Butler was afterwards entombed in the Castle of Vilvord, in Flanders, where he is said to have performed wonderful cures by means of Hermetic medicine. A monk of Brittany, who was one of his fellow-prisoners, having a desperate erysipelas in his arm, was restored to health in an hour by drinking almond milk in which Butler had merely dipped the stone. The next day at the rumour of this circumstance, the celebrated Helmont, who abode in the neighbourhood, went with several noblemen to the prison, where Butler cured, in their presence, an aged woman of a megrim by dipping the stone into oil of olives and then anointing her head. An abbess, whose arm was swelled, and whose fingers had been stiff for eighteen years, was also cured by a few applications of the same stone to her tongue.
These cases are attested by the illustrious van Helmont in his works.
JEAN D’ESPAGNET.
This Hermetic philosopher is known to us by two treatises—Enchiridion Physicæ Restitutæ and Arcanum Philosophiæ Hermeticæ, which, however, has also been claimed as the production of an unknown individual who called himself the Chevalier Impérial.[AA] “The Secret of Hermetical Philosophy” comprises the practical part of the magnum opus and the Enchiridion, the physical theory on which the possibility of transmutation is founded. D’Espagnet is also the author of the preface to the Tableau de l’Inconstance des Démons, by Pierre Delancre.
“The Arcanum of Hermetic Philosophy” is better known under the title of the “Canons of Espagnet,” and, as I have shown in the Introduction, it is claimed as a treatise on mystical alchemy. The author, however, very plainly states that “the science of producing Nature’s grand Secret is a perfect knowledge of Nature universally and of art, concerning the realm of metals; the practice whereof is conversant in finding the principles of metals by analysis.” Moreover, the authors whom Espagnet recommends as a guide to the student include those who, like Trévisan, are known to have spent their existence in practical alchemy. The Sethon-Sendivogius treatises are also respectfully cited. At the same time, it may be freely granted that much of the matter in the canons, though treating of a physical object, may be extended to the psychic side of the Hermetic art.
FOOTNOTES:
[AA] Ce chevalier, très-révérée des alchimistes, est mentionnée souvent dans la Trompette Française, petit volume, contenant une Prophétic de Bombast sur la Naissance de Louis XIV. On a, du Chevalier Impérial, le Miroir des Alchimistes, avec instructions aux dames pour dorénavant être belles sans plus user de leurs dards venimeux, 1609, 16mo. Dictionnaire des Sciences Occultes.
ALEXANDER SETHON.
None of the adepts suffered from imprudent exposure of their power more than the subject of this article. He was a native of Scotland, and is supposed to have inhabited a mansion at a village in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and close to the sea-shore.[AB] In the summer of 1601 a Dutch vessel was wrecked upon the coast, and some of the crew were saved through the instrumentality of Sethon, who received them into his house, treated them with great humanity, and provided them with the means to return to Holland. One year later he visited James Haussen, the pilot of the ship, one of the rescued persons, at Erkusen, in that country. The sailor received him with joy, and detained him for several weeks in his house, during which period he beheld with astonishment several transmutations performed by his guest, who confessed that he was an alchemical adept. He was bound in gratitude and friendship to the most inviolable secrecy, but he could not refrain from confiding the wonder which he had witnessed to Venderlinden, the physician of Enkhuysen, who was a man of integrity and prudence, and to whom he presented a piece of gold, which had been transmuted in his presence from lead on the 13th March 1602. This curiosity came into the hands of the doctor’s grandson, who showed it to the celebrated George Morhoff, by whom it was mentioned, with its history, to Langlet du Fresnoy, in an epistle on the transmutation of metals.
From Enkhuysen, Sethon proceeded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, subsequently embarking for Italy, where, after a short stay, he passed into Switzerland, and so entered Germany, accompanied by Wolfgang Dienheim, an adversary of Hermetic philosophy, whom by ocular demonstration he convinced of his error, in presence of several distinguished persons of Basle.