NOW ARE THERE not four elements to the square? Or the circle, where does it lead if not upward? Or the habitat of divinity, is not this triangular? Yet how do we compute the mathematics of Heaven? If it has neither beginning nor end its boundaries cannot be estimated and its embodiment we fail to construe.
LET US SAY we admit sentience to the most frivolous weed, then what should be dismissed—left alone next to the gate with its face turned aside? What fails to share the mercy and beneplacit of our Lord?
SUPPOSE THAT A man refuses to identify the evil he observes, how might he profit? Upon what watch was he ordered, if not to adjudicate? Do we define ourselves with consonant pieties, knitting the scattered remnants of what once was?
BEHOLD THE ANCIENT fabric of our tapestry—how it deteriorates. Women have brought forth sightless basilisks dressed in scales, furious in hair and talons. Lord, with what unseemly confidence has Mankind usurped Thy vast prerogative. And do they call Thee Ourobouros?
SO! WHO APPEARS cloaked with rage? On this restful Sabbath what journey seems imperative? Saint Augustine has affirmed the existence of but one sovereign philosophy that was absent from the world since Time began, which is called Christian and has endured by passing through innumerable vicissitudes with many shapes of transgression and of wickedness, being rephrased and magically elucidated when Mankind is debased. And with its one office it has but one catholic watchword: Ye shall be born again.
Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy and mistrust that would resurrect us before the gates of Prague have shut.
Glossary
The language of alchemical writing is weighted with technical terms and neologisms. For readers unfamiliar with alchemical literature (and Connell’s erudite vocabulary), the following glossary is provided. Any attempt to translate Paracelsus’s terminology into modern chemical or psychological terms neglects the metaphysical implications present for Paracelsus (and Connell) and any sixteenth-century reader. Furthermore, it should be remembered that an understanding of these Alchymic Journals depends largely upon the reader’s imagination.
adamantine: composed of adamant, a fabulous mineral, diamond, or lodestone; having the qualities of an imaginary stone of impenetrable hardness; rigidly hard or resembling diamond in luster
adumbrate: to shade; to represent a shadow of
afreet: a powerful, evil jinni, demon, or monstrous giant in Arabic mythology
Agrippa, Cornelius (1486–1535): German physician, theologian, and philosopher, author of De occulta philosophia, a cosmology based on cabalistic and Pythagorean analyses and magic that helped link his name to the Faust legend, and of De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium, which rejected all scientific knowledge for biblical piety
albifaction: the process or art of making white
alembic: an apparatus that refines or transmutes as if by distillation
aludel: a pear-shaped pot of earthenware or glass, open at both ends so that a series could be fitted one above the other; used in sublimation
amma: the soul; also used to designate everything similar to the breath; all refined, volatile matter, as well as the specifically effective part of a medicine, its essence
analeptic: a restorative agent or drug that acts on the central nervous system
Antipode (pl., Antipodes): the exact opposite of a person or thing; pl., those who dwelt directly opposite to each other on the globe, as if with feet against feet
astral: related to the impression engraved in a person at the hour of birth by the external heaven, which inside the person’s body forms a separate “heaven” and which constitutes this person’s specific heaven
athanor: a digesting furnace used by the alchemists, in which a constant heat was maintained by means of a self-feeding apparatus
augury: divination by interpretation of omens as portents or of chance phenomena, as in the flight of birds or entrails of sacrificed animals
Avicenna (980–1037): Arab philosopher whose canon was publicly burned by Paracelsus
Beccher, Johann Joachim (1635–1682): German chemist and physician who carried on experiments for transmuting Danube sand into gold; advanced a theory of combustible earth that influenced Stahl’s phlogiston theory of combustion
Böhme, Jakob (1575–1624): German mystic who read works of alchemists, Paracelsus, etc.; author of a manuscript condemned as heretical by ecclesiastical authorities; his philosophy, concerned especially with the problem of evil, rested on the thesis of dualism of God; his writings were translated into other languages, notably English; strongly influenced development of idealism, Romanticism, and theology, especially of Quakers and Pietists
brigandage: practice of brigands; highway robbery, freebooting, pillage
Cacophrastus: nickname for Theophrastus (Paracelsus’s real name); has an obscene connotation in German; reference first found in a poem or squib nailed to the church door and lecture hall in defense of Galen; the name stuck and Paracelsus never got over it
calefaction: the act of warming or the state of being warm
calx: the friable residue (e.g., a metal oxide) left when a mineral or metal has been subjected to calcination or roasting
Cardano (Cardan, Geronimo, 1501–1576): Italian astrologer, physician, and mathematician
catchpole: one who makes arrests for debts
celandine: plant whose thick yellow juice was supposed to benefit weak sight
Chaldean: a person versed in the occult arts
chalybs: Latin term for steel
cinnabar: the red or crystalline form of mercuric sulfide; the most important ore of mercury
cockatrice: a serpent, identified with the basilisk, fabled to kill by its glance and to be hatched from a cock’s egg
costermonger: a street seller of fruit
croslet: a crucible; a small cross
cryptogram: a communication in cipher or code
cucurbit: a gourd-shaped vessel or flask for distillation, used with or forming part of an alembic
deemster: a judge
Democritus (c. 460–370 B.C.): Greek philosopher known as “the laughing philosopher” because of his amusement at the foibles of humankind; regarded as one of the most important Greek physical philosophers, although only fragments of his works survive
divellicate: to tear apart, break off
dross: the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal
effluvium (pl., effluvia): something especially subtle and invisible that flows out or issues forth
endogenous: growing from
