and the comprehensive nature of the Hermetic theory, fully explain
the aberrations of mystical commentators, who have mistaken the side
issues for the end in view, not altogether inexcusably, because the
end in view sinks into complete unimportance when compared with the
side issues, and all that is of value in alchemy for the modern
student of occultism is comprised in these same possibilities, in the
application of the Hermetic theory to the supreme subject, Man. It is
impossible within the limits of a brief introduction to do justice
to an illimitable subject, to the art of psychic transmutation, to
the spiritual alchemistry, the principles of which are contained in
the arcane theory of the adepts, and which principles are by no means
dependent for their truth on the actuality of metallic transmutation,
so I must confine myself to a few general observations.
The admirable lesson which we may learn of the alchemists is the
exaltation of things in virtue beyond the unassisted ability of Nature.
Such exaltation is possible, according to the adepts, both within and
without the metallic kingdom. Man and the animals are alike included
by this comprehensive theory of development, and it is therefore
conceivable that a few of the Hermetic symbolists taught in their
secret and allegorical fashion the method of alchemical procedure when
man was the subject, and revealed the miraculous results of this labour
in the typewritten books which they bequeathed to posterity. That Henry
Khunrath was in search of the transmutation of metals up to a certain
point and period is, I think, very clearly indicated by his visit to
Dr Dee. That the _Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ_, which was published
in 1609, treats of a spiritual alchemy, is, however, evidenced by
the nature of its symbols and by the general tenor of the strange
esoteric commentary on some of the Hebrew psalms. Those who worked
in metals may, or may not, have failed; it is by no means a point of
importance to the discriminating student of occultism; but they have
left behind them a theory which is wholly true in its application to
that one substance in Nature which we know to be capable of indefinite
perfectibility, and the splendour and glory of the accomplished _Magnum
Opus_, when the young King issues from the Everlasting East, from the
land of the Morning and of Paradise,
“Bearing the crescent moon upon his crest,”
though it be a dream--say even, which no one can actually
affirm--though it be an impossibility for the metal, is true for the
man; and all that is beautiful and sublime in alchemical symbolism may
be rigorously applied to the divine flower of the future, the young
King of Humanity, the perfect youth to come, when he issues from the
Spiritual East, in the dawn of the genuine truth, bearing the Crescent
Moon, the woman of the future, upon his bright and imperial crest.
I am of opinion, from the evidence in hand, that metallic
transmutations did occur in the past. They were phenomena as rare as a
genuine “materialisation” of so-called spirits is generally considered
at the present day among those believers in physical mediumship who
have not been besotted by credulity and the glamour of a world of
wonders. Like modern spiritualism, the isolated facts of veritable
alchemy are enveloped in a crowd of discreditable trickery, and the
trade of an adept in the past was as profitable, and as patronised by
princes, as that of modern dealers with familiar spirits.
But the fact of an occasional transmutation gives little reason to
suppose that the _praxis alchemiæ_ in metallic subjects is ever
likely to succeed with modern students of the _turba philosophorum_.
The enigmas of the alchemists admit, as I have said, of manifold
interpretations. Their recipes are too vague and confused to be
followed. They insist themselves that their art can only be learned
by a direct revelation from God, or by the tuition of a master.
Their fundamental secrets have not only been never revealed in their
multitudinous treatises, but they scarcely pretend to reveal them,
despite the magnificent assurances which are sometimes contained in
their titles. The practical side of alchemy must be surrendered to
specialists in chemistry, working quite independently of the books
or the methods of the philosophers. Only the theory is of value to
neophytes, or initiates, or to any student of the higher occultism; and
it is of value, as I have said, because it can be applied outside the
kingdom of metals, as the alchemists themselves acknowledge, and as
some of them seem to have attempted.
