Tunc ire ad Mundum Archetypum sæpe atque redire,
Cunctarumque Patrem rerum spectare licebit’—
thou hast got that spirit Qui quicquid portentosi Mathematici, quicquid prodigiosi Magi, quicquid invidentes Naturæ persecutores Alchymistæ, quicquid Dæmonibus deteriores malefici Necromantes promittere audent. Ipse novit discernere et efficere idque sine omni crimine, sine Dei offensâ, sine Religionis injuria. Such is the power he shall receive, who from the clamorous tumults of this world ascends to the supernaturall still voice, from this base earth and mind whereto his body is allyed, to the spirituall, invisible elements of his Soul.”
After the same fashion, the still greater Eirenæus Philalethes declares that God alone communicates the whole secret of the aqua philosophorum, that all untaught by Him must wander in mists and error, but that it is revealed to those who labour in study and prayer.
Quotation might be continued indefinitely. The Centrum Naturæ Concentratum, ascribed to Alipili, and a treatise of some reputation, declares that “The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal word, by which all things were made and upheld, to be his Light and Life, by which he is capable of knowing all things in time and eternity.... Therefore let the high inquirers and searchers into the deep mysteries of nature, learn first what they have in themselves, before they seek in foreign matters without them; and by the divine power within them, let them first heal themselves and transmute their own souls; then they may go on prosperously and seek with good success the mysteries and wonders of God in all natural things.”
These quotations, some of which are unknown to, or, at any rate, uncited by Hitchcock, do not by any means establish the points which are debated in his book. If the philosophers from whom they are selected were in possession of the whole secret of wealth, they saw fit to conceal it from the profane, and their works, full of practically insoluble enigmas, are proclamations of the fact of their success, rather than lights for those who sought to follow in their steps. Under these circumstances, they saw that in the blind guess-work which their symbols created of necessity, no student would ever attain to the true light of alchemy except by pure chance—in other words, by the favour of Heaven, which, accordingly, they counselled him to supplicate. None of the passages in question are inconsistent with the physical object of alchemy, and in the citation from Alipili, it is evident that the mysteries and wonders referred to include metallic transmutation in the mind of the writer. The investigator of natural secrets was advised to take counsel with the Author of natural secrets after the only possible manner.
“Whoever attempteth the search of our glorious stone, he ought, in the first place, to implore the assistance of the all-powerful Jehova, at the throne of his mercy, who is the true and sole author of all mysteries of nature; the monarch of heaven and earth, the King of kings, omnipotent, most true and most wise; who not only maketh manifest in the microcosm, the truth of every science to worthy philosophers, and liberally bestoweth both natural and divine knowledge on the deserving and faithful; but also layeth open his treasures of wealth and riches which are locked up in the abyss of nature to those who devoutly worship him. And forasmuch as none are permitted to touch the mysteries of nature with foul fingers, therefore it behoveth all who attempt such matters, to lay aside their natural blindness from which, by the light of the holy Scripture and a stedfast faith, they may be freed, that being the means by which the Holy Spirit doth clearly make manifest the most profoundly hidden light of nature, which light alone lays open the way to the wisdom of nature, and to unlock the most abstruse mysteries thereof.”
Even the subdued imagination which is claimed by the author of “Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists,” is likely to go astray in the labyrinth of alchemical symbolism, and some of the interpretations of Hitchcock are exceedingly forced and unnatural. His citations are indiscriminately gathered from the most transcendental writers, and from those who, like George Starkey, have exhausted language in emphatic declarations that their subject and their object are actual metallic gold.
“Zoroaster’s Cave, or the philosopher’s intellectual echo to one another from their caves,” is the title of a small work quoted by Hitchcock. It opens thus:—“Dry water from the Philosophers’ Clouds! Look for it and be sure to have it, for it is the key to inaccessibles and to those locks that would otherwise keep thee out. It is a middle nature between fixed and not fixed, and partakes of a sulphureous azurine. It is a raw, cool, feminine fire, and expects its impregnation from a masculine solar sulphur.” Hitchcock’s interpretation is this:—a pure conscience! Look for it and be sure that you have it, &c. It is of a middle nature between soul and body, and partakes of a heavenly spirit. It expects its life from God.