Alchymic Journals

some dusty bouquet of stale herbs that dangle from a leaky roof—piss-guardian to pots of camphor and stibnite jugs sweet as night-buckets, pasting together his porcelain crock—this jack-leg porter to Bedlam logic. Listen to him cough while he tabulates wages that would starve a cellar mouse. Slop-slop! Drizzle-drizzle! Whistling stripes greet the venturesome Adept, strangulation with a halter if his mouldy metaphysic work-shop gives birth to that ineffable Regal Infant. Ague, cold soup, lice, cinders, mildewed bread—O yea! Apocalyptic images fade like tapestry. How long would our dove-tail chymist warm a splintered bench? Here does he squat—this ambitious novice in bleached velvet, alight to occult parallels. Observe him confront the universe by means of ichor, balm, gall, calx—Pelican plus White Cock plus the faithless Argent Vive. Now being told of some doctor that smeared yellow unguent over a peasant’s fork to gild it our aspirant would do likewise. Thus every student replicates the art of his professor and struts in taverns like a deemster glutting his soul with lies. Therefore have we felt his pulse to speak of Gehazi—the impudent servant who turned covetous and opinionated after boasting accomplishments he had filched, unread, foppish, persuaded that he understood the Magnum Opus but got as his reward a Leprosie. So will others sicken upon rancid wine, puking, helpless, turgid with emrods, spite and livor, much like those storks which congregate on Asian plains where he that settles last is torn apart. Regard this Chymist. Watch him kneel by the hearth to pursue treasure, immortality and youth. Observe the tattered bundle vanish, old, emaciated, furious, grazing on bitter herbs yet devoted to uncertain art, unrepentant, dissolving among smoke and ashes. How handsomely does he illustrate affliction. Such a puddly life.

WE OURSELVES, HAVE we not fled from imperfectly rubified metal and the odor of bauxite? We have essayed all—hair, blood and soul of Saturn, marcasites, aes astum, saffron of Mars, scales and dross of litharge, of iron, of antimony—all worth a rotted prune-pit. We have worked to extract oil and water from silver, calcined with salt or without salt, yet our best efforts failed. We derive no advantage. Toward antique grandeur have we labored, assisted by ardent and corrosive liquid. By recourse to vitriol and salammoniac with egg-shell orpiment have we sought the Stone which achieves consummation through putrefaction. The Green Lion did not help. Saffron of Mars proved inefficacious. Celandines, secundines, rennet, salt attincar, salt alembrot, none disclosed its secret. Nor would the sperm of falling stars—sophic brass! So we have pummeled froth! We have heard quaint music! Mercuric ointments have we congealed and mixed into triumphant minerals, thinking thereby to succeed—joining those that struggle toward multiplication and amalgamation. With constancy and perseverance have we multiplied one-third of nothing. Not simple albifaction but rubifaction have we witnessed—receipts with congelations, sophistications from Navarre to Germany. Lo! All proved Limbus, the wily cube of nature escaped. Now here and there did we meet one or two claiming to know another who possessed that Formula, yet never could we make his acquaintance. So is it not familiar? Is it not a lugubrious concert?

AGAINST THE INCERTUS with every vain science were we advised by Cornelius Agrippa—those that constitute medicine, physic or metaphysic, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, music, poetry, cosmography and jurisprudence, pious superstition, principles, alchymy and the craft of memory. He does bloat with eloquence does our tutor, he thickens with those divulgations of wisdom which map out solitary minds. And how shall he address himself to the mermaid’s shoulder when midnight turns?

SOME FLANDERS CHYMIST pretends that by a stranger’s generosity he was granted a morsel of the essence we seek, which sparkled like powdered glass and upon which he projected half-a-pound of quick-silver—this mineral congealing toward yellow slag with excellent virtue that weighed almost as much. Therefore he chose to believe in the truth of alchymic magistery, albeit he could not by any method analyze the constituents of his gift nor saw his benefactor again. O mercy! So did Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Vitruvius call this elusive substance their tenement. Democritus fabricated jewels at Memphis while Cneius Pompeius Magnus returned triumphantly to Rome from Syria with an optic Lens through which he descried multitudes of distant soldiers! Miracle succeeds miracle. Ah, but we suspect we testify enough against putative testament, more than enough to question each supposed triumph, hazarding that metamorphosis resemble the Friar’s Lantern—ignis fatuus—a migrant globe.

WHAT MARKS THE scope or ambit of any man? How shall we divide the interior of divergent spheres? Do we not gauge the wind without knowing what hurls from its belly? Meister John Picus de Mirandola writes in De Auro how concerning gold and silver he saw these confected on sixty occasions, and of a reputable chymist that he twice had pulled out gold from pig-iron. Well, we are indebted to John Picus for nine hundred splendid theses pertaining to logic, divinity, mathematics, Kabbalism and kinetics. Indeed we feel obligated, yet narrow enquiries administer our thought. Have we not studied seventeen volumes on venesection by that occasional doctor of Padua, Horatius Augenius? Meanwhile we count nine hundred duplicities issuing from a white palace that like medlars rot in the mid-day sun. O yea, we do squint. We listen and look asquint.

NO EVIDENCE OF duality have we detected in twenty-one volumes incorporating the opera omnia of Albert de Groot, nor traces of black art. No more did he preach sorcery than make pistols or cannon, which inventions have been charged against him by Matthias de Luna. But that he did value some curious element branded with the image of a serpent provided by Dominicans, and that reptiles came slithering to visit this counterpart—so much is true. Still, the degrees of a circle which chart our circumference sub-serve magisteries within.

NOW SINCE BATH Abbey was dismantled, laborers have unearthed out of an ancient niche or cranny we know not just where—a glass filled with noxious tincture which was thrown aside onto a dunghill. And the vile