Peter Marshall – Ars Magica  Rosicrucean Digest No 1
Rudolf II (1552-1612) was an extraordinary patron of the arts and mysticism. Driven to understand the deepest secrets of nature and the riddle of existence, Rudolf invited to his court an endless stream of genius and established Prague as the artistic and scientific center of Europe at that time.
Neoplatonism, Hermeti­cism, the Cabala, and magic were essential elements in the world view of Rudolf’s court, alchemy and astrology were the main sciences that shared the same perspective. Alchemy attempted to transform nature by drawing on invisi­ble energies as well as physical means, while astrology assumed that the subtle web of correspondences between heaven and earth ensured that celestial events would influence those on earth. Although they were con­sidered—with magic—part of the “occult” sciences, their higher purpose was to ban­ish the darkness of ignorance and to attain enlightenment through knowledge.
The alchemists believed in the alchemy of matter as well as the alchemy of spirit: If an alchemist was not spiritually pure, he would never achieve success in his experiments. To discover the Philosopher’s Stone was therefore an outward sign of inner enlightenment, the two aspects were inextricable. The alchemists’ aim was to attain personal harmony which mirrored the ultimate harmony of the universe. Moreover, they sought not only the 'transmutation of metals' but the moral and spiritual transformation of humankind. Underlying their obsessive pursuit of the Philosopher’s Stone was undoubtedly a drive for harmony and perfection and for the truths of revealed religion. The alchemical dream of the Renaissance was nothing less than a search for the Creator through his created works

Peter Marshall – Ars Magica  Rosicrucean Digest No 1
Indeed, what Rudolf was trying to achieve  in his castle is beautifully evoked by the title of an illustrated book on alchemy by Daniel Stoltzius von Stolzenberg, a late representative of Rudolfine Prague, A Chemical Pleasure Garden, “decorated with handsome figures cut in copper, illustrated with poetic paintings and explanations, so that it may not only serve to refresh the eyes and the spirit but arouse at the same time a very deep contemplation of natural things…” It shows perfectly how at Rudolf ’s court science and art, reason and imagination, philosophy and religion were inseparable.

Rudolf II painted as Vertumnus, Roman deity of the seasons

by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Rudolf greatly appreciated the work

Peter Marshall – Ars Magica  Rosicrucean Digest No 1
Rudolf would have known about the fiery dreams of the alchemists ever since he was a boy. The libraries of his father in Vi­enna and of his uncle in Madrid were full of the works of the German, Italian, and Spanish alchemists and physicians who wrote and communicated with each other in Latin. Rudolf ’s quest for miraculous knowledge would have been excited by the imperial court physician and astrono­mer-astrologer Dr. Tadeáš Hájek of Hájek (Thaddaeus Hagecius). A native of Prague and a master of ars magica and occult phi­losophy, Hájek had been first engaged by his father. He conducted alchemical ex­periments in his house on the corner of Bethlehem Square in the Old Town and it became the meeting place for many alchemists, physicians, scientists, and scholars. Hájek completed Rudolf ’s Spanish educa­tion by introducing him to the writings of the medieval philosophers Albertus Mag­nus and Roger Bacon (whose works were on the Index forbidden by the Vatican), the physician Avicenna (the “Aris­totle of the Arabs”), the alchemist Geber (the “Prince of the Arab Philosophers”), and the works of Paracelsus (the found­ing father of modern medicine and chem­istry). The heady writings of the Spanish alchemist Arnald de Villa­nova, who was a physician to several Popes and accused of heresy, were not neglected.

The Powder Tower - which exists

Rudolf had an ‘alchemi­cal laboratory’ built in the Powder Tower set in the northern wall of Prague Cas­tle and invited alchemists from all over Europe to use it. It would have been full of athanors (furnaces), with sooty assistants working the pumps, warming up stills called alembics (after the Ar­abic al abiq) and pelicans (so called because they looked like the bird) as well as the bain-marie, named after the Alexandrian alchemist Maria the Jewess who first invented the ‘bath for gentle heating’. Rudolf would often call un­announced to see how the experiments were proceed­ing.

Peter Marshall – Ars Magica  Rosicrucean Digest No 1
Into this royal crucible, with its heady brew of Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, the Cabala, magic, alchemy, and astrology, Rudolf welcomed some of the greatest thinkers and scientists of the day. These included the English magus John Dee, the German alchemist Oswald Croll, the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, and the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Because of the constant threat of persecution from Church and State, such original and subversive thinkers were often obliged to travel around Europe in search of a congenial place to continue their pioneering and potentially heretical work. They were men who were prepared to risk their lives in the search for knowledge, wherever it might lead them, and despite their different nationalities, backgrounds, and interests, they shared with Rudolf a readiness to go beyond the boundaries of permissible thought. Each one was, as Galileo addressed Johannes Kepler, a “comrade in the pursuit of truth.”

Peter Marshall – Ars Magica  Rosicrucean Digest No 1
While their work was rooted in the medieval world view, the late Renaissance thinkers who came to Rudolf ’s Prague de­veloped new methods of experimentation and observation which saw the first glim­merings of empiricism and the modern scientific method. Steeped in alchemy, they were the fathers of modern chemistry and medicine; believing in astrology, they created the new astronomy