ALCHEMY -
DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS IN ITS PURSUIT
“Non ti fidiare al alchemista povero, o medico ammalato."
by PARABOLANUS
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FROM the very
cradle of the greatest civilizations of Antiquity, the precious
metals, Gold and Silver, have formed the basis of commercial
transactions, facilitated their expansion, and contributed
to the mutual intercourse and welfare of mankind. Commerce
made easy leads to mutual advancement, civilization, and the
spread of knowledge.
Gold and Silver must necessarily, at first, have been
obtained from the localities where Nature had deposited
them. When their great convenience had once established
them in general use as the means of obtaining this world's
goods — which
are considered to be not only the necessaries of life, but
also the product of the toil, industry and ingenuity of some
classes of men, or of the luxuries and special fruits of
one richly endowed soil and climate to be transported to
other countries not so favoured — it is evident
that the desire of men to possess as much as possible
of the precious metals would stimulate some more ambitious
and cleverer than their fellows to try to imitate the
processes of Nature. From what we now know to be the
extreme difficulty of it, we might reasonably suppose
that no one, by the exercise of a mere physical intellect,
would be able to succeed in doing so. Gold is mentioned
at the earliest period of history, but before the time
of Hermes Trismegistus there is no early record of anyone
having in this way succeeded in Chrusopoieia. Whether
there are not slight evidences of its having been so
performed, under peculiar circumstances, in later times,
we shall allude to further on. We may take it as presumptive
evidence that it was not so done, because we may be sure
that if it had been many would have done it, and Gold,
which was then, at least, the scarcest of all metals,
would have become so plentiful that the market would
have been over supplied, and it would have lost its value
and use as a convenient mode of exchange. The history
of the primitive world gives not the slightest indication
that this ever took place. Croesus is related to have
obtained his immense wealth from the gold found in the
sands of the [Page 6] river
Pactolus in Lybia.
It would seem he must have taken it all, for Strabo, the
Geographer, says none was found there in his time.
The scientific
world and the generality of (so-called) educated men,
notwithstanding the evidence of all Antiquity, and of,
comparatively, more modern witnesses, such as Picus Mirandula,
Helvetius, Athanasius Kircher, and others, still affect
to doubt whether it ever was done. We have not the slightest
wish to make any attempt to convince those who are guided
by prejudice and feeling, or the shibboleth of a party,
instead of the right use of the logical faculty in deliberately
and carefully sifting the whole of the evidence for or
against on any given subject. The scientific world is
still swayed by loose reasoning and exploded prejudices.
It is as well that such men should not believe it. We
write not for them. The mark of the true Magus is, by
the sternest self-discipline, to have rooted out all
prejudices and to have left the mind perfectly free to
receive as truth what the preponderance of evidence,
as judged by the logical faculty, declares to be such,
and utterly to disregard the fashion of the times on
any subject. These only will give heed to what we say. "Unless ye become
as little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven " may
be understood to apply to the removing of prejudices
and educational errors.
We would not have presumed to offer our
own ideas on the Golden Fleece were it not that, firstly,
we have been strongly urged to do so, and, secondly, because
at the present moment the revival of Occultism has brought
in its train, as it always has done, a strongly awakened
attention to that one branch of it called Alchemy. That many
may not labour in vain at it, we would put before them a
few considerations drawn, not from the practice exactly,
but from the long contemplation of the lives and calamities
of those who have, or, at least, are supposed to have performed
this Magnum Opus.
As a basis of what we would wish to submit to them is
the very able and useful book recently published, " Lives
of Alchemistical philosophers," by Edward Arthur
Waite. In the Introductory Essay to his book, followed
by the Theory and Practice of the Magnum Opus, Mr. Waite,
in eloquent phraseology, examines and comments on some
of the latest modern writers on the subject, and with
great perspicacity and justice weighs in the balances
their probable errors, and declares his own firm belief
in opposition to some of these modern Alchemical writers,
that it was real material gold which the old Alchemists
sought, and not solely the psychical regeneration and
perfection of Man.
Mr. Waite also shows the probable use of the "Intuitive
Faculty" in those who have attained to the "Magnum
Opus". Herein we most cordially agree with him.
