CALA II.2 The Book of Pictures – Mushaf as-suwar by Zosimos of Panopolis

Edited and introduced by Theodor Abt
English translation by Salwa Fuad and Theodor Abt

747 pages, with bibliography and index, 72 illustrations, ISBN 978-3-9522608-7-6, LivingHumanHeritage

The translation presented here of the Mushaf as-suwar (The Book of Pictures) into English is its first translation into a European language. It is the result of careful, repeated, distillation work over a period of twenty years, encouraged by Dr. M.-L. von Franz.

The text is a dialogue between the teacher Zosimos and his beloved student Theosebeia, explaining to her the symbolic meaning of the alchemical work.

The unique contribution of this text is its 42 pictures, mostly colored, that Zosimos has drawn for Theosebeia. These pictures are, as is demonstrated in the introduction written by Theodor Abt, the earliest alchemical pictures known, and they are the source of the picture series given in the Rosarium and of the Mutus Liber.

The whole dialogue is the earliest known psychological dialogue concerning transference and counter-transference.

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Theodor Abt (1947), born in Zurich, Switzerland; Ph.D. from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich 1977, 1973-79 project leader of overall regional development concepts for two Swiss mountain regions. Since 1975 Jungian Analyst in private practice. 1983-88 member of the board of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich. Since 1990 Professor for Rural Sociology at the ETH. Since 1995, member of the board of the Research and Training Centre for Depthpsychology according to C.G. Jung and M.-L. von Franz, Zurich. Since 1988, President of the Society of the Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt. His research focuses on the relationship of the outer world with the needs of the inner unconscious world. Together wird Wilferd Madelung he is editor of the Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum (CALA) series. Of his publications in German is available in English: Progress without Loss of Soul, 1990 and Dark Clouds over Europe, 2014.