In some books these gates and keys are symbolically represented in drawings, e.g. in a pamphlet by Paracelsus, called "Tripus Aureus, hoc est Tres Tractates chymici selectissimi." (Frankfurt, 1618.)
It is evident that a method of studying Nature which resulted in such dim and hazy explanations as these was eminently fitted to produce many who pretended to possess secrets by the use of which they could bring about startling results beyond the power of ordinary men; and, at the same time, the almost universal acceptance of such statements as those I have quoted implied the existence in men generally of a wondrous readiness to believe anything and everything. Granted that a man by "sweating whole days and nights by his furnaces" can acquire knowledge which gives him great power over his fellows, it necessarily follows that many will be found ready to undergo these days and nights of toil. And when we find that this supposed knowledge is hidden under a mask of strange and mystical signs and language, we may confidently assert that there will be many who learn to repeat these strange terms and use these mystical signs without attempting to penetrate to the truths which lie behind—without, indeed, believing that the mystical machinery which they use has any real meaning at all.
We find, as a matter of fact, that the age of the alchemists produced many deceivers, who, by mumbling incantations and performing a few tricks, which any common conjuror would now despise, were able to make crowds of men believe that they possessed a supernatural power to control natural actions, and, under this belief, to make them part with their money and their substance.
One respectable physician of the Hague, who entertained a peripatetic alchemist, complains that the man entered his "best-furnished room without wiping his shoes, although they were full of snow and dirt." However, the physician was rewarded, as the stranger gave him, "out of his philosophical commiseration, as much as a turnip seed in size" of the much-wished-for stone of wisdom.
That the alchemist of popular belief was a man who used a jargon of strange and high-sounding words, that he might the better deceive those whom he pretended to help, is evident from the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the play of the "Alchymist" Ben Jonson draws the character of Subtle as that of a complete scoundrel, whose aim is to get money from the pockets of those who are stupid enough to trust him, and who never hesitates to use the basest means for this end. From the speeches of Subtle we may learn the kind of jargon employed by the men who pretended that they could cure diseases and change all baser metals into gold.
"Subtle. Name the vexations and the martyrizations of metals in the work.
Face. Sir, putrefaction,
Solution, ablution, sublimation,
Cohobation, calcination, ceration, and
Fixation.
Sub. And when comes vivification?
Face. After mortification.