The great craftiness which Satan makes use of in true alchemy

in order to hurl the unintelligent seekers of the Philosophical Stone
into all temporal and eternal ruin,

brought to light for faithful warning and better instruction
by one whose chosen motto is:

In the garden of Christ are bestowed treasures most great and most precious.

Erfurt,
to be found at Augustinus Crusius,

1731.




Translated to English from the book:
Die grosse Arglistigkeit derer sich der Satan bedienet bey der Wahren Alchymie, Um Die unverständigen Sucher des Philosophischen Steins in alles zeitliche und ewige verderben zu stürtzen

Discovered as a sincere warning and instruction by one whose motto is: In Christi Horto Dantur Thesauri Maximi Pretiosissimique

To His High-Comital Excellency,

the high-born Count and Lord,
LORD Heinrich the Twenty-Fourth,
of the Younger Line of Reuss, Count and Lord of Plauen,
of Greiz, Kranichfeld, Gera,
Schleiz and Lobenstein, etc.,

My gracious Count and Lord.

High-born Count,
gracious Count and Lord,

To lay these poor pages at YOUR feet, Your High-Comital Excellency, though it is done in the deepest respect, ought indeed to have held back my insignificance from so bold an undertaking, as well by the loftiness of YOUR rank as by YOUR exceedingly great prudence, by virtue of which YOU have never taken the slightest pleasure in matters of the sort here contained, but rather have preferred, at their very first graciously permitted approach, to dismiss such self-styled artists with a gracious gift from YOU, and dismissed them, in that YOU have thereafter given no further ear to their deceitful pretences, for which YOU are indeed most justly to be highly praised.

But since it is very well known that YOU have been acquainted with various such eager seekers, and can therefore give unimpeachable testimony to the truths touched upon in this little writing, and since besides YOU are otherwise most gracious in Your dealings with everyone, I have therefore had so much the less hesitation in dedicating this small treatise to Your Comital Excellency, with the most humble request that YOU would look upon it with gracious eyes and receive its author into YOUR high comital favour and grace.

For this I shall daily stand before the Most High with my poor prayer, that He may keep Your High-Comital Excellency and YOUR High-Comital House in constant well-being, and may richly endow YOU all with the gold of true faith; while I, for my part, shall ever remain in most bounden veneration,

High-born Count,
gracious Count and Lord,

Your most obedient
servant,

The Author.

Preface

Most honoured reader,

At first glance and on a hurried perusal of the title-leaf someone might very easily fall into the thought as though the truth of the art of changing lesser metals into better ones, namely into gold and silver, were being doubted, and as though one therefore also sought to make others doubtful of it. This, however, is by no means intended; indeed for that very reason there has been carefully added on the title-page: “of true alchemy.”

For if one wished to deny that which others have seen with their own eyes, one would act no more sensibly than a blind man who would wish to deny the brightness of sun, moon and stars, which others nevertheless see. So let no one think and suppose, when the title reads, when it says: “The great craftiness of which Satan makes use in true alchemy, so that people hold such an art to be devilish, as something that must be learned from the Devil, or as nothing but a devilish delusion.”

For although Satan, as an old and well-experienced physician, may understand the art, yet according to his perverted nature he is inclined to nothing more than to deceit and craftiness. And since, as a prince of darkness, he hates the light, he is not unlike the will-o’-the-wisps which at night lead travellers who follow after them away from the right road and plunge them into danger, as shall be shown hereafter.

For this reason I would advise no seeker of the lapis philosophicus to learn the gold-makers’ art through conjuration (as the monk Beyer is said to have done), or in any other forbidden way from Satan; but rather that he acknowledge that God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is alone the Lord of nature and the Father of lights, from whom all good gifts, wisdom, and skill come; and so a seeker must turn to Him alone, that He would cause the light to shine forth out of the darkness and allow him to perceive nature.

About this no one should be curious to know who then has written this, but should rather well consider what is written, and whether everything also holds true. If one finds oneself here and there hit by it, one should not at once suspect that it was meant in specie for him which indeed cannot be; and even if it were so, he can still take it as a warning for himself, if he will.

