchemy transcends particular religious and social groups, and was very much part of what we today call 'science'. Alchemy, for example, in ancient India or China has many similarities with Alchemy in the West - though its cultural and religious milieu is quite distinct.
With regards to Kabbalah, it became established as such circa the tweflth century - one can quibble and also discuss Kabbalistic tradition in the form of Merkabah Mysticism and various other impulses earlier. Kabbalistic thought was also used by the Church, in late Mediaeval times and during the early Renaissance, to attempt to convert Jews to Christianity. It also became very much embedded, in the process, in the Western magical and Hermetic tradition(s)... by the time of Knorr von Rosenroth's Cabalah Denudata, Alchemical and Kabbalictic thought had already been interweaved through the works of numerous others.
One of the most beautiful - in terms of its diagrammes, is Michelspacher's Cabala...
I write this off the top of my head, and certainly a little digging will reveal numerous other authors and illustrators, from Pico and Trithemius to... well, to others
As to Newton's Alchemical interests, it remains a puzzle to me why it isn't more standardly generally acknowledged. After all, his presumption that the rainbow has seven bands of colours - rightly criticised by Goethe - emerges straight out of his Astrological and Alchemical interests and the seven planets ('planets' in the original sense of heavenly bodies moving against the 'fixed' stars, and thus including Sun & Moon).
With regards to Kabbalah, it became established as such circa the tweflth century - one can quibble and also discuss Kabbalistic tradition in the form of Merkabah Mysticism and various other impulses earlier. Kabbalistic thought was also used by the Church, in late Mediaeval times and during the early Renaissance, to attempt to convert Jews to Christianity. It also became very much embedded, in the process, in the Western magical and Hermetic tradition(s)... by the time of Knorr von Rosenroth's Cabalah Denudata, Alchemical and Kabbalictic thought had already been interweaved through the works of numerous others.
One of the most beautiful - in terms of its diagrammes, is Michelspacher's Cabala...
I write this off the top of my head, and certainly a little digging will reveal numerous other authors and illustrators, from Pico and Trithemius to... well, to others
As to Newton's Alchemical interests, it remains a puzzle to me why it isn't more standardly generally acknowledged. After all, his presumption that the rainbow has seven bands of colours - rightly criticised by Goethe - emerges straight out of his Astrological and Alchemical interests and the seven planets ('planets' in the original sense of heavenly bodies moving against the 'fixed' stars, and thus including Sun & Moon).