Alchymic Journals

the dispositions of cattle which never have learned how to speak or explain themselves. Why is this? Because nothing moves on the somnolent sea-deep nor in the firmament that was ordained to thwart us, neither fish nor plant nor animal nor bird. All matter is subordinate to the enduring and imperial quest of humanity—its premise. Was not man appointed to explore? Was he not royally baptized? It has become his mission to dazzle the elements. How swiftly he strides forth dressed with jewels to confront the universe. One that wrought miracles they called Galen—Paradoxopoeus—which is the essence of every man. And I say that prodigies which exceed their measure draw destruction on their wake.
NOW, SOME FIND great virtue in the herb Centaurea, yclept Isiphilon by Chaldees, which if powdered and intermingled with lamp-oil and the lapwing’s blood and set to burning—all those clustered around will cry how they are witches, and say of one whose face lifts toward heaven that his foot yet touches earth. But in so doing they make up a vitious black tincture which provokes almighty God. Groping, tense, men split their brains. They seek to use the wind.
I HAVE SAID that things proceed less by lottery than election and humanity’s passage appears wrathful, senseless, aberrant, replete with desperate biting, while the stipulations of life are complex illusions resembling colors in an artist’s picture, being not in fact yellow or blue or green, merely seeming thus to the eye of the beholder.
I BELIEVE ILLNESS substitutes for the spectrum of health its own hue—monarchical and threatening. Pliny the Elder has counted up three hundred varieties or sorts of disease but I account others, curious disaffections to every part. And I say that those afflicting us differ from those past, hence new distillations must be ordered. All objects and phenomena have their hour.
AS THE SKY possesses constellations so is each man mightily constellated within himself. Then why is he unlike animals or plants or metals that do not deviate from what they are? Why is he alone cursed with a necessity for transmutation? What is incommensurable about him? What urges him to emulate the grison, the fox, the goat, the blood-drinking nightswift? I say that if he would reclaim the nature of his inheritance he must be born again. And I say miracles of the soul exceed heavenly dispensation.
I BELIEVE PROVIDENCE contemplates the blind mole squirming through abysmal darkness and declares its vision adequate. Why? Because to look further would encumber this poor thing with unremitting discontent by exposing the tenebrous walls and limits of its existence. So do we observe timorous men who, perceiving that they have burrowed up toward daylight, hastily dig themselves downward into comfortable obscurity. Still others like foolish birds standing on a withered bough chatter with amazement at the dawn. Others lift both hands to praise the incipient day as night slips west. Providence apportions to each—to each man, beast, insect and mineral—the animus of its being.
NOW, IF EARTH be a cryptogram burning with significance—the House of Man in which ubiquitous houseflies predicate brief lives—let us equate the Holy Spirit to a glow-worm. Does not the humblest caterpillar symbolize transfiguration? Therefore let us say quick-silver represents man’s conscience whose existence must be verified, having lapsed into desuetude. We see mercuric particles cling to the rim of a dusty crucible, hence we are entitled to say of our conscience that it endures, that it refuses to forget.
MINERALS SINK, FEATHERS float, serpents upon their course change direction. We do not know why. Quick-silver escapes from alluvial gold—aureate sperm of cinnabar. Why is this? Meanwhile fumbling neophytes submit to misjudgment by Macar, by Galen, by Dioscorides. Even so, they anticipate success! But I say alchymic magistery cannot be conferred by diploma nor through philosophic reflection, nor by those souffleurs that burn charcoal, since being duped on their own ignorance they make dupes of others. I avow that as God spoke radiance was formed, departing from its limb. Then God spoke further, confused elements became separated and what was chaos understood its balance.
RAIN FALLS TO the earth not all at once but drop after drop because if it is poured down too abundantly it would destroy everything, just as if a gardener should inundate his plants. From this it is evident how nature distributes her benefits. Therefore the soil of any province tends toward infertility through exhaustion and lies unconscious for long intervals. Similarly, those remote mines which provide silver and gold often exhaust their energy and insist upon millennia of rest before they consent to additional labor. Now this is because minerals germinate and grow like wheat from their elementary matrix, hence it must be useless to contemplate or cry aloud for valuables that do not exist.
WHEN AT THE end of time all things throw aside their cover every chymist and physician must stand up to be recognized so that we learn which kept to the foundations of science, which did not. Then all that were conceived and flourished emptily and stood notorious behind clap-trap recitals greasily prevaricating—I say their gullets will enlarge at the hour of their disgrace! What do they teach about Pliny’s herbs? Have they learned the three parts of wisdom? And how was it that those promising vast wealth to others are themselves importunate beggars? Cacochymists whose tongues ride before their wits like a gentleman’s usher! Alleging familiarity with Avicenna of Bokhara, with Velascus and with De Vigo—how do they call themselves learned? Times return, rhetoric yields its measure highest to lowest, logic makes a circuit. Hah! We will count how many rich and redoubtable physicians tucked flagrant ignorance beneath chit-chat to the detriment of reliable doctors. I say those that truthfully prescribed will be distinguished from muck-hill daubers and guild-hall apprentices. Each deserves his merit, so each shall acquire the palm. Proscription to such swaggering glistering rogues that exult with the title of Alchymist but oppugn the Art, boasting how they know anatomy