#Secretum Secretorum

[upennmanuscripts]

Coffee With A Codex is an informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different manuscript and the expertise of one of our curators. If you miss an event, no fear! CWAC is recorded and posted to our YouTube channel. Check it out and see what you've been missing!

Here's a clip from the CWAC with four copies of Secretum secretorum, in Arabic and Latin. Secretum secretorum is a popular treatise presented as a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great on statecraft, astronomy, astrology, magic, and medicine. Two of our copies are in Arabic, dating from the 12th and 14th century, and the other two are 15th century copies from Germany. The one in the clip is LJS 459.

🔗 watch the full 30-minute video: https://bit.ly/3SRafbc

🔗 find out more about CWAC: https://bit.ly/3zsqip2

[generaldavila]

EL SECRETUM SECRETORUM DE LA POLÍTICA. Rafael Dávila Álvarez. General de División (R.)

La Esfinge. Palacio de Liria (Madrid) La presidenta de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid nos dice que sus conversaciones de wasap con Sánchez (el de La Moncloa) han desaparecido. Miedo produce, aunque no es descabellado pensar que el control de las comunicaciones no lo tenemos asegurado. Hay un runrún por ciertos sectores que te lleva a desconfiar. Nada nuevo. Sí peligroso. La mentira, como…

[nyxshadowhawk]

I asked cryptotheism for some research tips and they pointed me to you. Know any good late medieval, especially 15c middle english texts on magic?

I've got this one: https://search.library.yale.edu/archives/11743426 Takamiya MS 33. It's a Middle English edition of the Secretum Secretorum and other related works, dated to ca.1475-1499.

George Ripley was also a fifteenth-century alchemist who wrote in Middle English. The Ripley Scrolls are all from the sixteenth century and later, but written in Middle English.

That's what I've got off the top of my head. There's not a lot of occult stuff written in Middle English over Latin, at least not that I know of. This may be a little too obvious (and not English), but definitely look through Agrippa if you haven't already. His work synthesized all the occult material of the previous centuries into a unified system.

[talonabraxas]

Hermes Trimegistus. The Seven Steps. Secretum Secretorum. 1140. Spiritus Hermeticum, Hermes Trimegistus. Cave of the Ancients. https://www.rosicrucian.org/rosicrucian-digest-hermetism?fbclid=IwAR2irbuIRm6NyG1yc1-HqR1IA0Uhv2BCnZ9xq2Gc7FBqabZdJufikw3l6JA

[simarcana]

hiiiiii!!!

🔮 Crystal Ball, 🎃 Pumpkin and 👻 Ghost for two of your favs please!

Since The Conundrum is on a indefinite hiatus, im gonna talk about my two complete stories (secretum secretorum + smoke&mirrors) and their continuation: aracana mundi! formerly "all for the band" 🤡 🔮 Crystal Ball: How far into the future of your story can you see? Do you plan everything in advance or take things step by step?

I knew what I was doing with the first two stories. Usually, I know how the story begins and how it will end, but not quite how. And more than once the ending arrived in the most unsuspecting ways! With Arcana Mundi… I have no idea what I'm doing cause I never wrote a story with so many characters that aren't mine (Aodh and Noah) but I have a lot of interesting scenes in the oven!

🎃 Pumpkin: What character continues to light up your mind and inspire you to write more?

Contrary to what one might think, Ebe is my main muse! They were the main inspiration behind two of my main stories and often act the MacGuffin of all the stories I write or imagine to pass the time. Ebe is a complex and intriguing characters, perfect for an equally intriguing storytelling. He makes the character around him evolve and test or even exceed their limits, pulling the strings of the story to its best.

👻 Ghost: Do you have a character or a scene that continues to haunt you? Something or someone you wish you had done differently or just can’t stop thinking about?

FOR NOW nothing haunts me, but it's early to consider myself safe from my own damage. Still, I'm worried about how I'll handle the romance in the new story cause it's less fated than the one between Ebe and Morgyn, and I fear it will be bland comparing to theirs.

[starburstgalexies]

Albedo's banner title: Secretum Secretorum

Me without fail each time: Scrotum Scrotorum

[zafyrus-owo]

Okay but this is just plain not true. Knights looked very little like powerlifters, and did not have that much bulk at all. The ideal knight had a slim waist with strong shoulders, though strong shoulders are of course relative to their slimmer frame. A large part of this was what a knight actually needed to train for, and how they did it. A powerlifter lifts a heavy weight a few times with intention to grow their muscle size and explosive strength, while a knight has to swing the relatively low weight of a sword for sometimes hours at a time and thus developed their endurance a lot. Armour, while incredibly heavy, rests on a lot of different places on the body. It is held at the waist by a tight belt, it hangs on the shoulders, and is tied to the arms and legs. However, with this wide distribution of weight, it too functions more as endurance exercise, similarly to how modern soldiers often have to carry heavy backpacks and bulletproof plate carriers.

