M. Pott, M. de Justi, undertake its defense openly in their

Memoirs)— they have not wished to shake off the yoke of prejudice, they have remained under it.
But finally, what constitutes the difference between com- mon chemistry and Hermetic Chemistry? Simply this. The first is, properly speaking, the art of destroying the composites which Nature has formed; and the second is the art of working with Nature to perfect them. The first puts in practice the furious and destructive Tyrant of Nature; the second employs her gentle, benign Agent. Hermetic Philosophy takes as the subject of its work the secondary* or chief principles of things, to lead them to the perfection of which they are susceptible, by processes conformable to those of Nature. Common chemistry takes the Mixts which have already reached their point of perfection, decomposes and destroys them. Those who may desire to carry further the parallelism between these two arts, may have recourse to the work which one of the great antagonists of Hermetic Philosophy, Father Kircher, S. J., has composed, and which Manget has inserted in the first volume of his Bzblethégue dela Chymtie curieuse. The Hermetic Philosophers scarcely fail to mark the difference of these two arts in their works. But the infallible mark, by which one may distinguish an Adept from a chemist, is that the Adept, according to all Philosophers, takes only one thing, or, at most, two of the same nature, one vase, or perhaps two, and a single furnace to perfect his work; on the contrary, the chemist works on all kinds of matters, indiscriminately. This is also the stone by the touch of which you must try those rogues, or soufleurs, who have designs upon your purse, who demand gold in order to make it, and who, instead of the transmutation which they
*Secondary Matter, or Seed of Metals, the primal Matter of the Philosopher’s Work, to distinguish it from the Prima Materia, or First Created Matter, which is beyond the reach of the Artist.
Preliminary Discourse. 31
promise you, make indeed only a transfer of gold from your purse to theirs. This remark is not the less applicable to those souffeurs of good faith and honesty, who think to be in the right way, and who deceive others while deceiving themselves. If this work makes enough impression upon minds to convince of the possibility and reality of Hermetic Philosophy, God grant that it may also serve to undeceive those who have a mania for spending their property in blow- ing charcoal, in erecting furnaces, in calcining, in sublimat- ing, in distilling, finally in reducing everything to nothing, that is, to ashes and smoke; the Adepts do not run after gold and silver. Morien givesa great proof of this in the Roz Calid. The latter having found many books which treated of Hermetic Science, and being able to comprehend nothing of them, offered a great reward to him who would explain them, (Luxtretien du Rot Calidad). The charms of this reward brought to him many souffeurs. Then Morien, the Hermit, departed from his desert, attracted not by the promised recompense, but by the desire of manifesting the power of God, and of showing how wonderful He is in all His works. He found Calid, and demanded as the others a suitable place to work, in order to prove, by his works, the truth of his words. Morien, having finished his operations, left the Perfect Stone in a vase around which he wrote: 7khose who have all that ts necessary for them, have need netther of recom- pense nor of the aid of others, He then departed without saying a word, and returned to his solitude. Calid having found this vase, and having read the writing, understood well what it signified, and after having tested the Powder, he banished, or put to death, all those who had wished to deceive him.
Therefore, Philosophers rightly say that this Stone is the center and source of virtues, since those who possess it scorn
32 Che Great Art.
all the vanities of the world, vain glory, ambition; since they esteem gold no more than sand or dust,(Sapzentia, chap. 7), and silver is to them no more than dirt. Wisdom alone makes any impression upon them; envy, jealousy and other tumultuous passions do not excite the tempests of their heart; they have no other desires than to live to please God, no other satisfaction than to render themselves secretly useful to their neighbour, and to penetrate more and more into the secrets of Nature.
Hermetic Philosophy is therefore, the school of piety and religion. Those to whom God accords the knowledge of it are either already pious or they become so, (/lamel, Hiero- glyph). All the Philosophers begin their works by demand- ing of those who read them, with the intention of penetrating into the sanctuary of Nature, an upright heart and a God- fearing spirit: Jutteum sapientie timor Domini, a compas- sionate mind, to aid the poor, a profound humility, and a fixed purpose to do all for the glory of the Creator, who conceals His secrets from the proud and pretended wise of the world to manifest them to the humble, (Matthew, ch. XJ).
When our first father heard the sentence of death pro- nounced as a punishment for his disobedience, he received, at the same time, the promise of a Deliverer who was to save the entire human race. God, all-pitiful, did not wish to permit the most beautiful work of His hands to perish abso- lutely. The same wisdom which had prepared with so much goodness the remedy for the soul, did not forget to indicate one against the evils which were to afflict the body. But, just as all men do not profit by the means of safety, which Jesus Christ has procured for us, and which God offers to us, so all men do not know how to use the remedy, which can cure the ills of the body, although the matter of which it is composed is common, and present before their eyes. They
Preliminary Discourse. 33
see it without knowing it, and employ it for other purposes than the one for which it was designed, (Laszl Valentin Azoth des Phil. and the Cosmopolite). This proves, indeed, that it isa gift of God which is bestowed upon those who please Him. Vr tusiptens non cognoscet, et stultus non intellt- get hec. Although Solomon, the wisest of men, says to us, Altissimus de terra creavit medicinam et posuit Deus super terram medicamentum quod sapiens non desprciet, (Eccl., ch. 38).
It is this matter which God used to manifest His wisdom in the composition of all beings. He animated it with the breath of that spirit which “moved upon the face of the waters,’ before His omnipotence had disentangled the chaos of the Universe. This it is, which is susceptible of all forms, and which, properly speaking, has none of its own, (B. Valen- tin). Thus most of the Philosophers compare the confection of their Stone to the creation of the Universe. There was, so say the Scriptures, (Genesis, ch. 1), a confused chaos, in which no individual could be distinguished. The terrestrial globe was submerged in the waters; they seemed to contain the Heavens, and to enclose in their womb the germs of all things. There was no light, all was in darkness. The light appeared, the shadows were dissipated, and the stars were placed in the firmament. The Philosophical Work is exactly the same thing. First it is a shadowy chaos; all appears so / confused in it, that one cannot distinguish the principles | which compose the matter of the Stone. The Heaven of the | Philosophers is plunged in the waters, shadows cover all | their surface; finally light separates them; the Moon and / the Sun are manifested, and bring joy to the heart of the | Artist and life to the matter. .
This chaos consists of the szccum and humidum. The siccum constitutes the Earth; the humzdum is the Water. The shadows are the black color, which Philosophers call
34 The Great Art.
nigrum, nigro nigrius, (black, blacker than black itself). This is the Philosophical Night, and the palpable shadows. Light in the creation of the world appeared before the sun; it is that whiteness of matter, so much desired, which succeeds the black color. Finally the sun appears, of an orange color, _ the red of which is deepened, little by little to the red of _ purple: this makes the completion of the first work. / The Creator wished then to place the seal upon His work; He formed Man from Earth, and from an earth which ap- peared inanimate: He breathed into him the breath of life. That which God did then in regard to Man, the agent of Nature, whom some call her ArcuHEus, (Paracelsus, van Hel- mont), does now with the Earth or Philosophical clay. He works it by its interior action, and animates it so that it begins to live, and to strengthen itself, day by day, until it reaches perfection. Morien, (/oc. cz¢.), having remarked this analogy, has explained the confection of the Wagisterium by a comparison, drawn from the creation and the generation of Man. Some even claim that Hermés speaks of the resur- rection of bodies in his Pymander, because he concludes it by stating what he has observed in the progress of the Magistertum. The same matter which had been forced toa certain degree of perfection in the first work, is dissolved and putrified, which can very well be called a death, since our Saviour has said of a grain which one sows, (/lame/), Nisi eranum frumentt cadens in terram mortuum fuerit ipsum solum manet. In this putrefaction the Philosophical Matter be- comes a black, volatile earth, more subtle than any other powder. The Adepts even call it Corpse when it is in this state, and say that it has the odor of one; not, says Flamel, that the Artist smells a bad odor, since it is made in a sealed Vase; but he judges that it is such by the analogy of its cor- ruption to that of dead bodies. This powder, or ashes, which
Preliminary Discourse. 35
Morien says we must not despise, because it is to revive, and because it contains the diadem of the Philosopher-King, recovers its vigor, little by little, in proportion as it escapes from the arms of death, that is to say, from the blackness: it is revivified, and takes a more brilliant splendour, a state of incorruptibility more noble that the one in which it existed before its putrefaction.
The Egyptians, observing this metamorphosis, imagined the existence of the Phoenix, which they said to be a bird of purple color, which sprang from its own ashes. But this fabulous bird is simply the Philosopher's Stone, which has reached the color of purple after its putrefaction.
Several ancient Philosophers, enlightened by these wonder- ful effects of Nature, have concluded from them, with Hermés, from whom they had derived the principles in Egypt, that there was a new life after death had taken away this. This is what they have wished to prove when they have spoken of the resurrection of plants from their own ashes into other plants of the same species. One finds no one who has spoken of God and of Man with so much eleva- tion and nobility... He explains even, how one can say of men that they are Gods. Ego dixi dit estts, et filit excelsi omnes, says David; and Hermés: (Pymand., ch. I1.), “The “soul, O Thaut, is of the essence of God himself; for God ‘has an essence, and what it is He alone knows. The soul “is not a part, separated from this divine essence as a part is “separated from any other material; but it is, we may say, “an effusion, almost as the light of the sun, which is not the “sun itself. This soul is a Godin Man; this is why one says “of men that they are Gods, because that which constitutes, “properly speaking, humanity, is akin to divinity.”
What then must be the knowledge of man? Is it surprising that, enlightened by the Father of lights, he penetrates even
36 Che Great Art.
into the gloomiest, most hidden recesses of Nature? that he knows her properties, and how to use them? But God dis- tributes His gifts asit pleases Him. If He is good enough to establish a remedy for the maladies which afflict humanity He has not judged fit to make it known to all. Consequently Morien says, (Lxtretzents de Caltd et de Morten), “that the “ Magistertum is the secret of secrets of the most high God, “ Creator of all that exists; and that He himself has revealed “this secret to His holy Prophets, whose souls He has placed “in Paradise.”
If this secret is a gift of God, some will say it must doubt- less be placed in the category of the talents which God bestows and which must not be buried. If Philosophers are people so pious, so charitable, why do we see so few good works on their part? A single one, Nicolas Flamel, in France, has built and endowed churches and hospitals. These monuments exist today in the sight of all Paris. If there are other Philosophers, why do they not follow such a good example? Why do they not cure the sick? Why do they not relieve the families of honest people overwhelmed with misery? I answer, that one does not know all the good done in secret. One must not do good and then publish it at the sound of the trumpet; the left hand, according to the precept of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, must not know the good which the right hand doeth. It was not known, until after the death of Flamel, who was the author of these good works. The hieroglyphic figures, which he had placed in the Cemetery of the Innocents, presented only that which was pious and in conformity with religion. He himself lived humbly, without ostentation, and without giving the least sign of the secret which he possessed. Moreover, there were in those times greater facilities for doing good than now.