This is what we wished to remind the kindly-disposed reader of beforehand. Whoever, in the perusal of what follows, will give close heed to the great craftiness of Satan, of which he makes use in true alchemy, and will diligently guard himself against the same, will not only escape the ruin contrived by Satan, but will also all the more easily draw nearer to the sought-for goal, toward which the way is, ever and again, not indistinctly pointed out to him. It is known that Satan, on account of his many cunning underhand dealings, who is called the “artist of a thousand arts”; for at all times and on every occasion he is only intent on how he may bewitch the unwary and plunge them into all temporal and eternal ruin, and, alas, but too often more than one could wish or suspect actually attains his evil final aim, as one may indeed observe in many ways, especially, among others, in the foolish seekers of the Philosophers’ Stone.

And since his tricks and craftiness are so manifold that one can scarcely describe each and every one of them in full, I shall, in this present little tract, touch only briefly upon some of the most common among them (otherwise one would have to prepare a great folio volume) and treat of them in two chapters, wherein I will then show.

Chapter 1
How and by what means Satan hurls the foolish seekers of the Philosophical Stone into all temporal ruin.

This happens, first, through the procuring of various minerals and other things in great quantity. For since the philosophers designate their subject with many different names (which they do to this end, that an unworthy person may not easily come at the art; yet the many names can very well apply to their one single subject, as is known to the filii artis), and since they state that they obtained their quintessence from it in small quantity, yet of powerful quality, the eager and over-clever gold-beetles imagine that they must have all manner of things brought to them from every place, even though it be with the greatest expense, and indeed in great quantity, so that they may be able to make a large brewing-cask full of gold tincture from it.

But that these people are blinded by Satan may be inferred from this, that in their blind and covetous seeking they do not see the light which the true philosophers have set upon the candlestick for those who grope about in the darkness, when they expressly reject all minerals and metals and clearly explain their saying “in / of / from and through metals” from the very principles of the minerals, metals and other sublunary or visible things.

I also, for my part, freely say that their single subject is a small and genuine, inexpensive, well-known and commonly available thing that anyone can easily procure. Those who read this latter statement with attention, Satan again fits with deceitful spectacles, so that they indeed no longer fall upon costly things, as did the former, but upon mean and readily obtainable things, such as soot, “human red” (Menschen-Roth), etc., not observing that the philosophers add that their subject is indeed small and contemptible, yet more glorious than solid gold and silver themselves; and this not only because of the power it contains in itself, but also in respect of its outward appearance. Of this everyone will bear witness whom God deems worthy to place the same in his hands and to let him recognize it.

For the nigrum nigerrimum of the wise points just as little to the blackness of soot, and the smell of death to the stench of human filth, as their acerrimum points to wine-vinegar or any other sour mineral spirit, their strongest poison to arsenic, and their fiercest fire to the concentrated rays of the sun in a burning-glass or any other great coal-fire.

Should a maker of lamp-black object here that the soot has indeed gone forth out of its previously specified essence into its chaos, and has become sufficiently dissolved and universal, one could say this not only of all things that, like soot, attach themselves in smelting-houses, but rather that the privy of the house could with still greater right and reason claim it of its own filth.

For since soot, through the elementary kitchen-fire (which drives off the common mercury and yet, according to the statement of the Wise, ought not to happen), is deprived of the universal mercury; whereas human excrement, by a natural warmth of fermentation, is brought about and thus its mumial spirit or mercury is not driven out but preserved, if one now wished further to maintain that the shining soot is precisely the highly-shining minera of Saturn of which Basil writes, the answer is: Saturn is called by the Wise a devourer of children and is therefore regarded as a father; how can this be said of soot?

For the Wise unanimously write that all minerals and metals themselves have their origin out of the principles of their subject, since this had existed earlier; so one may now ask whether soot and human excrement, etc., were before the minerals and metals. Whoever believes Moses, the Spirit-scribe of creation, will have to grant that the trees and herbs, from which soot and human excrement from which soot and human excrement arise, were produced only afterwards.

And how then could Adam, according to the unanimous declaration of the philosophers, have brought soot with him out of Paradise, since he had neither house nor chimney, nor any fire or hearth for cooking food?

“Yes,” says the lover of soot, “this is to be understood thus: Adam had before the Fall a bright, shining body of light; but after the Fall he brought with him out of Paradise a coarse, dark and black body, and by this the soot is signified.”

This indeed is rightly said, but badly understood and still worse applied. For there are still more black bodies; and if things were so, only the Moors would have to be regarded as Adam’s true children, and the whites as bastards.

