Alchymic Journals Read online

  BEYOND THE CIRCUMFERENCE of flesh how do we meet satisfaction? Plato, on his discourse regarding colors and tastes of water in rivers and seas, explains that perceptions vary by concord with the earth through which it flows, taking up every weight and molecule—transgression and deviation—much as the soul varies according to the temperament of its body. Consequently the motive for our universe is justified because the existence of each living thing has been affirmed with moving qualities. This we applaud, hearing a most admirable music.

  WEIDENFELD EXCLAIMS UPON those innumerable gifts vouchsafed from above—which we do not hesitate either to acknowledge or reiterate day and night by consenting to the jurisdiction of our Lord. And as we are not loath to accept His blessing we have been called microcosm. Now, this estate we consider most excellent. We think it unlimited. How should men avoid the lees and puddles of earth on private initiative? Hence, Nature withholds from avaricious chymists Lapis Philosophorum toward which the future bends.

  PLOTINUS HAS EXPLAINED how wisdom arrives swiftly by itself and brings with it an empyreal universe where entities seem diaphanous, while matter asserts itself to human faculties, living resplendent in each particular. Now since the majesty of God is intense and splendor radiates, what is untutored becomes great as the moon and sun and stars blend together.

  WE ARE TOLD by François de Foix Candale, Bishop of Aire, how comprehension of celestial matters surpassing that allocated to Hebrew prophets—equaling that of apostles or evangelists—was acquired before the advent of Moses by Hermes Trismegistus. Further, we have heard Khunrath, Böhme, Freher, and Grasseus testifying to metaphysic art that not merely antedates but corresponds with Christian orthodoxality. Being pious notaries, we ask how the pure might be severed from the unholy, since God bestows grace wherever He decides—overlooking all that plead or beg. Also, we question the source of misbelief. Does it arise complacently out of ignorance? If so, we seem consigned to live doubly helpless since we exist not only unaware but incapable of departing from ignorance. Accordingly, we compare ourselves to a corpus indurated with disease which, oblivious to its torment, seeks no cure.

  MEISTER TYMME SPEAKS of an Almighty proffering two ineffable volumes. And the wisdom of this first, which we call natural philosophy, urges us to exalt the produce emanating from our Savior’s hand, since He is in-dwelling—the efficacious cause toward which matters tend. But the wisdom of this second book opens upon subterraneous cosmography and therefore is closed to all save seraphic minds.

  MEISTER BÖHME DECLARES that as he was born to the similitude and image of the Lord God he has opened but one single text. Like a child in its mother’s house that requests no guidance he bent himself to this restorative volume, excluding others, since as he looked to the palpitating surge of his own heart he understood the armature and structure of the world.

  NOW, IN THAT model of the universe drawn up by Meister Fludd we notice an ape shackled to a woman representing celestial harmony, who is herself shackled to an inimitable presence beyond our sight. Thus are we linked to heaven with a chain, yet apostates argue that man is satisfied to emulate nature, content with senseless mimicry, exchanging forgotten dignity for immoderate power. This we dispute. As didactic historians it seems to us that man beset with trivial endowments must be superior to a discarded husk—greater than a mummified rind broken on the surface.

  IAMBLICUS ARGUES HOW the tenuity and attractive subtility of divine guidance is such that initiates might be affected in the manner of fishes drawn upward through dense, turbid waters toward the luminous radiance of a higher atmosphere, only to become deprived and languid and sickened—forsaking the connascent spirit which directed them.

  PYTHAGORAS NOTES HOW we seek a light, exemplified by angels, when we speak of God, so that during journeys through prayer and convocation we carry a candle to refute those obscurities which accumulate with darkness.

  FROM THE ANONYMOUS Pedagogue we learn of a prodigious book in which our Lord has communicated such truth as we require for adequate knowledge of the world and of His high majesty. This being so, who should cry out? We do but change position, twisting like victims of plague which endeavor to alleviate their anguish. Is it not wiser to let stars shine through us? Afflictions beyond reason entreat the spirit to suffer calmly while in a darkened antechamber the body waits.

