ON CERTAIN ALCHEMISTS
Nicholas Flamel belongs to alchemy exclusively, and he enters only into
our consideration because of the hieroglyphical book of Abraham the
Jew, in which the scrivener of the rue Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie found
the absolute keys of the Great Work. This book was founded on the Keys
of the Tarot and was simply a hieroglyphical and Hermetic commentary
on the _Sepher Yetzirah_. We find as a fact, by the description of
Flamel himself, that the leaves were 21 in number, making 22 with the
title,[246] and that they were divided into three septenaries, having
a blank leaf at every seventh page. Let us here bear in mind that the
Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic summary of all occult
types, also divided its symbols into three septenaries, between each of
which there is silence in heaven, thus instituting a striking analogy
with the uninscribed leaf in the mystic book of Flamel.[247] The
septenaries of the Apocalypse are (_a_) seven seals to open, meaning
seven mysteries to be learned and seven difficulties to be overcome;
(_b_) seven trumpets to sound, being seven utterances to understand;
(_c_) seven vials to empty, which signify seven substances which must
be volatilised and fixed.
In the work of Flamel the first seventh leaf has as its hieroglyphical
character the wand of Moses overcoming the serpents brought forth by
the magicians of Pharaoh. They are seen devouring one another, and the
figure as a whole is analogous to the Victor of the Tarot, yoking to
his cubic chariot the white and black sphinxes of Egyptian Magic. The
symbol in question corresponds to the seventh dogma in the creed of
Maimonides: we acknowledge but one prophet, who is Moses. It represents
the unity of science and the work; it represents further the Mercury of
the Wise, which is formed by the dissolution of composites and by the
reciprocal action of the Sulphur and Salt of metals.
The emblem on the fourteenth page was the Brazen Serpent set upon a
cross. The cross represents the marriage of the purified Sulphur and
Salt, as also the condensation of the Astral Light. The fourteenth
Trump card in the Tarot depicts an angel, who is the spirit of the
earth, mingling the liquids in two ewers, one of gold and one of
silver. It is the same symbol formulated after another manner. On the
21st leaf of Flamel’s book there was the type of space and universal
life, represented by a desert with springs of water and serpents
gliding hither and thither.[248] In the Tarot, space is typified by
the four signs allocated to the cardinal points of heaven, and life
is represented by a naked girl dancing in a circle. Flamel does not
specify the number of springs and serpents, but the former would
probably be four, springing from one source, as in the Pantacle of
Eden; the serpents would be four, seven, nine or ten.
On the fourth leaf was the figure of Time, preparing to cut off the
feet of Mercury. Close by was a rose-tree in blossom, the root being
blue, the stem white, the leaves red, and the flowers golden.[249] The
number four is that of elemental realisation. Time is atmospheric
nitre; his scythe is the acid which is extracted from this nitre,
and the Mercury is fixed thereby, being transformed into salt. The
rose-tree represents the Work and the successive colours which
characterise its stages: it is the mastery passing through the black,
white and red aspects, out of which gold is produced as a blossom that
buds and unfolds.
The number 5 is that of the Great Mystery, and on the fifth page blind
men were represented digging up the ground round the rose-tree in
search of the grand agent which is present everywhere. Some others,
who were better advised, were weighing a white water, resembling a
solidified air.[250] On the reverse side of this page was the massacre
of the innocents, with the sun and moon descending to bathe in their
blood. This allegory, which is the literal secret of Hermetic art, has
reference to that process of taking air into air, as Aristeus[251]
puts it; or, to speak intelligible language, of using air as force,
expanding it by means of Astral Light, just as water is changed into
steam by the action of fire. This can be accomplished by the aid of
electricity, magnets and a powerful projection of the operator’s
will, when directed by science and good intent. The children’s blood
represents that essential light which is extracted by philosophical
fire from elementary bodies. When it is said that the sun and moon come
down to bathe, the meaning is that the silver therein is tinctured into
gold and that the gold acquires a grade of purity by which its sulphur
is transformed into the true Powder of Projection.
We are not writing a treatise on alchemy, although this science
is really Transcendental Magic put into operation; we reserve its
revelations and wonders for other special and more extended works.
