1. Mercury and Sulphur each incorporate a germ of the other (like the Chinese Yin and Yang). This paradoxical duality is expressed in alchemical texts by the changing gender of the symbols at different stages of the synthesis.

2. Benedictus Figulus, Canon 147, p.295.

3. Norton, ‘Capitulum V’, line 2665.

4. Dorn was a sixteenth century alchemist and was much quoted by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis.

5. Burckhardt, pp.149–56.

6. Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Sloane Manuscript SL630.

7. C.A. Burland, The Arts of the Alchemist, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.

8. Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Sloane Manuscript SL630.

9. Burckhardt, p.189.

10. J.C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy, The Aquarian Press, 1984, p.135.

11. ‘The Emerald Tablet’ of Hermes. Everard (trans.), Divine Pymander, Wizard’s Bookshelf, 1978, p.ix.

12. Cooper, pp. 135–6.

13. ‘Critical Forum’, Norwich Tapes. A transcript is available at https://ann.skea.com/CriticalForum.htm.

14. Cooper, pp.151–3.

15. Halifax, p.70.

16. Baskin’s title, Scolar Press Limited Edition.

17. Ad de Vries, pp.326–8 and pp.410–15.

18. Grossinger, p.78.

19. Grossinger, p.78.

20. Halifax, p.125.

21. Halifax, p.13

22. Beane and Doty, p.266, quoting Eliade; and Halifax, p. 13.

23. Ripley, ‘The Epistle’ stanza 25–27.

24. Eliade, p.115.

25. Ad de Vries, p.339

26. K. Raine, The Human Face of God: William Blake and the Book of Job, Thames and Hudson, 1982, p.256

27. Baskin’s title, Scolar Press Limited Edition.

28. The transmutative stone egg occurs, too, in the Chinese myth of the birth of the Monkey God,who combines human and animal characteristics and accompanies a Buddhist priest on a journey to enlightenment.

29. Leonardus Thurneiser, Sloane Manuscript 3676.

30. R. Grossinger, p.78.

31. Burckhardt, quotes Bernardus Trevisanus, p.188.

32. Burckhardt, p.154.

33. Everard(trans.) The Divine Pymander, ix. “its nurse is the earth”

34. Burckhardt, pp.196–7.

35. Benedictus Figulus, p.333.

36. Basil Valentinus, The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, Ch.1. https://sacred–texts.com/alc/antimony.htm

37. Wright, pp.5 and 51.

38. Everard (trans.) The Divine Pymander, p.ix.

39. Ripley, ‘Of Projection’, stanza 8.

40. Faas, ‘Ted Hughes and Crow’, p.15.