We have, at the beginning of this Paper, alluded to the
extreme improbability of anyone reaching this greatly
desired goal by the exercise of the mere physical intellectual
powers, however elevated
[Page 7] they might be above
those of the ordinary run of mortals. We must look elsewhere
for a confirmation of Mr. Waite's reasoning as to what was
revealed by the intuitive faculties.
Now, in ancient India there existed, of the glorious
Aryan race, "Munis", or inspired men, i.e.,
intuitive. To them we are indebted for the sublime Sciences
of Algebra, Astronomy, etc., and if to them we owe so
much in this direction, we may safely presume that these
were the men, if any, to penetrate intuitively all the
secrets of Nature, and behold, by Divine Inspiration,
how gold had been formed in the earth. As the Algebra
they in this way invented has come down to us, or, more
probably, some portion only of it, so we may reasonably
conclude did some remnants of their knowledge of transmutation
of metals. There are treatises in Sanscrit upon it. What
exactly was the connexion between ancient India and Egypt,
history does not tell us. That the Misraimites, or Mezzoranians,
or Egyptians were skilled in the esoteric sciences is
beyond doubt. Hermes Trismegistus was a reality. Possibly
both were colonies from the ancient Atlantis, and had
both brought with them the Science of Magic. Whatever
the source, both Aryans and Mezzoranians had this Science,
and by it Hermes Trismegistus made laws for and governed
Egypt, giving it dynasties lasting through ages and ages.
In Ragon's "Maçonnerie Occulte" he quotes
from the " Oedipus Aegyptiacus " of
the learned Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher (t. ii., p. 2,
De Alchym., c. 1), expresses himself thus as to Hermes :-
" It is so certain that these first men possessed the
art of making gold, whether by extracting it from all sorts
of matters, or by transmuting the metals, that he who doubted
it, or would fain deny it, would show himself perfectly ignorant
of history. The priests, the kings, and the heads of families
were alone instructed in it. This art was always kept a great
secret, and those who were possessors of it always maintained
a profound silence, for fear that the laboratories and the
sanctuary the most concealed of Nature, being discovered
to an ignorant people, they would turn this knowledge to
the injury of the Republic. The ingenious and prudent Hermes,
foreseeing this danger which threatened the State, had then
reason for concealing this art of making gold under the same
veils and under the same hieroglyphic obscurities, of which
he availed himself to conceal from the profane people that
part of philosophy which concerned God, angels, and the universe."
Ragon goes on to say: "It required the evidence and
the force of truth to draw such an avowal from this most
learned father, who, upon many occasions, has disputed the
existence of the philosopher's stone.” One of these
occasions is given in "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique,
par M. l’Abbé Langlet du Fresnoy" (Tom.
ii. p. 51). A young man, an unsuccessful seeker of the philosopher's
stone, was visited by a perfect stranger, [Page
8] who showed him a process for making it, did
it with him, and with the powder so made the young man did
convert a large quantity of mercury
into pure gold. At the stranger's dictation he wrote down
the recipe. Yet he never could do it again, nor find the
stranger. Kircher, in accordance with the practice of his
church, intimated that the strange visitor was the devil.
Ragon proceeds to say that the gold then found in all the
mines of the world would not have sufficed for the expense
of raising the extraordinary monuments, the sumptuous palaces,
the immense works which covered the soil of Egypt, but infers
that it must have come from the sacred laboratories.
