PUBLISHING IN LATE 2026
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“The main thing is that the Soul may be re-born in the flesh, and while having experience of Matter, to master it.” — Julius Kohn
Perhaps the best-known alchemical treatise in the world, British Library manuscript Harley MS. 3469, titled Splendor Solis by Solomon Trismosin, has been studied for four centuries—translated, reproduced, theorized over. Many have admired its images and yet remain outside of its entrance debating what it could mean.
Splendor Solis is a book that invites us not just to read it, but to inhabit it. Beyond illuminating the accompanying text, the images are designed to reform the perception of those who attend to them closely.
Trismosin, whoever he was, created something more meaningful than a sequence of stunning painted images. He created a system of meditative tools and study materials to produce a change of perception in his students.
James Investigates is pleased to announce our forthcoming commentary on Splendor Solis, which offers fellow miners practical tools to decode the alchemical symbols and ciphers in this and many other manuscripts, thereby beginning or deepening their own perception.
We are also excited to share a new discovery revealing the true structure of the 22 plates, which resolves the “mistaken” order of binding and significantly expands the inquiry.
Where academic study has preserved and catalogued this manuscript, this edition explores its practical teaching and offers an approachable system.
Join the waitlist for SPLENDOR SOLIS: THE ART OF SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY
ABOUT THE BOOK
This oversize hardbound volume reproducing the highest resolution scans from the British Library features:
- GORDON JAMES: With forty years of devoted experience and leveraging the full apparatus of the Western Mystery Tradition, James’ commentary offers unusual depth and practical application. His corrected essays and four other preparatory essays come to print for the first time.
- JULIUS KOHN: The first English translation by Kohn served occult students for more than a century for good reason. We have retained the complete 1920 text, explanatory notes, and supplemental material.
- J. KUNS: Editor of James Investigates supplies commentary on the frame images and chariot scenes, clarifications of Kohn and James, an essay on the Opus Minor, and the key that unlocks the vessels of the Fourth Treatise.
THE CHAPTERS
PEPARATION: Steps Toward The Stone — Stages in the Art — Gematria — Color — The Opus Minor.
PLATE I: The two men that are one man — The arms of the art are not for a battle — The three modes of consciousness — The structural pattern within the common arrangement.
PLATE II: The philosopher’s finger — The gross work and the physical vessel — What the outer frame encodes about the three principles across the seven metals.
PLATE III: The two nerve currents and the method of their combination — The geometry of the two fountains — The intellect and the deductive function.
PLATE IV: The Emerald Tablet and the seven parables — Achilles, Alexander, and Diogenes triptych explained — Why there are no mistakes in the manuscript or in life.
PLATE V: Meditation as mining — The Esther allegory — ESTHES, HASVEROS, and the hidden stone.
PLATE VI: The Tree of Life — The White-headed Raven, the Door of the Art, and the subconscious as the field of the Work — The philosophers’ ladder.
PLATE VII: The Old King and New King — The three crowns and their metals decoded — On violence — The nymphs and satyrs of the intaglios.
PLATE VIII: The Holy Guardian Angel, the 25th Path, and the One Ego of all humanity — The pure gold of the Absolute — Alchemical fraud.
PLATE IX: The Rebis and the operative union of Self- and Subconsciousness — The hidden Conjunctio.
PLATE X: The philosophic death, the True Ego, the body reborn — Poseidon and Galatea — Who is in charge here?
PLATE XI: Why Mercury and Jupiter? — The reproductive force rechanneled — The cyclical nature of Nigredo.
PLATE XII: Saturn’s caduceus — The corrected order of the vessels — The Vault of C.R.C., Hodos Camelionis, and the harmonized regimes.
PLATE XIII: Jupiter’s chariot over Saturn’s regime — Three birds enacting the three stages of the Art — The pancha kleshas as a working method — Righteousness and race-consciousness.
PLATE XIV: Making the fixed volatile — The Iron Key and the Samson allegory — The wheel signs — Geburah’s three names.
PLATE XV: The Sun and the three-headed dragon — Anahata at the center — The number 666 as coincidentia oppositorum.
PLATE XVI: The pineal gland and the Amber Bell — The Lunar Queen on the solar face — The four 1582’s — Zion, seat of the hidden stone.
PLATE XVII: The peacock and the tethered Cupid — The cauda pavonis — The danger of siddhis — The yoke and the goad.
PLATE XVIII: The King standing upon the crescent — Twenty-one marks and eight pearls at the cardinal cross — ORSAN and the Bird of Hermes — The key that turns itself.
PLATE XIX: The surrender from beyond will — The three registers of the Fifth Treatise — LUCAS and the premature Rubedo — The 49 Gates and the 50th.
PLATE XX: The Jackdaw and the white cat — The ten Sephiroth as the egoistic structure surrendered — The swastikas, the stove-womb, and the 72 roundels.
PLATE XXI: Squaring the Circle — The reproductive force rebuilding the vehicle — The Egyptian water glyph and the Salt of the sages.
PLATE XXII: The New Jerusalem and the Cube of Space — The psycho-physiological transmutation of consciousness — The manuscript that continues.
CONCLUSION: On the Government of the Fires — Trismosin’s Alchemical Wanderings — A Summary of His Alchemical Process Called “The Red Lion”