“Yes,” people say, “yet soot often gives a reddish-brown colour.” That is true; but so too does black-dried malt and roasted coffee beans. And if the philosophical tincture gave no better colour, lustre and radiance of itself than the shine and appearance of soot, glittering soot, one would not even wish to think of it.

“Yes,” people say, “for that very reason a certain philosopher called himself Schwartz-Ruß (Black-Soot).”

Reply: If he had wanted to borrow this name from that, he would rather have had to call himself Schwartz-Kopf (Black-Head) or even Schwartzmann (Black-Man), because soot does not cling to the head but hangs rather up high, on the roof and top of the house, and blackens the chimney everywhere.

And even if one grants that the author meant to indicate something by such an invented name, yet others do the same under other appellations, such as Thauheld, Sigillus, Zoroüllus, and so on, all of which are nomina ficta. Whoever therefore directs his thoughts toward soot indeed has a black thing before his eyes, but he will not hit the little black spot in the philosophical disk. For just as their signate star is not the one that appears on the regulus antimonii, so too their blackness is something quite different from soot. Over and above all this, the philosophers all say in general that the blackness first shows itself in the work and operation, and not before.

Secondly.

By the building up of great laboratories, of various furnaces, and by the purchase of many newly-invented vessels. For when the Wise write of different operations and effects which in truth Nature herself performs, and therewith say “according to Nature,” the unintelligent, through Satan’s perverted spectacles, again do not take this rightly, and so hit upon all kinds of furnaces (for which of necessity a large laboratory is required) in which they can carry out the manifold works of their imagination by different degrees of fire; whereas the Wise expressly say that their fire is no kitchen-, coal-, or lamp-fire, but a natural one, and that their subject itself is the furnace and the vessel; indeed, for their work they do not use more than two vessels.

Here I cannot leave unmentioned the foolish simplicity which some have committed, and still commit, in the invention of strange vessels: I will mention only one.

When the philosophers compare their work with a pelican which opens its breast with its beak and through the blood that spurts forth makes its dead young alive again, the foolish, misled by Satan’s delusion, have a glass vessel made for them whose heated beak must be bent down into the belly of the lower glass; and this is then to be and to be called the philosophers’ pelican.

But one might well ask these inventive artists why their fancy has not also taken pleasure in making a glass phoenix or ship, since the wise have likewise compared their work to the bird Phoenix and have represented it under Jason’s voyage by ship. Whoever wanted to have vessels made after all the philosophical similitudes would have to be more ingenious than a maker of Schnorr-pipes, and into what laboratory could one bring all the Schnorr-pipes? Here one can, as it were, grasp with one’s hands the lack of understanding that many have allowed to appear from themselves when they wish to explain the philosophical riddles and similitudes, of which more will be said at the end of the second chapter.

Thirdly.

By the costly learning of new chemical operations. For when the philosophers write about the natural effects which take place in and with their subject, in order thereby to lead the intelligent seeker more quickly to its discovery and to a sure knowledge of it, the unintelligent, however, let themselves be led astray by Satan and his following into entirely newly-invented operations, of which the ancients never thought, and against which the more recent writers, to whom such futile cookeries are well known, have given ample warning.

Notwithstanding this, they take pains to learn them from others for a great fee, and spend many years, with great diligence and expense, in vain, just as their teachers do. If such artificial cookeries were useful for the philosophical work, how could a wise man have called it “women’s work and children’s play”?

Fourthly. By buying useless processes.

Some philosophers write that a seeker does not so easily and quickly find and learn the art unless a good friend teaches it to him. Here Satan again avails himself of his craftiness and leads the unintelligent so far that they think of nothing else than how they might obtain some process from someone.

And since such deceitful processes have long since been forged together by sophists and are kept and sold secretly (for who would wish to offer such a secret art openly for sale to everyone?), they let themselves be smeared with them for large sums of money.

Yet the true adepts faithfully warn against this, and Bernard says: “He who knows it, mark well, will not tell me; and he who does not know it cannot tell me.” Therefore they direct the seeker to God, from whom he himself must beg the knowledge of the subject. For whoever truly understood it, to him it would of itself also show how one must proceed with it.

Fifthly. By stubborn persistence in their foolish undertakings.

