Part 1
# Lives of alchemystical philosophers: To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy ### By Waite, Arthur Edward
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LIVES OF ALCHEMYSTICAL PHILOSOPHERS.
LIVES
OF
ALCHEMYSTICAL PHILOSOPHERS
_BASED ON MATERIALS COLLECTED IN 1815_
_AND_
_SUPPLEMENTED BY RECENT RESEARCHES_
WITH A PHILOSOPHICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE MAGNUM OPUS, OR GREAT WORK OF ALCHEMICAL RE-CONSTRUCTION, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SPIRITUAL CHEMISTRY
BY
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
AUTHOR OF
“THE REAL HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS;” “THE MYSTERIES OF MAGIC: A DIGEST OF THE WRITINGS OF ÉLIPHAS LÉVI,” ETC.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
_A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ALCHEMY AND HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY_
LONDON GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1888
PREFACE.
The foundation of this work will be found in “The Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers; with a Critical Catalogue of Books in Occult Chemistry, and a Selection of the most celebrated Treatises on the Theory and Practice of the Hermetic Art,” which was published in the year 1815 by Lackington, Allen, & Company, of Finsbury Square, London. This anonymous book has been attributed by certain collectors to Francis Barrett, author of the notorious treatise entitled “The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer;” but it may be safely affirmed that, alike in matter and treatment, it far transcends the extremely meagre capacities of that credulous amateur in occultism. It is indeed a work of much sense and unpretentious discrimination, and is now a bibliographical rarity which is highly prized by its possessors.
The independent researches which have supplemented the biographical materials of the original compilation have produced in the present volume what is practically a new work under an old title; those lives which have been left substantially untouched as to facts have been more or less rewritten with a view to the compression of prolixities and the elimination of archaic forms, which would be incongruous in a work so extensively modified by the addition of new details. The “Alphabetical Catalogue of Works on Hermetic Philosophy” has been considerably enlarged from such sources as Langlet du Fresnoy’s _Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique_. The preliminary account of the “Physical Theory and Practice of the Magnum Opus” is a slight original sketch which, to readers unacquainted with alchemy, will afford some notion of the processes of accredited adepts. The introductory essay on the object of alchemical philosophy advocates new and important views concerning the great question of psychal chemistry, and appreciates at their true worth the conflicting theories advanced by the various schools of Hermetic interpretation.
IMPORTANT NOTE.
I am forced to append to this Preface a correction of one or two errors of absolutely vital importance, which were unfortunately overlooked in the text. On page 188, line 18, the date was intended to read 1643; on page 189, line 5, read _anno trigesimo tertio_ for _trigesimo anno_; and on line 6, _anno vigesimo tertio_ instead of _vigesimo anno_. But if these emendations restore the passage to its original integrity, a discovery which I have made while this work was passing through the press has entirely cancelled its value. I have been gratified with a sight of the original edition of Philalethes’ _Introitus Apertus_--a small octavo pamphlet in the original paper cover as it was published at Amsterdam in the year 1667. It definitely establishes that its mysterious author was born in or about the year 1623, or two years later than the Welsh adept, Thomas Vaughan, with whom he has so long been identified. This original edition is excessively scarce; I believe I am the only English mystic who has seen it during the present generation. The reader must please understand that the calculation in the pages referred to was based on the date 1643; this date, in the light of the original edition, has proved erroneous, and by a curious chance, that which was accidentally printed, turns out to be correct at the expense of the calculation.
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE 5
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON THE TRUE PRINCIPLES AND NATURE OF THE MAGNUM OPUS, AND ON ITS RELATION TO SPIRITUAL CHEMISTRY 9
ON THE PHYSICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE MAGNUM OPUS 38
LIVES OF THE ALCHEMISTS.