There is an abundance of testimony from other sources, that
the Hierarchy or Priest-kings of Ancient Egypt were adepts
in the transmutatory art, and, for some centuries, ruled
with great justice and equity the rest of the nation by means
of the great advantage which this and the discipline of Initiation
gave them. It was necessary, therefore, to enshrine this
knowledge in the most profound secrecy. Hence the invention
of Hieroglyphics and a Symbolism, in which the process is
involved in the most intricate, fantastic, and perplexing
images, the meaning of which
none but the Initiates were able to penetrate. There is reason
to believe that the Isiac Table is a revelation to Initiates
of the whole process. This Initiation was an ordeal that
none but those highly gifted by Nature, such as Moses, Pythagoras,
Plato, Apollonius Tyanaeus, and some few others could
undergo and live. When they had passed it, they had attained
to such a mastery of themselves as not to be likely to make
an ill use of this knowledge, even if the penalty of death
had not awaited those who divulged the Mysteries of Initiation. [ See
Christian's " Histoire de la Magie à travers
les âges", etc., pages 106 to 143. Also "Initiations
aux mystères d'lsis dans la pyramide de Memphis" and
I”Initiation aux Mystères de Mithra aux Sciences
Magiques des Chaldéens d'Assyrie, Par Henri Delaage"
]
It is, more especially, to this withholding the secrets of
Chrusopoieia from all but those who had achieved the mastery
of themselves to which we would now refer. Mr. Waite, as
we mentioned above, has shown the different views held by
some modern writers, one part maintaining that all the symbolic
and mystic allusions of the Alchemists had reference to the
human body and soul — to Man — and denying that
it included the literal transmutation of the inferior metals
into gold. What we have just now given as to the Ancient
Initiations, and the books to which we have referred, tend
to show that the two things were combined in one; that unless
the aspirant had passed the ordeal, guaranteeing his complete
subjugation of the lower passions, the knowledge of Chrusopoieia
was for ever forbidden to him. [Page 9]
The Hermetic Philosophers understood well the duplex symbolism
of their Art, i.e., both its physical and its psychical meaning,
e.g., in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a large scroll
done by Sir George Ripley, containing Hermetic Symbolism.
At one end is the Fool, or merely natural man, drawn exactly
according to the Zero, or first Symbol of the Taro. At the
other end is the portraiture of the well-balanced and highly-developed
head of the Adept. The Zero may mean either the unregenerate
man, or the Prima Materia, the Chaos, of the Alchemists.
The space between the Fool and the Adept contains various
Symbols applicable either to the progressive stages in finding
the philosopher's stone, or to the process of Regeneration
of Man.
We know there are individuals in various parts of this country
who are secretly or openly working at the Hermetic Art. We
do not tell them it is a hopeless task, for undoubtedly history
tends to show it has been done even by those who have not
become regenerate by a regular process of Initiation, but
the same history shows that the percentage of those who have
so succeeded is very small, and of this small number there
is a fatal record of the direst calamities and miseries coming
upon some of them.
Mr. Waite gives a list of more than fifty real or supposed
Adepts from Geber to Cagliostro. To go through all these
would far exceed the limits permitted to us, and we can only
take a few of the most prominent. The Monks, such as Roger
Bacon, Basil Valentine, Sir George Ripley and others we may
pass over as coming under the category of those who had subdued
their passions by an ascetic life, even if they had not undergone
an actual Initiation, which seems to be more than probable.
Although these could undoubtedly perform the Magnum Opus,
the evidence is that
they made no use of it for their own mere animal and worldly
enjoyment, which of itself shows the attainment of the greatest
self-control.
Nicolas Flamel is one of the first prominent
laymen whom modern history asserts to have been a true Adept,
but that he did not attain to it till late in life. So many
years of patient perseverance and the necessary self-denial,
the all-absorbing mental concentration, all going on to an
advanced period of life, must have been a discipline acting
on the same lines as progressive Initiation and, perhaps,
equivalent to it in subduing the lower passions. No self-indulgence
is recorded of him, but he used his wealth to build churches,
alms-houses and hospitals, succoured the needy and did every
good work. Eliphas Levi [“Dogme et Rituel
de la Haute Magie", Tome 1, page 355 ] remarks
that his final success was owing to his personal preparation.
What can this mean but the same effect which is produced
by progressive Initiation ? According to Mr. Waite, the reputation
he had of possessing the philosopher's stone brought him
under the notice of the king, who sent for him.
Perceiving [Page 10] the danger
he incurred in complying with this summons, he contrived
that his wife should appear to die and be buried, but, in
reality, she fled to another country, when he also enacted
for himself a pseudo-death and burial, but secretly went
and joined his wife, and that they were seen alive many years
after in another country. If this be true, his Adeptship
was environed by a great danger, which his sagacity and prudence
alone enabled him to avoid. Had the king demanded his secret
and he refused to reveal it, he might have ended his days
in the Bastile which Charles VI had just completed.
Bernard Trevisan passed a whole life
and spent all his patrimony in vainly trying to make gold,
and was reduced to the greatest extremity of poverty, but
at last, when he was seventy-five years of age, as he said,
by laborious comparing one Alchemical writer with another,
picking out a little from each and putting the whole together,
did at last find out the secret. This is the piece of evidence
we alluded to in our opening remarks as tending to show it
could be done by a mere physical Adeptship, but what we have
said as to Nicolas Flamel is equally applicable to him.