Philosophers are not so common as physicians. They are
Preliminary Discourse. 37
few in number. They. possess the secret of curing all maladies. They are not lacking in the desire to do good to all the world; but this world is so perverse that it is dan- gerous for them to try it. They would do so, at the risk of their lives. Will they cure some one as by miracle? A mur- | mur will be heard among the Physicians and the People; | and even those who most doubted the existence of the Philosophical Remedy will then suspect that there is such a thing. This man will be followed; his actions will be — observed; the report will spread; the avaricious, the ambi- | tious will pursue him to discover his secret. Then, what can — he hope for but persecutions, or voluntary exile from his | country?
The experience of the Cosmopolite and of Philalethes proves this sufficiently. ‘We are,” says the latter, “ envel- “oped in malediction and infamy; we cannot enjoy tran- “quilly the society of our friends; whosoever will discover ‘‘who we are, will wish either to extort from us our secret, “or to plan our ruin, if we refuse to reveal it to them. The “world today is so wicked and so perverse, interest and ‘ambition so dominate men that all their actions have no ‘other aim but the satisfaction of these passions. Do we “wish, as the Apostles, to perform works of mercy, one re- “turns to us evil for good. I have made the trial of this lately “in some distant places. I have cured, as by miracle, some “dying ones, abandoned by Physicians; and to escape perse- “cution, I have been obliged, more than once, to change my “name, my dress, to shave my hair and my beard, and to flee “under cover of the night.’”’ Yet, to what greater dangers would a Philosopher not expose himself, if he should make the transmutation? although he should intend to make use of the gold for a very simple life, and for the benefit of those in need. This gold, finer and more beautiful than common
38 The Great Art.
gold, as they say it is, will soon be recognized. By this mark alone, one will suspect the bearer, perhaps even of counterfeiting money. What frightful consequences would a Philosopher, charged with such a suspicion, not have to fear?
I know that many Physicians exercise their profession, not so much through self-interest as through the desire of serv- ing the Public; but all of them are not so. Some will rejoice at the good fortune of their neighbour, others will be angry because they have been deprived of a chance to increase their revenues. Jealousy would not fail to take possession of their hearts, and would their vengeance be long in making its effects felt? Hermetic Science is not taught in schools of Medicine, although we cannot doubt that Hippocrates under- stood it, when we weigh well scattered expressions in his works, and the praise which he bestowed upon Democritus before the inhabitants of Abdera, who regarded this Philos- opher as a madman because, on returning from Egypt, he distributed among them almost all his patrimony, in order to live as a Philosopher in a little country house, removed from tumult. Yet this would be an insufficient proof of the antiquity of Hermetic Science; but there are so many others, that to deny this antiquity is to show one’s ignorance of ancient authors. What means Pindare, (Olymp. 6), when he relates that the greatest of the gods caused to fall in the city of Rhodes a golden snow, made by the art of Vulcan? Zosimus, Panopolite, Eusebius and Synesius teach us that this Science was long cultivated at Memphis in Egypt. They quote the works of Hermés. Plutarch says, (7eolog. Physico Grecor), that the ancient Theology of the Greeks and Barbarians was simply a discourse on Physics, hidden under the veil of Fables. He even tries to explain it when he says that by Latona they understood night; by Juno, the earth;
Preliminary Discourse. 39
by Apollo, the sun; and by Jupiter, heat. He adds that the Egyptians said that Osiris was the sun, Isis the moon,
aera en mal
Jupiter the universal spirit diffused throughout Nature, and Vulcan, fire, etc. Manetho enlarges much upon this subject.
Origen, (LZ. /. against Celse), says that the Egyptians amused the people by these fables, and that they veiled their Philosophy under the names of the gods of the country. Coringius,(Omnzino tamen et ipse existimo Eigyptiorum FHero- phantas, omnium mortalium principes xpvoowojow Jactisasse, et ab his chemiwe profluxisse exordia), in spite of all that he , has written against Hermetic Philosophy, has been forced, by strong proofs, to avow that the Priests of Egypt prac- | ticed the Art of making gold, and that Chemistry took | its origin there. Saint Clement of Alexandria, in his Szvo- | mates, gives great praise to the six works of Hermés, on Medicine. Diodorus of Sicily, (Anizg. 7. 4, ¢. 2), speaks in © detail of a secret which the Kings of Egypt possessed, of drawing gold from a white marble, found on the frontiers of their Empire. Strabo, (Geogr. 7. 77), also, makes mention of a black stone, from which they made many mortars, at Memphis. It will be seen, in the course of this work, that this black stone, white marble and gold were merely allegor- ical, and signified the Philosopher’s Stone, which has reached the state of the black color, Stone which the same Philoso- phers have called Mortar, because the matter is ground and dissolved. The white marble was this same matter, arrived at the white color, called Marble because of its fixity. The — gold was the Philosophical Gold, which is derived from this whiteness, or the fixed Red Stone. More detailed explana- tions of this will be found in the course of this work.
Philo, the Jew, (£20. /. de Vita Mosis), relates that Moses learned in Egypt, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Sym- bolical Philosophy, which was written only in sacred charac-
40 The Great Art.
ters, Astronomy and Mathematics. Saint Clement of Alex- andria adds to these Medicine and the knowledge of Hiero- glyphics, which the priests taught only to their sons, and the sons of the kings of their country. (Cum autem Moses jam esset elate grandior, Arithmeticam et Geometriam, Rhytmicam et Harmonicam et preeterea medicinum simul et musicam ab tis (Zigyptus), edoctus est, qui inter Eigyptios evant insigniores; et preterea eam, que traditur per symbola et signa Philosophiam, quam in litterts ostendunt hieroglyphicts. Alium autem doc- trine orbem tanquam puerum regium Grect eum docuere in CLgypto, ut decit Philo in Vita Mosis. Didicit autem litteras Egyptirum et rerum celestium scientiam a Chaldets et ab Cgyptius. Unde in egus gestis, dicitur eruditus, futsse in omni sctentia Eigyptiorum. (Clemens Alexand. l. I. Strom.)
Hermés was the first who taught all these sciences to the Egyptians, according to Diodorus of Sicily, (Z. 2c. 7), and Strabo, (£26. 77). Father Kircher, although very bitter against Hermetic Philosophy, has proved, himself, (@dyp. Egypt. L. 2p. 2), that it was practiced in Egypt. See also Diodorus, (Aztzg. /, c. 17) and Julius Matern. Firmicus, (2d. 3, ¢. I. de Petosirt et Nicepso). Saint Clement of Alexandria thus expresses himself on this subject: We have still forty- two works of Hermés which are very useful and very neces- sary. Thirty-six of these books contain all the Philosophy of the Egyptians; and the other six relate especially to Med- icine: the first treats of the construction of the body or anat- omy; the second of diseases; the third of instruments; the fourth of medicines; the fifth of the eye; and the sixth of diseases of women.
Homer had travelled in Egypt, (Dzodorus of Sicily, 7. [, c. 2), and learned many things from his association with the Priests of that country. We may even say that from. here he derived his Fables. He gives proof of this in several
Preliminary Discourse. 41
places in his works, and especially in his third Hymn, to Mercury, in which he says that this god was the first who invented the Art of Fire: rupés d éwenaero réyvnv. V. 108 & V. 111. —’Eppijs to. mpwrisa mupyia, wip, 7 avédwye. Homer even speaks of Hermés, as the author of riches, and calls him con- sequently Xpvodppaws, SGrop édwy. It is because of this that he says, (zdzd v. 249), that Apollo went to Hermés to obtain news of the oxen which had been stolen from him. He saw him, lying in his obscure cavern, which was full of nectar, of ambrosia, of gold and silver, and of the red and white gar- ments of Nymphs. This nectar, this ambrosia, and these garments of the Nymphs refer to the Philosophic Work.
Esdras, in his fourth book, chapter eight, thus expresses himself: Quomodo tnterrogabts terram, et dicet ttbi, quoniam dabit terram multam magts, unde fiat fictile, parvum autem pulverem unde aurum fit.
Stephen, of Byzantium, was so well persuaded that Hermés was the author of Chemistry, and had such a high idea of him, that he has not hesitated to name Egypt ’Eppoydpuos, and Vossius, (de /dol.), has thought it his duty to correct this word by the one *Eppoyyjpuos. It was doubtless this which led Homer to imagine that his plants Moly and Nepenthes, which had so many virtues, came from Egypt. Pliny, (£28. I}, c. 2), bears witness to this in the following terms: Homerus quidem primus doctrinarum et antiquitatis parens, multus alias in admiratione Circes, gloriam herbarum Cigypto tributt. Flerbas certé Gigyptias &@ Regis uxore traditas sue Helene plurimas narrat, ac nobtle tllud nepenthes, oblivionem tristitie, veniamque afferens, ab Helend utique omnibus mortalibus pro- pinandum.
It is then beyond doubt that the Chemical Art of Hermés was known among the Egyptians. It is scarcely less certain that the Greeks who travelled in Egypt learned it there, at
42 The Great Art.
least some of them; and that, having learned it from hiero- glyphics, they taught it under the veil of fables. Eustathius implies this in his commentary on the Iliad.
The idea of making gold by the aid of Art is therefore not new; besides the proofs which we have given, Pliny, (£20. 33, ¢. 4), confirms it because he relates of Caligula “The love “which Caius Caligula had for gold, induced this Prince to ‘“‘work to obtain it. Therefore, says this author, he digested “a great quantity of orpiment and succeeded, indeed, in “making excellent gold; but in such a small quantity that “he lost much more than he gained.” Caligula knew, then, that gold could be made artificially; therefore Hermetic Philosophy was known.
As for the Arabs, no one doubts that both Hermetic and common Chemistry have been always known among them. Moreover, Albusarius teaches us, (Dynastzd nond), that the Arabs have preserved a great number of the works of the Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, and of the Greeks, by the translation which they made of them into their own lan- guage; we have still the writings of Geber, Avicenna, Abu- bali, Alphidius, Alchindis, and many others on these subjects. One may even say that Chemistry has been diffused through all Europe by means of them. Albert the Great, Archbishop of Ratisbonne, is one of the first known, since the Arabs. Among other erudite works on Dialectics, Mathematics, Physics, Metaphysics, Theology and Medicine, several works on Chemistry are found, one of which bears the title de Alchymia,; it has been swelled later on with an infinity of additions and sophistications. The second is entitled, De Concordantia Philosophorum. The third, De Compositione Composit?z, He has also written a Treatise on minerals, at the end of which he places a special article on the Matter of Philosophers, under the name De Electrum Minerale.