GEBER 44
RHASIS 46
ALFARABI 48
AVICENNA 51
MORIEN 53
ALBERTUS MAGNUS 57
THOMAS AQUINAS 61
ROGER BACON 63
ALAIN OF LISLE 67
RAYMOND LULLY 68
ARNOLD DE VILLANOVA 88
JEAN DE MEUNG 90
THE MONK FERARIUS 92
POPE JOHN XXII. 93
NICHOLAS FLAMEL 95
PETER BONO 118
JOHANNES DE RUPECISSA 119
BASIL VALENTINE 120
ISAAC OF HOLLAND 123
BERNARD TRÉVISAN 124
JOHN FONTAINE 129
THOMAS NORTON 130
THOMAS DALTON 133
SIR GEORGE RIPLEY 134
PICUS DE MIRANDOLA 136
PARACELSUS 137
DENIS ZACHAIRE 140
BERIGARD OF PISA 148
THOMAS CHARNOCK 148
GIOVANNI BRACCESCO 151
LEONARDI FIORAVANTI 153
JOHN DEE 153
HENRY KHUNRATH 159
MICHAEL MAIER 160
JACOB BÖHME 161
J. B. VAN HELMONT 166
BUTLER 168
JEAN D’ESPAGNET 170
ALEXANDER SETHON 171
MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS 175
GUSTENHOVER 181
BUSARDIER 182
ANONYMOUS ADEPT 184
ALBERT BELIN 186
EIRENÆUS PHILALETHES 187
PIERRE JEAN FABRE 200
JOHN FREDERICK HELVETIUS 201
GUISEPPE FRANCESCO BORRI 208
JOHN HEYDON 210
LASCARIS 211
DELISLE 216
JOHN HERMANN OBEREIT 219
TRAVELS, ADVENTURES, AND IMPRISONMENTS OF JOSEPH BALSAMO 220
AN ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE OF WORKS ON HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY AND ALCHEMY 274
APPENDIX 307
INDEX 313
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
ON THE TRUE PRINCIPLES AND NATURE OF THE MAGNUM OPUS, AND ON ITS RELATION TO SPIRITUAL CHEMISTRY.
Those unfamiliar with modern alchemical criticism, even if they have some acquaintance with the mystical labyrinth of the _turba philosophorum_, will probably learn with astonishment that the opinions of competent judges are divided not only upon the methods of the mysterious Hermetic science, but upon the object of alchemy itself. That it is concerned with transmutation is granted, but with the transmutation of metals, or of any physical substance, into material gold, is strenuously denied by a select section of reputable students of occultism. The transcendental theory of alchemy which they expound is steadily gaining favour, though the two text-books which at present represent it are both out of print and both exceedingly scarce.
In the year 1850 “A Suggestive Inquiry concerning the Hermetic Mystery and Alchemy, being an attempt to recover the Ancient Experiment of Nature,” was published anonymously in London by a lady of high intellectual gifts, but was almost immediately withdrawn for reasons unknown, and which have given occasion, in consequence, to several idle speculations. This curious and meritorious volume, quaintly written in the manner of the last century, originated the views which are in question and opened the controversy.
Fifteen years after the appearance of the “Suggestive Inquiry,” an American writer, named Hitchcock, after apparently independent researches arriving at parallel conclusions, made public, also anonymously, in the year 1865, some “Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists,” in a small octavo volume of very considerable interest. A psychic interpretation was placed by the previous author on the arcana of Hermetic typology, and Mr Hitchcock, by adopting a moral one, brought the general subject within the reach of the most ordinary readers, and attracted considerable attention in consequence.
The views thus enunciated have filtered slowly through, and, combined with the Paracelsian theory of the psychic manufacture of material gold by the instrumentality of the interior magnes, have considerably influenced the revived occultism of the present day. The question in itself, taken at its lowest standpoint, is one of the most curious to be found within the whole circle of esoteric archæology; and for students whose interest in the great alchemical mystery is of another than antiquarian kind, it is truly of palmary interest, and of supreme importance. In an account of the lives and labours of the Hermetic adepts, it calls for adequate consideration; and, after careful researches, I believe myself to have discovered a true alchemical theory which will be equally acceptable to all schools of interpretation.
The supreme and avowed object of every hierophant, as well as of every postulant and pretender, in the _ars magna_ discovered by Hermes Trismegistus, has been commonly supposed to be the chemical manufacture of material gold from commercially inferior substances. On the other hand, Hitchcock, marshalling an impressive series of verbatim citations from writers of all ages and all nationalities, undertakes to demonstrate that the concealed subject of every veritable adept is one only--namely, MAN, the triune, and that “the object also is one, to wit, his improvement, while the method itself is no less one, to wit, nature directed by art in the school of nature, and acting in conformity therewith; for the art is nothing but ‘nature acting through man.’” Again, “the genuine alchemists were not in pursuit of worldly wealth or honours. Their real object was the perfection, or, at least, the improvement of man. According to this theory, such perfection lies in a certain unity, a living sense of the unity of the human with the divine nature, the attainment of which I can liken to nothing so well as to the experience known in religion as the NEW BIRTH. The desired perfection, or unity, is a state of the soul, _a condition of Being_, and not a mere condition of KNOWING. This condition of Being is a development of the nature of man from within, the result of a process by which whatever is evil in our nature is cast out or suppressed, under the name of superfluities, and the good thereby allowed opportunities for free activity. As this result is scarcely accessible to the unassisted natural man, and requires the concurrence of divine power, it is called _Donum Dei_.”