A life-time spent and energies concentrated on the constant
search for the one thing, and latterly in poverty, expatriation,
and actual want and privation, must of itself have been equal
to an Initiation, and have included in it the abasement of
the mere animal passions and a corresponding elevation of
the higher faculties, which at last enabled him to triumph.
We know that Swedenborg became lucid at the age of fifty-seven,
and Cardan at about the same age. Trevisan's lucidity may
have been delayed to a still later period, and it might,
after all, have been a psychic Adeptship which at last gave
him the entrance to the shut palace of the king. Of him,
Lenglet du Fresnoy [ Philosophie Hermétique", Tome
1, page. 244 ] writes " It was a feeble consolation
to have consummated uselessly considerable wealth at the
end of more than sixty
years, to have been exposed to the most extreme misery, and
even to see himself forced to expatriation that his misery
might not be known, and not to arrive at the consummation
till the age of seventy-five years, an age at which a man
can no longer enjoy wealth. However, if Bernard did find,
he enjoyed it for some few years, but can one call by the
title of enjoyment riches acquired at the expense of his
repose, and at the age of decrepitude, when one ought to
be no longer occupied with anything but the possession of
future good ? " To this we answer that his more than
sixty years freedom from debasing worldly pleasures, and
the exercise of his will in elevating his psychic powers
were the true riches with which to enter upon the next world.
We have no account of his abusing the great power he possessed
during the remaining years of his life. Men act from habit,
which in his case was formed by voluntary long and painful
abstinence. [Page 11] This
habit was the passport to his final success, and we may reasonably
suppose that he considered himself happy to have achieved
it even at the cost of so much suffering. His example, however,
does not give much encouragement to those who are seeking
this power for their own selfish and worldly purposes.
The next prominent adept is the man of apparent
contradictions, the marvellous Paracelsus, the pupil of the
great Trithemius, who, at the early age of thirty years,
had so far advanced that an Arabian Adept at Constantinople
revealed to him the great secret, or so much of it as he
did not know already. The Arabian must have perceived that
he had so far progressed that he was justified in revealing
to him what no possessor will impart to an unworthy person,
even if it cost him his life to refuse. Much mystery has
hung about the death of Paracelsus at the early age of forty-eight
years, for the unravelling of which we are greatly indebted
to the careful researches of Dr. Franz Hartmann, at Salzburg,
which seem to prove conclusively that he was assassinated.
This extraordinary man must have used his powers with the
greatest moderation, for in his life there was no ostentation
nor ambition of high station, and at his death no
signs of great wealth were found. His one care seems to have
been to heal the sick, performing such cures as are not recorded
of any Medicus before or since, and to have been content
to live on his professional income, and scorning to use his
Alchemical knowledge for his own pleasure or convenience.Éliphas
Lévi has said in his remarks upon evocations
[ Histoire de la Magie”, page 456 ] — that
Schroepffer and Lavater, who practised this dangerous form
of magic, both died a violent death, the one by suicide, the
other by assassination, and seems to intimate that in these
two cases the evocation of spirits was, at least, the indirect
cause of this tragical consummation. Whether there was any
irregularity in the occult practice of Paracelsus likely
to lead to such a calamity, there is no reliable evidence.
The kind of life he is said to have passed does not show
any great personal comfort or worldly advantage which he
derived from the immense power his Illumination gave him,
but rather an intense strain upon his bodily and mental functions,
which his profound knowledge caused him to perceive must
be equilibriated by seasons of conviviality and festive relaxation.
His early death seems revolting to all our ideas of what
should be the last end of an Adept. Whether he revealed too
much to princes is a question not easy to solve. If he did,
it may account for that fate overtaking him, which is the
allotted portion of the revealers of mysteries. Let those
who are entering upon this study consider well the dangers
that bristle on their path.
We will only make a passing allusion to Dr. John Dee. Although
he had passed probably as many years in the pursuit of the
philosopher's stone, yet the extreme poverty and dependence
of his last years attest that [Page 12]
he could not have performed the Magnum Opus, and that his
endeavours to obtain it by communicating with spirits opens
up a lugubrious vista of the degradation and humiliation
brought upon a man of genius and learning by this risky means.
