SNAKE WOMEN, DRAGONS AND OTHER ESOTERIC IMAGERY FROM THE ALCHEMICAL MANUSCRIPT ‘CLAVIS ARTIS’

The renowned composer Nino Rota collected books and manuscripts on the occult. Rota was a child prodigy who went on to compose ten operas, five ballets and many, many choral and chamber pieces. He is now best known for his multi-award-winning film scores for The Godfather, Romeo and Juliet and Fellini’s 8½ and

When Rota died in 1979, a copy of a very strange occult manuscript Clavis Artis was discovered among his personal effects. Rota had purchased this illustrated text from a bookseller in Frankfurt. After his death it was donated to the Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei where it can still be found today.

Rota’s copy of Clavis Artis is one of only three editions of the manuscript being currently held in Italy and Germany—only two of which are illustrated.

Clavis Artis is the title of an alchemy manuscript created in Germany in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, attributed to the Persian Zoroaster (Zarathustra). The work is in three volumes of medium format, two of which are illustrated here. The text is in German Gothic script cursive and is accompanied by numerous illustrations in watercolor depicting alchemical images. There are also some pen drawings depicting laboratory instruments.

There are 3 copies of the manuscript, of which only two are illustrated. The most well-known is the Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. Another copy is kept in Trieste at the Public Library Attilio Hortis. A different version, in a single volume and without illustrations, is located at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, of Monaco of Bavaria.

A copy of the manuscript was also present at the Duchess Anna Amalia Bibliothek, of Weimar, but was destroyed in the 2004 fire that hit the German library.

The attention of scholars to the manuscript is relatively recent because of the few existing copies and their low prevalence.

R. et AC 

Secret key for many covert operations 

In the animal kingdom, the kingdom of metals 

and minerals 

CORPUS. SOUL. SPIRITUS.

Zoroaster 

the rabbi and Jew 

Clavis Artis 

Part one 

The original was written by the author 

over a dragon skin 

World Year 

1996 

Following text was translated 

from Arabic into German 

in the Year of Christ 

1236 

from 

SVFR and AC

Zoroaster’s manuscript details various rites and practices relating to alchemy. It has been suggested the text may have been lifted from an earlier work, while its author “Zoroaster” may have been Abraham Eleazar—an occultist who wrote another alchemical text L’Uraltes Chymisches Werk in 1735. However both these manuscripts contain imagery to be found in an even earlier alchemical manuscripts by Nicolas Flamel—the man who allegedly found the Philosopher’s Stone.

Whatever the book’s provenance it is fair to say these illustrations from Clavis Artis are quite beautiful and strange.