Francis Barrett

“ My object in publishing this book is to establish the true nature of the Hermetic experiment by an account of those men who have undertaken it, and who are shewn by the plain facts of their histories to have been in search of the transmutation of metals. There is no need for argument; the facts speak sufficiently. It is not to the blind followers of the alchemists that we owe the foundation of chemistry; it is to the adepts themselves, to the illustrious Geber, to that grand master Basilius Valentinus, to Raymond Lully, the supreme hierophant. ”

“ I write with an unterrified quill in an unheard of style, to the honour of God, to the profit of my neighbours, with contempt of the world and its riches; because Elias the artist is already born, and now glorious things are declared of the city of God. I dare affirm that I do possess more riches than the whole known world is worth, but I cannot make use of it because of the snares of knaves. I disdain, loathe, and detest the idolizing of silver and gold, by which the pomps and vanities of the world are celebrated. ”

“ I do not remember that ever I learned anything from Raymond Lully. Some who are not adepts give more instruction to a beginner than one whom perfect knowledge makes cautious. I learned the secret of the magnet from one, the chalybs from another, the use of Diana’s Doves from a third, the air or cameleon from another, the gross preparation of the dissolvent in another, the number of eagles in another; but for operations on the true matter and signs of the true mercury, I know of none like Ripley, though Flamel be eminent. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, this little book testifies over and over again, and that in the most emphatic manner, to the physical object of the alchemists, and to the fact that they operated on common gold.
“The first matter which we take for our work is gold, and with it mercury, which we decoct till neither will forsake the other, in which work both die, rot by putrefaction, and after that are regenerate in glory. It is actual gold and nothing else. What does not equal a metal in weight will never enter it in flux. Nothing but the metalline will dwell with metals.” ”

“ I do not fear that the art will be disesteemed because I write plainly, for true wisdom will defend its own honour. I wish gold and silver were as mean in esteem as earth, that we need not so strictly conceal ourselves. ”

“ When I speak of a sage, I mean one who sees all things die and revive without concern: he has more riches in his power than the greatest king, but lives temperately, above the power of events.’
“Here I stopped him:—‘With all these fine maxims, the sage dies as well as other people.’ ‘Alas!’ said he, ‘I perceive you are unacquainted with sublime science. Such a one as I describe dies indeed, for death is inevitable, but he does not die before the utmost limits of his mortal existence. ”

“ The thing we have seen, taught, and made, which we have, possess, and know, that we do declare; being moved with compassion for the studious, and with indignation of gold, silver, and precious stones, not as they are creatures of God, far be it from us, for in that respect we honour them, and think them worthy of esteem, but the people of God adore them as well as the world. Therefore let them be ground to powder like the golden calf! ”

“ Alchemy is a wonderful science, a secret philosophy, a singular grace and free gift of the Almighty, which was never discovered by independent human labour, but only by revelation or the instruction of one of the adepts. ”

“ Alchemy is the science of the four elements, which are to be found in all created substances, but are not of the vulgar kind. The whole practice of the art is simply the conversion of these elements into one another. The seed and matter of every metal is mercury, as it is decocted and otherwise prepared in the bowels of the earth, and each of them can be reduced into this prima materia, by the help of which they are also, one and all, susceptible of augmentation and multiplication, even to infinity. ”

“ Now, the publication of the writings of Jacob Böhme caused the alchemists who were his contemporaries to fear that their art could not much longer remain a secret, and that the mystic vase in particular would be shortly revealed to all. This vase is the vas insigne electionis, namely, Man, who is the only all-containing subject, and who alone has need to be investigated for the eventual discovery of all. The modern adepts describe the life of man as a pure, naked, and unmingled fire of illimitable capability. Man, therefore, is the true laboratory of the Hermetic art ”