The psychic method of interpretation as propounded in the “Suggestive
Inquiry” exalted the seekers for the philosophical stone into
hierophants of the mystery of God; it endowed them with the _altitudo
divitiarum sapientiæ et scientiæ Dei_. They had crossed the threshold
of eternity; they had solved the absolute; they had seen Diana
unveiled; they had raised the cincture of Isis, and had devoured
her supernatural beauties--that is, they had accomplished the
manifestation of the incarnate spirit of man, and had invested it with
deific glory. They did not grope after physical secrets; they did
not investigate, with Paracelsus, the properties of ordure and other
matter in putrefaction; they did not work with mercury and sulphur;
they did not distil wine; they did not decoct egg-shells. They were
soul seekers, and they had found the soul; they were artificers, and
they had adorned the soul; they were alchemists, and had transmuted
it. Sublime and romantic hypothesis! But we know that they worked in
metals; we know that they manipulated minerals; we know that they
ransacked every kingdom of nature for substances which, by a bare
possibility, through some happy guess, might really transform the baser
metals into gold. They were often extravagant in their views, they were
generally absurd in their methods; they seldom found their end, but,
judged as they actually were, stripped of all glamour and romance,
self-educated seekers into Nature at the dawn of a physical science,
they are eminently entitled to our respect, because, in the first
place, unenlightened and unequipped, with their bare hands, they laid
the foundations of a providential and life-saving knowledge, and in the
second, because their furnaces were erected, intellectually, “on a peak
in Darien”--that is, they worked in accordance with a theory which had
an unknown field of application, and through the smoke of their coals
and their chemicals they beheld illimitable vistas where the groaning
totality of Nature developed its internal resources, and advanced
by degrees to perfection, upon lines which were quite in accordance
with their vision of mineral culture. “A depth beyond the depth, and
a height beyond the height,” were thus revealed to them, and their
glimpses of these glorious possibilities transfigured their strange
terminology, and illuminated their barbarous symbolism.
Eliminating obviously worthless works, the speculations of needy
impostors and disreputable publishers, it is from those who have
least contributed to the advancement of chemical science that we must
seek information concerning the spiritual chemistry--those who have
elaborated the theory rather than those who exclusively expound the
practice. In all cases, we shall do well to reflect that the object
in view was metals, except in such rare instances as are presented by
Henry Khunrath and the anonymous author of the treatise concerning Mary
of Alexandria, with a few Rosicrucian philosophers. We must read them
for what they suggest, and not for what they had in view.
The dream of the psycho-chemistry is a grand and sublime scheme
of absolute reconstruction by means of the Paracelsian _Orizon
Æternitatis_, or supercelestial virtue of things, the divinisation, or
deification, in the narrower sense, of man the triune by an influx from
above. It supposes that the transmutation or transfiguration of man
can be accomplished while he is on this earth and in this body, which
then would be magically draped _in splendoribus sanctorum_. The Morning
Star is the inheritance of every man, and the woman of the future will
be clothed with the sun, and Luna shall be set beneath her feet. The
blue mantle typifies the mystical sea, her heritage of illimitable
vastness. These marvels may be really accomplished by the cleansing
of the two-fold human tabernacle, the holy house of life, and by the
progressive evolution into outward and visible manifestation of the
infinite potencies within it.
In the facts and possibilities of mesmerism and in the phenomena of
ecstatic clairvoyance, in ancient magic and modern spiritualism, in
the doctrines and experiences of religious regeneration, we must seek
the _raison d’être_ of the sublime dream of psycho-chemistry--that,
namely, there is a change, a transmutation, or a new birth, possible
to embodied man which shall manifestly develop the esotoric potencies
of his spiritual being, so that the flesh itself shall be purged,
clarified, glorified, and clothed upon by the essential light of the
divine pneuma. Those of my readers who are interested in this absorbing
subject I must refer to a work entitled, “AZOTH, OR THE STAR IN THE
EAST,” which, I trust, will be ready for publication early in 1889,
and which will treat of the First Matter of the _Magnum Opus_, of the
evolution of Aphrodite Urania, of the supernatural generation of the
Son of the Sun, and of the alchemical transfiguration of humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] There is no need to suppose a metonymy. The conscience is a guide
which education easily perverts. Therefore, supposing it to be really
the _instrument_ of the alchemists, it may eminently stand in need of
purification, and, except in the most general matters, is at best an
uncertain guide.
