#THE MERCURIAL EMPEROR THE MAGIC CIRCLE FULL#
You get the full story of Rudolf II and his magic circle in Prague in The Mercurial Emperor by Peter Marshall (Pimlico 2007). Emperor Rudolf also met with the Jewish learned Rabbi Loew (Judah Loew ben Bezalel, dead 1609), legendary maker of the Prague Golem. Astronomist Tycho Brahe was his court astronomer and astrologist, while sometimes active in the royal alchemy lab. He moved the imperial court to Prague castle in 1583, where it remained for the rest of his life, and welcomed occult experts there such as John Dee and Edward Kelley. Rudolf was a great patron of occult learning.
The historical background to the present alchemy fuss in Prague revolves around the melancholic Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612). The Alchemist’s lair, as presented at the Speculum Alchemiae museum in Prague Alchemy wasn’t generally done in secret labs but by the most high-ranking learned at royal courts. Sure alchemists were trying to make gold, but how would they have known it wasn’t possible? In the process and among all failed experiments they managed to gain some new insights. There are alchemy bars, alchemy museums and all sorts of alchemic stories around, some of them even true, and as a visitor you can’t avoid it.Īlchemy was big among the learned in renaissance and early modern Europe, a sort of pre-scientific quest to understand nature and neither as crazy nor as underground as often portrayed, though an obvious field also for charlatans. Alchemy is a main theme for the Prague visitor and understandably so since it goes so very well with the twisted, bohemian mood of the city.