The Divine Ark: Jane Lead’s Vision of the Second Noah’s Ark

[Dover]

Those familiar with esoteric symbolism will be familiar with the image of Noah's Ark. I don't know the origins of its use historically in esoteric language, or whether the following interpretation of that symbol by a woman who was both visionary and alchemist (yes!) in the 17th Century was something new and unique to her that then became part of the lineage of esoteric language. At any rate I find both the symbolic subject matter and the gender/occupation of its interpreter pretty fascinating.


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This article will examine how the seventeenth-century visionary, Jane Lead, imagined and represented purification, redemption and salvation in her visions of Noah’s Ark using alchemical imagery as a way of describing the processes leading to the illumination of the soul. It is important to remember, however, that it is almost impossible to separate her use of alchemical symbolism from the other occult sciences, such as magic and numerology. Indeed, to try to do so would obscure the complicated nature of Lead’s writing. As we shall discover, she strategically placed words to offer multi-meanings, drawing on a rich tapestry of tradition involving an idiomatic use of symbols and figurative language from a particular strand of spiritual alchemical thought...>

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeVI/divineark.htm