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Palingenesis

These materials open up contexts for understanding the alchemical process of palingenesis, which Pulter analogizes to the resurrection of the body within Christian theology.

Sir Thomas Browne,
Religio Medici

Let us speak naturally, and like philosophers. The forms of alterable bodies in these sensible [of or relating to the senses] corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, wholly quit their mansions, but retire and contract themselves into their secret and inaccessible parts, where they may best protect themselves from the action of their antagonist. A plant or vegetable consumed to ashes, to a contemplative and school philosopher, seems utterly destroyed, and the form to have taken his leave forever. But to a sensible artist, the forms are not perished, but withdrawn into their incombustible part, where they lie secure from the action of that devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalk and leaves again. What the art of man can do in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger of God cannot do in these more perfect and sensible structures? This is that mystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, but from the visible effects of nature, grows up a real divine, and beholds not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object the types of his resurrection.

Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (London, 1643), sigs. F6r-F6v.
[This passage can be found as section 46 or 48 in modern editions.]
Jacques Gaffarel,
Unheard-of Curiosities Concerning the Talismanical Sculpture of the Persians, the Horoscope of the Patriarchs, and the Reading of the Stars

And here it may be objected, that the greatest part of these plants, though they be reduced into ashes, yet do they not fail to work the same effects and to have the same quality that they had before, and that therefore this power is to be attributed to the nature of the plant, and not at all to the figure, which it now no longer retains, when it is once reduced into powder. I answer, that though they be chopped in pieces, brayed in a mortar, and even burnt to ashes, yet do they nevertheless retain, (by a certain secret, and wonderful power of nature,) both in the juice, and in the ashes, the self-same form and figure that they had before. And though it be not there visible, yet it may by art be drawn forth, and made visible to the eye, by an artist. This perhaps will seem a ridiculous story to those who read only the titles of books. But those that please, may see this truth confirmed, if they but have recourse to the works of M. du Chesne, S. de la Violette one of the best chemists that our age has produced, who affirms that himself saw an excellent Polish physician of Cracovia who kept, in glasses, the ashes of almost all the herbs that are known. So that, when anyone, out of curiosity, had a desire to see any of them, as (for example,) a rose, in one of his glasses, he took that where the ashes of a rose were preserved, and holding it over a lighted candle, so soon as ever it began to feel the heat, you should presently see the ashes begin to move; which afterwards rising up, and dispersing themselves about the glass, you should immediately observe a kind of little dark cloud; which dividing itself into many parts, it came at length to represent a rose. But so fair, so fresh, and so perfect a one, that you would have thought it to have been as substantial and as odoriferous a rose, as any grows on the rose-tree. This learned gentleman says, that himself has often tried to do the like, but not finding the success, to answer all the industry he could use, fortune at length gave him a sight of this prodigy. For, as he was one day practicing, with M. de Luynes, called otherwise De Fomentieres, Counselor to the Parliament, to see the curiosity of diverse experiments, having extracted the salt of certain nettles burnt to ashes, and set the lye [ashes] abroad all night in a winter evening, in the morning he found it all frozen–but with this wonder attending it; that the nettles themselves, with their form and figure, were so lively and so perfectly represented on the ice, that the living nettles were not more. This gentleman, being as it were ravished at the sight, sent for the said Counselor, to be a witness of this secret, the rarity whereof he expressed in these verses …

In English thus:
This secret proves, that, though the body die,
The form doth still within its ashes lie.

But now this secret is not so rare: for M. de Claves, one of the most excellent chemists of our times, shows the experiment every day.

From hence we may draw this conclusion; that the ghosts of dead men, which are often seen to appear in churchyards, are natural effects, being only the forms of the bodies, which are buried in those places, or their outward shapes or figures, and not the souls of those men, or any such like apparition, caused by evil spirits, as the common opinion is. The Ancients thought that these ghosts were the good and evil genii, which attended always upon armies; but they are to be excused, seeing they knew not how to give any other reason of these apparitions. It being most certain that in armies, where, by reason of their great numbers, many die, you shall see some such ghosts very often, (especially after a battle) which are, as we have said, only the figures of the bodies, excited, and raised up, partly by an internal heat, either of the body, or of the earth, or else by some external one, as that of the Sun, or of the multitudes of the living, or, by the violent noise, or heat of great guns, which puts the air into a heat.

Jacques Gaffarel, Unheard-of Curiosities Concerning the Talismanical Sculpture of the Persians, the Horoscope of the Patriarchs, and the Reading of the Stars (London, 1650), sigs. K4r-K5v.
Kenelm Digby,
A Discourse Concerning the Vegetation of Plants

Let us come back to our plant, and inquire if it be not possible to render it perpetual, or rather to convert it into a permanent substance and state, no longer subject to the vicissitudes of time and outward agents that destroy all things, so to bring it to a kind of glorified body, such as we hope ours will be after the Resurrection. Quercetanus, the famous physician of King Henry the Fourth, tells us a wonderful story of a Polonian Doctor that shewed him a dozen glasses hermetically sealed, in each of which was a different plant. For example, a rose in one, a tulip in another, a clove-gillyflower in a third, and so of the rest. When he offered these glasses to your first view, you saw nothing in them but a heap of ashes in the bottom. As soon as he held some gentle heat under any of them, presently there arose out of the ashes, the idea of a flower, the flower and the stalk belonging to those ashes. And it would shoot up and spread abroad to the due height and just dimensions of such a flower, and had perfect color, shape, magnitude, and all other accidents, as if it were really that very flower. But whenever you drew the heat from it, as the glass and the enclosed air and matter within it grew to cool by degrees, so would this flower sink down by little and little, till at length it would bury itself in its bed of ashes. And thus it would do as often as you exposed it to moderate heat, or withdrew it from it. I confess it would be no small delight to me to see this experiment, with all the circumstances that Quercetanus sets down. Athanasius Kircher at Rome assured me he had done it; and gave me the process of it. But no industry of mine could affect it.

Kenelm Digby, A Discourse Concerning the Vegetation of Plants (London, 1661), sigs. D2v-D4r.