THE INEVITABLE LAW OF TRANSMUTATION
CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESS, XENOPHANES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, ZENO, LEONARDI DA
VINCI AND THEIR SPECULATIONS: THE HARNESSING OF INVISIBLE AGENCIES:
THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT: DESTINY, THE LAW: POINT OF UNION OF FORCES
KNOWN TO THE HERMETIC PHILOSOPHERS: UNIVERSAL ORDER AND HARMONY.
“_Each change of many colour’d life he drew,
Exhausted worlds and then imagin’d new._”
JONSON.
Transformation, under the various forms of transfiguration,
transmutation and change, forms the subject of many fascinating stories
which adorn the pages of romance, mythology, science and symbology. It
may be said to exhibit itself as the dominant force in the world of
matter—the changeful, restless world with which we change and to which,
while dressed in its elements, we are held. The disobedience of Lot’s
wife changed her material form into a pillar of salt; the fated Niobe
was transformed into a rugged rock which forever was bathed by her
tears; the glance of Medusa turned her victims into stone, her blood
turned trees into coral; the stone which Rhea duped Cronus into
swallowing in the belief that it was one of his children—indeed, the
whole legend concerning the devouring of his offspring by the old god,
is illustrative of the process of nature which forever consumes that
which it produces. Nature is a veritable alchemist, a royal transmuter,
turning the precious into the base and the base into the precious,
regardless of dignity, rank or name. Parable and symbol have ever been
the ornate coverings beneath which lie securely hidden from the
superficial gaze the secrets with which searching man has played for
ages. The work of these intrepid scientists had, at certain periods of
the world’s history, to be carefully concealed from the vulgar and
intolerant mind which was continually endeavouring to bind the thoughts
of men within the slavery of a fixed dogma. The true meaning of this
dogma was indeed far better known and understood by the faithful
searchers into the mysteries of nature than by all the narrow agents
seeking to suppress them. But they were compelled to wait till the
champions of liberty in the material world had swept back the devils of
intolerance which darkened the way to spiritual and material freedom.
The waiting for the right time to present their discoveries to the
people did not suspend their researches—it rather advanced them. Nearly
600 years before the Christian era the poetical philosopher Xenophanes
wrote of fossil fishes, shells and other petrifaction found on high
mountains and in quarries, which he instanced as indicating changes on
the earth’s surface, certain lands sinking beneath the sea and certain
lands rising out of it. The earlier examinations of these remains were
considered as evidence of a subtle tractable power inherent in the
earth. Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno taught that God entered His Spirit
into eternal matter, producing the earth, thus eternally filled with the
potential Spirit.
That many-sided genius of the 15th and 16th centuries, Leonardo da Vinci
was rightly regarded by Dmitri Merejkowski as “The Forerunner,” in his
historical story of that name. Leonardo was most precise in his
remarkable deductions on fossilization, which, he wrote, occurred from
the accumulation of mud in the cavities of shells discovered in rivers
which were at an ancient period beneath the sea near the coast. Nature’s
wonderful workings are exhibited in the metamorphoses of the various
stones. This process is noticed in the silification of wood, shells,
coral, etc. It is observed in the incrustation of one substance on
another, the expulsion of one mineral matter by some chemical agency, by
the gradual yielding of original substance to new and foreign invaders
and by the occurrence of one mineral in the form of another, etc. So far
as is considered necessary this subject has been already dealt with. And
so Nature is continually proving to man that all is change and that
dissolution is impossible. Continually, lower forms are giving place to
higher, and the work of the world goes on with the persistent regularity
of a huge machine. “Nothing is lost,” says chemistry, and even the voice
of man, the cries of animals, sounds of breaking rocks, the restless
sea, the moaning of the winds amongst the trees, etc., can now be easily
impressed on the modern phonograph plates which provide a material
working body. Every action can be recorded and reproduced by the
photographic camera; even the air can be harnessed to convey a desire.
Everything in the Universe, from the stars of Heaven to the atom, or to
the minutest subdivision of the atom, is mathematical, law abiding, and
under the mysterious and controlling Force which we reverence as God the
Infinite.
Nature claims her own, the material goes to the material, “dust to
dust,” and earth processes turn the visible parts of animals and plants,
etc., into its identical crystal form. And the controlling powers about
which these perceptible forms materialize, seek the realms of finer
forces to which they truly belong. Rightly say the venerable
philosophers whose inspired utterances have taught us so much, “The
Spirit strips itself to go up and clothes itself to go down.” The writer
has tried to make this palpable truth clear in these pages, and trusts
that the links in the ancient chain are now left in a little better
repair than they were, and that the power within the stone will be
better appreciated and better understood. The order of the Infinite
Universe is exact and sincere. From its inception the work, trials and
struggles of the smallest atom are determined and Mind is compelled to
express itself. The exact point of union between the visible and the
invisible forces has been long known to the hermetic scientists and
philosophers whose thoughts are echoed by Wilks, the English poet of
Geology, in the following lines:
“_God is a God of order, though to scan
His works may pose the feeble powers of man._”
FINIS
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Transcriber’s Note
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
vi.8 Sir Edward Mackenzie-Mackenzie, Bart[.], for Inserted.
his original
14.10 wearing the Breas[t]plate Inserted.
19.30 redeems from wor[l]dly sin Inserted.
34.2 upon which the Cameo artist works[.] Added.
81.16 Milon had done the deed[.] Added.
215.31 Mad[a/e]moiselle de Hautville Replaced.
247.5 “a stone of good counsel for traders[”] Added.
264.7 All marble is under the celest[r]ial Gemini. Removed.
307.27 JULIUS C[AE/Æ]SAR, Replaced,
for
consistency
334.21 LI[É/È]GE CATHEDRAL Replaced.
340.21 These workings are of ver[y] great age Restored.
384.32 that tourmaline specimens [w]ere used by Restored.
396.16 a perpetual source of pleasure[,] philosophy Added.
408.4 with thy k[ni/in]gdom’s pearl Transposed.
410.5 ALEXAS: [“]_Last thing he did,_ Added.
410.9 ALEXAS: [“]_‘Good friend,’ quote he,_ Added.
418.44 C[U/u](OH)>,H]_{3}PO_{4} Copper, not
‘CU’