The wise are accustomed to exhort their seekers to patience and constancy, both in the investigation of nature and of the one subject, and also in awaiting the completion of the work; for just as one cannot pluck roses before their time, and nature requires a definite period for her operations, so the unintelligent let Satan persuade them that they must not give up their enterprise, even if all the phenomena noted by the philosophers have failed to appear. Rather, if they only catch sight of some sign which they forcibly drag by the hair to fit a philosophical saying, they think they must either continue their already-begun cookery, or else start again from the beginning and in another way. And thus they go round so long in such a circle until they become quite giddy and blind. And even if one were to offer them the most thorough demonstrations that their whole undertaking is sheer folly, one still would not be able to turn them from it.

Sixthly. By premature liberality.

The philosophers quite rightly admonish one to deal properly with so great a treasure received from God, and to apply it well to God’s honour and to the good of one’s neighbour, especially by showing help and kindness from it to the poor sick and distressed.

The foolish, however, again look at this Christian admonition through Satan’s spectacles and let themselves be led from liberality into wastefulness, in that they not only let it flow out lavishly in their own house, but also, beyond their means, bestow gifts outside upon others who are not even so very needy and worthy of it although they have not yet seen so much as a speck of gold-powder, let alone obtained any. And then they imagine that God, through such their premature liberality (if it may be so called), will let Himself be moved all the sooner to favour them with the Philosophers’ Stone.

Concerning this a distinguished theologian once very rightly said: “Poor people think to bribe our Lord God with their alms, and to hide it.”

Therefore, if someone possesses Bernhard’s Fontaine, then he can and should, according to Solomon’s and other wise men’s admonition, let his little fountains flow out into the streets.

Seventhly. By abandoning their proper calling and profession.

Here it is first of all to be borne in mind that one by no means wishes to take away from anyone the freedom to amuse himself with such an art and to seek and try something in it, but only, as throughout, to warn him against harm.

The wise are accustomed to say in their writings that the investigation of so secret a matter demands the whole man; which indeed, though with certain limitations, is true especially when one considers their wisdom-filled riddles, deeply grounded turns of speech, and statements that seem to contradict one another, and wishes, as one should, to learn from them the hidden art.

Here, however, the unintelligent let themselves once more be deceived and blinded by Satan, so that they imagine where they do not entirely give up all other trades and business.

If they acted more wisely, they would remain with their own profession and calling, and would carefully and attentively consider the things which they have in their hands; then many a craftsman would often sooner attain to the knowledge of such a common and universally known thing through simple contemplation than some highly learned man through his deep, brooding meditations. For an average understanding is already sufficient for this note well, if only it be appointed thereto by God.

But in order that Satan may give the foolish seeker the final push, to cast him into all temporal ruin, he persuades him to lay aside his profession, by which he and his household have hitherto had their unfailing livelihood through God’s blessing.

We will now also consider.

Chapter 2
How and by what Satan hurls the foolish seekers of the Philosophical Stone into eternal ruin.

1. Through immoderate desire for such a treasure.

Although the Wise write that their Stone is fixed and fire-resistant and also gives riches and health, yet it is by no means that precious Cornerstone on which eternal life and blessedness rest; and nevertheless they seek the former more eagerly than the latter. Indeed, for the latter they often do not think at all, though it be to their everlasting destruction.

They snap at shadows and uncertainties like a dog, and thereby lose what is certain; they seek gold and pass by the true God. Thus they again forget what the Wise so often inculcate and impress upon them, namely, that a seeker must first of all seek God and pray to Him, if he wishes to be successful in the finding.

When Moses despised and set aside all the Egyptian treasures, God appeared to him in the burning bush and made him into a great man of wonders; so whoever in this matter follows Moses, to him God will cause the light to shine forth out of the darkness, so that he may recognise and obtain the serpent-staff of Mercury, by means of which he can accomplish the wondrous transmutation of the metals.

2. Through deceitful persuasion of other people, in order to obtain from them the costs for working out their chimeras.

When a seeker, in his meditations, hits upon one or another subject to which a few philosophical sayings, although in a very forced way, can be applied, he lets himself through this be so greatly blinded by Satan that he firmly believes he has found the one true wonder-thing, and that now he lacks nothing further but to set the work going according to his own conception.

When such if he carries out his foolish fancies at his own expense, he indeed commits a deceit against himself and his household; but if, for lack of the aforesaid means, he also instils his foolish imagination into others and persuades them to advance the costs, then he deceives his neighbour as well, although unwittingly, yet not without all guilt and worthiness of punishment. Then it is true of him: falluntur et fallunt – “they are deceived and they deceive.”