Popular tradition affirms that Flamel did not die and that he buried a
treasure under the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. According to
illuminated adepts, this treasure, contained in a cedar box covered
with plates of the seven metals, was the original copy of the famous
book attributed to Abraham the Jew, with commentaries in the writing
of Flamel and sufficient specimens of the Powder of Projection to
transmute the sea into gold, supposing that the sea were Mercury.
After Flamel came Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine and other famous
alchemists. The twelve Keys of Basil Valentine are at once Kabalistic,
magical and Hermetic. Then in 1480 appeared Trithemius, who was the
master of Cornelius Agrippa and the greatest dogmatic magician of the
middle ages. Trithemius was an abbot of the Order of St. Benedict,
of irreproachable orthodoxy and unimpeachable conduct. He was not so
imprudent as to write openly on occult philosophy, like his venturesome
disciple Agrippa. All his magical works turn on the art of concealing
mysteries, while his doctrine was expressed in a pantacle, after the
manner of true adepts. This pantacle is excessively rare, and is found
only in a few manuscript copies of his tract _De Septem Secundeis_.
A Polish gentleman and man of exalted mind and noble heart, Count
Alexander Branistki possesses a curious example which he has kindly
shewn to us. The pantacle consists of two triangles joined at the base,
one white and the other black. At the apex of the black triangle there
is a fool crouching, who turns his head with difficulty and gazes
awe-struck into the triangle, where his own likeness is reflected.
On the apex of the white triangle stands a man in the prime of life,
armed as a knight, having a steady glance and an attitude of strong
and peaceful command. In this triangle are inscribed the letters of
the divine Tetragram. The natural and exoteric sense of the emblem may
be explained by an aphorism as follows: The wise man rests in the fear
of the true God, but the fool is overwhelmed by the terror of a false
god made in his own image. By meditating on the pantacle as a whole,
and thereafter on its constituents successively, the adepts, however,
will find therein the last word of Kabalism and the unspeakable formula
of the Great Arcanum. In other words, it is the distinction between
miracles and prodigies, the secret of apparitions, the universal theory
of magnetism and the science of all mysteries.
Trithemius composed a history of Magic, written entirely in pantacles,
under the title: _Veterum Sophorum Sigilla et Imagines Magicæ_. In
his _Steganography_ and _Polygraphy_ he gives the key to all occult
writings and explains in veiled terms the real science of incantations
and evocations. Trithemius is in Magic the master of masters, and we
have no hesitation in proclaiming him the most wise and learned of
adepts.
It is otherwise with Cornelius Agrippa, who was a seeker all his life
and attained neither science nor peace. His books are full of erudition
and assurance; he was himself of an independent and phantastic
character, so it came about that he passed for an abominable sorcerer
and was persecuted by the priesthood and princes. In the end he wrote
against the sciences which had failed to bring him happiness, and he
died in misery and abandonment.
We now come to the mild and pleasing figure of that learned and sublime
Postel who is known only by his over-mystical love for an elderly but
illuminated woman. There is something far different in Postel from the
disciple of Mother Jeanne, but vulgar minds prefer to disparage rather
than to learn and have no wish to see anything better in him. It is not
for the benefit of these that we propose to make known the genius of
William Postel.
He was the son of a poor peasant, belonging to the district of
Barenton in Normandy; by force of perseverance and much sacrifice,
he contrived to teach himself and became the most learned man of his
time; but poverty pursued him always and want occasionally compelled
him to sell his books. Full of resignation and sweetness, he worked
like a labouring man to win a morsel of bread and then went back to
his studies. He acquired all known languages and sciences of his
period; he discovered rare and priceless manuscripts, including the
apocryphal gospels and the _Sepher Yetzirah_; he initiated himself
into the mysteries of the transcendental Kabalah,[252] and in his
simple admiration for that absolute truth, for that supreme reason of
all philosophies and dogmas, it was his ambition to reveal it to the
world. He therefore spoke the language of mysteries openly and wrote
a book entitled the _Key of Things kept Secret from the Foundation of
the World_.[253] He dedicated this work to the fathers assembled at the
Council of Trent, entreating them to enter the path of conciliation and
universal synthesis. No one understood him, some accused him of heresy
and the most moderate were contented to say that he was a fool.