  ARTEPHIUS, WITH HIS learned work on humanity’s predicament, has endeavored to explain that transcendent process whereby all men shall pass through the discipline of God and nature out of chaos toward unity. So we find our heavenly roadstead charted with its various coasts and bays—how the land falls. So would we indict heretics that, like stolid contented oxen licking their noses, do not appreciate Genesis. If not oxen, what are they but monkeys dressed in silk?

  NOW, AS THE tree was adorned by our Lord with succulent fruit so did He burden the human spirit with an exuberance of shapes and ambitions toward knowledge. Therefore, we ask of the mole what does it signify in his blindness? Might this be a papist reluctant to admit the folly of his course? Or with Patricius we ask whether oceans roil above the sky. Also, we would learn how it is that gold spent by the wise, stamped with lightning, glistens pure and clear. And why should yesterday perplex men with unrequested answers? We are distressed by all affections which plentifully doubt the geniture and scheme of existence since all matters descend from His hand. Still, as registrars we dedicate our season to metaphysic service. We fat ourselves with present joy as a glutton slips toward his dish, a satyr his harlot, the credulous his idol.

  FROM HUGH OF Saint Victor we learn how the dove’s two wings represent the active and contemplative lives of Christianity. Next are we taught how the blue color of her wing signifies Heaven. The shimmering, soft nuance of her body—tremulous and inconstant as the sea—exemplifies a passion threatening our vigilant church, about which Mankind must thread its path. Behold those grasping red claws that betoken an ignoble world saturated with the blood of martyrs. Behold those yellow eyes, what do they represent? Thus are men consumed with unfulfilled desire, gnats drawn to a candle.

  WE ARE TAUGHT by the hermit Morien that he who lusts toward superiority encounters no abundance surpassing his own self, while the orb of this earth reveals no greater excellence or mystery than the humble figure of a common man reformed by our Lord into some other image. Yet, should the aspirant be not himself purified and cleansed and aged by the labor of experiment—much as the subjectum with which he works—why should the measure of his ordeal be preserved?

  ACCORDING TO THALES there is but one world which demonstrates the construction of God. Metadorus argues otherwise, claiming a universe populated by numberless worlds since their causes must be numberless, which contention we reject as sophistry. Who has not felt the obstetric hand of God? Who can mistake the light for its ray? Light is the cause, brightness the effect.

  WE HAVE STUDIED how four elements representing a Quaternarius grow entwined with their indecipherable Ternarius and Unity during the incarnation of our Savior. Hence, three plus four make seven, that Septenary a Sabaoth into which the creature enters. Therefore, we suppose transmutation with resurrection must be equivalent. Yet, for no two men are events identical and the springs of behavior lie hidden.

  WE HAVE LOOKED upon the considerate spider assembling his web more efficiently than a man and have watched the industrious honeybee manufacturing a house more artistic than any palace, so we conclude these must be blessed insects, albeit assigned to trafficking with fungible goods which decay or degenerate. Man by himself goes ranging across the night and neither Luna nor Sol shall direct the course of his study.

  SOME ENDORSE THE stars as instruments of unlimited authority, intermediaries that influence us yet neither seduce nor abduct nor deprive men of opinions which formulate their inheritance. Nevertheless we are at first deceived by what looks virtuous—much as the light bequeathed us turns mutable or shifting.

  SEPARATE SUBJECTS HAVE separate truths. According to Meister Franciscus Pi
cus, men watch approaching events through a mirror governed by benevolent constellations and built in compliance with natural laws of perspective—which Friar Bacon would name Almuchefi. Now, this may happen as we are told, but mayhap not. Often with great fiction some claim they were there to see it. Being as we are but didactic amanuenses, we look to divisible success until the prophet be modified in body and spirit.

