LET THE APPRENTICE know that what he writes or professes is not his own since all things precede and outlast him so that he has but one contribution, which is the pattern of their embellishment. Therefore he is but a transitory instrument to calculate uncommon shapes for common truth. Who would impeach the light?
FIVE CENTURIES BEFORE Abraham marched down to Egypt, which was before the Deluge, Adam’s grandson Hermes Trismegistus lifted the sacred chalice to his lips. Homage to this master, thrice-greatest, resting in his private apartment in Cheops’ pyramid, from whose hand Alexander took the Tabula Smaragdina with that unmentionable formula. But to the covetous or delinquent graduate we would award false profit—a wealth of drifting ash.
LET IT BE understood how the temple of Solomon was erected with the help of Hiram and Queen Sheba. So shall the stone of the wise be perfected through successive circulations. Now this immaculate stone becomes the rock of Christianity, a Numinous Child whose essence is two-fold, whose exoteric nature grows manifest while the esoteric remains concealed. And we wonder if glass might not be compared to that stone like those fools among men who take up attitudes or aspects of color with all sorts of divers and contradictory shapes and without melting can be repaired, but stream from sight like pretty liquors poured on sand in whose soul the agent of transfiguration which we call holy grace has yet to act.
WE HAVE HEARD the voices of Commerce naming us possessed that conjoin poverty with dungbeds and urge metal upward, crushing egg-shell by the cast of sooty lamps to grapple at mystery, summoning old correctives to meliorate brutish residue, so much in exchange for a glimpse of incandescent yellow slag. Peasants quarrel, lie bugger, drink and shout upon scullery maids by the hedgerow while great discoveries flutter from patched bellows to pockets vacant as a skull. Such are the wages of hermetic philosophy. But let it be. We ask no unprecedented honorarium since by alchymic craft we transmute men to makers of prodigious dreams.
WE LEARN HOW Beguinius discourses with his Tyrocinium on the extraction of quick-silver from diurnal atmosphere, of oleaginous sulphur that is a viscid balm conserving the interior warmth of human organs as well as of alchymy’s third hypostatic principle, or Salt, which resembles earth dryly encrusted, conferring brackishness and solidity with taste, thereby preserving all from putrefaction—counsel at once sacred and profane. And because we think it unwise to formulate answers prematurely, we repudiate disclosure through subscription to riddle.
WE ASSERT THAT Solomon himself withheld the incomprehensible while thrice-famous Hermes earlier had sought an exaltation of imperfect metals through the development of quicksilver, which emulates gold in quality and weight but was prohibited from enjoying prosperity by crudities beneath the soil. Thus we expect Mankind to lament its future not unlike this metal denied a legitimate place on earth, or like a hapless beast watching Death examine the horizon. So we say of each object that it must be the fruit of its element and that its origin is revealed by the element to which it returns. Quick-silver regresses to poverty, nymphs to liquid, witches to the wind. Man himself protests, roils, and having poured out his gifts lies down wretchedly next to darkness. None can dispute this. Who would doubt that particular numbers possess secret magic? Who doubts that Apollo’s music reverberated from the walls of Troy?
WE ASSERT THAT the Red Lion, Tinctura Physicorum, beloved of five hundred authors but thought impossible to achieve, has been accomplished by Hali, Albertus Magnus and Hermes Trismegistus. We regard its nature as wholly indescribable since each distillation requires the presence of two adepts laboring in unimaginable harmony. Revelation of this formula would cause the sophist to grow blasphemous just as the venal might shiver with anticipatory delight. Therefore a claimant expects less than nothing, pointing to the Ladder of Paradise whose seven rungs correspond to seven vowels or seven planets, each comprised of a different essence. So this is an alphabet conceived in secrecy to withhold magisteric art from chapmen instructed at birth like rapacious hornets to pillage flowers, from commonalities trudging between Jupiter and Pluto.
WE BELIEVE VESSELS holding flatulent or vaporous palliatives should be ordered like the alembic because delicate spirits must be drawn through a slender neck. Consider the Giraffe which is famous for his generosity, unlike the Hippopotamus or the Bear, or barnyard Swine. Nature devises various forms and proposes for each creature that shape thought congenial to its animus. Nor can any one be what it is not. The Tiger—could he play a flute?
IS IT NOT imperative to mark a disposition among entities of individuality or of kind? Consider the wrathful Leopard who rushes and springs after his prey with little regard, which is extravagant. So does the insistent Harlot make bold and we call her mendacious. Also, there is a natural enmity and amity among beings which will command them to disperse or to rejoice, like the amiable Dog jumping and frolicking about the foot of its master while the cowardly Sheep rushes bleating from the Wolf. And so, being engrafted by nature, essences do not change, albeit we have seen herbs withdraw from their purpose to resuscitate the ailing and morient, stars deviate from their course to signal imminent events, and upon its passionate flight we have witnessed the Soul accomplish more than alchymic ligatures.
WE BELIEVE THREE elements unite in the Soul. The nutritive we share with vegetables, and with animals the susceptive, but rationality is our private possession. How excellently is Man arranged, how much more attractive than subordinate creatures, since upon his countenance drifting expressions indicate divine comprehension while his generative members display their exquisite and noble symmetry. So we dispute those Manichees who claim we were denied a throne on earth and announce them wrong in the argument. With its cornucopia of jewels and fruits this world