The Trinity, according to Postel, made man in Its image and Its
likeness. The human body is dual and its triadic unity is through the
union of the two halves. The human soul is also dual; it is _animus_
and _anima_, or intellect and emotion; it has also two sexes, the male
being resident in the head and the female in the heart. Redemption in
its completion must also be dual in humanity; the mind by its purity
makes good the errors of the heart, and then the generosity of the
heart must rescue the egoistic barrenness of the brain. Christianity,
from Postel’s standpoint, has been so far understood only by the
reasoning mind and has not entered into the heart. The Word has been
made man, but the world will be saved when the Word shall have been
made woman. The sublime grandeurs of the spirit of love will be taught
by the maternal genius of religion, and then reason will be harmonised
with faith, because it will comprehend, interpret and restrain the
sacred excesses of devotion.
Observe, he remarks, how religion is understood by the majority of
Christians; it is only as an ignorant and persecuting partiality, a
superstitious and stupid stubbornness, and fear—base fear—above all.
Why is this? Because those who profess it have not the woman-heart,
because they are foreign to the divine enthusiasms of that mother-love
which explains all religion. The power that has invaded the brain
and binds the spirit is not that of the good, understanding and
longsuffering God; it is of the wicked, imbecile and cowardly Satan.
It comes about in this manner that there is far more fear of the devil
than love for the Divine. The frozen and shrivelled brain weighs on
the dead heart like a tombstone. What an awakening will it be for
understanding, what a rebirth for reason, what a victory for truth
when the heart shall be raised by grace. Why am I the first and almost
the only person to comprehend this, and what can one who has attained
resurrection perform alone among the dead who can hear nothing? Come
therefore and come quickly, O mother-spirit, who appeared to me at
Venice in the soul of a virgin inspired by God; descend and teach the
women of the new world their redeeming mission and their apostolate of
holy and spiritual life.
It is a fact that Postel owed these noble inspirations to a pious woman
named Jeanne, whose acquaintance he had made at Venice. He was the
spiritual adviser of this elect soul and was drawn into the current
of mystic poetry which eddied about her. When he administered the
Eucharist to her she became radiant and transfigured in his eyes, and
although she was more than fifty years old, the poor priest confesses
innocently that he would have taken her for less than fifteen: so
did the sympathy of their hearts transform her in his eyes. One must
have followed the life of asceticism to understand such celestial
hallucinations and lyrical puerilities, such a mystic marriage between
two virginal beings, such extraordinary enthusiasms of love in two pure
souls. In her he discerned the living spirit of Jesus Christ by which
the world would be regenerated. I have seen, says he, this light of the
heart which will drive the hideous spectre of Satan from all minds; it
is no chimera of my dreams; she has appeared in the world, has taken
flesh in a maid, in whom I have hailed the mother of the world to
come. This is analysing rather than translating Postel, but the rapid
abridgment of his sentiments and language will make plain that he spoke
figuratively and, as maintained by the learned Jesuit Desbillons, in
his notice on the life and works of Postel, that nothing was further
from his thoughts than to represent, as some have pretended, a second
incarnation of divinity in this poor hospital sister who had only drawn
him by the brightness of her humble virtues. We are utterly certain
that all those who have slandered and ridiculed Postel are not worth
one Mère Jeanne.
The mystical relations of Postel and the nun continued for about five
years, at the end of which time she died, assuring her confessor that
she would never be parted from him but would help him when freed from
the bonds of material life. “She kept her promise,” says Postel; “she
has been with me at Paris, has enlightened me with her own light and
has harmonised my reason and my faith. Two years after her ascent
into heaven, her spiritual body and substance descended into me and
permeated sensibly my whole body, so that it is she rather than
myself who lives in me.” After this experience Postel always regarded
himself as a risen being and signed himself _Postellus Restitutus_. As
a matter of fact one curious result followed; his white hair became
again black, his wrinkles disappeared and the ruddy colour of youth
was assumed by his countenance, previously made thin and pallid by his
austerities and vigils. His derisive biographers assert that he dyed
his hair and painted his face; it was insufficient to picture him as a
fool, and so out of his noble and generous character they produced a
juggler and charlatan. Assuredly the imbecility or bad faith of cold
and sceptic minds, when they pass judgment on enthusiastic hearts, is
more wonderful than the eloquent unreason of the latter.
