Witch, Warlock, and Magician. W. H. Davenport Adams
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century. Here is his definition of it:
‘Chemistry is the art of preparing gold and silver. The books concerning it were sought out and burnt by Diocletian, on account of the new plots directed against him by the Egyptians. He behaved towards them with great cruelty in his search after the treatises written by the ancients, his purpose being to prevent them from growing rich by a knowledge of this art, lest, emboldened by measureless wealth, they should be induced to resist the Roman supremacy.’
Some authorities assert, however, that this art, or pretended art, is of much greater antiquity than Suidas knew of; and Scaliger refers to a Greek manuscript by Zozomen, of the fifth century, which is entitled ‘A Faithful Description of the Secret and Divine Art of Making Gold and Silver.’ We may assume that as soon as mankind had begun to set an artificial value upon these metals, and had acquired some knowledge of chemical elements, their combinations and permutations, they would entertain a desire to multiply them in measureless quantities. Dr. Shaw speaks of no fewer than eighty-nine ancient manuscripts, scattered through the European libraries, which are all occupied with ‘the chemical art,’ or ‘the holy art,’ or, as it is sometimes called, ‘the philosopher’s stone’; and a fair conclusion seems to be that ‘between the fifth century and the taking of Constantinople in the fifteenth, the Greeks believed in the possibility of making gold and silver,’ and called the supposed process, or processes, chemistry.
The delusion was taken up by the Arabians when, under their Abasside Khalifs, they entered upon the cultivation of scientific knowledge. The Arabians conveyed it into Spain, whence its diffusion over Christendom was a simple work of time, sure if gradual. From the eleventh to the sixteenth century, alchemy was more or less eagerly studied by the scholars of Germany, Italy, France, and England; and the volumes in which they recorded both their learning and their ignorance, the little they knew and the more they did not know, compose quite a considerable library. One hundred and twenty-two are enumerated in the ‘Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa,’ of Mangetus, a dry-as-dust kind of compilation, in two huge volumes, printed at Geneva in 1702. Any individual who has time and patience to expend ad libitum, cannot desire a fairer field of exercise than the ‘Bibliotheca.’ One very natural result of all this vain research and profitless inquiry was a keen anxiety on the part of victims to dignify their labours by claiming for their ‘sciences, falsely so-called,’ a venerable and mysterious origin. They accordingly asserted that the founder or creator was Hermes Trismegistus, whom some of them professed to identify with Chanaan, the son of Ham, whose son Mizraim first occupied and peopled Egypt. Now, it is clear that any person might legitimately devote his nights and days to the pursuit of a science invented, or originally taught, by no less illustrious an ancient than Hermes Trismegistus. But to clothe it with the awe of a still greater antiquity, they affirmed that its principles had been discovered, engraved in Phœnician characters, on an emerald tablet which Alexander the Great exhumed from the philosopher’s tomb. Unfortunately, as is always the case, the tablet was lost; but we are expected to believe that two Latin versions of the inscription had happily been preserved. One of these may be Englished as hereinunder:
1. I speak no frivolous things, but only what is true and most certain.
2. What is below resembles that which is above, and what is above resembles that which is below, to accomplish the one thing of all things most wonderful.
3. And as all things proceeded from the meditation of the One God, so were all things generated from this one thing by the disposition of Nature.
4. Its father is Sol, its mother Luna; it was engendered in the womb by the air, and nourished by the earth.
5. It is the cause of all the perfection of things throughout the whole world.
6. It arrives at the highest perfection of powers if it be reduced into earth.
7. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, acting with great caution.
8. Ascend with the highest wisdom from earth to heaven, and thence descend again to earth, and bind together the powers of things superior and things inferior. So shall you compass the glory of the whole world, and divest yourself of the abjectness of humanity.
9. This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, since it will overcome everything subtle and penetrate everything solid.
10. All that the world contains was created by it.
11. Hence proceed things wonderful which in this wise were established.
12. For this reason the name of Hermes Trismegistus was bestowed upon me, because I am master of three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
13. This is what I had to say concerning the most admirable process of the chemical art.
These oracular utterances are so vague and obscure that an enthusiast may read into them almost any meaning he chooses; but there seems a general consensus of opinion that they refer to the ‘universal medicine’ of the earlier alchemists. This, however, is of no great importance, since it is certain they were invented by some ingenious hand as late as the fifteenth century. Another forgery of a similar kind is the ‘Tractatus Aureus de Lapidis Physici Secretis,’ also attributed to Hermes; it professes to describe the process of making this ‘universal medicine,’ or ‘philosopher’s stone,’ and the formulary is thus translated by Thomson:
‘Take of moisture an ounce and a half; of meridional redness—that is, the soul of the sun—a fourth part, that is, half an ounce; of yellow sage likewise half an ounce; and of auripigmentum half an ounce; making in all three ounces.’
Such a recipe does not seem to help forward an enthusiastic student to any material extent.
THE EARLIER ALCHEMISTS.
It is in the erudite writings of the great Arabian physician, Gebir—that is, Abu Moussah Djafar, surnamed Al Sofi, or The Wise—that the science of alchemy, or chemistry (at first the two were identical), first assumes a definite shape. Gebir flourished in the early part of the eighth century, and wrote, it is said, upwards of five hundred treatises on the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. In reference to the latter mysterious potion, which possessed the wonderful power of conferring immortal youth on those who drank of it, one may remark that it was the necessary complement of the philosopher’s stone, for what would be the use of an unlimited faculty of making gold and silver unless one could be sure of an immortality in which to enjoy its exercise? Gebir’s principal work, the ‘Summæ Perfectionis,’ containing instructions for students in search of the two great secrets, has been translated into several European languages; and an English version, by Richard Russell, the alchemist, was published in 1686.
Gebir lays down, as a primary principle, that all metals are compounds of mercury and sulphur. They all labour under disease, he says, except gold, which is the one metal gifted with perfect health. Therefore, a preparation of it would dispel every ill which flesh is heir to, as well as the maladies of plants. We may excuse his extravagances, however, in consideration of the services he rendered to science by his discovery of corrosive sublimate, red oxide of mercury, white oxide of arsenic, nitric acid, oxide of copper, and nitrate of silver, all of which originally issued from Gebir’s laboratory.
Briefly speaking, the hypothesis assumed by the alchemists was this: all the metals are compounds, and the baser contain the same elements as gold, contaminated, indeed, with various impurities, but capable, when these have been purged away, of assuming all its properties and characters. The substance which was to effect this purifying process they called the philosopher’s stone (lapis philosophorum), though, as a matter of fact, it is always described as a powder—a powder red-coloured, and smelling strongly. Few of the alchemists, however, venture on a distinct statement that they had discovered or possessed this substance.
The arch-quack Paracelsus makes the assertion, of course; unblushing mendacity was part of his stock-in-trade; and he pretends even to define