A certain manuscript - From an old manuscript, Anonymous.
1672
Extract from the book called:
"N.
Since from my youth I have borne a great desire and inclination toward the true Philosophy, I have also fallen among the sophists and deceivers (as Bernhardus Trevisanus and Dionysius Zacharias themselves testify how it befell them), and sought to learn something from them. But through much reading and study I discovered that it is a gift and grace of God, and that no philosopher makes it, apart from the loss of the precious jewel of his soul, as can be shown from many books of the philosophers; the same no one can reveal. Therefore I abandoned the sophists and sellers of processes, and I also wish to earnestly admonish every lover of this noble art to beware of them: to give no credence to anyone who offers him a process and money—for I have had much experience of this in my own time—therefore I can well warn against it, whoever will let himself be warned; for their deceit is nothing but lies. No one can make a particular, without the extraction of Sal Ammoniac or of Philosophical Mercury from the Philosophers’ Pontic Water, the use of which the philosophers have not so openly revealed. NB. And this extraction God alone shall reveal, who knows the hearts and minds of men; as Sendivogius writes in the conclusion of the twelve treatises: Et paulo post (“and a little later”):
“When you now, with time, will attain the desired end, then you will believe me, and will not reveal yourself to the world.”
Frater Basilius Valentinus, in the fifth key, also speaks of this extraction with these words:
“Thus from this Matter a visible spirit must be drawn out, which is nevertheless incorporeal; and this very spirit (I say) is the root of life, our body, and the Mercury of the philosophers, from which the Liquorish Water is prepared in our art, which you must then again, in its composition, reduce materially, and by certain means, from the lowest to the highest degree, prepare into an over-sweet medicine.”
NB. Et paulo post. “And know that with my mouth I have given no further revelation, but God has imparted more effect and wonder of nature, than many thousands of men could believe; but to me it has been prefigured under a seal (Arrige auris Pamphili), one after another, I too may write of wondrous things (but not reveal them to others), since they are naturally permitted by the Creator, but are held back supernaturally from the unwise.
And in repetition of the great Stone of the Ancients, of the Salt of the Philosophers: now I have spoken according to the true philosophical custom, so that it does not further become me to report to anyone how the doors are locked within.
Raymund Lullius, in his Last Testament, chapter 4, also remembers this extraction, and calls it a hidden fire; for this knowledge of the fire is the highest secret, because it is not human but angelic, to reveal this heavenly gift.
Thus now the curse of the philosophers, which has been left to those who come after, is not left without cause: therefore we pray to God, that the treasure of this most secret fire may not come into the hands of the unworthy, but only into the hands of the wise. For whoever would reveal and uncover this holy mystery, they are breakers of the heavenly seal, and offend the Divine Majesty, so far as lies within them: they are also subject to much misfortune, and not far from the punishment of God.
Let every Christian beware,
to open what is forbidden.
Be silent still, that is my counsel:
thus shall he have peace early and late.
Praise and thanks be to GOD in all eternity for His high and mighty gift: that He has so richly endowed Nature, for our salvation and earthly friend, with such great abundance of all temporal welfare. Amen.
THE END.