On top of this, the beauty ideals of the time adapted to this, and so texts like the 10th century Secretum Secretorum mention ideals like a broad chest, well built shoulders and long legs. That's not to say knights were never fat, as there are several English monarchs noted for their bulk as well as their fearsomeness, including Henry VIII, who was one of the main inspirations for the character of Robert Baratheon in GoT as well as several historic figures who are though to have gigantism.

However, based on Greek statues and Roman murals, there certainly men with a bodybuilder-type physique like OP mentions, it's just that knights had very different types of bodies due to their different activities.

(most info in here was shamelessly taken from this video)

I'm not usually a nitpicker about historical accuracy - and I know that my own comic is going to make Ancient Rome Nerds shriek about all the "fuck it, looks right enough" desicions I'm not even consciously aware that I've been making - but one thing I want to point out is that gladiators did not fucking have visible sixpacks.

Gladiators were trained for strength, endurance, battle fitness and stamina. Functional peak performance. The kind of a build you've got when your life literally depends on it. And because ancient Romans were exactly as horny and indulgent as imperial powers allowed themselves to be before the christian pretense of modesty was invented, they fought half-naked. And if you're going to have no armour over your skin, you've got to have some protective layer between skin and muscle. Roman gladiators were muscled, bulky and they were fucking

thick

and people were

stupid horny

about that. Everybody stop depicting them as skinned-squirrel-looking dehydrated bodybuilders, they were a work line not show line breed of built. This is a built-like-a-brick-wall stack body build developed by the people who discovered an indestructible type of concrete.

[jamesgraybooksellerworld]

One of the most widely read texts of the High Middle Ages. The Secretum Secretorum:

659J. Aristotle (pseudo) Tr  Johannes Lorchner.  Rāzī, Mu��ammad ibn Zakarīyā Abū Bakr al-; (864?-925?). Das aller edlest und bewertest Regiment der gesundtheyt, Auch von allen verßorgen Künsten un[d] Königklichen Regimenten Aristotelis. Das er dem Großmechtigen König Alexandro zůgeschrieben hatt. Auß Arabischer Sprach durch Meister Philipsen, dem Bischoff Vonn Valentia, der Stadt Jerapolis, In…

[toughtzzinmyhed]

Hermes Trimegistus. The Seven Steps. Secretum Secretorum. 1140.

[sora-genshin]

🥰🌥❄⛄

[albrdo]

Albedo coming home be like:

Mail: Here's your freemogems.

Me: oh thank you.

Noelle: I'm home... again. C1 isn't that bad... right?

Me: THAT SCARED THE LIVING HECK OUT OF ME I THOUGHT YOU WERE ALBEDO-

Noelle: Well... I need DEF too... so...

Me: Ah well, doesn't harm anyone to pull again. Besides, it's not going to be Albe-

Albedo: DID SOMEBODY SAY ALBEDO?!

ᴬˡᵇᵉᵈᵒ ʷᵃˢ ᵐʸ ᶠⁱʳˢᵗ ⁵*, ˢᵒ ⁿᵃᵗᵘʳᵃˡˡʸ, ᴵ ʳᵉᵖˡᵃᶜᵉᵈ ᵐʸ ᵖʳᵉᵛⁱᵒᵘˢ ᵐᵃⁱⁿ, ˣⁱⁿᵍqⁱᵘ, ʷʰᵒ ʰᵃᵈ ᶜᵃʳʳⁱᵉᵈ ᵐᵉ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵗʰᵉ ᵛᵉʳʸ ᵇᵉᵍⁱⁿⁿⁱⁿᵍ. ᵈʷ ʰᵉ'ˢ ˢᵗⁱˡˡ ᵐʸ ˢᵘᵇ <3

[upennmanuscripts]

Ms. Codex 864 -  [Extract from Secretum secretorum]

This manuscript is a portion of a work purporting to be a letter of advice from the philosopher Aristotle to Alexander the Great (who was his student). It was written in Germany in the second half of the 15th century, in Latin. 

Do you want to know more? Click here. Or click here to see the facsimile!

[simarcana]

I have the dark urge to make a mega post about secretum secretorum+smoke&mirrors cause they are my two compete stories BEFORE arcana mundi and God why i wish English was my first language

[handwritingpractice-no-ririchiyo]

although my references seem rather disorderly,

[talonabraxas]

Hermes Trimegistus. The Seven Steps/Cave of the Ancients. Secretum Secretorum. 1140.

[genshin-impact-updates]

Teyvat Anecdotes - Albedo: "Today's Weather Is Perfect for Painting. Wait, Is That..."

Hello Travelers~

Today, I want to tell you a tale that occurred in Dragonspine...

The Event Wish "Secretum Secretorum" will be available after the Version 2.3 update. The event-exclusive 5-star character "Kreideprinz" Albedo (Geo) will receive a huge drop-rate boost! Don't miss out~