We possess a MS. purporting to have belonged to him which
gives the symbols of formulae for
evoking the spirits of the planet Venus to gain from them
the knowledge of transmutations of metals. Dr. Dee is another
lamentable instance of the perils and sufferings incurred
by those who try to gain this great prize by running the
race without regarding the wise rules laid down by the ancient
sages.
Apparently, the most successful as well the most unfortunate
and wretched of all Adepts was the Scotchman, Alexander Seton,
calling himself Cosmopolites. Mr. Waite gives his history.
It seems nothing less than utter infatuation on the part
of Seton, in visiting Holland and Germany, to have made projections
in the presence of such various people. This infatuation
was only equalled by the great courage and fortitude he afterwards
displayed when put to the torture by the Elector of Saxony
to
force him to discover his secret. In this he showed the spirit
of the true Adept. And yet his singular folly and imprudence
cannot be otherwise designated than as being contrary to
all the rules which should guide those who have been admitted
to this great arcanum. Mr. Waite does not mention it, but
it is known to a few that the mode in which he gained his
knowledge was not quite regular. He had a sister, a natural
Clairvoyante, whose health he ruined by employing her lucidity
in his researches. He also made an evocation of a spirit
whom we will not name, and, by this means, gained possession
of a powerful Ancient Talisman.
In this irregularity we may, perhaps, discern the cause of
his great imprudence above alluded to. Spirits always turn
the tables on those who constrain them, if they have the
opportunity. Neither did Seton, like Flamel, use his wealth
for charitable purposes, but simply for his own personal
wealth and enjoyment. For two years after
escaping from the Elector of Saxony by the aid of Sendivogius,
he underwent the greatest bodily suffering from the effects
of the rack and the hot irons applied to him. He told Sendivogius
that, had not his body been completely disorganized by the
terrible torture of the rack, his Elixir would have restored
him. We may suppose that his mental agonies could not have
been less than his bodily sufferings. From these he was released
by death at the end of two years. His fate does not encourage
anyone to endeavour, by devious paths, to compass the Art
of Transmutation for the purpose of self-enjoyment and the
gratification of ambitious worldly desires.
There is another not included in the list given by Mr. Waite,
the also unfortunate Dr. Price, of Guildford. This brings
transmutation nearer to our own times, for it was in the
year 1782, from May 6th to May 28th, upon eight different
occasions, in the presence of witnesses varying from [Page
13] four in the first experiment to fifteen in
the last but one, Lords Onslow, King, and Palmerston being
amongst the number, Dr. Price did transmute inferior metals
into gold and silver which stood the test of the assayers
in London and Oxford. Every precaution was taken against
deception, those coming to the trial bringing the metals
to be transmuted and other things with them. There seemed
to be no doubt in the minds of those present that Dr. Price
had fully succeeded in transmuting inferior metals into pure
gold and silver. All this is given at length in the “Annual
Register" for
1782. It is also given in the " Gentleman's Magazine", as
we suppose, of the same date, but this we have not ourselves
seen. It seems to us impossible to read this account of his
various transmutations, so often repeated, and before so
many creditable and watchful witnesses, without being convinced
that if he had used any of the well-known tricks of the pseudo-artists,
he must have been detected.
The sequel to this strange history is, that the Royal Society
of which Dr. Price was a Fellow called upon him, on pain
of expulsion if he refused, to repeat the experiment in their
presence. He attempted it and failed. We are precluded from
obtaining from himself the causes of this failure, for he
forthwith went and committed suicide. The Fellows of the
Royal Society would, no doubt, be glad to take this as conclusive
evidence that he could not, and never had done it. And yet
there were fifteen witnesses of high intelligence and as
competent to judge of this particular question as any of
the Fellows of the Royal Society, who could have had no special
experience in this department. In a Court of Law, we opine,
the positive evidence of the fifteen witnesses would out-weigh
the negative evidence of the Fellows of the Royal Society.
As Occultists we know there may have been other reasons for
his failure under such conditions, and what we may call,
hostile influences, for we may consider the question prejudged,
or they would have been content with, and not ignored, the
evidence of fifteen such good witnesses as they were. As
Occultists we know that Dr. Price was contravening all the
laws of Initiation to attempt to make it a public matter,
and was therefore pre-doomed to pay the penalty of failure
and death.
