Ghost dances and Alchemy!

In 1985 right after quitting The Sisters of Mercy, Gary Marx joined forces with Anne-Marie from Skeletal Family and formed, short lived Ghost Dance as every decent old goth on the planet knows...
Their third release was "The Grip of Love" on Karbon Records 31 October 1986 (hey that's Halloween and... my B-day!)
The 12" version of this release was adorned with  this sleeve:

The illustration used on it depicts an hermaphrodite and was  the cover of a famous 14th century publication, now entitled Aurora Consurgens. 

Aurora Consurgens is an illuminated manuscript of the 15th century which can now be found in the Zürich Zentralbibliothek.

The Aurora Consurgens is one of the earliest emblematic alchemical manuscripts. It is dated to the early 1400's. It has become well known for its thirty-eight miniatures in watercolour, a strange series of engaging allegorical images all representations of alchemical elements depicted in human or animal form, which the contemporary mind sees as surrealistic and enigmatic. In fact it was a sort of code addressed to mystics e.g. mercury is depicted as a serpent; gold as the sun, silver as the moon etc. 

The work became known towards the end of the 20th century through the work of a Jungian psychologist, Marie-Louise von Franz, who issued an edition of it which was translated into English as Aurora Consurgens : a document attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the problem of opposites in alchemy (now attributed to a writer called the "Pseudo-Aquinas"  if you care...)

Except for "our" Ghost Dance, brazilian symphonic power metal act ANGRA released in 2006 a cd entitled Aurora Consurgens...

That's all for now my little alchemists!

Stay tuned for more Goth-an-Roll!