[41] It is perhaps advisable to mention here that the lives of the alchemists, for the most part, are enveloped in considerable obscurity, and many points in connection therewith are in dispute. The authorities we have followed will be found, as a rule, specifically mentioned in what follows; but we may here acknowledge our general indebtedness to the following works, though, as the reader will observe, many others have been consulted as well: Thomas Thomson’s The History of Chemistry, Meyer’s A History of Chemistry, the anonymous Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers (1815), the works of Mr. A. E. Waite, the Dictionary of National Biography, and certain articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica. This must not be taken to mean, however, that we have always followed the conclusions reached in these works, for so far as the older of them are concerned, recent researches by various authorities—to whom reference will be found in the following pages, and to whom, also, we are indebted—have shown, in certain cases, that such are not tenable.
[42] Dr. Everard’s translation of this work forms vol. ii. of the Collectanea Hermetica, edited by W. Wynn Westcott, M.B., D.P.H. It is now, however, out of print.
The Smaragdine Table.
§ 30. In a work attributed to Albertus Magnus, but which is probably spurious, we are told that Alexander the Great found the tomb of Hermes in a cave near Hebron. This tomb contained an emerald table—“The Smaragdine Table”—on which were inscribed the following thirteen sentences in Phœnician characters:—
1. I speak not fictitious things, but what is true and most certain.
2. What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing.
3. And as all things were produced by the mediation of one Being, so all things were produced from this one thing by adaptation.
4. Its father is the Sun, its mother the Moon; the wind carries it in its belly, its nurse is the earth.