[B] “L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes,” p. 93.
ON THE PHYSICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE MAGNUM OPUS.
The physical theory of transmutation is based on the composite
character of metals, on their generation in the bowels of the earth,
and on the existence in nature of a pure and penetrating matter which
applied to any substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind.
This matter is called THE LIGHT by Eugenius Philalethes and by numerous
other writers. In its application to animals, it exalts animals; in
its application to vegetables, it exalts vegetables, while metals and
minerals, after the same manner, are refined and translated from the
worst to the best condition.
All the elements which enter into the composition of metals are
identical, but they differ in proportion and in purity. In the metallic
kingdom, the object of nature is invariably to create gold. The
production of the baser metals is an accident of the process, or the
result of an unfavourable environment.
The generation of metals in the earth is a point of great importance,
and must be well studied by the amateur, for without this, and
the faithful imitation of Nature, he will never achieve anything
successful. It is by means of the seed of metals that their
generation takes place. Their composite character indicates their
transmutable quality. Such transmutation is accomplished by means of
the philosophical stone, and this stone is, in fact, the combination
of the male and female seeds which beget gold and silver. Now the
matters or elements of this stone, and the _prima materia_ above
all, are concealed by a multitude of symbols, false and allegorical
descriptions, and evasive or deceptive names.
According to Baron Tschoudy, all who have written on the art have
concealed the true name of the _prima materia_ because it is the chief
key of chemistry. Its discovery is generally declared to be impossible
without a special illumination from God, but the sages who receive
this divine favour and distinction have occasionally perpetuated its
knowledge by the instruction of suitable pupils under the pledge of
inviolable secresy. The author of _L’Étoile Flamboyante_ supplies an
immense list of the names which have been applied to this mysterious
substance under one or other of its phases. “As those that sail between
Scylla and Charybdis are in danger on both sides,” says D’Espagnet,
“unto no less hazard are they subject, who, pursuing the prey of
the golden fleece, are carried between the uncertain rocks of the
philosophers’ sulphur and mercury. The more acute, by their constant
reading of grave and credible authors, and by the irradiant sun, have
attained unto the knowledge of sulphur, but are at a stand in the
entrance of the philosophers’ mercury, for writers have twisted it with
so many windings and meanders, and involved it with so many equivocal
names, that it may be sooner met with by the force of the seeker’s
intellect than be found by reason or toil.”
The _prima materia_ has been defined as a fifth element, or
quintessence, the material alpha and omega, the soul of the elements,
living mercury, regenerated mercury, a metallic soul, &c. It is
designated by such allegorical names as the Bird of Hermes, the
Virgin’s Son, the Son of the Sun and Moon, the Virgin’s Head, Azoth, &c.
Where it appears to be seriously described the adepts are in continual
contradiction, but it is generally allowed to be a substance found
everywhere and continually seen and possessed by those who are ignorant
of its virtues. “Although some persons,” says Urbiger, “possessed with
foolish notions, dream that the first matter is to be found only in
some particular places, at such and such times of the year, and by the
virtue of a magical magnet, yet we are most certain, according to our
divine master, Hermes, that all these suppositions being false, it is
to be found everywhere, at all times, and only by our science.”[C]
In similar terms, we are told by the “Commentary on the Ancient War of
the Knights,” that the matter of the art, so precious by the excellent
gifts wherewith Nature has enriched it, is truly mean with regard to
the substances from which it derives its original. “Its price is not
above the ability of the poor. Tenpence is more than sufficient to
purchase the Matter of the Stone.... The matter is mean, considering
the foundation of the art, because it costs very little; it is no
less mean if one considers exteriorly that which gives it perfection,
since in that regard it costs nothing at all, in as much as _all the
world has it in its power_, says Cosmopolite, so that it is a constant
truth that the stone is a thing mean in one sense but most precious in
another, and that there are none but fools that despise it, by a just
judgment of God.”
