Alchemical Magic

In the European Middle Ages, both alchemists and magicians sought to accomplish material change by manipulating the natural powers of matter. Modern historians of science attempt the same when reconstructing historical recipes in a laboratory setting. This article asks how “impossible” medieval practices can be visualized and replicated, focusing on the Natural Magic, one of a group of related treatises pseudonymously attributed to Ramon Llull. This treatise describes the generation of “shaped spirits”: language that evokes both alchemical images of allegorical beasts and the suffumigations of ritual magic. Reconstruction suggests that this language also alludes to practice—the smoky vapors produced within the alchemical vessel.