Preliminary Discourse. 43
In the first of these Treatises, he says: “The desire to ‘‘instruct myself in Hermetic Chemistry has led me to travel “over many cities and provinces, to visit the wise in order “to acquaint myself with this Science. I have copied and “studied, with much care and attention, the books which “treat of it, but for a long time, I have not recognized what “they advance as true. I studied, anew, books for and “against it, and I have been unable to derive any benefit “from them. I have met many canons, some learned in “Physics, some ignorant, who meddled in this Art, at an “enormous expense; in spite of their trouble, their work and “their money, they did not succeed. But all this did not “discourage me; I began to work myself; I made expendi- “tures; I read; I watched; I went from one place to another, “and I meditated constantly on these words of Avicenna: “Tf the thing ts, how ts tt? if tt is not, how 1s it not? Then I “worked; I studied with perseverance, until I found what I “sought for. I owe my success to the grace of the Holy « Spirit, who enlightened me, and not to my own knowledge.” He says also in his Treatise on minerals, (£20. 3, c. 7): “Tt is not the province of Natural Philosophers to judge “of the transmutation of metallic bodies, and of the change “of one into the other: this belongs to the Art called “Alchemy. This Science is very certain, because it teaches “one to know each thing by its peculiar cause; and it is not “difficult for it to distinguish from things even the acciden- ‘tal parts, which are not of their nature.”” He then adds, in the second chapter of the same book: “The Primal Matter “of the metals is a humidity, oily, subtle, incorporated and “even largely mixed with terrestrial matter.” He speaks as a Philosopher, and in conformity with Hermetists, as will be seen later on.
Arnaud de Villeneuve, Raymond Lully, his disciple, and
44 Ube Great Art.
Flamel, appeared shortly after; the number increased little by little, and this Science spread throughout all the King- doms of Europe. In the last century one saw the Cosmopo- lite, d’ Espagnet, and Philalethes—doubtless there were many others—and some live in our times; but the number is so small, or they conceal themselves so well, that they cannot be discovered. This is a strong proof that they do not seek the glory of the world, or at least, that they fear the effects of its perversity. They are guarded in their speech, as well as in their writings. Works on this subject appear from time to time; but it is only necessary to have read and medi- tated on those of the true Philosophers, to perceive that these resemble them only in the barbarous terms and enig- matical style, and not at allin the main. Their authors had read good books; they quote them often enough, but so inopportunely as to clearly prove, either that they have not meditated on them, or have done so, in such a manner as to adapt the expressions of the Philosophers to the false ideas which prejudice has placed in their minds, in regard to the operations and Matter, and not so as to rectify their ideas by those of the authors whom they read. These works of false Philosophers are numerous; everybody has wished to write, most of them, doubtless, in order to find in the purse of the bookstore a resource, which would otherwise fail them, or at least to make a name, which they certainly do not deserve. A certain author formerly expressed the desire that some true Philosopher would have enough charity toward the Public, to publish a list of the good writers on this Science, so as to prevent many from reading with confidence the bad, who lead them into error. Olaus Borrichius, the Dane, had printed at the end of the last century, a work, entitled: Cons- pectus Chymicorum celebriorum. We makes separate articles on each one, and tells, prudently enough, what he thinks of
Preliminary Discourse. 45
them. He excludes a great number of authors from the class of true Philosophers; but those whom he gives as true —are they, indeed, so? Besides, the number is so great, that one does not know which to choose in preference to the others. Consequently one will be embarrassed, when wish- ing to devote one’s self to this study. I would prefer to take the wise advice of d’Espagnet, which he gives in these terms in his Arcanum Hermetice Philosophie Opus, can.g. “Leta lover of truth make use of few authors, but of the best note and experienced truth.” And canon 1o, “As for the authors “of chiefest note, who have discoursed both acutely and “truly of the secrets of Nature and hidden Philosophy. “Hermés, (Lmerald Table) and Morienus Romanus, (£xtrezz- “ents du Rot Calid et de Morien), amongst the Ancients, are, “in my judgment, of the highest esteem; amongst the mod- “erns, Count Trévisan, (La Philosophie des Métaux, and his “Lettre &@ Thomas de Boulogne), and Raimundus Lullius are “in greatest reverence with one; for what that most acute Doc- “tor hath omitted, none almost hath spoken; let a student ‘“‘therefore peruse his works, yea, let him often read over his “Former Testament, and Codicil, and accept them as a “legacy of very great worth. To these two volumes let him ‘‘add both his volumes of Practice, out of which works all “things desirable may be collected, especially the truth of “the First Matter, of the degrees of Fire, and the Regimen “of the Whole, wherein the final Work is finished, and those “things which our Ancestors so carefully laboured to keep “secret. (Most of the works of Raimundus Lullius, not here ‘‘mentioned, are worse than useless). ‘The occult causes of “things and the secret motions of Nature, are demonstrated “nowhere more clearly and faithfully. Concerning the first ‘‘and mystical Water of the Philosophers he hath set down “few things, yet very pithily.”’
46 The Great Art.
“As for that Clear Water sought for by many, found by “so few, yet obvious and profitable unto all, which is the ‘Basis of the Philosophers’ Work, a noble Pole, not more “famous for his learning than subtlety of wit, who wrote ‘anonymously, but whose name, notwithstanding a double «Anagram hath betrayed, (The Cosmopolite. When d Espag- “net wrote this, the Public was not yet aware of his error tm “vegard to the author of this book, which Michael Sendivogtus, “a Pole, published under an anagram of his name, but it has “since been made known that he recetved the manuscript from “the widow of the Cosmopolite.”), hath in his Movum Lumen “ Chymicum, Parabola, and Ginigma,as also in his Tract on “ Sulphur, spoken largely and freely enough; yet he hath “expressed all things concerning it so plainly, that nothing “can be more satisfactory to him that desireth knowledge.” Cai. wlan:
“‘¢ Philosophers,’ continues the same author, (Caz. 12), “do usually express themselves more pithily in types and ‘‘enigmatical figures, (as by a mute kind of speech), than “by words; see, for example, Senior’s Table, the Allegorical “ Pictures of Rosarius, the Pictures of Abraham the Jew in “Flamel, and the drawings of Flamel himself; of the later “sort, the rare Emblems of the most learned Michael “‘Maiérus, wherein the mysteries of the Ancients are so fully “opened, and as new Perspectives they present antiquated “truth, and though designed remote from our age, yet are “near unto our eyes, and are perfectly to be perceived Dy US. Hig
Such are the only Authors commended by d’Espagnet, as being beyond all doubt, competent to instruct in Hermetic Philosophy, any man who wishes to apply himself to it. He says that one must not be contented with reading them once
*Translation by W. Wynn Westcott, in Collectanea Hermetica. Vol. I, pp. 13-14.
Preliminary Discourse. 47
or twice, but must read them ten times or more, without becoming discouraged; that one must do this with a pure heart, free from the fatiguing cares of the age, with a fixed purpose to use one’s knowledge of this Science only for the glory of God, and the good of one’s neighbour, so that God may diffuse His wisdom in the mind and heart; for Wisdom, so says the Sage, will never dwell in a heart impure and stained with sin.
Yet d’Espagnet demands an extended knowledge of Phy- sics; and, for this reason, I will place at the end of this Discourse, an abridged Treatise which will contain its general Principles, drawn from the Hermetic Philosophers, which have been collected by d’Espagnet in his Exchyridion. The Hermetic Treatise, which follows is absolutely necessary to prepare the reader to understand this work.* I will add quotations from the Philosophers to show that they all agree on the same points.
The study of Physics cannot be too highly recommended, for from it one learns to know the principles which Nature employs in the composition and formation of the individuals of the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral. With- out this knowledge, one would work blindly, and would try to form a body, from that which would be suitable only to form one of another genus or species, entirely different from that proposed. For man comes from man, ox from ox, plant from its own seed, and metal from its own germ. Therefore, he who would seek, outside of the metallic nature, the art and means of multiplying, or of perfecting the metals, would be certainly in error. Yet we must avow that Nature alone could not multiply the metals, as does Hermetic Art. It is true that the metals contain within themselves this multipli- cative property; but they are apples plucked before their
*Les Fables Egyptiennes et Grecques dévoilées of which this work is an extract. E. B.
48 The Great Art.
maturity, according to Flamel. The perfect bodies or metals (Philosophical) contain this more perfect, more abundant germ; but it is so obstinately bound to them, that only Hermetic Solution can draw it out. He who has the secret of it, has the secret of the Magnum Opus, if we are to believe the Philosophers. It is necessary, in order to suc- ceed, to know the agents which Nature employs to reduce the Mixts to their principles; because each body is composed of that into which it may be naturally resolved. The princi- ples of Physics, which follow in detail, may well serve asa torch to enlighten the steps of him who would penetrate the wells of Democritus and there discover the truth, hidden in the thickest shadows. For this well is only the enigmas, the allegories, and the obscurity, scattered throughout the works of the Philosophers, who have learned from the Egyptians, as did Democritus, zo¢ to unveil the secrets of wisdom.
[Part 1.
General Principles of Pbystcs according to
hermetic Philosophy.
General Principles of Pbysics according to Hermetic Pbilosopby.
T is not given to all to penetrate the innermost sanc-
tuary of the secrets of Nature, very few know the road that leads to it. Some, impatient, err by taking paths which seem to shorten the route; others find, at almost every step, cross-roads which perplex them, lead to the left and to Tartarus, instead of holding the right which lead to the Elysian Fields, because they have not, as A‘neas, a sibyl for a guide. Others think not to be mistaken in following the most beaten and most frequented ways. Yet all perceive, after long labors, that far from having reached their aim, they have either passed on one side or turned their back Upom 1?
Errors have their source in prejudice as well as in the want of knowledge and sound instructions. The true road must be very simple, since there is nothing more simple than the operations of Nature. But although traced by this same Nature, it is little frequented; and even those who pass in it make it their jealous duty to conceal their steps with thorns and brambles. One walks there only through the obscurity of fables and enigmas; it is very difficult not to go astray, unless a guardian angel bears the torch before us.
«Therefore I will not step one step farther without a Guide, for I dread going again into the Labyrinth.” (Collectanea Hermetica, edited by Dr. Wynn Westcott. Vol. III. A Short Enquiry Concerning the Hermetic Art, by a Lover of Philalethes, page 30).
+ ‘‘This guide must be a very wise Man, indued with singular gifts.”’—Jbid.
52 The Great Art.
It is then necessary to know Nature before undertaking to imitate her and to perfect what she has left on the road to perfection. The study of Physics gives us this knowledge; not of that natural philosophy of the schools, which teaches only speculations, and stores the memory with terms more obscure than the thing which one wishes to explain. Physics, which claiming to define clearly a body, tells us that it isa composition of points, or parts; of points which, led from one place to another, will form lines; these lines, brought together, a surface, whence extent and other dimensions; from the union of parts will result a body, and from their separation, divisibility ad tmfinttum. Finally, so many other reasonings of this kind, which are incapable of satisfying a mind curious to arrive at a palpable and practical knowledge of the individuals who compose this vast Universe. It is to Chemical Philosophy that one must have recourse. It is a - practical Science, founded on the theory, the truth of which experience has proved.* But this experience is unfortunately so rare that many people doubt its existence.
In vain authors, people of mind, of genius, and very wise in other departments, have wished to invent systems, in order to represent to us, by a flowery description, the formation and birth of the world. One is caught in whirlwinds + the too rapid movement of which has borne him away, he is lost with them. His Przma Materia, divided into subtle, ramous and globulous parts, has left us only an empty subject for artful discussions, without teaching us what is the essence
of bodies. Another,{ not less ingenious, has thought of
*See ‘ Traité Méthodique de Science Occulte,’? by Papus, p. 643, for irrefutable proofs of the possibility of the Transmutation of metals.