The same authority assures us, with regard to the actual nature of the
_prima materia_, that it is one only and self-same thing, although it
is a natural compound of certain substances from one root and of one
kind, forming together one whole complete homogeneity. The substances
that make up the philosophical compound differ less among themselves
than sorrel water differs from lettuce water. Urbiger asserts that the
true and real matter is only “a vapour impregnated with the metallic
seed, yet undetermined, created by God Almighty, generated by the
concurrence and influence of the astrums, contained in the bowels of
the earth, as the matrix of all created things.” In conformity with
this, one earlier writer, Sir George Ripley, describes the stone as
the potential vapour of metals. It is normally invisible, but may be
made to manifest as a clear water. So also Philalethes cries in his
inspired way:--“Hear me, and I shall disclose the secret, which like
a rose has been guarded by thorns, so that few in past times could
pull the flower. There is a substance of a metalline species, which
looks so cloudy that the universe will have nothing to do with it.
Its visible form is vile; it defiles metalline bodies, and no one can
readily imagine that the pearly drink of bright Phœbus should spring
from thence. Its components are a most pure and tender mercury, a dry
incarcerate sulphur, which binds it and restrains fluxation.... Know
this subject, it is the sure basis of all our secrets.... To deal
plainly, it is the child of Saturn, of mean price and great venom....
It is not malleable, though metalline. Its colour is sable with, with
intermixed argent, which mark the sable field with veins of glittering
argent.”[D]
The poisonous nature of the stone is much insisted on by numerous
philosophers. “Its substance and its vapour are indeed a poison
which the philosophers should know how to change into an antidote by
preparation and direction.”[E]
No descriptions, supplied _ad infinitum_ by the numberless adepts who
were moved by unselfish generosity to expound the arcana of alchemy,
for the spiritual, intellectual, and physical enrichment of those who
deserved initiation, expose the true nature of the _prima materia_,
while the _vas philosophorum_ in which it is contained and digested is
described in contradictory terms, and is by some writers declared a
divine secret.
Given the matter of the stone and also the necessary vessel, the
processes which must be then undertaken to accomplish the _magnum opus_
are described with moderate perspicuity. There is the Calcination or
purgation of the stone, in which kind is worked with kind for the space
of a philosophical year. There is Dissolution which prepares the way
for congelation, and which is performed during the black state of the
mysterious matter. It is accomplished by water which does not wet the
hand. There is the Separation of the subtle and the gross, which is to
be performed by means of heat. In the Conjunction which follows, the
elements are duly and scrupulously combined. Putrefaction afterwards
takes place,
“Without which pole no seed may multiply.”
Then in the subsequent Congelation the white colour appears, which is
one of the signs of success. It becomes more pronounced in Cibation. In
Sublimation the body is spiritualised, the spirit made corporeal, and
again a more glittering whiteness is apparent. Fermentation afterwards
fixes together the alchemical earth and water, and causes the mystic
medicine to flow like wax. The matter is then augmented with the
alchemical spirit of life, and the Exaltation of the philosophic earth
is accomplished by the natural rectification of its elements. When
these processes have been successfully completed, the mystic stone
will have passed through three chief stages characterised by different
colours, black, white, and red, after which it is capable of infinite
multiplication, and when projected on mercury, it will absolutely
transmute it, the resulting gold bearing every test. The base metals
made use of must be purified to insure the success of the operation.
The process for the manufacture of silver is essentially similar, but
the resources of the matter are not carried to so high a degree.