“It has been imagined,” writes Father Desbillons, “and is still, I
understand, believed that the regeneration supposed to have been
accomplished by Mother Jeanne is the foundation of his system; it
had however been completely developed before he was aware of her
existence, and he never departed from it, unless indeed he did so
a few years before his death. It had come into his mind that the
evangelical reign of Jesus Christ, established by the Apostles, could
be no longer maintained among Christians or propagated among infidels
unless enforced by the light of reason. To this principle, which
affected him personally, he added another, being the destination of
the king of France to universal monarchy. The way of the Second Advent
must be prepared by conquest of hearts and conviction of minds, that
there may be henceforth but one faith and Jesus Christ reigning over
the whole world in the person of a single king and in virtue of one
law.” According to Father Desbillons, this proves that Postel was mad.
Mad for having thought that religion should reign over minds by the
supreme reason of its doctrine and that the monarchy, to be strong
and permanent, should bind hearts together by the victories of public
prosperity under the dominion of peace. Mad for having believed in the
coming of that kingdom about which we say daily—His kingdom come. Mad
because he believed in reason and justice on earth. Well, well, they
spoke truly; poor Postel was mad. The proof of his madness is that
he wrote, as already said, to the Fathers of the Council of Trent,
entreating them to bless the whole world and to launch anathemas
against no one. As another example, he tried to convert the Jesuits
and cause them to preach universal concord among men—peace between
sovereigns, reason among priests, and goodness among the princes of
this world. In fine, as a last and supreme madness, he neglected the
benefits of this world and the favour of the great, lived always humbly
and in poverty, possessed nothing but his knowledge and his books, and
desired nothing but truth and justice. May God give peace to the soul
of poor William Postel.
He was so mild and so good that his ecclesiastical superiors took pity
upon him and, thinking probably, as was said later on of La Fontaine,
that he was more silly than wicked, they were contented with shutting
him up in his convent for the rest of his days. Postel was grateful for
the quiet thus ensured toward the close of life, and he died peaceably,
retracting everything that his superiors required. The man of universal
concord could not be an anarchist; he was before all things the
sincerest of catholics and humblest of Christians. The works of Postel
will be rediscovered one of these days and will be read with wonder.
[Illustration: THE SEVEN PLANETS AND THEIR GENII]
Let us pass to another maniac who was called Theophrastus Aureolus
Bombast and was known in the World of Magic under the famous name
of Paracelsus. There is no need to recapitulate what has been said
concerning this master in our _Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental
Magic_, but something may be added on the occult medicine restored by
Paracelsus. This truly universal medicine is based upon a spacious
theory of light, called by adepts fluid or potable gold. Light, that
creative agent, the vibrations of which are the movement and life of
all things; light, latent in the universal ether, radiating about
absorbing centres, which, being saturated thereby, project movement
and life in their turn, so forming creative currents; light, astralised
in the stars, animalised in animals, humanised in human beings; light,
which vegetates in plants, glistens in metals, produces all forms of
Nature and equilibrates all by the laws of universal sympathy—this
is that light which exhibits the phenomena of magnetism, divined by
Paracelsus, which tinctures the blood, being released from the air as
it is inhaled and discharged by the hermetic bellows of the lungs. The
blood then becomes a true elixir of life, wherein ruby and magnetic
globules of vital light float in a slightly gilded fluid. These
globules are actual seeds, ready to assume all forms of that world
whereof the human body is an abridgment. They can become rarefied and
coagulated, so renewing the humours which circulate in the nerves and
in the flesh encompassing the bones. They radiate outside, or rather,
in rarefying, they are drawn by the currents of light and circulate in
the astral body—that interior and luminous body which is dilated by
the imagination of ecstatics, so that their blood sometimes colours
objects at a distance when these have been penetrated and identified
with the astral body. In a special work on occult medicine that which
is stated here will be proved, however strange and paradoxical it may
seem at first sight to men of science.[254] Such were the bases of
medicine as put forward by Paracelsus; he cured by sympathy of light;
he administered medicaments not to the outward material body, which is
entirely passive, which can be rent and cut up without feeling anything
when the astral body has withdrawn, but to the inward medium, to that
vehicle which is the source of sensations. The quintessence of these
he renewed by sympathetic quintessences. For example, he healed wounds
by applying powerful reactives to the spilt blood, thus sending back
its physical soul and purified sap to the body. To cure a diseased
limb he made a limb of wax and, by will-power, transferred thereto the
magnetism of the diseased limb. Then he treated the wax with vitriol,
iron and fire, thus reacting by imagination and magnetic correspondence
on the sick person himself, to whom the limb of wax had become an
appendix and supplement. Paracelsus knew the mysteries of blood; he
knew why the priests of Baal made incisions with knives in their flesh,
and then brought down fire from heaven; he knew why orientals poured
out their blood before a woman to inspire her with physical love; he
knew how spilt blood cries for vengeance or mercy and fills the air
with angels or demons. Blood is the instrument of dreams and multiplies
images in the brain during sleep, because it is full of the Astral
Light. Its globules are bisexual, magnetised and metalled, sympathetic
and repelling. All forms and images in the world can be evoked from the
physical soul or blood.
