FOOTNOTES:
[AB] The names Seton or Seatoun have been given as that of the village in question, but in Camden’s “Britannia” it appears as the name of the house itself. The alchemist himself is sufficiently myrionimous, being variously denominated Sethon, Sidon, Sethonius, Scotus, Sitonius, Sidonius, Suthoneus, Suethonius, and even Seehthonius.
[AC] Epistola ad doctorem Schobinger, printed by Emmanuel Konig in his Ephemerides.
[AD] Théobald de Hoghelande, Historiæ aliquot Transmutationis Mettalicæ pro defensione Alchemiæ contra Hostium Rabrein. Cologne, 1604.
[AE] Galdenfalk, “Alchemical Anecdotes.”
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