But those who well know that they know nothing solid, and yet make others believe that they know everything about the Alkaest (why not about everything else as well?), and seek and accept from others the expenses for their fool’s work – these are deliberate and wilful deceivers, and thus are all the nearer to eternal ruin, unless in time they recognize their wickedness and through true repentance seek and find from God grace and forgiveness for their deceit.

3. By fraudulently passing off a coloured brandy spirit, or other liquor, as a gold-essence or universal medicine.

When, in the aforesaid way, an alchemist cannot talk anyone into his foolish whims and persuade them to provide the necessary costs, then, driven by Satan, he urges himself in another fashion to gather together as much money as possible, in order to carry out his most senseless notions. Thus he offers his somewhat coloured spirit to those inexperienced in chemistry as a gold tincture with which he advertises that he can cure all diseases. And because he knows that a cheap thing is not particularly esteemed and that an unknown medicine is scarcely bought a second time, he therefore makes it very dear, so as to draw the money to himself at once, after the manner of the market-criers.

4. By proud contempt of other people. For since those who have truly known the art and have written about it are commonly called “the wise,” the much-read but little-understanding seekers imagine for themselves, after they have taken from the writings of the wise a different manner of speaking, without any foundation, snatch up a little understanding, and imagine that they have already reached the highest summit of wisdom, and therefore regard others, who make no account of alchemy, as ignoramuses – though these are much wiser, in that they do not stake their understanding and their money on such a dangerous art and so easily-failing affair, nor squander them on it.

Certain philosophers are wont to write that their art is not taught and learned in the high schools, and that it surpasses all academic, bread-less and useless sciences. This indeed is not to be denied; but who would be so foolish, if he knew the art, as to present it so freely and openly before rough and untutored people? And who would still apply himself to other sciences and arts much more useful to human society, since already now tailors, linen-weavers, cobblers, etc., would lay down their professions and, without any oral instruction, take up alchemy and want to become great lords? Would we not have to go about unclothed?

For this very reason God has science and art into darkness and secrecy, and has so well guarded the little golden twig that it is not cropped off by some goat and befouled by linen-weaver, cobbler and tailor, so that its shining beauty would be dimmed.

5. By abandoning their wives.

When the foolish seekers read that most of the adepts were without wives, or that this or that philosopher has admonished that a man ought to conceal his undertaking from his wife – namely for these reasons, that she should not hinder him through her wilfulness, or bring him into danger through her love of gossip – then Satan suggests to them that they can undertake nothing firm and secure in this matter unless they separate themselves from their wives.

Yet in this way Satan only gains an opportunity to tempt both parties and to plunge them into sins, whereas they ought rather to consider how even women themselves have been deemed worthy by God to receive such an art to grasp; and just as Flamellus for that reason did not separate himself from his Petronella, but the two of them remained faithful to one another and proceeded hand in hand in all secrecy, so they too would and should rather direct their wives to the same virtues than expose them, through Satan’s temptations, to all sorts of vices.

If, however, the wife were and remained altogether opposed to the husband in this matter, then he ought to examine whether this is not from God, who thereby precisely wishes to show that He has not called him to such an art. One might indeed say: because Nature is described as a pure fiery virgin, and the philosophers’ subjectum is called a virginal earth, a seeker must at the very least abstain from all female cohabitation.

Reply: a chaste maiden will, to be sure, also wish to have a chaste beloved; but chastity can and ought also to be found among married people, and by it the philosophers understand rather the pure and sincere love toward God and men than an entire withdrawal, the separation from women and the denial of the duties owed in marriage.

6. By neglecting public worship.

If one wishes to learn such a secret art from the books of the Wise (for one very seldom teaches it to another by oral and practical instruction), the philosophers advise that one should ponder every word carefully and diligently; but this is greatly hindered by the noise of others who are present. Therefore Satan suggests to them that they can have no more suitable time and opportunity for this than when they send their household to church and remain at home alone; then they can in quiet and undisturbed read through one thing after another and consider the matter thoroughly. And since many a philosopher depicts the Work by biblical histories and spiritual parables, they imagine it is just as good, indeed better, to keep such a book at home than to listen to a sermon in church.

If they do this a few times, it soon becomes a habit for them; and thus Satan, without their noticing it, strengthens them in separatism. Very many similar examples could easily be produced of this, were the matter not so very odious.

