Hours with the Mystics: A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion

by Robert Alfred Vaughan

CHAPTER III.

Subtle. Your lapis philosophicus?

Face. ’Tis a stone,

And not a stone; a spirit, a soul, and a body;

Which if you do dissolve, it is dissolved;

If you coagulate, it is coagulated;

If you make it to fly, it flieth.

The Alchemist.

Atherton. We are to call on Willoughby to-night, I believe, to conduct us to Jacob Behmen—or Boehme, more correctly.

Willoughby. I shall scarcely bring you so far this evening. I have to trouble you with some preliminary paragraphs on the theosophic mysticism which arose with the Reformation, some remarks on the theurgic superstitions of that period, and a word or two about Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus. A very formidable preamble,—yet necessary, I assure you.