NICHOLAS FLAMEL.
The name of this alchemical adept has been profoundly venerated not only in the memory of the Hermetists but in the hearts of the French people, among whom he is the central figure of many marvellous legends and traditions. “Whilst in all ages and nations the majority of hierophants have derived little but deception, ruination, and despair as the result of their devotion to alchemy, Nicholas Flamel enjoyed permanent good fortune and serenity. Far from expending his resources in the practice of the magnum opus, he added with singular suddenness a vast treasure to a moderate fortune. These he employed in charitable endowments and in pious foundations that long survived him and long sanctified his memory. He built churches and chapels which were adorned with statues of himself, accompanied by symbolical characters and mysterious crosses, which subsequent adepts long strove to decipher, that they might discover his secret history, and the kabbalistic description of the process by which he was conducted to the realisation of the Grand Magisterium.”
Whether Flamel was born at Paris or Pontoise is not more uncertain than the precise date of his nativity. This occurred some time during the reign of Philippe le Bel, the spoliator of the grand order of the Temple, and, on the whole, the most probable year is 1330. His parents were poor, and left him little more than the humble house in Paris which he continued to possess till his death, and which he eventually bequeathed to the Church. It stood in Notary Street, at the corner of Marivaux Street, opposite the Marivaux door of the Church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie.
Authorities disagree as to the amount of education that Flamel obtained in his youth, but it was sufficient to qualify him for the business of a scrivener, which, in spite of his wealth and his accredited wisdom, he continued to follow through life. He was proficient in painting and poetry, and had a taste for architecture and the mathematical sciences; yet he applied himself steadily to business, and contracted a prudent marriage, his choice falling on a widow, named Pernelle, who, though handsome, was over forty years, but who brought a considerable dowry to her second husband.
In his capacity as a copyist before the age of printing, books of all classes fell into the hands of Flamel, and among them were many of those illuminated alchemical treatises which are reckoned among the rarest treasures of mediæval manuscripts. Acquainted with the Latin language, he insensibly accumulated an exoteric knowledge of the aims and theories of the adepts. His interest and curiosity were awakened, and he began studying them in his leisure moments. Now tradition informs us that, whether his application was great, his desire intense, or whether he was super-eminently fitted to be included by divine election among the illuminated Sons of the Doctrine, or for whatever other reason, the mystical Bath-Kôl appeared to him under the figure of an angel, bearing a remarkable book bound in well-wrought copper, the leaves of thin bark, graven right carefully with a pen of iron. An inscription in characters of gold contained a dedication addressed to the Jewish nation by Abraham the Jew, prince, priest, astrologer, and philosopher.
“Flamel,” cried the radiant apparition, “behold this book of which thou understandest nothing; to many others but thyself it would remain for ever unintelligible, but one day thou shalt discern in its pages what none but thyself will see!”
At these words Flamel eagerly stretched out his hands to take possession of the priceless gift, but book and angel disappeared in an auriferous tide of light. The scrivener awoke to be ravished henceforth by the divine dream of alchemy; but so long a time passed without any fulfilment of the angelic promise, that the ardour of his imagination cooled, the great hope dwindled gradually away, and he was settling once more into the commonplace existence of a plodding scribe, when, on a certain day of election in the year 1357, an event occurred which bore evidence of the veracity of his visionary promise-maker, and exalted his ambition and aspirations to a furnace heat. This event, with the consequences it entailed, are narrated in the last testament of Nicholas Flamel, which begins in the following impressive manner, but omits all reference to the legendary vision:—
“The Lord God of my life, who exalts the humble in spirit out of the most abject dust, and makes the hearts of such as hope in Him to rejoice, be eternally praised.
“Who, of His own grace, reveals to the believing souls the springs of His bounty, and subjugates beneath their feet the crowns of all earthly felicities and glories.
“In Him let us always put our confidence, in His fear let us place our happiness, and in His mercy the hope and glory of restoration from our fallen state.