Alexander Roob

Art publisher Taschen printed a whole slew of 25th anniversary editions back in 2005, one of which was a translation of Alexander Roob's Alchemy & Mysticism. When I came across the book remaindered last summer I thought I'd take a leaf through the nearly 600 pages of text and images. I have now completed my perusal. Unfortunately I found the text well nigh incomprehensible, but I'm not sure whether this is a function of the subject itself or just the translation. The images (from early show more alchemical and mystical texts, mainly) were interesting enough (and are beautifully reproduced here), but the accompanying captions and expository paragraphs left something to be desired.

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Suprise, this inexpensive and easy to find book contains a cornacopia of alchemical and mystical diagrams from obscure texts. The author respects the material and only gives teases to their decipherment. For the money this is a darn good little book.

There are those that say the key to reality can be found between these pages. Maybe so, but I read this for the artwork, the ideas, the mysteries, not for signs of truth. Here is the sheer joy of discovery of the human psyche's ability to creatively construct a scaffold on which to hang reality on. Highly recommended.

Awesome drawings; a wonderful resource. The text is a bit difficult at times to grasp, as are many of the illustrations, but this book was enormously helpful to me during the research phase of writing my book. If you are interested in the history of alchemy, I highly recommend this book