+ Theory of Descartes, who taught that every star was a sun occupying the cen- ter of an immense circulary current, within which moved each planet, itself the center of an interior current. These whirlwinds, in spite of their inequality in regard to the space they occupy, are nevertheless compensated by the rapports existing between the volume of the central body and the expanse of the current.
+ Newton.
General Principles. 53
submitting all to calculation, and has imagined a reciprocal attraction, which would, at most, aid us in giving the reason for the actual movement of bodies, without giving us any information as to the principles of which they are composed. He knew very well that this would have been to revive, under a new name, the occult qualities of the Peripateti- cians,* banished so long from the School; also he has stated this attraction only as a conjecture, while his votaries have made it their duty to uphold it as a real thing.
The head of a third author, struck by the same blow with which his pretended comet struck the sun, has permitted his ideals to take routes as irregular as those which he fixes for the planets, formed, according to him, of parts separated by the shock of the “zgneous body” of the star which presides over the day.
The imaginations of a Talliamed, and other similar writers, are dreams which merit only scorn or indignation. Finally, all those who have wished to depart from what Moses has left us in Genesis, have lost themselves in their vain reason- ings.
Let one not say that Moses has wished to make only Christians and not Philosophers. Instructed by the revela- tion of the Author of Nature, well-versed in all the sciences of the Egyptians, who were most enlightened in all those which we cultivate today, who, better than he, could teach us something certain as to the history of the Universe?
His system, it is true, is very fit to make Christians; but is this quality, which is lacking in most of the others, incompatible with truth? Everything in it announces the grandeur, the omnipotence and wisdom of the Creator; but at the same time, everything manifests to us the creature,
* Disciples of Aristotle. It was customary for the Master to instruct his disciples while walking with them in the country. From this the etymology of the word Peripatetician, from the Greek to walk, E. PB.
54 Tbe Great Art.
such as he is. God spoke and all was made: Dzzit et facta sunt, (Gen. 1). That was enough for Christians, but not for Philosophers. Moses adds whence this world has been derived; what order it has pleased the Supreme Being to place in the formation of each kingdom of Nature. He does more: he declares positively what is the principle of all that which exists, and what gives life and movement to each individual. Could he say more in so few words? Could one demand from him that he should describe the anatomy of all the parts of these individuals; and if he had done so, would one have had more faith in him? One wishes to examine; and that because one doubts. One doubts through IGNo- RANCE; and on such a foundation what system can one erect which will not soon fall in ruins? ;
The wise man could not better designate this kind of architects, these makers of systems, than by saying that God has given over the Universe to their vain reasonings, (Lcc/es. Chidll, v.71). Leet: us say more; there 1s ne, oneswersednin the Science of Nature, who does not recognize Moses as a man inspired of God, as a great philosopher and a true physicist. He has described the creation of the World and of Man with as much truth as if he had assisted in person. But let us confess, at the same time, that his writings are so sublime, that they are not within the comprehension of all; and that those who combat him, do so because they do not understand him, because the shadows of their ignorance © blind them, and their systems are only mad dreams of a head inflated with vanity and diseased with too much presumption. Nothing more simple than Physics. This subject, although very complicated to the eyes of the ignorant, has only a single principle divided into parts, some more subtle than others. The different proportions employed in the mixture, the reunion and combinations of the more subtle parts with
General Principles. 55
those which are less so, form all the individuals of Nature, and as these combinations are almost infinite, the number of Mixts * or Composites is also infinite.
God is an eternal Being, an infinite Unity, the radical Principle of all: His essence is a great light, His power is omnipotence, His desire a perfect good, His absolute will an accomplished work. To him who would know more, there remains only astonishment, admiration, silence and an im- penetrable abyss of glory. Before Creation, He was as if folded within Himself and sufficient into Himself. In creation, He brought forth this great work which He had conceived for all Eternity. He developed Himself by a manifest extension of Himself, and rendered actually mate- rial this ideal world, as if He had wished to render palpable the image of His Divinity. This is what Hermés has wished to make us understand, when he says that God changed form: that then the World was manifested and changed into Light, (Divine Pymander, chap. I). It appears probable that the Ancients understood something like this, by the birth of Pallas, issuing from the brain of Jupiter, with the aid of Vulcan, or Light.
Not less wise in His combinations than powerful in His operations, the Creator has established such order in the organic mass of the Universe, that superior things are mixed without confusion with inferior ones, and become similar to them by certain analogy.{ The extremes are very closely bound by an imperceptible mean, or a sacred knot,§ of that
* We have adopted this orthography for designating, without confusion, bodies formed by the association of different elements; Mixts are what modern chemistry calls composed substances, or composites.— E. B.
¢ Phenomena in material bodies and in organic bodies have for conditions the same elements and the same elementary properties, Jt is the complexity of the arrangement which causes the difference.— CLAUDE BERNARD.
{The fundamental dogma of the Occult Sciences is resumed in the well-known aphorism: ‘“‘ Harmony results from the analogy of contraries.”— E. B.
§ This secret bond, uniting into a triunity all opposites, whether physical or metaphysical, constitutes the GRAND ARCANUM, the Universal Solvent of Alchy- mists.— E, B.
56 The Great Art.
adorable Workman, so that all obeys the direction of the Supreme Moderator, while the bond of the different parts can be broken only by Him who has combined them. Her- més was right in saying that “that which is below is like that which is above, in order to perfect all the admirable things which we see”’, (Tabula Smaragdina).
Some Philosophers have supposed a Matter existing before the elements;} as they did not understand it, they have spoken of it in a very obscure manner. Aristotle, who appears to have believed the World eternal, speaks of a universal First Matter, yet, without daring to entangle himself in the dark windings of the ideas which he had of it, he has expressed himself in regard to it in a very ambiguous manner. He regarded it as the principle of all sensible things, and seems to wish to imply that the elements were formed of a kind of antipathy, or repugnance, which was found between the parts of this Matter, (de Ortu et [nteritu, B Il, Chap. 1-2). He would have reasoned better, if he had seen only sympathy and perfect harmony; since one sees no opposition in the elements themselves, although one usually thinks that fire is opposed to water. One would not be mistaken, if he noticed that this pretended opposition comes
Of tbe
First Matter.*
* The First Matter, or Prima Materia, or Hylé, is the Cosmic Ether, the Grand Telesma of Hermés. The Alchemical Theories are founded upon the unity of matter; the Artificers recognized but one Cosmic element, a chemical absolute which they named Azoth. The dogma of the unity of matter, after having been rejected by modern chemistry, is now again attracting the attention of scientists. The Unity of Matter was symbolically represented by a Serpent biting its tail, the circle being the hieroglyphic of the continuity of material transformations through a gradual, imperceptible progression. E. B.
+ In Hermetic Philosophy, the elements mean certain conditions in which bodies are found: they are the equivalents of Solid, Liquid, Gaseous, etc.
Of the First Matter. 57
only from the aim of their qualities and the difference of subtlety of their parts, since there is no water without fire.
Thales, Heraclitus, Hesiod, have regarded water as the First Matter of things. Moses appears, (Geneszs, Chap. 1), to favor this idea by giving the names Abyss and Water to this First Matter; not that he understood water as the element which we drink, but as a kind of smoke, a humid vapor, thick and dark, which is condensed, more or less, according to the greater or less density of the things which has pleased the Creator to form from it. This mist, this immense vapor, was condensed or rarefied into a universal chaotic Water, which thus became the principle of all for the present and for the future, (Cosmop. Tract 4).
In its beginning this Water was volatile, as a mist; con- densation made of it a matter more or less fixed. But what- soever may have been this Matter, the first principle of things, it was created in shadows too thick for the human mind to see clearly. Only the Author of Nature knows it, and in vain would theologians and philosophers wish to determine what it was; yet, it is very probable that this dark abyss, this chaos, was an aqueous, or humid, matter, since it would be more easily rarefied and condensed, and conse- quently more suitable, because of these qualities, for the construction of the heaven and earth.
The Sacred Scripture calls this unformed mass sometimes Empty Earth and sometimes Water, although it was actually neither one nor the other, but only in potentiality. It would, then, be permissible to conjecture that it could have been almost like fumes, or a thick vapor, stupid and inert, torpid by a kind of cold, and without action, until the same Word ‘which created this vapor, infused in it a vivifying spirit, which became visible and palpable by the effects which it ‘produced.
58 The Great Art.
The separation of the waters above the firmament from the waters below, of which mention is made in Genesis, seems to have been made by a kind of sublimation of the more subtle and more tenuous parts, from those which were less so, almost as in a distillation, where the spirits rise and separate from the heavier, more terrestrial parts, and occupy the upper part of the vase, while the grosser ones remain at the bottom.
This operation could have been made only by the aid of that luminous spirit which was infused in the mass. For Light isan igneous spirit, which by acting on this vapor, and in it, rendered some parts heavier by condensation, and opaque by their closer adhesion; this spirit drove them toward the inferior region, where they kept the shadows in which they were first buried.* The parts more tenuous, and which had become more and more homogeneous by uni- formity of their tenuity and purity, were elevated and pressed towards the upper region where, being less con- densed, they permitted a freer passage to Light, which was manifested in all its splendour.
That which proves that the dark Abyss, the Chaos, or the World’s First Matter, was an aqueous and humid mass, is that, besides the reasons which we have brought forward, we have a palpable instance under our eyes. The property of water is to run, to flow, so long as heat animates and holds it in its fluid state. The continuity of bodies, the adhesion of their parts, is due to the aqueous humour. It is the ciment which unites and binds the elementary parts of bodies. So long as it is not separated from them entirely, they preserve the solidity of their mass. But if fire warms
* This Universal Light, when considered particularly as the main metal-forming agent, is called AZOTH, or Sophic Mercury. It is the menstrum, the Universal Solvent, the bond of union, or in less mystic terms, the Cosmic Ether dynamized.
DE GUAITA.
Of the First Matter. 59
these bodies beyond the degree necessary for their preser- vation in their state of actual being, it drives away, rarefies this humour, makes it evaporate, and the body is reduced to powder, because the bond which united its parts no longer exists.
Heat is the instrument which fire employs in its operations; | it even produces by this means two effects, opposite in appearance, but conformable to the laws of Nature, and representing to us that which has taken place in the disen- tanglement of chaos. In separating the most tenuous, the most humid part from the most terrestrial, heat rarefies the first and condenses the second. Thus, by the separation of the heterogeneous, is made the union of the homogeneous.
Indeed, we see in the world only water, more or less con- densed. Between the heavens and the earth, all is smoke, mist, vapors, pressed from the center, the interior of the earth, and elevated above its circumference in the part which which we call air. The weakness of the organs of our senses does not permit us to see the subtle vapors, or emanations of celestial bodies, which we call influences, and which mingle with the vapors sublimating from sub-lunar bodies. The eyes of the mind must aid the weakness of the eyes of the body.
