In the discussion of stones each paragraph opens with the words, “Said Toz.” The use of these stones is mainly medicinal, however, and consists usually in taking a certain weight of the stone in question. Of astrology, spirits, and power of words there is little more said. Some marvelous virtues are attributed to stones nevertheless. With one, if you secretly touch two persons who have hitherto been firm friends, you will make them enemies “even to the end of the world. And if anyone grates from it the weight of one argenteus and mixes it with serpent’s blood (possibly the herb of that name) and gives it to anyone to drink, he will flee from place to place.”
Further mentions of Toz Graecus.
Toz Graecus was cited by more than one medieval writer and the work which we have just been describing was not the only one that then circulated under his name, although it seems to be cited by Daniel Morley in the twelfth century.[690] Albertus Magnus in his list of evil books on images in the Speculum astronomiae included a work on the images of Venus,[691] another on the four mirrors of Venus, and a third on stations for the cult of Venus. This last is also alluded to by William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, in his De universo, and ascribed by him to “Thot grecus.”[692] There also was once among the manuscripts of Amplonius at Erfurt a “book of Toz Grecus containing fifty chapters on the stations of the planets.”[693] Cecco d’Ascoli, the early fourteenth century astrologer, mentions together “Evax king of the Arabs and Zot grecus and Germa of Babylon.” Which reminds one of Albert’s allusion in his theological Summa[694] to “the teachings of that branch of necromancy” which treats of “images and rings and mirrors of Venus and seals of demons,” and is expounded in the works of Achot of Greece—who is probably our Toz Graecus, Grema of Babylon, and Hermes the Egyptian. And again in his work on minerals[695] Albert lists together as authorities on the engraving of gems with images the names of Magor Graecus, Germa of Babylon, and Hermes the Egyptian.
Toz the same as Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus.
Moreover, not only is the work of Toz closely associated both in the extant manuscripts and by Albertus Magnus with that of Hermes, but William of Auvergne’s spelling “Thot” shows what has perhaps already occurred to the reader, that this Toc or Toz Graecus is no other than the Greek equivalent of the Egyptian god Thoth; in other words, Hermes Trismegistus himself. I have not yet mentioned one other treatise found in a seventeenth century manuscript, and which, while very likely a later invention, shows at least that Toz remained a name to conjure with down into modern times.[696] The work is called A commentary by Toz Graecus, philosopher of great name, upon the books of Solomon to Rehoboam concerning secrets of secrets. A long preface tells how Solomon summed up all his vast knowledge in this book for the benefit of his son Rehoboam, and Rehoboam buried it in his tomb in an ivory casket, and Toz after its discovery wept at his inability to comprehend it, until it was revealed to him through an angel of God on condition that he explain it only to the worthy.
Magic experiments.
The text is full of magic experiments: experiments of theft; experiments in invisibility; love experiments; experiments in gaining favor; experiments in hate and destruction; “extraordinary experiments”; “playful experiments”; and so on. These with conjurations, characters, and suffumigations make up the bulk of the first book. The second book deals chiefly with “how exorcists and their allies and disciples should conduct themselves,” and with the varied paraphernalia required by magicians: fasts, baths, vestments, the knife or sword, the magic circle, fumigations, water and hyssop; light and fire, pen and ink, blood, parchment, stylus, wax, needle, membrane, characters, sacrifices, and astrological images. Two of its twenty-two chapters deal with “the places where by rights experiments should be performed” and with “all the precepts of the arts or experiments.” In another seventeenth century manuscript are Seven Books of Magical Experiments of Hermes Trismegistus. “And they are magic secrets of the kings of Egypt,” drawn, we are told, from the treasury of Rudolph II, Holy Roman emperor from 1576 to 1612.[697] Another manuscript at Vienna contains a German translation of the same work.[698]
[653] For detailed references for this and the preceding statements see Lippmann (1919), pp. 357-9.
[654] I have used the edition of Paris, 1564, Liber de compositione alchemiae quem edidit Morienus Romanus Calid Regi Aegyptiorum Quem Robertus Castrensis de Arabico in Latinum transtulit. A number of MSS of the work will be found listed in the index of Black’s Catalogue of the Ashmolean MSS, and elsewhere, as in Sloane 3697 and Digby 162, 13th century, fols. 21v and 23r. Other editions are Basel, 1559; Basel, 1593, in Artis Auriferae quam Chemiam vocant, II, 1-54; and Geneva, 1702, in J. J. Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, I, 509-19.
[655] See above, chapter 38, p. 83.