Alchymic Journals

wearing a coronet of foliage squeeze milk from her breast to nourish our Regal Infant. And I have observed the Elder approach. Like a dilatory Franciscan that would lie abed while his brothers’ scythes sweep back and forth to gather a ripening harvest, so have I lain wrapped in conjuration. Apparitions vanish, strange fictions imprint their image upon a heart without consent. Therefore do I gaze upward to my shelter, my refuge. When shall I visit the heavenly city of Sarras?
HOW SHOULD ONE request admittance by that alabaster gate were he not refashioned? Alchymic masters teach that with a purification of Gold we imply mankind regenerate. Silver, although it is precious and able to resist fire, undergoes less evolution, hence it is subject to corrosion by sulphur or nitric acid—which explains why we liken this rare metal to regenerate humanity at its lowest period of development. Dull and ponderous Lead depicts the unregenerate.
LET US SAY natural forces could realign mercury with sulphur to make new minerals, then why could not magisterial artists duplicate such feats of transmutation within their alembics? Similarly, the mind and body of man consisting of loathsome effluent would shrivel, corrode and turn black—reappearing anew, incorruptible as gold. But we may no more expect a man to be what he is not than we may direct a pine to be an elm or copper to be silver, not unless both have been subducted to the quintessence which we know as Protyle. And upon this consanguinity we teach the mystical resurrection of Osiris, of Buddha, of our Christian Lord.
AS THE CHIP of Lodestone suggests perfection across two poles, so does every spark of fire embrace the generating principle of its elements, thus fragments of existence proportionately live continent and fulfilled. Just as a man united with God becomes divinely empowered, at liberty to act or to meditate as he chooses, being no more than a palimpsest of his deity in consonance with reason, similarly our Stone appropriates to itself the imperial task of transmutation from what it was into what it promises. At that hour shall Mankind stand forth to the Antipodes burnished with truth, surpassing excellence. Ultima Thule shall prove no limit and stars take up positions as they did when the world unrolled. And I am content to wait and praise the interior shape of things—vapor virtutis Dei, Ruach Elohim—which brooded over the face of waters.
IT IS TRUE that I am a poor novitiate and truly is my faith compared to a Hammer. So does my faith resound. So do I labor to defeat the sightless figure inhabiting my cell, struggling against duality. Nineteen years have I fought without success against myself. Like the creature Ourobouros annulling itself as circles round, I am become too young for death. Therefore I ask why shapes are sacrificed to resurrection more valuable than at their beginning, since the center is a circumference toward which all journeys tend.
WHO KNOCKS? WHO? Some novice wearing a black skull-cap to hide both ears cropped in the pillory for coinage? Some lapsed or untidy pilgrim that digged up a corpse by Walton-le-Dale and stole to practice his necromantic art? From the plenitude of human souls I would inquire how many are not deformed.
Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy . . .

FROM SCOTLAND TO GRIMY ENGLAND, from Portugal to Bohemia, from muddy Palestine to Germany pseudo-alchymists quarrel, boasting stupendous effects even as they pump the bellows. O yea! And we have met imposters more agile than roaches, desirous as Frenchmen hawking fragrant packets of crystal drenched with rose-water. But of that Great Magisterium—glistering, saffron-colored, faultless—slender evidence. Like some harsh powder brought from India or liquid resin exuded out of evergreens, iridescent while opaque, pliant yet more frangible than glass, simultaneously transparent, nacrous and malleable, it bathes in the light of planets by whose jurisdiction imperfections change.
WE DOUBT THAT gold-weighted quartz responds to a quivering rod, or that precipitate milked from macerated butterflies spontaneously glows at midnight. Victims of abundant phlegm, does heavy rain inundate their dreams? We suspect not. Also, we doubt Sendivogius for asserting that concentrated bismuth expands beneath the rising moon. Indeed, sophistical rhetoric floats on the surface of our craft like froth upon fresh wine. Much we find gilded, varnished and bundled up in gaudy tissue flecked with mica to deceive the ignorant.
O, WE HAVE been advised that in Egypt lives a rare bird yclept Ibis which walks up to stroke the Crocodile with its feathers so the monster squats paralyzed. And gossip of one that rises chittering to fly off when it sees the Horse. We hear further about a prodigious stone named Magnes brought over to Europe from an Eastern Isle which can know if a man’s wife be chaste, since when it is thrust underneath her pillow while she sleeps if she has been faithful she will begin efforts to embrace him, but if not she must kick at her husband and cause difficulty. Also, we have heard much about wonderful jugglers from India that have perfected the queer deceptive art for gathering up and applying formulas which make shrubs spring out of soil by manipulation through evocative gestures with their hands, but how they accomplish this Magic escapes our understanding. Yea, we do give ourselves to false prophets dictating marvels like fox-hounds that yelp after false echoes. Meister Archytus would remind us how discoveries materialize with ease to those that explore rightly, so how should a man control any substance unless by fixed attention to its behavior he deduce its law.
HAVE WE NOT found copper counterfeited by varnishing iron with laminar malachite? Indeed. Likewise we simulate gold by obducting silver with white of egg. Surfaces heighten, true, but what endures cannot be subtracted. Accordingly we meddle with nothing out of kind, be this sulfur or salt or anything of such imposition. To the inimitable elixir alien matter appears reprobate. Do not dissemble by deceit nor