  WE ARE INFORMED how a wreath of Sinechrusmontes Behdem encloses the deadly glass encircled by blackwood sticks which harridans arrange, which they float upon buckets filled with lake water and expose to a nascent moon—whose image reflected upward must radiate downward, because a poisonous oval infects the earth. This proves how the atmosphere is able to convey foul influence, and how the vindictive contaminate spirits other than their own. But as conscience becomes a tablet on which offenses are laid up we ask how amoral souls persist in the moral universe. What is the agent of such audacity?

  WE ASK IF Jehovah delights in righteous adherents. Or is this a mockery, a conceit? We wonder why Johannes de Rupecissa perished in a Vatican dungeon for experimenting with prophecy and denouncing the future of nations—twice visited by Etienne Aubert, Innocent VI. That evil arrives dressed with a bright and sudden gaze, we doubt not.

  OR WHAT OF one that sprinkles the Paschal Lamb with sour herbs? John Wierus comments on a villainous magistrate assisted by princes, dukes, demons mistitled marquis, counts and accursed presidents congregating for heinous intercourse—frightful spirits who negotiate apartments in temples while praising obscenities. And we are rolled up with obedience and no viceroy shall exist above that dominating a man’s mind. Or do things freely combine through submission to one regent?

  WE ASK IF humanity’s requirement be some fabric or synthesis—a morality it cannot live without. Much discourse have we heard of Albert von Bollstaedt who beckoned white magic to his side, constructing an automaton imbued with the authority of speech, which he named the Android and that like an augur fastidiously served him by responding to every question. Now, this we call perilous because the distinctions between good and evil belie their intent, nor was a man meant to compete against divinity. That is why his pupil, Aquinas, picked up the hammer.

  THIS MONK WE have titled Doctor Universalis since he has taught the quality of common plants in Liber secretorum Alberti Magni de vertutibus herbarum and has instructed us with De Secretis mulierum et virorum on the aspects of male and female mystery. And with his ultimate labor—Compendium theologicae veritatis—that was printed at Nuremberg, Frater Albertus unveils a world of metals and minerals, of mechanics, of compounds, of physics and of chymistry, not to mention eight hundred lesser subjects, by such industry preserving the marvels of Arabic scholarship. Nevertheless that diabolic grimoire embellished with talismans extolling the Ring of Invisibility which was flaunted at Lyons—Alberti Parvi Lucii Liber de Mirabilibus Naturae Arcanis—this is a wicked misleading book quite untouched by a masterful hand, hence it must be considered spurious. Thus would we compare him to our Stone replete with beauty, both inimitable and worthless, disguising what is evident. His corpse we are told was exhibited at the central quire of the Dominican convent where it resisted corruption. His entrails we believe were carted off to Ratisbon where once he served as Bishop. Now, all this we think merciful so we entreat our Lord on behalf of a learned servant.

  SKEPTICS DEMAND TO know what mortal is qualified to serve God. We answer without hesitation that because He deplores impurity nothing might exist in His presence which is vile or blemished or compounded. They ask what of Agrippa, who expired face-down. We would not deny that he ordered ducats out of slate, nor that the obedient poodle trotting at his side was meant to advise him of distant occurrences among foreign people. Further, we do admit he died with his face to the floor at the house of the Receiver General, which is on Clerk’s Street in Grenoble, in the province of Dauphiné, and that his black accomplice drowned in the Isère—ending an illegitimate search for knowledge. Yet, like the blind that gaze wrong directions we feel reluctant to decide. Ignoring Satan’s rhetoric, we believe that a compassionate God looks down with indulgence upon troubled scholars. And we demand to know if there be not numerous doors to the temple of knowledge.

  MEISTER HEINRICH CORNELIUS Agrippa with wondrous felicity and limitless eloquence could translate or dictate eight languages while conversing upon every subject. With admirable integrity he has explored in his gigantic work, De Occulta philosophia, how the impassioned commitment of but a single soul directed through imagination may benefit and guide our faint majority. So we ask of skeptics what rate seems usurious?