At all times bodies exhale a subtle vapor, which is mani- fested more clearly in summer. The warm air sublimates the waters into vapors, and attracts them to itself. When, after a rain, the rays of the sun beam upon the earth, one sees it smoke and exhale itself in vapor. These vapors hover in the air in the form of fogs, when they do not rise far above the surface of the earth: but when they mount to the middle region, one sees them float, here and there, in the form of clouds. Then they are resolved into rain, snow, hail, etc., and fall to return to their origin.
60 The Great Urt.
The workman feels this to his great inconvenience, when he works vigorously. Even the idle man feels it in great heat. The body perspires always, and the transpiration which often runs from the brow manifests this sufficiently.
Those who have accepted the fantastical ideas of the rabbis, have believed that there existed, before this First Matter, a certain principle, more ancient than it, to which they have very improperly given the name of Hy/é.* It was less a body than an immense shadow; less a thing, than a very obscure image of a thing, which one could rather call a gloomy phantom of being, a very black night and the retreat or center of shadows, finally, a thing which exists only in potentiality, and which the human mind could imagine only inadream. But even the imagination could represent it to us, only as a man born blind represents to himself the light of the sun. These votaries of the rabbis have seen fit to say that God drew from the First Principle a gloomy, formless abyss as the matter from which would be derived the ele- ments and the world. But finally, everything announces to us that Water was the first principle of things.
The Spirit of God which moved upon the waters, (Gen., ch. 1), was the instrument which the Supreme Architect used, to give form to the Universe. It diffused Light instantly, reduced from latent into actual existence the germs of things, up to this time confused in chaos, and, by a constant alternation of coagulations and resolutions, it main- tains all individuals scattered through all the mass; it animates each part of it, and by a continual and secret operation, it gives movement to each individual, according to the genius and species to which it has appointed it. It is, properly speaking, the sow/ of the world; and he who ignores or denies it, ignores the laws of the Universe.
*Word derived from the Greek bry, and which signifies forest, chaos, confusion. It is also the name given by the Alchemists to the matter of the Philosopher’s Stone.— Pernety, in Dict. Mytho-Herm., p, 205.
Of Wature. 61
To this First Motive or principle of genera- tion and transformation is joined a second material one, to which we give the name of Nature. The eye of God, always attentive to His work, is, properly speaking, Nature herself, and the laws which He has placed for her preservation, are the causes of all that which takes place in the Universe. The Nature which we have just called a second material motive, is a secondary nature, a faithful servant who obcys exactly the order of her Master, (Cosmopol. Tract. 2), or an instrument guided by the hand of a Workman, incapable of making a mistake. This nature, or Second Cause, is a Universal Spirit, which has a vivifying and fertilizing property of the Light created in the beginning and communicated to all parts of the Macrocosm. Zoroaster and Heraclitus have called it an igneous Spirit, an invisible Fire, and “the Soul of the World.” It is of it that Virgil speaks when he says, (Zed. /.6): from the beginning a certain igneous spirit was infused into the heaven, the earth and sea, the moon and the Titanian, or terrestrial bodies — that is to say, the minerals and metals, to which one has given the names of planets. This Spirit gives them life and preserves them. The Soul, diffused through every body, gives movement to all the mass and to each of its parts. Whence have come all kinds of living beings, quadrupeds, birds, fishes. This igneous Spirit is the principle of their vigor; its origin is celestial, and it is communicated to them through the germ which produces them.
The order which reigns in the Universe is only a conse- quence of the eternal laws. All the movements of the different parts of its mass depend upon them. Nature forms, alters, and disintegrates continually, and her moderator, everywhere present, repairs continually the transformations of the work.
62 Tbe Great Art.
One may divide the Wor'd into three regions*, the superior, the middle, and the inferior. The Hermetic Philosophers give to the First the name of INTELLIGIBLE, and say that it is spiritual, immortal or unalterable; it is the most perfect region.
The Middle is called CELESTIAL: it encloses bodies less perfect and a quantity of spirits. It is necessary to notice that the Philosophers do not understand by these spirits, immaterial or angelic spirits, but simply physical spirits, such as the igneous spirit scattered throughout the Universe; such is also the spirituality of their superior region. This region being in the middle, participates in the character of both the superior and inferior. It serves as the means to unite these two extremes, and as the canal by which the vivifying spirits which animate all the parts of the inferior region are com- municated to it. It is subject only to periodical changes.
The Inferior or ELEMENTARY, contains all sublunary bodies. It receives from the two others vivifying spirits only to return them. This is why all is changed, all is corrupted, all dies; there is no generation which is not preceded by corruption; and no birth which is not followed by death.
Each region is subject to and dependent upon the one superior to it, but they act in concert. The Creator alone has the power of annihilating beings, as He alone has had the power of drawing them from nothingness. The laws of Nature do not permit that that which bears the character of being, or substance, should be subjected to annihilation; which has caused Hermés to say, (Pymand.), that nothing dies in this world, but that all passes from one state of being to another. Every Mixt is composed of elements, and resolves finally into these same elements, by a continual rotation, as said Lucretius:
*These three divisions are identical with those adopted by the Kabbalists, who divide the Universe in three worlds: Archetypal, Astral and Elemental, ORL Ly fe
Of Wature. 63
Fluic accedit uti quicque tn sua corpora rursum Dissolvat natura; neque ad nthilum interimat res.
There existed then, in the beginning, two principles: the one luminous, approaching spiritual nature; the other mate- rial and dark. The first, the principle of light, of movement and of heat; the second, the principle of shadows, of torpor and of cold, (Cosmopol. Tract /.), the former, active and mas- culine; the latter, passive and feminine. From the first comes the movement for generation in our elementary world, and from the second proceeds the alteration, whence death has taken its origin.
All movement is made by rarefaction and condensation, | (Beccher, Physica Subterranea). Ueat, the effect of sensible | or insensible light, is the cause of rarefaction, and cold produces contraction or condensation. All generations, vege- tations and accretions are made only by these two means; because these are the first two dispositions by which bodies were affected. Light is diffused only by rarefaction; and
condensation, which produces the density of bodies, has alone arrested the progress of light, and preserved the shadows.
When Moses said that God created the heavens and the earth, he seems to have wished to speak of the two formal and material, or active and passive, principles which we have explained, and he does not appear to have understood by the earth, that arid mass which appeared after the waters were separated from it. That of which Moses speaks is the mate- rial principle of all that which exists and comprehends the globe terra-aqua-aerian. The other has taken its name from its dryness, and in order to distinguish it from the mass of waters: e¢ vocavit Deus aridam terram, congregationesque aquarum maria, (Gen., chap. I).
64 The Great Art.
The Air, Water and the Earth are only the same matter, more or less tenuous and subtilized, in proportion as it is more or less rarefied. The Air, as the principle most approaching rarefaction, is the most subtle, Water comes next, and then Earth. As the object which I have, in giving these abridged principles of Natural Philosophy, is only to instruct the amateurs of Hermetism, I will not enter into the details of the formation of the stars and their move- ments.
Light, after having acted upon the parts of the dark mass, which were nearest to it, and having rarefied them more or less in propor- tion to their distance, finally penetrated even to the center, in order to animate it in its entirety, to fertilize it, and to make it produce all that which the Universe presents to our eyes. Thus it pleased God to fix its natural source in the sun, yet without collecting it there entirely. It seems that God had wished to establish it as the only dispenser of light, in order that the light created by an unique God, Himself the Increate Light, should be communicated to creatures by a single agent, as if to indicate to us its first origin.
From this luminous torch all the others borrow their light and the brilliancy which they reflect upon us; because their compact matter produces in regard to us the same effect as a spherical polished mass, or a mirror on which the rays of the sun fall. We must judge of celestial bodies as of the moon, in which sight alone reveals to us solidity, and a property common to terrestrial bodies of intercepting the rays of the sun, and of producing shadow, which property belongs only to opaque bodies. One must not conclude from
Of Higbt and Its “Effects.
Of Ligbt and its Effects. 65
this that the stars and planets are not transparent bodies; since clouds, which are only vapors of water, also make a shadow intercepting the solar rays.
Some Philosophers have called the sun the soul of the world, and have supposed it placed in the middle of the Universe, as it would be easier for it to communicate every- where its benign influences from a center. Before having received them the Earth was in a kind of idleness, or as a female without the male. As soon as it was impregnated by them, it produced immediately, not simple vegetation as formerly, but animated and living beings, animals of all species.
Thus the animals were the fruit of light, and having all the same principle, how could they, according to the common opinion, be antipathetic and contradictory? It is from their union that all bodies are formed according to their different species, and their diversity arises only from the greater or less proportion of each element in their composition.
The First Light had scattered the germs of things into the matrix which was fit for each one; that of the sun has fertilized them and made them germinate. Each individual preserves within himself a spark of that Light, which reduces germs from latency into activity. The spirits of living beings are raised of this Light, and the soul of Man is a ray, or emanation, of the Increate Light. God, that eternal, infi- nite, incomprehensible Light, could He manifest Himself to the world except by light? and must one be astonished if He has infused so many beauties and virtues in His image, which He has formed Himself, and in which He has estab- lished His throne: /x sole posuit tabernaculum suum, (Psalm
I8.)
66 The Great Art.
God in materializing Himself, to speak thus, by the Creation of the World, did not think that it was enough to have made such beautiful things, He wished to place upon it the seal of His divinity, and to manifest Himself still more perfectly by the forma- tion of Man. To this end, He made him in His image, and in that of the World. He gave him a soul, a mind and a body ; and of these three things, united in the same subject, He constituted humanity.
He composed this body of a clay extracted from the purest substance of all created bodies. He drew his mind from all that which is most perfect in Nature, and He gave him a soul made by a kind of extension of Himself. It is Hermés who speaks: ‘ Mens, 0 Tat, ex propria essentid Det est. Aliqua siquidem est Det essentia. Qualiscumque tamen ille sit, hec ipsum sola absoluté novit. Mens ttaque ab essentie Det habitu non est precisa: Quin etiam velut diffusa, solis splendoris instar. lec autem mens in hominibus quidem Deus est, ed de causa homines dit sunt, acipsorum humanttas divinitati est confinis,” (Pymand., cap. II.) The Bopy represents the sublunary world, composed of Earthand Water; it is because of this that it is composed of the dry and humid, or of bone, of flesh and of blood.
The Minp,* infinitely more subtle, holds the middle place between the soul and the body, and serves as a bond to unite them, because one can join two extremes only by a mean. It is this, which by its igneous virtue, vivifies and moves the body under the direction of the soul, of which it is the min- ister; sometimes, rebellious to its orders, it follows its own
fantasies and inclinations. It represents the firmament, the
*What Pernety calls MIND answers to the Astral Body of the Kabbalists ; the “Perisprit” of the Spiritists, equilibriating term between the material body and the pure Spirit. It isthe 4%, Ruah, of the Kabbalah; the Linga Sharira of Eastern Philosophy.
Of Man.
E. B.
Of Man. 67
constituent parts of which are infinitely more subtle than those of the Earth and Water.
