Stratford J. A dictionary of western alchemy

Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Illinois, Chennai, India, 2011 - 137 p.A renewed interest in the esotericisms of an earlier time seems to be a trend today. In academic circles we’ve seen everything from Frances Yates’s fascinating but lamentably fl awed hermetic revival to Richard Kieckheff er’s forming of the scholarly Societas Magica to Christopher Lehrich’s methodologically biased condemnation of Renaissance magical thought as a mere bricolage. Within esoteric circles, interest in the past has never been new. Certainly
the Golden Dawn and the Aurum Solis are rooted in history. They are hardly alone, whether we’re talking about the druidic revival of the 1700s or the renewed interest in Hermes Trismegistus in the 1400s. Given the evidence for the practice of alchemy in ancient Egypt, the Greco-Roman world, and medieval Islam, the fl ourishing of the art in the Middle Ages already constituted a revival. But regardless of the format of esoteric thought inspiring renewed interest, the drive behind
that interest has always been the same: knowledge. Jordan Stratford’s thirst for knowledge is vast. His involvement in esoterica ranges from Freemasonry to modern Paganism, the Golden Dawn, Gnosticism, and several heretical stops in between. It is inevitable that alchemy, as one of the major sources of Western esoteric
thought, would become a focus of his attention.