According to the “Commentary on the Ancient War of the Knights,” the
transmutations performed by the perfect stone are so absolute that no
trace remains of the original metal. It cannot, however, destroy gold,
nor exalt it into a more perfect metallic substance; it, therefore,
transmutes it into a medicine a thousand times superior to any virtues
which can be extracted from it in its vulgar state. This medicine
becomes a most potent agent in the exaltation of base metals.
Among the incidental properties of the perfect mineral agent is
the conversion of flints into precious stones, but the manufacture
of gold and of jewels is generally declared to be the least of the
philosophical secrets, for the spirit which informs the mysterious
_prima materia_ of the great and sublime work can be variously used and
adapted to the attainment of absolute perfection in all the “liberal
sciences,” the possession of the “whole wisdom of nature, and of things
more secret and extraordinary than is the gift of prophecy which Rhasis
and Bono assert to be contained in the red stone.”
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Baro Urbigerus--“One Hundred Aphorisms demonstrating the
preparation of the Grand Elixir.”
[D] Aphorismi Urbigerani.
[E] Commentary on the “Ancient War of the Knights.”
LIVES OF THE ALCHEMISTS.
GEBER.
The first, and, according to the general concensus of Hermetic
authorities, the prince of those alchemical adepts who have appeared
during the Christian era, was the famous Geber, Giaber, or Yeber, whose
true name was Abou Moussah Djafar al Sofi, and who was a native of
Haman, in Mesopotamia, according to the more probable opinion. He is
also said to have been a Greek, a Spanish Arabian born at Seville, and
a Persian of Thus. Romance represents him as an illuminated monarch
of India. According to Aboulfeda, he flourished during the eighth
century, but later and earlier periods have been also suggested. His
life is involved in hopeless obscurity; but his experiments upon
metals, undertaken with a view to the discovery of their constituent
elements and the degrees of their fusibility, led him to numerous
discoveries both in chemistry and in medicine, including suroxydised
muriate of mercury, red oxyde of mercury, and nitric acid. “It is
thus that Hermetic philosophy gave rise to chemistry,” says a writer
in the _Biographie Universelle_, “and that the reputation of Geber is
permanently established, not upon his search for an impossible chimera,
but for his discovery of truths founded on actual experience.”
With the characteristic prodigality of the Middle Ages, no less
than five hundred treatises have been attributed to the Arabian
adept. They are supposed to have embraced the whole circle of the
physical sciences, including astronomy and medicine. A few fragments,
comparatively, alone remain of all these colossal achievements. Cardan
included their author among the twelve most penetrating minds of the
whole world, and Boerhave spoke of him with consideration and respect
in his celebrated _Institutiones Chemicæ_. According to M. Hoefer,
he deserves to be ranked first among the chemists and alchemists
who flourished prior to Van Helmont. “He is the oracle of mediæval
chemists, who frequently did nothing in their writings but literally
reproduce their master. Geber for the history of chemistry is what
Hippocrates is for the history of medicine.”
The name of Geber has been borne or assumed by several writers
subsequent to the Hermetic adept; in this way the few extant facts
concerning his life have been variously distorted, and books of later
date and less value falsely ascribed to him. An astronomical commentary
on the _Syntaxis Magna_ of Ptolemy, in nine books, must be included in
this number. It is a work of the twelfth century, as may be proved by
internal evidence.
The extant works of Geber are, for the most part, in Latin, and are all
open to more or less legitimate suspicion. In the library at Leyden
there are said to be several Arabic manuscripts which have never been
translated, and there is one in the Imperial Library at Paris, together
with a _Fragmentum de Triangulis Sphæricis_ which is still unprinted.
The most complete edition of Geber is that of Dantzich, published
in 1682, and reproduced in the Collection of Mangetus.[F] First in
importance among the works of the Arabian adept must be ranked his “Sum
of Perfection”--_Summæ Perfectionis magisterii in suâ naturâ Libri
IV._ The next in value is the treatise entitled _De Investigatione
perfectionis Metallorum_, with his Testament, and a tract on the
construction of furnaces.
* * * * *