As yet we have not succeeded in obtaining any information
as to how Dr. Price became possessed of the powder of projection
with which he effected the transmutations, whether he made
it himself, or whether a small quantity only had been given
him by some Adept, and that he had exhausted his stock, or
nearly so, in the eight experiments above mentioned, or whether
he had learned it from intercourse with spirits, and they
according to their wont, turned treacherous to him in his
greatest need, we have not been able to discover. Sendivogius
was presented by Alexander Seton with a goodly portion of
the powder of projection, and, with this,
Sendivogius posed as an Adept, published Seton's writings
as his own, and transmuted in the presence of Royalty, and
received high honours and [Page 14] appointments, but,
when his powder was all expended, he became the veriest charlatan
and impostor, descending to the meanest tricks, and narrowly
escaping the sad fate of Alexander Seton. In the same way,
in France, one Delisle is supposed to have possessed himself
of the powder of projection by murdering an Adept. Beginning
from the year 1708, he deceived the world by his public transmutations,
whereby he gained the reputation of being a real Adept, but,
at last coming under the notice of Royalty, he was arrested.
His guards, knowing he had some of the powder of projection
on his person, resolved to kill him to possess themselves
of it. With this intention they gave him an opportunity of
escaping, that they might have a pretext for firing upon
him. Delisle availed himself of this chance, and was fired
at and not killed, but only his thigh broken. In this miserable
condition, he was imprisoned in the Bastille, and before
the end of a year, tired of his miserable existence, destroyed
himself by poisoning the wound which the soldiers had given
him. Before his death he confessed he did not know how to
make the powder, but had it from an Italian Adept. This probably
is the one he was supposed to have murdered. How this murdered
man gained his knowledge we have not been able to glean any
precise information, though it seems he was acknowledged
by Lascaris to have been a true son of the Transmutatory
Art.
The history of Delisle may bear somewhat upon the miserable
fate of Dr. Price, from which, by analogy, there may reasonably
be considerable doubt whether, even if he were an Adept,
he had not, like Alexander Seton, gained his knowledge in
a questionable and irregular way. To make projection in public
seems of itself to be evidence of a doubtful and risky Initiation,
and dire retribution in the shape of terrible personal suffering
and suicide usually follows it.
Even as we write, there appears from Paris the startling
account of one Tiffereau, calling himself the “Alchemist
of the Nineteenth Century” lecturing to an assemblage
of eager listeners on his grand discovery of a new method
of making gold artificially, proclaiming publicly the details
of the process, and demanding that the Government should
furnish him with the means of setting up a workshop in Paris
whence he could supply the manufactured article at £6
sterling, or as low even as £ 3 for about 2 Ibs. of
gold. The present price of gold is not quite £ 4 per
OZ. Like Bernard Trevisan, he has passed a long life in the
pursuit of the Transmutatory Art, but unlike Trevisan, he
does not seem to have really found it, even in his old age. Éliphas
Lévi, in his “Analysis of the seven chapters
of Hermes", lays down as an axiom ["La
clef des grands mystères", page 450]. ”He
who would make known the Magnum Opus, would prove
thereby that he knew it not". Judging by this, we may
reasonably and perhaps safely conclude that Tiffereau, instead
of finding by his long years of search and spending all his
money on it, has become hallucinated, and like all demented
men, now seeks to hallucinate [Page 15] others,
and yet with method in his madness, aims at obtaining from
the Government the reward of the public gold, which a life-time
of research has not enabled him to make for himself.
The “Daily Telegraph " had a leading article upon
Tiffereau, in which the writer used the threadbare and stock
arguments to show that gold cannot be artificially made,
and evinces the usual amount of ignorance on the history
of the subject. He does, however, perceive and dilate upon,
what we have hereinbefore remarked, the complete dislocation
of commerce and universal disaster which must ensue, if it
could be done so as to be generally known. If Tiffereau has
succeeded, as he says, we shall encounter strange changes
ere long. Our frontispiece is a copy of one prefixed to a
German edition of one of the works of Eugenius Philalethes.
