MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS.
Sendivogius, whose true name was Sensophax, was born at Moravia in 1566, and was therefore about thirty-eight years of age on the death of his taciturn master. He is said by some of his biographers to have been the natural son of a Polish nobleman, named Jacob Sendimir. His life has been written at some length by his advocate, an anonymous German, who, however, produced a romance rather than a history, among other fictions representing his hero to have been sent by the Emperor Rodolph II. to the east, where he received from a Greek patriarch the revelation of the grand mystery. As a matter of fact, Sendivogius had made no progress in alchemy before his acquaintance with Sethon.
Having almost exhausted his fortune to obtain the liberation of that adept, and having a taste for extravagant living, he was dissatisfied with the mere possession of a portion of the transmuting powder, and was more eager than ever to penetrate the mysteries of the Hermetic art. He married the widow of Sethon, but she was wholly unacquainted with the process, and her only possession was the manuscript of that celebrated treatise, “The New Light of Alchemy,” with the dialogue of Mercury and the alchemist, which Sendivogius appropriated and eventually published as his own composition. From this work the uninitiated inquirer believed himself to have discovered a method of augmenting the powder, but he only succeeded in diminishing it.
Foiled in this attempt, he was still anxious at any rate to appear as an adept, and acquired an immense reputation by incessant projections, which, assisted by his sumptuous living, made him pass for a great hierophant. At Prague he presented himself to the Emperor Rodolph II., and, in presence of several nobles, the king himself made gold by projection, and overjoyed at the success of the operation he appointed Sendivogius as one of his counsellors of state. A marble tablet with the inscription—
Faciat hoc quispiam alius
Quod fecit Sendivogius Polonus,
was set up in the chamber where the transmutation had been performed, and the occasion was celebrated in verse by the court poet, Mardochie de Delle.
This achievement Sendivogius followed by printing at Prague the treatise written by Sethon under the name of Cosmopolita. It passes for the work of its editor, as he included his name anagrammatically on the title-page, in the motto—Divi Leschi genus amo, and gave no information concerning the real author. Some time after he issued a tract on sulphur, which was probably his own composition. The motto on the title-page—Angelus doce mihi jus—is another anagram of his name. There are discrepancies between this tract and the twelve treatises which comprise the work of Sethon. This Sendivogius perceived, and in the second edition of the latter work he made alterations in its text.
From the Court of Rodolph II. the alchemist proceeded to that of Poland. As he passed on his way through Moravia, a lord of the country, who had heard of his transmutations at Prague, and suspected that he had abundance of the transmuting powder, laid an ambush for him on the road, seized him, and secretly imprisoned him, with the threat that he should never be liberated until he communicated the secret of his treasure. Sendivogius, dreading the fate of Sethon, cut through the iron bar that crossed the window of his dungeon, and making a rope of his clothes, he escaped almost naked from the power of the little tyrant, whom he summoned to the emperor’s court, where he was condemned to be fined, a village on his estate was confiscated and transferred to Sendivogius, who afterwards gave it as dower with his daughter at her marriage.
Sendivogius made several transmutations at Varsovia, but his powder was visibly diminishing. Duke Frederick of Würtemberg invited him to visit him, and two projections took place in the presence of this noble, who, to place him on the footing of a prince of the blood, gave him the territory of Nedlingen.
He was destined, however, to meet with a severe reverse at Würtemberg through the machinations of an envious alchemist already attached to the Court, and who persuaded him that the Duke Frederic had formed plans which menaced the freedom of his guest and the safety of his transmuting treasure. Sendivogius, once more vividly reminded of the fate of his master, precipitately fled, only to be pursued by his treacherous brother in science, who overtook him with twelve armed men, well mounted, arrested him in the name of the prince, robbed him of the philosophical treasure, and caused him to be cast into prison. Then this infamous souffleur, whose star had been overwhelmed by the sun of Sendivogius, proceeded to perform transmutations, more than regaining his lost reputation; but the report of this discreditable transaction spread, public opinion decided that the duke was a party to it, and the wife of the victim applying to the King of Poland, soon obtained the liberty of alchemist.