  FROM THE GREAT canon of Jean d’Espagnet, Enchiridion physicae restitutae, we learn that God was a book rowled up in Himself that enlightened only Himself before the universe was created, but unfolded Himself during travail with the birth of a world and brought light to the womb of His own mind by extending it to mortal view, so the world was framed with immortal extreams. And in the sun was the center of the world. And in the center of the whole was the sun, as the considerations of nature and equity seem to require, since the body of our light should have equidistance from the dark fabric of the world and the genesis of its fountain that it might receive an abundance of strength from its chief source and upon like distance convey this wealth to a universe below. Are there not many kinds or forms of unity? These are good and licit and commodious things which we hold up toward the looking-glass of reflection.

  ANDREAS LIBAVIUS EXPLAINS with his masterwork how spagyric art shall consist of perfecting magistery by extricating essences from a coalition of bodies through exceptional multiplications of imperious matter. But say we are descendants of Adam born wretchedly to ashes and dirt, how shall we persist in seeking that which we lack the wisdom to hold, or vouchsafe ourselves a constellation of faculties that we fail to exhibit?

  WE HAVE HEARD Meister Eirenaeus Philopones Philalethes contend in The Marrow of Alchymy how our subject is mercury associated with gold, both decocted until neither forsakes its opposite, so that both rot and putrefy—giving up themselves to glorious regeneration. Now, this finest of seven substances we identify as Monarch which septic fluid does not contaminate or necrotic soil corrode, since it was regulated by nature. Hence the King embodies nothing superfluous. Therefore, we grant this mineral supremacy and propose that it dominates lesser metals, flaring like Sol among weak planets, and by the production of mercuric gold from miserable atoms our Lord completed His majestic work. Thus, if man is the noblest creature it follows that he manifest some divinity which cannot be corrupted.

  ACCORDING TO THE Dutchman, Meister Isaac, if our Regal Infant transmutes one million times its weight into meritorious gold we have demonstrated the Magnum Opus, and all that obediently accept their allotment shall endure until an hour God assigns. Yet we watch indifferent men gossip and work toward their aims all oblivious to the parabolic curve which hurries them apart, bones washed in wine, huddled upon glyphs and numbers, saluting vacant air from squalid littorals, histories close-writ across the chapbook of iniquity while persevering at vengeance—fools eternally plowing the desert, extolling a long and witless jest, ignoring the prodigious fulcrum God exerts against our world. How shall they anticipate redemption? As conservative notaries we decline to speculate. We do but stockpile fact.

  HOEKSTERS WOULD RANSACK occult chronicles for those procedures Saint John employed to benefit the impoverished and to assist the decrepit by confecting silver and gold. Disparate entities coalesce. Where one predominates the consequence shall appear elliptical, but where equilibrium prevails a circle results—as Jehovah’s hand hurled the stars into perfect courses.

  MAY NOT THE close of a motion be also its beginning? Yes, since things turn upon their pattern, returning to no end other than their own. Therefore we believe in palingenesis. Avicenna, Cardanus, Averroes, Eckhartshausen, Seneca, Plato, Caspalin and others confirm the truth of this. Athanasius Kircher at the court of Queen Christina resurrected a rose from ashes.r />
  NOW BECAUSE WE are humble biographists expending ourselves with quiet scribbling to complete the archives of inheritance let us consult that emerald attendant who swallows his tail—Ourobouros—the serpent exemplifying mystery to be devoured and melted, transfigured by dissolution from its first estate to one of inimitable gold.

  LOOK! AH, WE behold some malodorous, greasy-visaged trickster disguised in a Jerusalem beard creamier than milk and a gown befitting a penniless wizard—ripped silken sleeves spangled with glittering stars with a half-moon smiling on his breast, the cowl pushed back from a face to make poor Lazarus faint. And he has brought his scrying-disk of polished cannel coal and a globe to manipulate which commands disembodied spirits until they swarm quicker than bats chattering for entrance. Now does he fill up his pelican flask half with yellow seeds that should be mothered night and day like a squatting hen warming her clutch of eggs who would hatch out golden chicks. God speed! We doubt he will usurp a throne nor surpass Midas except by the length of shaggy ears. Therefore, good passage. We cannot guess what formula he offers. With each disposition nothing travels swiftly save toward itself.