The Ars Magna, or Great Art, is the combinatorial philosophical system devised by the Catalan polymath Ramon Llull (c. 1232-1316). Llull conceived of an art of finding truth through the systematic combination of fundamental concepts, represented by letters and arranged on revolving concentric discs. By rotating the discs and reading off the combinations, the practitioner could generate all possible propositions about a given subject, theoretically discovering truths that no amount of ordinary reasoning could reach. The Ars Magna was conceived as a universal method applicable to all branches of knowledge, from theology and philosophy to medicine and natural science.

The historical Llull was not an alchemist, and his authentic works contain no alchemical content. However, a vast body of pseudo-Lullian alchemical writing emerged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, attributed to Llull but composed by anonymous alchemical authors who adopted his combinatorial framework for chemical purposes. These pseudo-Lullian texts adapted the Ars Magna's logic of systematic combination to the alchemical understanding of dissolution and coagulation as reciprocal operations. Just as Llull's revolving discs generated new combinations from fixed elements, the pseudo-Lullian alchemist combined and recombined the principles of matter through successive operations of solve et coagula. The Pseudo-Lullian tradition became one of the major currents in late medieval and Renaissance alchemy, producing texts such as the Testamentum, the Codicillus, and the Theorica that circulated widely under Llull's name.

De Jong identifies a thematic parallel between Emblem V of the Atalanta Fugiens and the Lullian teaching on dissolution and coagulation as reciprocal operations. The connection is mediated through the Harmonica Chemica, a text attributed to the pseudo-Lullian tradition, which articulates the principle that one nature coagulates only through the dissolution of another. This principle is dramatized in Emblem V through the image of the woman nursing the toad: as the woman (the liquid, volatile principle) dissolves and dies, the toad (the dry, fixed principle) coagulates and grows. The two transformations are not merely simultaneous but causally connected: the dissolution of one is the necessary condition for the coagulation of the other.

Maier's engagement with the pseudo-Lullian tradition extends beyond this single emblem. Forshaw notes that Maier discusses Boreas in Emblem I through the Pseudo-Lullian lens, where argent vive (quicksilver) is identified as the prima materia from which God creates everything. The broader framework of the Ars Magna, with its ambition to systematize all knowledge through combinatorial logic, resonates with Maier's own systematic approach to the emblem sequence, which organizes fifty distinct allegorical scenes into a single coherent curriculum.

De Jong demonstrates that Maier accessed the pseudo-Lullian tradition primarily through the compilations printed in the Theatrum Chemicum and the Artis Auriferae, the great alchemical collective works that served as his working library. This mediated access is characteristic of Maier's method: he rarely works from a single source but synthesizes material from multiple authorities, using the compilations as his gateway to the broader tradition.

For the modern reader, the Ars Magna illustrates the intellectual ambition that characterized Renaissance alchemy at its best. The pseudo-Lullian tradition attempted to bring the rigor of systematic logic to the apparently chaotic world of alchemical symbolism, and Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, with its carefully structured sequence of fifty emblems, participates in this same ambition to create a comprehensive and systematic art.