7. Through holding all religions in equal esteem.

Whoever reads the philosophers’ writings will find that their authors have not all belonged to one and the same religion: for there are heathens, Jews, Papists, Lutherans, etc., who have written about the Philosophers’ Stone. Now since it is one single thing, and is meant to be such, about which they all, though in such different ways, have nevertheless written in agreement, and none has contradicted the other because of the differing manner of speaking and of formulas, provided only that the truth has thereby been brought to light: so the Evil One makes them imagine that there is a similar kinship also among the religions, that they are all equally good (for they all think to honour of the one true GOD) and would find their difference to lie only in outward ceremonies, differing modes of speech and formulas, and mere wrangling about words.

By this Satan casts the undiscerning into indifferentism, so that they hold one religion to be worth just as much as another.

Yea, some of the greedy gold-grubs, when for many years they have roamed in vain outside the philosophical pleasure-garden and cannot find the golden roses, finally come so far that they deny the art and its Giver and become atheists.

8. By a perverted interpretation of Holy Scripture.

It cannot be unknown to him who has read the writings of the philosophers, that many of them, especially among the more recent, have set forth the whole work not merely by worldly riddles, as the ancients for the most part did, but almost throughout under spiritual parables, knowledge, bringing passages of Scripture to light, in order thereby to lead the intelligent and Christian seeker all the more readily to the knowledge and learning of the art, and at the same time to illuminate the divine mysteries in some measure.

Now one gladly admits that by this no small light is kindled; yet the malicious enemy misuses their good intention for his evil designs, and instils into the unintelligent seeker the notion that the cited holy writers themselves had also been adepts and alchemists.

Thus Moses must be counted among their craft, since he had been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and had employed much gold and silver in the erection and adornment of the tabernacle, and had also caused the golden calf made by Aaron to be burned in the fire – all of which, at least the latter, could not have happened without the alchemists’ fire.

Yet the deluded ought rather to remember that the whole Israelite people had to contribute a great quantity of gold and silver together with other things; and that the philosophers’ Lapis Ignis is not only itself resistant to fire, but also makes all baser metals, which do not endure the fire, resistant to fire – how then, mark well, could the gold, which in itself is fire-resistant, be destroyed and burned up by it? For rather, according to the unanimous testimony of the philosophers, it is thereby made plusquamperfect.

Thus Solomon too, on account of the costly building of the Temple and the great abundance of gold and silver, so that these lay like stones in the streets, would likewise have to be numbered among the gold-makers. But those who say such things forget yet again that his father David had left him a great treasure for this purpose, and that he himself had brought much gold, together with other precious things, by ships from Ophir.

If he had known the art of gold-making, then he would certainly not have needed to undertake such a dangerous voyage by sea.

Therefore I cannot understand how some people have fallen into the seductive notion that Solomon had revealed the whole philosophical work in his Song of Songs. I know well that an anonymous writer, in his unseemly freedom, has so explained it, or rather applied it to that purpose; but if, for the sake of one or another expression by which the philosophical subject or work might perhaps be adumbrated, one wanted straightway to regard such a man as an adept, then assuredly all the teachers and writers, both of the Old and of the New Testament, would have to be counted people of that sort. For one could easily find in any spiritual and theological book something that could, in some measure, be turned in that direction, although its author may perhaps once have heard something of alchemy, to say nothing of having known it.

With regard to biblical history, it is well known that many philosophers represent their work under the image of Creation and of what took place therein, and in this way they discover many things.

But then the undiscerning let themselves be blinded once more by Satan, so that they imagine that in the philosophical work and labour the very same operations go on and are to be undertaken in just the same manner; whereas they ought to consider that the creation of the world is something wholly supernatural, whereas the philosophical work is a natural work, and that therefore the one differs from the other as far, indeed yet farther, as heaven and earth are apart.

And since the good Oermann did not rightly ponder this, he has in his book, in an inconsiderate way, laid it down and said that the Spirit which at the creation hovered upon the waters was a created spirit, and not the uncreated one, namely the third person of the one Godhead; whereas David nevertheless says expressly: “The heaven is made by the word of the LORD, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. Ps. 33:6.”

If this uncreated Spirit had not, by his hovering over the waters, animated the earth-water globe with a created spirit, how then would everything have been enlivened and made fruitful? Since good Gutmann imagined a creator as acting at his work, he was of course obliged to posit a created spirit; otherwise his hope would have been in vain, for an uncreated spirit is not something that can be caught and held in his phial or flask.

