BEELZEBUB’S APOSTLES ARE alleged to debase and mislead men by masquerading as rocks, trees, cats, black lambs and owls, occasionally posing as delightful children. Also, it is said they seek out continent nuns. Perhaps. Testimonials flourish. But I suspect illness inhabits the brain as well as the body, and unlike our prescient sun that reads the sky for guidance I believe men seldom direct their course. Where do we look for counsel if a robin taps at the window, if a pullet crows like a cock, if a jackdaw flies down a chimney, if circling ravens alight on the church steeple? Let metaphysicians wrangle. I myself exclude necromancy, conjuration and all demonic partnership from alchymic therapies, because I am engaged with this craft for good, not to the prejudice of living things.
ACCORDING TO MONKS, the Prince of Darkness assisted by ghouls suspends fertile maidens and lusty youths from oak branches, binds their inverted bodies to stakes and boils their flesh in cauldrons. I wonder at this. Also, regarding the disposal of plague corpses—especially those of sodomites, harlots, thieves and maugre chirugeons—whether these be devoured or discarded, I cannot decide. Physicians debate in themselves. On few matters am I positive, but the recollection of birth and an expectation of death lurks always within and makes us separate, so that we find the taste of humanity intoxicating, delectable and precious.
I HAVE HEARD that images buried under stones by necromancers cause the intended subject to feel oppressed and lethargic, so that he lies helpless until the onerous weight is lifted. Or if a magician should twist the likeness of an arm or leg until it wrinkles and breaks, then will a similar infirmity be duplicated on the hapless victim. Or if a copy is stabbed or burnt or disfigured with acid, this too shall be repeated. Why so? I think it happens because our spirits act in concord. I believe all things establish their colony.
EACH INDIVIDUAL IS permitted to live out the existence nature assigned, therefore who should decide to protest or object or complain against lives pulsing contrarily to his own? The pulse of granite is not rapid or brief while that of a horse is variable. Whatever is ordained cannot be dissuaded from its usage. Why would we inquire of the rose where it blooms without prickles?
IT MAY BE that nature subsists upon this agreement: flowers, insects, animals, birds, minerals, fishes, herbs and trees have their parts so qualified that nothing seems homogeneous, yet all creatures have their class and each variety aspires to its own estate. As a tree with buds, leaves and branches is at root one, and as the leaf survives the exhausted bloom, or the trunk without either was made to endure a frigid blast, so do all things manifest their quintessence in this respect, independent yet complimentary, neither more nor less.
IT IS OBVIOUS how each presence—flower, thorn, metal or worm—cannot but exhibit some virtue, albeit less than the planets which deliver our light and governing intelligence. Selenite is a divers stone growing purple or green or oftentimes white that we pick from the bosom of Indian snails, which if tasted will provide hints of future matters. Sapphire also is a rock that traveled to India out of a mysterious eastern provenance, which adorns itself with suitable colors, the most prominent being luteous—engendering rapport, devotion and concurrence—so that any man who wishes to feel at peace should grasp it. Amandinus is a rock prodigiously formed, enabling every man to overcome his adversaries, or to prophesy and to interpret and expound upon dreams while unraveling difficult questions. Also with Chelonites, which is found inside a mollusc’s head. If a man place this under his tongue while the moon comes up he will forejudge and conjecture upon swiftly rising problems. Also there is one called Adamas, which the English have named Diamond, with a very sparkling color and impossible to crush, that is rumored to grow in Cyprus or Arabia and being bathed in the blood of a goat it will fracture—from what inadequacy? We know not. Despite this I think nothing can exist that fails to hide within a recess some private impulse or significance. The constituence of tin, for example, seems disproportionate because its mercury may be fine whereas its sulphur is corrupt, and since a commingling is thought to occur between the layers this metal is heard to shriek. I have met men so commingled.
ALCHYMY EMPLOYS STONE to alleviate Stone—crab’s claw, lapis lazuli, eagle-stone, selenite of Judaic—since out of these we procure a calcined excretion which dissolves more quickly than salt in heated water. Distillation enhances our deposit, providing the essence of restorative balsam. Yet those virtues resident in every panacea, congenial to many, prove malignant and damaging to others. The salamander dips himself in fire, the peacock hungers after serpents, the ostrich swallows rock. What good to them are humanity’s nutriments? What men consider instrumental, sacred or wondrous may prove deformed and untrue. Let us ask if the workman that acquires his important illness from a lead mine should be purged with circulations of galena or by cathartics derived from its opposite. Ash of the burnt cray-fish—Karkinoi—is this not effective against carcinoma? Has not every path some ultimate turning?
HOMEOPATHIC PRINCIPLES CONSPIRE to surmount disease even as outward aspects of medicaments define their usage. Eufragia, which endeavors to duplicate the appearance of the human eye, directs itself sympathetically toward this vulnerable organ. Thistle, which seldom hesitates to attack the hand, assuages interior stitches. And the root Satyrion, that orders itself to the shape of mankind’s generative part, restores virility. Hence I think it unwise to discard that
