Ulysses (Greek Odysseus) is the hero of Homer's Odyssey, celebrated for his metis — cunning intelligence — his endurance through twenty years of wandering and trials after the Trojan War, and his ultimate homecoming to Ithaca. Unlike Achilles, the hero of strength, or Ajax, the hero of stubborn endurance, Odysseus combines practical resourcefulness with strategic wisdom, making him, in the Renaissance reading, the archetype of the complete man.

In the Atalanta Fugiens, Ulysses appears not as the subject of any individual emblem but as one of the three master-archetypes of the alchemist named in the discourse of Emblem XLIV, alongside Hercules and Jason. Maier writes that 'the masters of art are Hercules, Ulysses, Jason, Theseus, or Pirithous' and that 'the troubles and dangers which they suffered are innumerable, and resemble the labors of Hercules, the wanderings of Ulysses, the dangers which Jason endured, the enterprises of Theseus, and the stay in the underworld of Pirithous' (De Jong, pp. 274-275). The alchemist's art is thus equated with the most demanding of heroic journeys.

Maier's identification with Ulysses became intensely personal. His final published work, the posthumous Ulysses (1624, full title: Tractatus Posthumus, sive Ulysses; hoc est: Sapientia seu Intelligentia), frames the hero's odyssey as an allegory for Maier's own life as a wandering physician-alchemist who traveled from Kiel to Padua, Prague, London, Frankfurt, and Magdeburg, enduring shipwrecks both literal and metaphorical, before dying far from home. Forshaw identifies this self-identification as significant: Maier saw his own suffering as participating in the same pattern as the mythological heroes whose stories encode the alchemical art.

The Odyssean themes resonate throughout the AF even where Ulysses is not named. Emblem XLII, with its motto 'May Nature, Reason, Exercise, and Literature be the guide, staff, spectacles, and lamp for him who participates in chemistry,' develops the metaphor of the alchemist as traveler on a dark, slippery, dangerous road — needing a competent guide, a solid staff, good eyesight, and a burning torch. This is the Odyssean traveler writ chemical: the journey requires intelligence, experience, theoretical knowledge, and the willingness to learn from error.

Alchemically, Ulysses represents the practitioner rather than the substance — he is the figure for the alchemist himself, as distinct from the figures who represent the materials of the Work. Where Osiris is the substance and Typhon is the reagent, Ulysses is the operator who must navigate between them. His cunning corresponds to the adept's practical wisdom; his suffering corresponds to the years of failed experiments and ruined finances; his homecoming corresponds to the successful completion of the Work.

The emphasis on wisdom and perseverance over brute strength marks Ulysses as the complement to Hercules. Where Hercules overpowers obstacles, Ulysses outthinks them. The alchemist needs both qualities — the heroic determination to continue when the Work appears hopeless, and the intellectual suppleness to change strategy when direct force fails.

For a general reader, Ulysses represents the human dimension of alchemy — the reminder that behind every emblem and every allegory stands a real person attempting an extraordinarily difficult task. Maier's identification with Ulysses suggests that he understood his own life as an alchemical odyssey: a journey through suffering toward a golden homecoming that he may never have reached.

Meanings Across Registers

De Jong shows that alchemical terms operate simultaneously across material, medical, spiritual, and cosmological dimensions.

Alchemical

The cunning navigator of Maier's frontispiece: cipher for the wily artist whose homeward voyage—through Circean transformations and Sirenic temptations—models the long return-journey of the opus.

Medical

The patient who endures protracted convalescence with cunning rather than force; the long regimen whose success depends on intelligent improvisation against shifting symptoms.

Spiritual

The polytropos soul, much-turning and adaptive; the seeker whose homecoming requires recognizing transformations of self and other, and refusing premature arrivals.

Cosmological

The wandering planet (planos) personified: the celestial body whose long, looped motions through the zodiac chart a journey home that can be read as both literal and allegorical.