| Abyssinia | Lapis Lazuli |
| Afghanistan | Catseye |
| Albania | Dark Onyx |
| Algeria | Banded Agate |
| Arabia | Flint |
| Argentina | Spodumene |
| Australia | Opal |
| Austria | Opal |
| Bavaria | Topaz |
| Belgium | Marble |
| Brazil | Jasper Bloodstone |
| Bulgaria | Striped Onyx |
| Burma | Malachite |
| China | Pearl |
| Denmark | Hematite |
| Egypt | Jasper Opal |
| England | Diamond |
| France | Ruby |
| Germany | Hematite |
| Greece | Dark Onyx |
| Holland | Pearl |
| Hungary | Carbuncle |
| India | Catseye |
| Ireland | Emerald |
| Italy | Sardonyx |
| Japan | Jade |
| Judea | Topaz |
| Mexico | Onyx |
| Morocco | Banded Agate |
| New Zealand | Nacre |
| Norway | Topaz |
| Nubia | Crystal |
| Palestine | Limonite |
| Persia | Mocha Stone |
| Poland | Emerald |
| Portugal | Chrysolite |
| Prussia | Sapphire |
| Rumania | Lapis Lazuli |
| Russia | Chrysoberyl-Alexandrite |
| Scotland | Chalcedony |
| Sicily | Carnelian |
| South Africa | Pearl |
| Spain | Turquoise |
| Syria | Limonite |
| Sweden | Sapphire |
| Switzerland | Jasper |
| Turkey | Jacinth |
| Transvaal | Cairngorm |
| USA | Tourmaline |
| Wales | Marble |
CHAPTER XXXV
THE INEVITABLE LAW OF TRANSMUTATION
CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESS, XENOPHANES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, ZENO, LEONARDI DA VINCI AND THEIR SPECULATIONS: THE HARNESSING OF INVISIBLE AGENCIES: THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT: DESTINY, THE LAW: POINT OF UNION OF FORCES KNOWN TO THE HERMETIC PHILOSOPHERS: UNIVERSAL ORDER AND HARMONY.
“Each change of many colour’d life he drew,
Exhausted worlds and then imagin’d new.”
Jonson.
Transformation, under the various forms of transfiguration, transmutation and change, forms the subject of many fascinating stories which adorn the pages of romance, mythology, science and symbology. It may be said to exhibit itself as the dominant force in the world of matter—the changeful, restless world with which we change and to which, while dressed in its elements, we are held. The disobedience of Lot’s wife changed her material form into a pillar of salt; the fated Niobe was transformed into a rugged rock which forever was bathed by her tears; the glance of Medusa turned her victims into stone, her blood turned trees into coral; the stone which Rhea duped Cronus into swallowing in the belief that it was one of his children—indeed, the whole legend concerning the devouring of his offspring by the old god, is illustrative of the process of nature which forever consumes that which it produces. Nature is a veritable alchemist, a royal transmuter, turning the precious into the base and the base into the precious, regardless of dignity, rank or name. Parable and symbol have ever been the ornate coverings beneath which lie securely hidden from the superficial gaze the secrets with which searching man has played for ages. The work of these intrepid scientists had, at certain periods of the world’s history, to be carefully concealed from the vulgar and intolerant mind which was continually endeavouring to bind the thoughts of men within the slavery of a fixed dogma. The true meaning of this dogma was indeed far better known and understood by the faithful searchers into the mysteries of nature than by all the narrow agents seeking to suppress them. But they were compelled to wait till the champions of liberty in the material world had swept back the devils of intolerance which darkened the way to spiritual and material freedom. The waiting for the right time to present their discoveries to the people did not suspend their researches—it rather advanced them. Nearly 600 years before the Christian era the poetical philosopher Xenophanes wrote of fossil fishes, shells and other petrifaction found on high mountains and in quarries, which he instanced as indicating changes on the earth’s surface, certain lands sinking beneath the sea and certain lands rising out of it. The earlier examinations of these remains were considered as evidence of a subtle tractable power inherent in the earth. Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno taught that God entered His Spirit into eternal matter, producing the earth, thus eternally filled with the potential Spirit.
That many-sided genius of the 15th and 16th centuries, Leonardo da Vinci was rightly regarded by Dmitri Merejkowski as “The Forerunner,” in his historical story of that name. Leonardo was most precise in his remarkable deductions on fossilization, which, he wrote, occurred from the accumulation of mud in the cavities of shells discovered in rivers which were at an ancient period beneath the sea near the coast. Nature’s wonderful workings are exhibited in the metamorphoses of the various stones. This process is noticed in the silification of wood, shells, coral, etc. It is observed in the incrustation of one substance on another, the expulsion of one mineral matter by some chemical agency, by the gradual yielding of original substance to new and foreign invaders and by the occurrence of one mineral in the form of another, etc. So far as is considered necessary this subject has been already dealt with. And so Nature is continually proving to man that all is change and that dissolution is impossible. Continually, lower forms are giving place to higher, and the work of the world goes on with the persistent regularity of a huge machine. “Nothing is lost,” says chemistry, and even the voice of man, the cries of animals, sounds of breaking rocks, the restless sea, the moaning of the winds amongst the trees, etc., can now be easily impressed on the modern phonograph plates which provide a material working body. Every action can be recorded and reproduced by the photographic camera; even the air can be harnessed to convey a desire. Everything in the Universe, from the stars of Heaven to the atom, or to the minutest subdivision of the atom, is mathematical, law abiding, and under the mysterious and controlling Force which we reverence as God the Infinite.
Nature claims her own, the material goes to the material, “dust to dust,” and earth processes turn the visible parts of animals and plants, etc., into its identical crystal form. And the controlling powers about which these perceptible forms materialize, seek the realms of finer forces to which they truly belong. Rightly say the venerable philosophers whose inspired utterances have taught us so much, “The Spirit strips itself to go up and clothes itself to go down.” The writer has tried to make this palpable truth clear in these pages, and trusts that the links in the ancient chain are now left in a little better repair than they were, and that the power within the stone will be better appreciated and better understood. The order of the Infinite Universe is exact and sincere. From its inception the work, trials and struggles of the smallest atom are determined and Mind is compelled to express itself. The exact point of union between the visible and the invisible forces has been long known to the hermetic scientists and philosophers whose thoughts are echoed by Wilks, the English poet of Geology, in the following lines:
“God is a God of order, though to scan