siss-boom-bah or vital spark

The fireworks have not ceased altogether, to be sure, and the ever excellent antiquary, Bibliodyssey, features a scholarly, beautifully illustrated essay on the the development of gunpowder and pyrotechnics in the Western world through the lens of an extensive German manual, Büchsenmeister und Feuerwerksbuch (Master Gunsmith and Fireworks Book—to show how it was impossible to divorce awe from practicality), from the last years of the 1500s, and how an evening's entertainment became more sophisticated and acclaimed much sooner than the substance could be harnessed for more destructive applications.

The alchemist with the ability to make a spectacle was regarded by his audience, it seems, in the early Renaissance, not as an entertainer or magician but rather as an educator who was able to make laboratory-style demonstrations of astral phenomena—lightening, comets—the moon, the stars and the sun, rather than mastering some strange new wonder of chemistry. Conjuring up the power of Nature through through carefully prepared potions became at that time also a literal understanding for the figurative, but not so inaccurate, investigation into the animating principle of life, believing that reawakening a fire from basically organic sources was evidence for the the vital spark, not the body electric (as I am sure electricity was looked at philosophically, theologically before being put to mundane use), but rather one that coursed and burnt with the stuff of skyrockets and sparklers.