Lastly, the Sout is the image of God Himself, and the Light of Man.
The body draws its nourishment from the purest substance of the three kingdoms of Nature, which pass successively from one into the other to end in Man, who is the comple- ment, the end and the epitome.
Having been made of Earth and Water, it can be nourish- ed only by an analogous substance, that is to say Water and Earth, and it could not fail to resolve into them.
The mind is nourished by the Spirit of the Universe and by the quintessence of all that which constitutes it, because it has been made from it. The soul of man communicates with the divine Light from which it derives its origin. |
The preservation of the body is confided to the mind. It works over the gross nourishment which we take from vege- tables and animals, in the laboratories in the interior of the body. It separates the pure from the impure; it keeps and distributes, through the different circulatory systems, the quintessence analogous to that from which the body has been made, in order to increase its volume, or to maintain it ; it rejects the impure and heterogeneous by means destined for _ this purpose.
It is the true ARcHEUS* of Nature, which van Helmont, (Traité des Maladies,) supposes placed in the orifice of the stomach ; but of which he seems not to have had a clear idea,
* Physicists and particularly Spagyric Philosophers call this the Universal and Particular Agent; itis that which induces movement in Nature and causes the seeds and germs of all sublunary beings to reproduce and multiply their species.
Pernety in Dict. Myth. Herm.
68 The Great Art.
since he has spoken of it in such a confused manner as to be almost unintelligible.*
This Archeus is an igneous principle, the principle of heat, of movement and of life, which animates bodies and pre- serves its manner of being as long as the weakness of its -organs permit. It is nourished by principles analogous to itself, which it attracts continually by respiration: this is why death succeeds life almost immediately when respiration is intercepted.
The body is by itself a principle of death, analogous to that formless, cold and dark mass, from which God formed the World. It represents shadows. The mind is derived from and participates in this matter, animated by the spirit of God, which in the beginning moved upon the waters, and which by its diffused light, infused into the mass that heat, producer of movement and life in all nature, and that fertiliz- ing virtue, principle of generation, which furnishes to each individual the means of multiplying its species.
Infused into the womb with the germ which it animates, it works there to form and to perfect the dwelling which it is to inhabit, according to the quality of the materials fur- nished, the geographical conditions and the specification of matter. If the materials are of good quality, the building will be more solid, the temperament stronger and more vigorous. If they are bad, the body will be weaker, and less fit to resist the perpetual assaults which it will have to sus- tain as long as it will exist. If the matter is susceptible of a more perfect organization, the mind will be able to exercise its action with all the liberty and ease possible. Then the
progeny who will proceed from it will be more alert, and the
*The Reader will discover, through the embarassed mannerin which Pernety expresses himself here, that the ARCHEUS is that same nervous(?) force which is concentrated in the Solar Plexus, that part of our organism which is the theatre of
the occult life of the Initiate. E. B.
Of Aan 69
mind will manifest itself in the actions of life with more brilliancy. But if something is wanting, if the matter is gross and terrestrial, if this mind is weak in itself, because of its little strength or quantity, the organs will be defective, or vitiated ; the mind can only work feebly in its abode ; the progeny will be more or less stupid. The soul which will be infused into it, will not be less perfect, but its minister, being able to exercise its functions only with difficulty—because of the obstacles which it meets at each step—will not appear in all its splendour and will not be able to manifest itself as it is. The cabin of a peasant, even the house of a merchant, would not announce the dwelling of a king, although a king should make his abode there. In vain will he have all the qualities required to reign gloriously, in vain will his minister be intelligent and capable of aiding his sovereign ; if the constitution of the state is bad, if they cannot command obedience, if there is no remedy, the state will not be splendid; all will go wrong, all will decline; it will go to its destruction without one being able to deny the existence of the sovereign, or to blame him for the lack of glory and splendour. One will render, even to the king and his minister, the justice which is due to them.
Thus one sees why reason is manifested in children only at a certain age, and in some sooner than in others; why, in | proportion as the organs are weakened, the reason appeared | to be weakened also: Corpus quod corrumpitur aggravat animam, et terréna inhabttatio deprimit sensum multa cogitan- tem, (Sap. /.) A certain time is necessary for the organs to be strengthened and perfected. They are finally consumed ; they fall into decay and are destroyed. Even if the state were at its highest degree of glory, if it begins to decline, if its destruction is inevitable, the king and his minister, with all the care and aptitudes possible, will be able, at most, only
ree The Great Art.
to make from time to time efforts, which will manifest their talents, but which will not suffice to arrest the ruin of the state.
Howsoever little an intelligent man looks into himself, and makes the analysis of his composition, he will soon recognize these three principles of his humanity, really distinct, but united in a single individual, (Vccolas Flamel, Explanation of Figures, Chap. 7).
Let the pretended strong minds, the materialists, ignorant and little accustomed to reflect seriously, consider themselves in good faith, and follow step by step this little detail of Man, and they will soon recognize their mistake and the weakness of their principles. They will see that their igno- rance causes them to confound the king with the minister, and the subjects, the Soul with the mind and the body. Finally, that a prince is responsible both for his own actions and those of his minister, when the latter acts by his order, or with his consent and approbation.
Solomon confounds the errors of the materialists of his time, and teaches us at the same time that they reasoned as foolishly as those of our day: —
“They have, said he, (Saf. c. 2), spoken as madmen who think evil, and have said :—
“Our Life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no remedy: neither was there any man known to have returned from the grave. |
“For we are born at all adventure: and we shall be here- after as though we had never been; for the breath in our nostrils is as smoke, and a little spark in the moving of our heart:
“Which, being extinguished, our body shall be turned into ashes, and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air. . . .
“Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are
Of Man. 71
present: and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youths. ah...
«Such things they did imagine, and were deceived: for their own wickedness hath blinded them.
“As for the mysteries of God, they knew them not: neither hoped they for the wages of righteousness, nor dis- cerned a reward for blameless souls.
“For God created man to be eternal, and made him to be an image of 47s own eternity.”
One sees clearly in this chapter the distinction between mind and soul. The former is an igneous vapour, a spark, a fire, which gives animal life and movement to bodies, and vanishes in the air when the organs are destroyed. The Soul is the principle of the actions of the will and of reason, and survives the destruction of the body and the dissolution of the mind.
Consequently this chapter explains these words of the same author, (Lcclestast. chap. III, v. 19): “For that which “befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing “befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, “they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence “over a beast: for all is vanity.” This igneous vapour, this spark of light animates the body of Man and puts in play all its resources. In vain will one seek for the particular place where the soul makes its residence, while it commands as a master. It is the particular abode of this spirit which it would be necessary to seek; but vainly would one wish to determine it. All the parts of the body are animated by it; | it is diffused everywhere. If the pressure of the pineal | gland,* or the callous body, arrests the action of this spirit,
it is not because it dwells there in particular, but because *Descartes placed the seat of the soulin the brain, in the small gland called
Glandula pinealis, situated between the Optic Thalimi and Corpora quadrigemina. E, B.
72 The Great Art.
the resources which the spirit employs to put in play the machine, end there mediately or immediately. Their action is hindered by this pressure; and the spirit, although diffused everywhere, can no longer make them act.
The tenuity of this igneous vapour is too great to be apparent to the senses, except by its effects. The minister of God and of the Soul in Man, it follows in the animals only the impressions and laws which the Creator has imposed upon it in order to animate them, to give them the movement conformable to their species. It accommodates itself to all, and is specified in man and the animals according to their organs. Whence comes the conformity which is noticeable in a great number of the actions of men and beasts. God uses it as an instrument by means of which the animals see, taste, smell and hear. Hehas constituted it under His orders the guide of their actions. He specifies it in each of them according to the different functions which it has pleased Him to give to their organs. Whence the difference of their char- acters, and their different manners of acting, yet always uniform as to each one in particular, taking always the same road to arrive at the same aim, when no obstacles are found in it.
This spirit, which is usually called instinct, when animals are spoken of, determined and almost absolutely specified in each animal, is not so in Man, because the spirit of Man is the epitome and quintessence of all the spirits of animals. So man has not a particular character which is peculiar to him, as each animal has: every dog is faithful, every lamb is gentle, every lion is bold, every cat is treacherous; but man is all at the same time, faithful, indiscreet, treacherous, intem- perate, gentle, furious, bold, timid, courageous; circum- stances, or reason, decide always what he is at each instant of life, and one never sees in any animal those varieties
Of Man. 73
which one finds in Man, because he alone possesses the germ of all. Each man would develop it, and would convert it from potentiality to actuality as the animals, when the occasion would present itself, if this spirit was not subordi- nated to another substance superior to itself. The Soul, purely spiritual, holds the reins. It guides the spirit, and conducts it in all its deliberate actions. Sometimes it does not give it time to communicate its orders, and to exercise its empire. It acts of itself; it puts in play the resources of the body, and Man then acts simply as an animal. These actions one calls first zmpulse,* and those which one makes without reflection, such as coming, going, eating, when one is worried by some serious affair which occupies him entirely.
The animal obeys always, infallibly, his natural inclination, because it tends only to the preservation of its transient, mortal existence, in which lies all its happiness and welfare. But Man does not always follow this inclination; because, while he is disposed to preserve that which is mortal in him- self, he feels also another desire which disposes him to work for the felicity of his immortal part, to which he is certain that he owes the preference.
Thus God has created Man in His image, and has formed him as the abrégé of all His works, and the most perfect of material beings. One calls him rightly: Microcosm. He is the center where all ends: he contains the quintessence of the entire Universe. He participates in the virtues and properties of all individuals. He has the fixedness of the metals and minerals, the vegetability of the plants, the sensitive faculties of the animals, and besides, an intelligent and immortal Soul. The Creator has placed in him, as in the
box of Pandora, all the gifts and virtues of things superior
*For the study of these involuntary acts, immediate result of Reflex Action, see the remarkable works of Dr. Papus: Traité de Physiologie Synthétique, Traité Méthodique de Science Occulte, etc.
7+ The Great Art.
and inferior. He finished His work of creation by the formation of Man, because it was necessary to create all the Universe in stupendous proportions before reducing it in hominal limits. And asthe Supreme Being, Himself with- out beginning, was yet the beginning of all, He wished to place the seal of His work on an individual, who, not being able to be without beginning, was at least without end as Himself.
Therefore let not man dishonor the Model of which he is theimage. He should think that he has not been created to live solely according to his animality, but according to his humanity, properly speaking. Let him drink, let him eat; but let him pray, let him subdue his passions, let him work for eternal life; in this he will differ from the animals, and will be really a man.
The body of Man is subject to change and entire dissolu- tion, as other composites. The action of heat produces this change in the manner of being of all sublunary individuals, because their mass being a composition of parts more mate- rial, less pure, less connected, and more heterogeneous than those of the stars or planets, is more susceptible to the effects of rarefaction.
This alteration is in its progression a real corruption, which is made successively, and which, by degrees, leads to a new generation, or new manner of being; for the harmony of the Universe consists in a different and gradual interior formation of the matter which constitutes it.