Once more Sendivogius appealed for redress to the Emperor Rodolph, who demanded the person of the souffleur from the Duke of Würtemberg. The possessions of Sendivogius were at once restored, with the exception of the powder, all knowledge of which was denied. The souffleur was hanged by the duke, but from this time the pupil of Sethon perceived his sign descending. He had but an infinitesimal quantity of the powder in his possession, which, ever in search of notoriety, he dissolved in spirits of wine, carefully rectified, and began to astonish the physicians of Cracovia, whither he had again repaired, by the marvellous cures which he performed with this for a medicine. Desnoyers, secretary to the Queen of Poland, and one of the alchemist’s biographers, was in possession of a crown piece which Sendivogius dipped red-hot into the same spirit, in the presence of Sigismund III., King of Poland, and which was partially transformed into gold.[AF] The elixir relieved the same king from the effects of a serious accident.
When every particle of his powder was expended, Sendivogius appears to have degenerated into a mere charlatan, obtaining large sums on the pretence of manufacturing the powder of projection. On one occasion he so far descended as to silver a piece of gold, and pretending that he possessed the elixir, he caused the silver to disappear by a chemical process, which he imposed on the ignorant as a projection of the tincture and a conversion of silver into gold.
His confidential servant, Bodowski, explains this deception as a finesse to conceal his real character, having learned from experience the necessity of defending himself from the violence of covetous men. He sometimes feigned poverty, or lay in bed as one attacked with the gout or other sickness. By these means he diverted the general suspicion that he possessed the philosophers’ stone, preferring to pass for an impostor than for one in the enjoyment of illimitable wealth. He frequently travelled in a servant’s livery, concealing most of his red powder in the footstep of his chariot, and causing one of his servants to sit inside. He kept some of the powder in a small gold box, and with a single grain of it would convert so much mercury into gold as would sell for five hundred ducats.[AG]
He was at his castle of Groverna, on the frontiers of Poland and Silesia, when he was visited by two strangers, one of whom was old while the other was young. They presented him with a letter bearing twelve seals, and addressed to Sendivogius. He declared that he was not the person whom they sought, but was at length persuaded to open the document, and learned that they were a deputation from the Rosicrucian Society, who wished to initiate him. He pretended not to understand them when they spoke of the stone of the philosophers, but they drew him into conversation on several abstruse subjects, he, however, declining to the last the initiation which was offered him.
Michael Sendivogius died at Parma in 1646, aged eighty-four years, having been counsellor of state to four emperors successively. His only daughter had married an army captain against her father’s wish. He left her nothing but a “Treatise on the Salt of the Philosophers,” which has never been printed, and, therefore, must not be confused with a spurious work which has been ascribed to him under a similar title.
The Sethon-Sendivogius treatises are generally known under the collective title, “A New Light of Alchemy.” They were written to counteract the many adulterated and false receipts composed through the fraud and covetousness of impostors. The procedure they indicate is declared to be the result of manual experience. “Many men, both of high and low condition, in these last years past, have to my knowledge seen Diana unveiled. The extraction of the soul out of gold or silver, by what vulgar way of alchymy soever, is but a mere fancy. On the contrary, he which, in a philosophical way, can, without any fraud and colourable deceit, make it that it shall really tinge the basest metal, whether with gain or without gain, with the colour of gold or silver (abiding all requisite tryals whatever), hath the gates of Nature opened to him for the enquiring into further and higher secrets, and with the blessing of God to obtain them.”
It is thus in the writings of the alchemists that we are continually glimpsing or hearing of altitudes beyond transmutation, of regions of achievement which nothing in the pages of the adepts prove them to have actually explored, but which in possession of a comprehensive theory of organic and inorganic development they beheld as a Promised Land.
The “New Light of Alchemy” insists on the existence of a sperm in everything, and that all Nature originated at the beginning from one only seed. It treats of the generation of metals and the manner of their differentiation, of the extraction of their seed, and of the manufacture of the stone or tincture.
FOOTNOTES:
[AF] See Desnoyer’s Letter in Langlet du Fresnoy’s Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique. Borel, in his Gallic Antiquities, recounts that he, with many others at Paris, saw this crown-piece. He describes it as partly gold, so far only as it was steeped in the elixir. The gold part was porous, being specifically more compact than in its silver state. There was no appearance of soldering, or of the possibility of deception.
[AG] See Vie de Sendivogius, tirée de la Rélation de Jean Bodowski.