When the individual man, by a natural and appropriate process, devoid of haste or violence, is brought into unity with himself by the harmonious action of intelligence and will, he is on the threshold of comprehending that transcendent Unity which is the perfection of the totality of Nature, “for what is called the ‘absolute,’ the ‘absolute perfection,’ and the perfection of Nature, are one and the same.”
In the symbolism of the alchemists this writer tells us that _sulphur_ signifies Nature, and _mercury_ the supernatural. The inseparable connection of the two in man is called _Sol_, but “as these three are seen to be indissolubly one, the terms may be used interchangeably.” According to Hitchcock, the mystical and mysterious instrument of preparation in the work of alchemy is the conscience, which is called by a thousand misleading and confessedly incongruous names. By means of this instrument, quickened into vital activity under a sense of the presence of God, the matter of the stone, namely, Man, is, in the first place, purged and purified, to make possible the internal realisation of Truth. “By a metonymy, the conscience itself is said to be purified, though, in fact, the conscience needs no purification, but only the man, to the end that the conscience may operate freely.”[A]
One of the names given by the alchemists to the conscience, on this theory, is that of a middle substance which partakes of an azurine sulphur--that is, of a celestial spirit--the Spirit of God. “The still small voice is in alchemy, as in Scripture, compared to a _fire_, which prepares the way for what many of the writers speak of as a _Light_.”
Hitchcock elsewhere more emphatically asserts that there is but one subject within the wide circle of human interests that can furnish an interpretation of the citations which he gives, and it is that which is known under the theological name of spiritual Regeneration. This gift of God the alchemists investigated as a work of Nature within Nature. “The repentance which in religion is said to begin conversion, is the ‘philosophical contrition’ of Hermetic allegory. It is the first step of man towards the discovery of his whole being. They also called it the black state of the matter, in which was carried on the work of dissolution, calcination, separation, &c., after which results purification, the white state, which contains the red, as the black contained the white.” The evolution of the glorious and radiant red state resulted in the fixation or perfection of the matter, and then the soul was supposed to have entered into its true rest in God.
As this interpretation is concerned chiefly with the conscience, I have called it the moral theory of alchemy; but Hitchcock, as a man of spiritual insight, could not fail to perceive that his explanatory method treated of the way only, and the formless light of an “End,” which he could not or would not treat of, is, upon his own admission, continually glimmering before him.
For the rest, when the alchemists speak of a long life as one of the endowments of the Stone, he considers that they mean immortality; when they attribute to it the miraculous properties of a universal medicine, it is their intention to deny any positive qualities to evil, and, by inference, any perpetuity. When they assert that the possession of the Stone is the annihilation of covetousness and of every illicit desire, they mean that all evil affections disappear before the light of the unveiled Truth. By the transmutation of metals they signified the conversion of man from a lower to a higher order of existence, from life natural to life spiritual, albeit these expressions are inadequate to convey the real meaning of the adepts. The powers of an ever active nature must be understood by such expressions as “fires,” “menstruums,” &c., which work in unison because they work in Nature, the alchemists unanimously denying the existence of any disorder in the creation of God.
In conclusion, Hitchcock states once more that his object is to point out the _subject_ of alchemy. He does not attempt to make its practical treatment plain to the _end_ of the sublime operation. It is, therefore, evident that he, at any rate, suspected the existence of more transcendent secrets which he distrusted his ability to discuss, and declined to speak of inadequately.
The author of the “Suggestive Inquiry” had already taken the higher standpoint of psychic interpretation, and developed her remarkable principles, which I must endeavour to reproduce as briefly as possible.
According to this work, the modern art of chemistry has no connection with alchemy except in its terminology, which was made use of by the adepts to veil their divine mysteries. The process of the whole Hermetic work is described with at least comparative plainness in the writings of the philosophers, with the exception of the _vessel_ which is a holy arcanum, but without the knowledge of it no one can attain to the magistery. Now, the publication of the writings of Jacob Böhme caused the alchemists who were his contemporaries to fear that their art could not much longer remain a secret, and that the mystic vase in particular would be shortly revealed to all. This vase is the _vas insigne electionis_, namely, MAN, who is the only all-containing subject, and who alone has need to be investigated for the eventual discovery of all. The modern adepts describe the life of man as a pure, naked, and unmingled fire of illimitable capability. Man, therefore, is the true laboratory of the Hermetic art; his life is the subject, the grand distillery, the thing distilling, and the thing distilled; and self-knowledge is at the root of all alchemical tradition.
“Modern discoveries are now tending to the identification of light, the common vital sustenant, as in motive accord throughout the human circulatory system with the planetary spheres, and harmonious dispositions of the occult medium in space; and as human physiology advances with the other sciences, the notion of our natural correspondency enlarges, till at length the conscious relationship would seem to be only wanting to confirm the ancient tradition.”