This change of form takes place only in the bodies of this inferior world. The cause is not, as some have thought, the contradiction or opposition of the qualities of matter, but its own essence, dark and purely passive, which, not having in itself power to acquire a permanent form, is obliged to receive these different and transient forms of the principle
Of Ahan. 45
which animates it; always according to the end which has | pleased God to give to the genera and species.
To supply this original defect of matter, from which even the body of Man has been formed, God placed Adam in a Terrestrial Paradise, so that he could combat and conquer this caducity by the use of the fruit of the Tree of Life, of which he was deprived, in punishment for his disobedience, and he was condemned to undergo the fate of other individ- uals whom God had not favored with this aid.
The Prima Materia from which all has been made, which serves as a basis for all the composites, seems to have been so mingled and identified in them, after it had received its form from Light, that it could not be separated from them without causing their destruction. Nature has left us an example of this confused and formless mass, in that dry water, which does not moisten, which may be seen rising from mountains, and which exhale from some lakes, impregnated with the germs of things, and which evaporates at the least heat. This dry water is that which forms the basis of the Ars Magna, according to all Philosophers. He who would know how to unite this volatile matter with its male, to extract from it the Elements, and to separate them philo- sophically, could flatter himself, so says d’Espagnet, (E£chz- rid. Phys. restit. can. 49.), that he had in his possession the most precious secret of nature, and even the epitome of the essence of the heavens.
Thus Nature employed from the beginning only two simple principles, from which all that which exists was made, namely, the
passive Prima Materia, and the Luminous Agent which gave
*In the Alchemical Theory, says Albert Poisson, the four Elements, not any more than the three Principles, represent particular substances; they are simply
Of the
Elements.*
76 Tbe Great Art.
it form. The Elements proceeded from their action, as secundary principles, from the different mixture of which was formed a Secunda Materia* subject to the vicissitudes of generation and corruption.
In vain will one imagine to be able by the aid of chemical art to arrive at and separate the Elements absolutely simple and distinct from each other. The human mind does not even know them. Those to which the profane gives the name of elements, are not really simple and homogeneous: they are so mingled and united as to be inseparable.
The perceptible bodies of the earth, the water and the air, which in their spheres are really distinct, are not the first and simple elements which Nature employs in her different generations. They seem to be only the matrix of others. The simple Elements are imperceptible, until their union forms a dense matter, which we call body, to which are joined the gross elements as integral parts. Ex znsenst- bilibus namque omnia confiteare principiis constare, (Lucret. lib, 2). The elements which constitute our globe are too crude and impure to form a perfect generation. Unseason- ably the chemists and physicists attribute to them the prop- erties of the parent-Elements: the Prima Materia and Lumi- nous Agent. The latter are as the soul of the composites, the former only the body. Art is ignorant of the first, and would work in vain to resolve the Mixts into them: this is the work of Nature alone.
On these principles the ancient Philosophers distinguished
_ only three Elements, and imagined the Universe governed by
states of matter, simple modalities. Water is synonymous with the liquid state, Earth with the solid; Air with the gaseous and Fire with that of a very subtle gaseous state, such as a gas expanded by the action of heat ... Moreover, Ele- ments represent, by extension, physical qualities such as heat, (Fire); dryness and solidity, (Earth); moisture and fluidity,(Water); cold and subtility, (Air); Zosimus gives to their ensemble the name of Tetrasomy. ( Théories et Symboles des Alchimistes.) «Secunda Materia, or Seed in Metals.
Of the Elements. T7
three gods, children of Saturn, whom they called sons of Heavens and Earth. The Egyptians, from whom the ancient Greek Philosophers derived their systems, regarded Vulcan as the father of Saturn, if we believe Diodorus of Sicily. Doubtless this is the reason which led them not to place Fire in the number of Elements. But as they supposed that the Fire of Nature, the principle of elementary Fire, had its source in the Heavens, they gave the government of it to Jupiter; and, asa scepter and distinctive mark, they armed him with a thunderbolt with three darts, and gave him fora wife his sister Juno, whom they imagined to preside over the Air. Neptune was placed over the sea, and Pluto over the infernal regions. The poets adopted these ideas of the Philosophers, who, knowing Nature perfectly, saw fit to make only a trine division of it, persuaded that the accidents, which distinguish the inferior region of the air from the superior, did not form a sufficient reason to make a real. distinction. They saw in them only a difference of dry and humid, szccum and humidum, of heat and cold united; which made them imagine the two sexes in the same Element.
Each of the three brothers had a three-pointed scepter as a mark of his empire, and to indicate that each Element, as we see it, is a composition of three. They were, properly speaking, brothers, since they were derived from the same principle, sons of the Heavens and the Earth, that is to say, the first animate matter from which all has been made.
Pluto is called the god of riches and the master of the infernal regions, because the earth is the source of riches, and because nothing torments men as does the thirst for wealth and ambition. |
It is not more difficult to apply the rest of the Fable to Physics. Several authors have interested themselves in this matter, and have demonstrated that the ancients proposed
78 The Great Art.
only to instruct by the invention of these fables. The Her- metic Philosophers, who claim to be the true disciples and imitators of Nature, made a double application of these prin- ciples: seeing in the processes and progress of the Avs Magna the operations of Nature, as in a mirror; they no longer distinguished the one from the other, and explained them in the same manner. Then they compared all that which takes place in the Magzstery, to the successive stages of the crea- tion of the Universe, by a certain analogy which they thought to remark in them. Is it surprising that all their fictions have had these two things for an object? If one reflected, one would not find much of the ridiculous in their myths. If they personified all, it was to render their ideas more obvious; and one would soon recognize that the ridiculous and licentious actions, which they attributed to these imagi- nary gods, were only the operations of Nature, which we see daily without noticing them. Wishing to explain themselves only by allegories, could they suppose things done otherwise and by other actors? Does not our ignorance of Physics give us the foolish privilege of mocking them, and imputing to them ridicule, which they could perhaps easily turn upon us if they were on the earth, to speak in the fashion of the present century? The analysis of the composites, or Mixts, gives us only the szccum and humtdum, whence one must conclude that there are only two perceptible Elements in the composition of bodies, namely, Earth and Water. But the same experiment shows us that two others are concealed in them. The Air is too subtle to strike our eyes: hearing and touch are the only senses which demonstrate to us its exist- ence. As tothe Fire of Nature, it is impossible for Art to manifest it, except by its effects.
Of the Lartb. 79
The Earth is naturally cold, because of its participating more of the nature of the opaque and dark Primal Matter. This cold makes the body heavier and denser; and this density renders it less penetrable to Light, which is the principle of heat. It has been created in the midst of the waters, with which it is always mixed; and the Creator seems to have made it dry on its surface, only to render it suitable for the abode of vege- tables and animals.
The Creator has made the Earth spongy, so that the Air, Water and Fire might have free access, and that the interior Fire, which was infused into it by the spirit of God before the formation of the Sun, (Cosmopol. Tract 4), could press from the center to the surface by its pores the virtues of the Elements, and exhale those humid vapors, which corrupt the germs of things by a slight putrefaction, and prepare them for generation. These germs thus prepared receive the celestial and vivifying heat, and even attracted by a magnetic love, the germ develops, and the seed produces its fruit.
The heat peculiar to the Earth, is fit only for corruption. Its moisture weakens it, and could produce nothing unless aided by the celestial heat, pure and without mixture, which leaves to generation, by exciting the action of the internal fire, by developing it, by expanding it, and by drawing it, to speak thus, from the center of the seed, where it lies torpid and concealed. These two heats by their homogeneity work in concert for the production and preservation of the Mixts. /
All cold is contrary to production. When a matter is of this nature, it becomes passive, and is fit for production only as long as it is aided and corrected by an outside force. The Author of Nature, designing the Earth to be the womb of the composites, warms it consequently, continually by the heat of the Celestial and Central Fire, and joins to it the
Of the arth.
80 The Great Art.
humid nature of Water; so that, aided by the two principles of generation, the warm and the humid, it is not sterile, and becomes the Vase in which are conceived all the generations, (Cosmop. zbtd). One says for this reason, that the Earth contains the other Elements.
It can be divided into two classes, the pure and the impure. The first is the basis of all the composites, and produces all by the mixture of Water and the action of Fire. The second is the garment of the first; it enters as an integral part in the composition of individuals.
The pure is animated by a Fire which vivifies the Mixts, and preserves them in their manner of being, as long as the cold of the impure does not rule, or as long as it is not too much excited and tyrannized over by the artificial and elementary fire, its fratricide. That which is visible in the Earth is fixed, and that which is invisible is volatele.
The density of Water holds the middle place between that of the Air and that of the Earth. It is the MWenstrum* of Nature, and the vehicle of the germs. It is a volatile body, which seems to flee from the attacks of fire, and evaporates at the slightest heat. It is susceptible of all forms, and more changeable than Proteus. Water is a mercury, which, partaking sometimes of the nature of a terra-aqueous body, sometimes of that of an aqua-aerian body, attracts and seeks the virtues of things superior and inferior. It becomes, by this means, the messenger of the gods and their mediator;
Of Water.
*Or Solvent —‘* One has also given the name of Menstrum, however improperly, to Vegetable and Metallic waters, which are regarded as the feminine principle of these two reigns, and in which is placed the matter to be dissolved.”
Pernety, Dict. Mytho-Herm., p 292.
Of Water. 81
through it is maintained the commerce between the heavens and the earth.
An unctious phlegm is diffused in Water, (Mémotre de ? Académie de Berlin). M. Eller has recognized it in his observations: “A water,” said he, “very pure and free from all heterogeneous parts, (in the manner of the common chemist), can suffice for vegetation. It furnishes the earth, the basis of the solidity of plants: it diffuses in it that inflammable, or oily part, which one finds in it.”
Let us take some earth, after having been washed in lye and parched by fire, in which we are certain that there is no germ of plants, let us expose it to the air in a vase, and let us be careful to water it with rain water, it will produce little plants in great number; proof that it is the vehicle of germs.
As Water is of a nature closely approaching that of the First Matter of the World, it becomes easily its symbol, or image. The chaos, whence all was derived, was like a vapor, or a humid substance, similar to a subtle smoke. Light having rarefied it, the heavens were formed of the most subtilized portion; the Air of that which was less so; the elementary Water of that which was a little more terrestrial; and the Earth, of the densest, and as feces, (Raymond Lully, Testam, Anc. Theor... Therefore Water partaking of the nature of the Air and Earth, is placed in the middle. Lighter than the Earth and heavier than Air, it is always mixed with both. Atthe least rarefaction it seems to abandon the Earth to take the nature of the Air; it is condensed by the least cold, it quits the Air, and unites itself with the Earth.
The nature of Water is rather humid than cold, because it is thinner and more open to the Light than the Earth. Water has preserved the humidity of the Prima Materia and of chaos; the Earth has retained its cold.
