The Ripley Scrolls (Imagery), The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616), & Observable Parallels to Genshin Impact Pt. 1
The Ripley Scrolls are a series of alchemical manuscripts, named after the 15th century alchemist George Ripley. It depicts the process of the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Cryptic, elaborate, and symbolic, the scroll has descriptions of the explanations for the transmutations of Base Metals ⟶ Gold ⟶ Elixir of Life.
How is this relevant to Genshin? Man IDK I’m spitting stuff here and just drawing correlations between “Before the Sun and Moon,” Rhinedottir and Albedo, and other canon Genshin texts. I think the Ripley Scrolls were an inspiration somehow, or at the very least, a guide we can use to contextualize the different events in Genshin. Just to preface, for these posts I'll be concentrating on the scrolls' imagery first. A separate post from this four-part long posts will be needed to fully break down the poems included in the Ripley scrolls.
I'll be dividing these discussions into different posts, as my analysis of Genshin's narrative through the Ripley Scrolls are divided into its four panels.
The First Panel
The Ripley Scroll begins with a large bearded figure clutching an egg-shaped vase. The figure, in cap/headdress and robe, is almost certainly that of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary founder of alchemy who is identified with the Egyptian god of healing Thoth.
Trismegistus means thrice-greatest; in Genshin Impact, Mona Megistus’ master Barbeloth is also called Trismegistus—recall that Barbeloth is a visionary, a great astromancer, and a member of the Hexenzirkle.
The Egg-Shaped Vase is actually called Hermetic Vase, known by its other names such as Vase of the Philosophers or the Philosopher’s Egg. The Egg Shape is significant, as eggs were symbolic of the “creation of life” in alchemy. Moreover, recall that Phanes (debatable whether Phanes = the Primordial One, or if Phanes was only confused for the Primordial One by Enkanomiya’s scribes, either way, not relevant to this post for now) was said to:
“…[have been] birthed from an egg, androgynous in nature. But for the world to be created, the egg’s shell had to be broken…Phanes…used the eggshell to separate the ‘universe’ and the ‘microcosm of the world’” (Before Sun and Moon).
Going back to the vase in the scrolls, inside the Philosopher’s Egg are a series of eight (8) roundels linked by chains to a larger, central roundel. Each small roundel has monk-like figures holding their respective hermetic vases that have homunculi inside. One way someone could reinterpret this in Genshin’s context is the idea of the eggshell being used to separate the “universe” and the “microcosm of the world.” There’s two ways I could see this connect to Genshin: The entirety “inside” the huge Philosopher’s Egg is symbolic of the Unified Civilization established after Phanes’ egg shells were used to create a microcosm, a false sky and a boundary for Teyvat. The smaller philosopher eggs with homunculi inside are symbolic of the cyclical civilizations of Teyvat.
The Hermetic Vase rests upon a furnace, which rests upon a tree (Tree-Imagery and Irminsul connections, no? 👀). The rest of the illustration continues on into Panel 2, which has a lot of interesting imagery. Panel 2 analysis will be linked below!
Click for Part 2 >>
Click for Barbeloth Addition >>