In addition to the faculties which he commonly exerts to communicate with the material universe, man possesses within him the germ of a higher faculty, the revelation and evolution of which give intuitive knowledge of the hidden springs of nature. This Wisdom-faculty operates in a magical manner, and constitutes an alliance with the Omniscient Nature, so that the illuminated understanding of its possessor perceives the structure of the universe, and enjoys free perspicacity of thought in universal consciousness.
In support of this statement it is argued that the evidence of natural reason, even in the affairs of common life, is intuition, that intuitive faith has a certainty above and independent of reason, that the subsistence of universals in the human mind includes a promise far beyond itself, and is stable proof of another subsistence, however consciously unknown.
The true methods and conditions of self-knowledge are to be learned from the ancient writers. The discovery of the veritable Light of alchemy is the reward of an adequate scrutiny of true psychical experience. Alchemy proposes “such a reducation of nature as shall discover this latex without destroying her vehicle, but only the modal life; and professes that this has not alone been proved possible, but that man by rationally conditionating has succeeded in developing into
## action the Recreative Force.”
The One Thing needful, the sole act which must be perfectly accomplished that man may know himself, is the exaltation, by the adequately purified spirit, of the cognising faculty into intellectual reminiscence. The transcendental philosophy of the mysteries entirely hinges on the purification of the whole understanding, without which they promise nothing.
The end in view is identical with Hermetists, Theurgists, and with the ancient Greek mysteries alike. It is the conscious and hypostatic union of the intellectual soul with Deity, and its participation in the life of God; but the conception included in this divine name is one infinitely transcendental, and in Hermetic operations, above all, it must ever be remembered that God is within us. “The initiated person sees the Divine Light itself, without any form or figure--that light which is the true _astrum solis_, the mineral spiritual sun, which is the Perpetual Motion of the Wise, and that Saturnian Salt, which developed to intellect and made erect, subdues all nature to His will. It is the Midnight Sun of Apuleius, the Ignited Stone of Anaxagoras, the Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, the Armed Magnet of Helvetius, the Fiery Chariot of Mercaba, and the Stone with the new name written on it which is promised to him that overcometh, by the initiating Saviour of mankind.”
This method of interpreting the Hermetic allegories is calculated to exalt the alchemists indefinitely in the estimation of all thinking minds. From possibly avaricious investigators of a by-way of physical science, they are transfigured into dreamers of the sublimest imaginable dream, while if that which they conceived was accomplished, they are divine and illuminated monarchs who are throned on the pinnacles of eternity, having dominion over their infinite souls.
A theory so attractive, devised in the interests of men whom romance has already magnified in the auriferous cloud of mystery which envelopes both their claims and their persons, is eminently liable to be accepted on insufficient grounds, because of its poetical splendour, so it will be well to ascertain the facts and arguments on which it is actually based.
Both Hitchcock and the unparalleled woman to whom we are indebted for the “Suggestive Inquiry” appeal to alchemical writings in support of their statements. A few of their quotations and commentaries must therefore be submitted to the reader.
The first point which strikes the alchemical student is the unanimous conviction of all the philosophers that certain initiatory exercises of a moral and spiritual kind are an indispensable preliminary to operations which are commonly supposed to be physical. Here the incongruity is evident, and it is therefore urged that the process itself is spiritual, and that it was materialised in the writings of the adepts to confuse and mislead the profane, as well as for the protection of esoteric psychologists in the days of the Inquisition and the stake.
The following preparation for the study of Antimony is recommended by Basil Valentin. “First, Invocation to God, with a certain heavenly intention, drawn from the bottom of a sincere heart and conscience, pure from all ambition, hypocrisy, and all other vices which have any affinity with these; as arrogance, boldness, pride, luxury, petulancy, oppression of the poor, and other similar evils, all of which are to be eradicated from the heart; that when a man desires to prostrate himself before the throne of grace, for obtaining health, he may do so with a conscience free from unprofitable weeds, that his body may be transmuted into a holy temple of God, and be purged from all uncleanness. For God will not be mocked (of which I would earnestly admonish all), as worldly men, pleasing and flattering themselves with their own wisdom, think. God, I say, will not be mocked, but the Creator of all things will be invoked with reverential fear, and acknowledged with due obedience.... Which is so very true that I am certainly assured no impious man shall ever be partaker of the true medicine, much less of the eternal, heavenly bread. Therefore place your whole intention and trust in God; call upon him, and pray that he may impart his blessing to you. Let this be the beginning of your work, that by the same you may obtain your desired end, and at length effect what you intended. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”