Cucurbits and covenants: descriptions of alchemical vessels as religious spaces in early modern England

Abstract Alchemists in early modern England frequently described their vessels as religious spaces, drawing analogies between Christian belief and the alchemical magnum opus . Such analogies offered clues as to what an alchemist should expect to experience during their experimentation, helping to guide their work if read correctly. During the great religious turbulence during the Reformation, however, these visual and symbolic descriptors became unstable, being transmuted and transfigured according to the religious currents of the time. Thus, whilst such descriptors provided coded instructions for how such vessels should function and what visual tokens an alchemist could expect to see occurring within them, such analogies between vessels and religious spaces simultaneously demonstrate the many nuanced ways in which alchemists reacted and responded to Reformed theology. Focusing on two sites in particular, Christ’s sepulchre and the tabernacle, this article draws on contemporary tracts, treatises and poems to argue that figurative and metaphorical descriptions drawing upon Christian sites can offer fresh insight into the relationship between alchemy and religion in this period.