“ I shall enjoy the vast treasure alone. A blessing when shared is but half a blessing for those who participate in it.”
On the morrow, however, Marano sought out the enchanter, having been agonised by the gold fever the whole night.
“I am furnished with the sum you require,” he said. “But I pray you to bargain a little with the spirits, and endeavour to beat them down.”
“Do you take them for sordid speculators?” cried the magician, indignant. “The devil is no Jew, though he abode full long in Judea. He is a magnificent seigneur, living generously in every country of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rose issues from its sepulchre and assumes a new life. It is the floral symbol of that resurrection by which mortals lying in darkness and in the shadow of death will pass into beautiful immortality. ”

“ Know, that if you seek this art without a ferment, you must beware of frequent error; you will err and stray from the right path, notwithstanding all your care, and perhaps may not in the course of your life attain this treasure, which is the alone gift of God. If you pursue the straightest course it will take a year to arrive at perfection; but if you take wrong ways, you shall be often left behind, sometimes a year, and must renew your charge and pains, repenting of your loss and error, in much distraction, care, and perils, with an expense you can hardly spare. ”

“ The application of alchemy to the extension of life was another subject of study with Roger Bacon. The grand secret, he assures us, does not only ensure the welfare of the commonwealth and of the individual, but it may be used to prolong life, for that operation by which the most inferior metals is purged from the corrupt elements which they contain till they are exalted into the purest gold and silver, is considered by every adept to be eminently calculated to eliminate so completely the corrupt particles of the human body, that the life of mortality may be extended to several centuries. ”

“ It becomes the true gold of the philosophers when by a retrograde motion it tends to resolution. “Then it is our Sun, our Marchasite, and, joined with our Moon, it becomes our bright crystal Fountain.”
But if the lives and the writings of the alchemists so clearly establish the physical nature of the Hermetic aim and opus, it may well be demanded how a psychical or moral interpretation could be reasonably set upon the symbols and the ambition of all the adepts. ”

“ When they assert that the possession of the Stone is the annihilation of covetousness and of every illicit desire, they mean that all evil affections disappear before the light of the unveiled Truth. By the transmutation of metals they signified the conversion of man from a lower to a higher order of existence, from life natural to life spiritual, albeit these expressions are inadequate to convey the real meaning of the adepts. ”

“ I was much concerned for a long time lest Perrenelle, by reason of extreme joy, should not hide her felicity, which I measured by my own, and lest she should let fall some words among her relations concerning the great treasure we possessed. For an extremity of joy takes away the understanding as well as an extremity of grief and sorrow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name of this alchemical adept has been profoundly venerated not only in the memory of the Hermetists but in the hearts of the French people, among whom he is the central figure of many marvellous legends and traditions. “Whilst in all ages and nations the majority of hierophants have derived little but deception, ruination, and despair as the result of their devotion to alchemy, Nicholas Flamel enjoyed permanent good fortune and serenity. Far from expending his resources in the practice of the magnum opus, he added with singular suddenness a vast treasure to a moderate fortune. ”

“ Whoever attempteth the search of our glorious stone, he ought, in the first place, to implore the assistance of the all-powerful Jehova, at the throne of his mercy, who is the true and sole author of all mysteries of nature; the monarch of heaven and earth, the King of kings, omnipotent, most true and most wise; who not only maketh manifest in the microcosm, the truth of every science to worthy philosophers, and liberally bestoweth both natural and divine knowledge on the deserving and faithful ”

“ It is a plain case, that, for the most part, the experiments which led the way to chemistry were made by men who were misled by the alchemists, and sought gold instead [Pg 26] of truth; but this class of men wrote no books upon alchemy. Many of them no doubt died over their furnaces, ‘uttering no voice,’ and none of them wrote books upon the philosopher’s stone, for the simple reason that they never discovered anything to write about. I know that some impostors purposely wrote of mysteries to play upon the credulity of the ignorant, but their works have nothing alchemical about them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those unfamiliar with modern alchemical criticism, even if they have some acquaintance with the mystical labyrinth of the turba philosophorum, will probably learn with astonishment that the opinions of competent judges are divided not only upon the methods of the mysterious Hermetic science, but upon the object of alchemy itself. That it is concerned with transmutation is granted, but with the transmutation of metals, or of any physical substance, into material gold, is strenuously denied by a select section of reputable students of occultism. ”

“ 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. ”