June 16, 2022

ROME: The Alchemical Gate…

ROME: The Alchemical Gate…

The sole survivingexampleof five,the “alchemical gate”—also known as the “magical gate,” “hermetic gate,” or “gate of the heavens”—is located in the “Nicola Calipari” Gardens in Rome, on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.

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It owes its existence to Marquis Massimiliano Savelli Palombara (1614–1685). The Marquis was a passionate man of broad learning with a keen interest in the occult; so much so that in the mid-1600s he had his own laboratory built at his second residence, Villa Palombara, to further his research in the fields of alchemy and esotericism.

The villa soon became a prominent gathering place for prominent figures, scientists, and alchemists of the time, hosting, among many others, the mathematician and astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini and his close friend, Queen Christina Alexandra Maria of Sweden, with whom he shared the same interests.

Legend has it that, in 1680, on a stormy night, the Marquis hosted the physician Giuseppe Francesco Borri. It is said that the physician wandered through the villa’s garden in search of a herb capable of producing gold. They never expected that the next day, they would never find him again. Doctor Borri had vanished, and nothing remained of him. Upon closer inspection, however, they found traces of pure gold and various alchemical symbols and formulas near the famous door that he hadlikely managed to pass through…

The Marquis tried unsuccessfully to decipher these formulas, and because he believed they held the secret to the philosopher’s stone, he had the symbols engraved on the villa’s five doors and on the walls so that anyone might eventually unravel their mystery and decipher them.

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Today, this gate is all that remains of the villa, whose garden once occupied the site of the current “Nicola Calipari” Garden in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. On either side stand two guardians, added later in the late 1800s, depicting the Egyptian god Bes, who in the ancient Roman world was often associated with the cult of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of life, healing, fertility, and magic.

Among the engraved symbols, one can see the design on the door’s pediment, depicting two overlapping triangles; the Seal of David enclosed in a circle with Latin inscriptions; and a cross connected to an inner circle at the top and to an oculus at the bottom (a symbol of the sun and gold). Along the doorposts, however, is depicted the sequence of planets associated with their corresponding metals:

Saturn - lead

Jupiter - stagnant

Mars - iron

Venus - copper

Moon - silver

Mercury - mercury

To make the solution even more difficult, there is a series of inscriptions bearing mysterious messages. On the threshold, for example, the words“SI SEDES NON IS”are engraved…amotto that, when read from left to right, means “if you sit, you do not go,” and when read from right to left, “if you do not sit, you go”…