The siccity is an effect of cold as of heat, and moisture is
82 The Great Art.
the principal subject on which heat and cold act. When the latter is powerful, it condenses the moisture; we see it in snow, ice and hail. From this comes the fall of leaves in autumn. If the cold increases, winter succeeds, the moisture in the plants congeals, the pores close, the stalk becomes weak through lack of nourishment: they finally wither. If the winter is severe, it bears the dryness even to the roots: it attacks the vzto-humidum,; and the plants perish. How can one say after this that cold is a quality of Water, since it is its enemy, and since Nature does not suffer that an Element act upon itself. One speaks, it seems to me, more correctly, when one says that the cold has duzned the plants. Cold and heat burn equally, but in a different manner; heat by expanding, and cold by contracting the parts of the Mixts.
That which Water presents to us visibly is volatile; its interior is fixed. The Airtempers its humidity. That which the Air receives from Fire, it communicates to Water, which in turn communicates it to the Earth.
One may divide this Element into three parts; the suze, the purer, and the purest, (Cosmopol., of Water); from the
latter the heavens have been made; from the purer, the Air; and the simply pure has remained in its sphere: it is the ordinary Water, which forms only one globe with the Earth. These two Elements united make all, because they contain the two others. From their union is born a mud, which Nature uses to form all bodies. This mud is the Matter from which will evolve all generations. It is a kind of chaos, in which the Elements are confounded. Our first father has been formed from it, as well as all the generations which have followed him. From the sperm and the menstrum is formed a mud, and from this mud an animal.
In the production of vegetation the seeds putrefy and change into a slime before germinating. It is then consoli-
Of the Air. 83
dated and grows into a vegetable body. In the generation of the metals, Sulphur and Mercury resolve into a viscous Water, which is a true slime. The decoction coagulates this Water, fixes it more or less, and from it results the minerals and the metals. In the Sophic Work, one first forms a slime of two substances, or principles, after having purified them. As the four Elements are found in them, the Fire preserves the Earth from submersion and entire dissolution: the Air maintains the Fire; the Water preserves the Earth against the violent attacks of the Fire; and acting thus in concert upon each other, there results from them a harmonious whole, which composes what is called the Phzlosopher’s Stone, or the Wicrocosm.
The Air is light, and is not visible; but it contains a substance which corporifies itself, which becomes fixed. Its nature is midway between that which is above and that which is below it; for this reason it takes easily the qualities of its neighbours. Whence come the changes which we experience in the low regions, those of cold, as well as those of heat.
The Air is the receptacle of the germs of all, the sieve of Nature, by which the powers and influences of other bodies are transmitted to us. It penetrates all. It is a very subtle smoke; the fit subject of light and of shadows, of day and night. A body always full, transparent, and most susceptible of foreign qualities, as well as most ready to abandon them. The Philosophers call it Sfzvz¢, when they treat of the Azs Magna. It contains the vital spirits of all bodies; it is the aliment of fire, of vegetation and of animals, who die when deprived of it. Nothing would be born in the world without
Of the Hir.
84 The Great Art.
its penetrating and altering force; and nothing can resist its rarefaction.
The superior region of the Air, next to the moon, is pure without being igneous; as has been long taught in the schools, according to the opinion of some of the ancients. Its purity is contaminated by none of the vapours which rise from the lower region.
The middle region receives the most subtle sulphurous exhalation, free from the gross vapours. They wander in it, and are set on fire from time to time by their movements and the different shocks which they undergo among them- selves. These are the different meteors which we perceive in the middle region.
In the lower region, the vapours of the earth rise and mingle. They are condensed by the cold and fall by their own weight. Thus Nature purifies Water to render it fit for her productions. This is why one distinguishes the superior waters from the inferior. The latter are near the earth, they are supported upon it as on their foundation and form only one globe with it. The superior waters occupy the lower region of the air, where they are raised in the form of vapours and clouds, and where they wander at the will of the winds. The air is full of them at all times; but they are manifest to our sight only in part, when they are condensed into clouds. This is the consequence of creation. God separated the waters of the firmament from those which were below. It should not be surprising that all the waters, united, have been able to cover the entire surface of the earth, and to cause an universal deluge, since they covered it before God had separated them, (Gex. Chap.V). These humid masses which hover over our heads are like travellers, who go to collect the riches of all countries, and return to benefit their native land.
Of Fire. 85
Some of the ancients placed Fire as a fourth Element, in the highest region of the Air, be- cause they regarded it as the lightest and most subtle. But the Fire of Nature does not differ from the Celestial Fire; this is why Moses makes no mention of it in Genesis, because he had said that Light was created on the first day.
The fire which we use ordinarily is partly natural and partly artificial The Creator has placed in the sun an igneous spirit, the principle of movement and of gentle heat, such as is necessary to Nature for her operations. It com- municates it to all bodies, and by exciting and developing the Fire which is innate in them, it preserves the principle of generation and of life. Each individual partakes of it more or less. He who seeks in Nature another element of Fire, is ignorant of what the sun and light are.
It is placed in the Mozst Radical as its proper seat. With animals it seems to have established its chief domicile in the heart, which communicates it to all parts, as the sun does to all the Universe.
The Fire of Nature is her first agent. It reduces the germs from potentiality to actuality. Assoon as it no longer acts, all apparent movement and all vital action ceases. The principle of movement is light, and movement is the cause of heat. This is why the absence of the sun and of light has such a great effect upon bodies. Heat penetrates to the interior of the most opaque and hardest substances, and animates the hidden and torpid nature. Light penetrates only transparent bodies, and its property is to manifest the perceptible accidents of the composites. Thus the sun is the first natural and universal agent.
In departing from the sun light strikes the dense bodies, the celestial as well as the terrestrial; it places their faculties
Of Fire.
86 | The Great Art.
in movement, carries them with it, reflects them and diffuses them in the upper Air as well as in the lower. Air having a disposition to mix with the Water and the Earth, becomes the vehicle of these faculties, and communicates them to the bodies which are formed of them, or which are by analogy most susceptible of them. These are the faculties which are called zzfluences. Many natural philosophers deny their existence, because they do not know them.
One divides Fire into three kinds, the Celestial, the Terrestrial, or Simple, and the Artificial. The first is the principle of the other two and is divided into Universal and Particular. The Universal diffused everywhere, excites and puts in movement the forces of bodies ; it warms and pre- serves the germs of things infused into our globe, destined to serve as their makers. It develops the particular Fire; it mixes the elements and gives form to matter.
The particular Fire is innate, and implanted in each mixture with its germ. It acts little, except when excited; it then does, in the part of the Universe, what the sun, its father, does in the whole.
Everywhere there is production, there must be Fire, as the efficient cause. The ancients thought as we:
Inde hominum pecudumque genus, viteque volantum,
Et que marmoreo fert monstra sub @quore pontus.
Lgneus est tllis vigor, et celestis origo
Semenibus. —Virg. Aineid. 1. 6. But it is surprising that they have admitted a contradiction between Fire and Water, since there is no Water without Fire and since they always act in concert in the generations of individuals.
Every discerning eye must, on the contrary, remark a love, a sympathy which causes the preservation of the Universe, the cube of Nature, and the strongest bond, to unite the
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Elements and the superior with the inferior things. This love is, to speak thus, what we should call Nature, the Minister of the Creator, who employs the Elements to execute His will according to the laws which He has imposed upon them. Everything is done in the World in peace and unity, which cannot be an effect of hatred and contradiction. Nature would not be so like to herself in the formation of individuals of the same species, if all was not done in con- cert. We would see only monsters proceed from the hetero- geneous germs of fathers perpetually hostile, constantly at war with each other. Do we see the animals work through hatred and contradiction for the propagation of their species ? Let us judge the other operations of Nature by this : her laws are simple and uniform.
Let philosophy cease to attribute the alteration, the corrup- tion, the decay of the Mixts to a pretended antagonism of the elements; it is found in the penury and weakness peculiar to the First Matter; for in chaos Frigzda non pugnabant calidis, humentia siccts. All was cold and humid, qualities which belong to Matter, considered as feminine. The warm and the dry, masculine and formal qualities, have come to it from Light, from which it has received its forms. Thus it is only after the retreat of the Waters that the Earth was called arid or dry.
We see continually that heat and dryness give form to everything. A potter would never succeed in making a vase, if dryness does not give to the clay a certain degree of adhe- sion and solidity. If the earth is too moist, too soft, it is a mud, which has no determined form.
Such was chaos, before the heat, or Light, had rarefied it, and caused the evaporation of a part of its moisture. The parts drew closer together, the clay of chaos became earth,
88 The Great Art.
and an earth of a consistency fit to serve as the material in the formation of all the composites in Nature.
Thus heat and dryness are only accidental qualities of the First Matter. It has been endowed with them on receiving its form, (Genesis, Chap. J). Thus itis not said in Genesis that God found chaos very good, as He did Light and other things. The abyss seems to have acquired a degree of perfec- tion, only when it began to produce. Confusion, lack of form, and opaque density, a coldness, a crude moisture, and powerlessness, were its characteristics; qualities which indi- cate an ill body, inclined to corruption. It has preserved something of this original fault, and has infected with it all the bodies which have proceeded from it, to be placed in this lower region. This is why all the composites have a tran- sient manner of being, in regard to the determination of their individual and specific form.
Howsoever opposed light and shadow may seem to be, since they have concurred, the one as agent, the other as patient, in the formation of the Universe, they have made by this agreement of their contrary qualities, an almost unalter- able treaty of peace, which has passed into their homogene- ous family of the Elements, whence has resulted the peaceful generation of all individuals. Nature is pleased in combina- tion and does all by proportion, weight and measure, and not by contradiction. |
Est modus in rebus sunt certt denique fines, Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum. —ffor. Art. Poét.
Each element has, peculiar to itself, one of the qualities of which we speak. Warmth, dryness, cold and moisture are the four wheels which Nature employs to produce the slow, graduated and circular movement which she seems to affect in the formation of all her works.
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Fire, her universal agent, is the principle of elementary fire. The latter is nourished by all fat matters, because all that which is fat is of a humid and aerial nature. Although, externally, it may appear dry to us, as sulphur, gunpowder, etc., experience teaches us that this exterior conceals a fat, oily moisture, which is resolved by the action of heat.
Those who have imagined that it was formed in the air- principle of hard bodies such as aerolites, have been mis- taken, if they have regarded them as terrestrial bodies. It is a substance which belongs to the gross element of Water: a fat, viscous humour, enclosed in the clouds as in a furnace, where it condensed and mixed with the sulphurous exhala- tions, which are warm and very inflammable. The air, which is too much compressed by this condensation, is rare- fied by heat, and produces the same effect as gunpowder in a bomb: the vessel breaks, the fire diffused in the air, freed from its bonds by this movement, produces that light and noise, which often startle the most intrepid.
Our artificial and common fire has properties exactly con- trary to the Fire of Nature, although derived from it. It is the enemy of all production; it is maintained only by the ruin of bodies; it is nourished only by rapine; it reduces all to ashes, and destroys all that which the other forms. It is a parricide; the greatest enemy of Nature; and if we did not know how to oppose obstacles to its fury, it would destroy all. Is it surprising that the “broilers” * see all perish in their hands, their property and health vanish in smoke, and useless ashes as their only resource?