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Manget's Alchemists
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Description
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This plate comes from an alchemical text called the Mutus Liber, or silent book, which was included in Jean-Jacques Manget's compilation, the 1702 Bibliotheca Curiosa (First-years, it's a far cry from the shrieking book in the school library's restricted section.) The image illustrates a sequence of laboratory operations to transmute baser metals into gold. Alchemical texts from the early eighteenth century and onward often show women working alongside men. The last panel of the image shows the alchemists shushing the reader, but they leave us with powerful wizarding wisdom: "Pray, read, read, read, reread, work and discover."
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How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course
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Valentine's Twelfth Key
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Description
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In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry learns that the alchemist Nicolas Flamel successfully created the philosopher's stone; in reality, reports of Flamel's reputation as an alchemist and immortal were greatly exaggerated. Jean-Jacques Manget's Bibliotheca Curiosa, published in 1702, compiled many alchemical texts and included Basil Valentine's The Twelve Keys. Valentine's work offered twelve plates that symbolically depicted methods to achieve the philosopher's stone. In this last operation, the final step in realizing the stone, a sun and moon illuminate a laboratory where an alchemist stands in front of a blazing furnace and tends to two roses, as a lion devours a snake.
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Collection
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How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course