“At Baroche,” says the estimable traveller Tavernier,[255] “there is
a first-class English house, which I reached on a certain day with
the English president, on my way from Agra to Surat. There came also
certain jugglers, asking leave to exhibit some of their professional
skill, and the president was curious to see it. In the first place
they lighted a great fire, at which they heated iron chains, then
wound them about their bodies and pretended that they were suffering
in consequence, but no harm followed. They next took a morsel of wood,
set it in the ground and asked one of the spectators to choose what
fruit he liked. His choice fell upon mangoes, and thereupon one of
the performers put a shroud about him and squatted on the ground five
or six times. I had the curiosity to ascend to an upper room, where I
could see through a fold in the sheet what was being done by the man.
He was actually cutting the flesh under the arm-pits with a razor, and
rubbing the wood with his blood. Each time he rose up the wood grew
visibly; on the third occasion there were branches and buds thereon, on
the fourth the tree was covered with leaves, and on the fifth it was
bearing flowers.
“The English president had brought his chaplain from Amadabat to
baptize a child of the Dutch commander, the president acting as
godfather. The Dutch, it should be mentioned, do not have chaplains
except where soldiers and merchants are gathered together. The English
clergyman began by protesting that he could not consent to Christians
assisting at such spectacles, and when he saw how the performers
brought forth from a bit of dry wood, in less than half an hour, a
tree of four or five feet in height, having leaves and flowers as in
springtime, he felt it his duty to put an end to the business. He
announced therefore that he would not administer communion to those
who persisted in witnessing such occurrences. The president was thus
compelled to dismiss the jugglers.”
Dr. Clever de Maldigny, to whom we owe this extract, regrets that
the growth of the mangoes was thus stopped abruptly, but he does not
explain the occurrence. To our mind it was a case of fascination by the
magnetism of the radiant light of blood, a phenomenon of magnetised
electricity, identical with that termed palingenesis, by which a living
plant is made to appear in a vessel containing ashes of the same plant
long since perished.
Of such were the secrets known by Paracelsus, and it was in the
application of these hidden natural forces to purposes of medicine that
he made at once so many admirers and enemies. For the rest, he was by
no means a simple personality like Postel; he was naturally aggressive
and of the mountebank type; so did he affirm that his familiar spirit
was hidden in the pommel of his great sword, and never left his side.
His life was an unceasing struggle; he travelled, debated, wrote,
taught. He was more eager about physical results than moral conquests,
and while first among practical magicians he was last among adepts
of wisdom. His philosophy was one of sagacity and, on his own part,
he termed it _philosophia sagax_.[256] He divined more than anyone
without knowing anything completely. There is nothing to equal his
intuitions, unless it be the rashness of his commentaries. He was a
man of intrepid experiences, intoxicated with his own opinions, his
own talk, intoxicated otherwise on occasion, if we may believe some
of his biographers. The works which he has left are precious for
science, but they must be read with caution. He may be called the
divine Paracelsus, understood in the sense of diviner; he is an oracle,
but not a true master. He is great above all as a physician, for he
had found the Universal Medicine. This notwithstanding, he could not
prolong his own life, and he died, while still young, worn out by work
and by excesses.[257] He left behind him a name shining with fantastic
and ambiguous glory, due to discoveries by which his contemporaries
failed to profit. He had not uttered his last word, and is one of those
mysterious beings of whom it may be said, as of Enoch and St. John: He
is not dead, and he will come again upon earth before the last day.