The interpretation of it is:
The man blindfolded is the Candidate for Initiation into
the Mysteries. He wanders in the Labyrinth of Fantasy, led
by his own natural instincts, and is deluded by the Elementals
or other beings in harmony with his lower tendencies. Ariadne
is on the left with the thread in her hand ready to give
him the clue for his liberation, but he turns himself from
her and simultaneously from the Light of Nature into the
region of darkness, which he appears to love better than
Light. Possibly, this may have the same signification as
the man putting his hand to the plough and looking back,
and his consequent unfitness and rejection.
At the bottom
of the frontispiece is represented debased human nature under
the symbol of a winged dragon which devours its own tail.
By this is signified the Initiate conquering his vices and
lower inclinations, before he can develop the higher phases
of his being, and so render himself fit to be intrusted with
the great secrets and powers of Nature.
Within the circle
formed by this dragon is seated the Adept, who has passed
the ordeal and conquered in all the progressive stages of
trial. Having learned to command himself, he is now fit to
command others. The “thesaurus incantatus," or
enchanted treasure, is laying in profusion around him.
At the upper part, just outside the Region of Fantasy, is
the invisible mountain of the Magi, the Sun, Moon, and stars
symbolizing the Macrocosm and all its powers and influences
known only to these true Adepts, and alluding probably to
the seclusion of the Rosicrucians. Philalethes and other
Adepts call the attaining to the Magnum Opus the gift of
God. Our frontispiece gives an intimation of what he means
by this. When a man has conquered himself and made himself
one with the Great Soul of
the Universe, according to the Oriental philosophy, he becomes
a God, and we may suppose this to be the concealed meaning
of Philalethes and others, in these words. This Adept, whom
we verily believe to have performed chrusopoieia at a very
early age, does not appear making transmutations before kings
or noblemen, and in his various works he writes obscurely,
symbolically, and enigmatically as any Ancient Egyptian [Page
16] Hierophant could desire. None but the Initiated
could discover the true meaning of his alchemical writings.
His design was only to mislead all but the Initiates. He
probably had a further design to make himself known to the
Rosicrucians, and to let them see that he would not reveal
this Sacred Arcanum. It is supposed that he did ultimately
join that Order, but his later years are wrapped in apparently
impenetrable obscurity. According to his own account such
was the state of society under the then existing regime,
such the tyranny and despotism pervading even commercial
transactions, such formalities and obstructions, that he
had the greatest difficulty in disposing of the gold and
silver he had made, and was obliged to roam from country
to country, and city to city, and assume all sorts of disguises
to conceal his identity. Even for this genuine Adept, his
very success brought with it, in those times, anxiety for
his personal safety, discomfort, and harassing cares. When
the Rosicrucians admitted him into their Order, as it seems
likely they did, these anxieties ought to have ceased, but
the Rosicrucians themselves were obliged to leave Europe
on account of persecutions and dangers, which we will not
here more particularly enter into.
The summing up of the evidence we have adduced is simply
that Chrusopoieia has been in the past and can still be effected,
but that in order to be a successful Alchemist a man must
either at an early age first conquer his lower nature, and
have no desire left for what are by worldly men considered
the advantages of wealth, and have disciplined himself never
to reveal the secret, giving hostages to Silence, speaking
only in vague and enigmatical verbosity, or he may possibly
attain to it by a life-long weary search, and when he shall
have arrived at an age when the bodily and mental powers
are waning and the grave is yawning to receive him, discover
it, as did Bernard Trevisan. Like Tiffereau, he may pass
his whole life in the weary search, and at the same age as
Trevisan, instead of finding, lose the equilibrium of his
faculties, and die in poverty and misery. He may wrest the
eagerly desired knowledge, by a fatal pact with spirits,
who will take care that he shall not long enjoy his riches
without some terrible calamity overtaking him. Verbum
sat sapienti.
A work devoted entirely to a research into all the details
of the lives of the Alchemists, if research would find such
details, we believe would fully confirm that of which we
are only able to give a faint outline. We feel sure such
a work would overwhelmingly show the futility of making gold
by way of hasting to be rich, and using it to enjoy this
world's pleasures. Let those who have opportunity and leisure
try to throw such a side-light on the Hermetic Art in the
lives of its Professors, and they will be benefactors to
the human race, and make them content with the less thorny,
but surer paths of Theosophy.
ΔΔ
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