Four natures in a single glass

George Ripley, the English alchemist who died around 1490, cast his Compound of Alchymy as a poem of instruction. Its verses lead readers through a succession of operations and collect the teaching once more towards the end. In this review an object comes into focus that might easily escape attention on a workbench. The glass in which change is to occur gives the brief instruction its spatial setting.

An instruction held together by repetition

And in one Glas wyth one governaunce 4 Naturs turne into one.

– George Ripley, The Compound of Alchymy, 1652, p. 188.^[1]

Several expressions of unity stand opposite the number four. The natures differ. The glass, however, is one, the treatment is shared, and the outcome of the change is also called one. The recurrence of the small numeral does more than specify a quantity. Read the line aloud and the several conditions of the operation can be heard converging on the same demand. Vessel and treatment are to hold together things that at first appear distinct.

What a vessel can contain

Glass has a particular advantage as an image. It draws a boundary around an operation while allowing someone outside to look in. What changes within its walls need not be gathered up afresh at every stage. The reader can picture a sequence of conditions observed in a single place. Ripley’s closing verses thus suggest a way of reading the poem as a whole. Its many named steps depend upon one another. Only when they are viewed as parts of a common undertaking does it become clear what holds their variety together.