If one asks an unintelligent seeker of the Philosophical Stone how he intends to begin and proceed, if he were to get the one true subject into his hands, he will answer: he wishes to do it as GOD did in the creation, who separated the light from the darkness; thus he also wants to separate the pure from the impure.

If one then asks further: “How then did GOD separate the light from the darkness?”

Moses answers: God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Now then, my over-clever alchemist, do follow the Creator, if you can, and say likewise: “Let it be pure.”

“Yes,” you say, “what God accomplished through His fiat, that I bring about by distilling, subliming, calcining, etc.” Well, you may do that; only do not then say that you are a follower of the Creator and of created Nature, but rather a mimicking ape. For imitari and sequi to imitate and to follow are very different things. And whoever rightly understands this difference also knows what the wise intend when they cry: “According to Nature!”

If the unintelligent seeker’s many and strange thoughts which he ought to form and cherish about the one subject and its elaboration could be fitted together into one another, then there would result from them such a snip-snap mish-mash (Schnipp-Schnapp-Schnorr) that as great as the world.

All those chimeras and whims arise from the fact that they extend the philosophers’ comparisons, figurative turns of speech and riddles beyond the proper third term of comparison. I will here adduce only one example, in order to show how shamefully the undiscerning err in this matter.

It is known that a certain philosopher, in order to instruct the seeker, quotes from the Second Book of the Maccabees, chapter 1, verses 19–20, how the Jewish priests, at the time of the persecution, hid the holy fire from the altar in a deep dry pit; and that when, after some years, they sought it again, they did not find fire, but a thick water. Some, out of ignorance, interpret this as meaning calcined tartar or soot, which, they say, one must put on a shelf in a deep cellar – which they call the moist bath – scattered over glass vessels, and then it dissolves into such a thick water.

Another interprets it as his filtered saltpetre and lets the third therefore treats another alkaline salt; and because this, both before and after its liquefaction, burns on the tongue, it must be called the philosophers’ secret watery fire.

The fourth understands it as the caput mortuum of the separating water.

The fifth chooses for this another caput mortuum.

The sixth melts small pebbles with saltpetre and then lets them liquefy in the cellar, etc.

Now you over-clever folk think you have hit on it quite well; then also, according to Basil’s instruction, let the mercury bathe in your water: in whichever water it lays aside or burns off its wings, he shall be called a master and be venerated as a great wise man.

But this will happen at the Greek Kalends.

To this may also be referred what has already been mentioned in the first chapter, numbers 1 and 2.

The most harmful and most grievous thing in all this is when the foolish seekers let themselves be blinded and deluded by Satan, as if such cited biblical books and passages of Scripture had been committed to writing for this very reason, namely that one might learn from them, if not solely and exclusively, yet at least alongside the instruction for attaining the highest good and eternal blessedness, the art of making gold.

I cannot here refrain from adding what Mr. N. in N. told me about a foolish seeker: that, on the basis of the philosophers’ saying “Adam brought it with him out of Paradise,” he fell into the foolish notion and imagined that thereby Eve was meant.

Therefore he had his own wife, after she had died and he had laid stones in the coffin in her place, anatomized, boiled, and roasted her in chymical fashion, in order to make from her the Philosopher’s Stone. Whether the narrator of such foolish, whether this incident itself really happened thus, or some other one, I did not ask further.

From this one can already sufficiently recognize the great cunning which the Devil employs in true alchemy, in order to hurl the unintelligent seekers of the Lapis Philosophorum into all temporal and eternal ruin. Therefore, if you have not yet been made quite stone-blind by Satan, let yourself be advised to turn to the fountain of all wisdom, Christ Jesus, and beseech Him that He may open your eyes for you, as He did for the blind man in Mark, chap. 8, vv. 23–24. If you follow this most useful counsel and obtain only so much ability to see as that aforesaid blind man had the first time, then you will already be able, if not to see everything, yet at least to recognize and perceive one thing and another better.

Sat sapienti.

Finally, I beg once more that you look only and solely at the matter here contained and at the reasons adduced for it, and by no means suspect that one has aimed at him in particular, but that everyone who if he finds that in one point or another he has erred and been hit, let him take everything as a sincere warning and better instruction,
according to what it is really aimed at.

And since David says, Psalm 112:4:
“Unto the pious there rises light in the darkness,
from the gracious, merciful and righteous One,”

may GOD therefore bring us all to true piety
and afterwards keep us therein until our end.

THE END.