The Jewel of Alchymy By Francis Barrett ALTHOUGH we do not, in any point of science, arrogate perfection in ourselves, yet something we have attained by dear experience, by diligent labour, and by study, worthy of being communicated for the instruction of either the licentious libertine, or the grave student--the observer of Nature; and this, our Work, we concentrated into a focus: it is, as it were, a spiritual essence drawn from a large quantity of matter; for we can say, with propriety, that this little Treatise is truly spiritual, and essential to the happiness of man: therefore, to those who wish to be happy, with every good intention we commend this Work to be their constant companion and study, in which, if they persevere, they shall not fail of their desires in the attainment of the true Philosophers' Stone. PART 1 IT is not necessary here to enter into a long detail of the merits of Alchymical Authors and Philosophers; suffice it to say, that Alchymy, the grand touch-stone of natural wisdom, is of Divine origin: it was brought down from Heaven by the Angel Uriel. Zoroaster, the first philosopher by fire, made pure gold from all the seven metals; he brought the sun ten times brighter from the bed of Saturn, and fixed it with the moon, who thereby copulating, begot a numerous offspring of an immortal nature, a pure living spiritual sun, burning in the refulgency of its own divine light, a seed of a sublime and fiery nature, a vigorous progenitor.
This Zoroaster was the father of alchymy, illumined divinely from above; he knew every thing, yet seemed to know nothing; his precepts of art were left in hieroglyphics, yet in such sort that none but the favourites of Heaven ever reaped benefit thereby. He was the first who engraved the pure Cabala in most pure gold, and, when he died, resigned it to his Father who liveth eternally, yet begot him not: that Father gives it to his sons, who follow the precepts of Wisdom with vigilance, ingenuity, and industry, and with a pure, chaste, and free mind. Hermes, Trismegistus, Geber, Artephius, Bacon, Helmont, Lully, and Basil Valentine, have written most profoundly, yet abstrusely, and all declare not the thing sought for.
Some say they were forbid; others that they declared it obviously and intelligibly, yet some few little points they kept to themselves. However far off the main point they lead us, of this be sure,--that something valuable is to be drained, as it were, out of each. Geber is good--Artephius is better--but Flammel is best of all;--and better still than these is the instructions we give; for with them a man (following our directions) shall never want gold; therefore to be an adept is possible, but first "seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.
" This is truth incontrovertible, and herein lies a vast secret--"seek and ye shall find;"--but remember, whatsoever ye ask, that shall ye receive. The cabala, in its utmost purity, is contained in the many precepts given in this book. The cabala enables us to understand--to bring our understandings to act, and, by that means, to attain knowledge;--knowledge makes us the children of God--God makes whom he pleases adepts in wisdom.
To be an adept, according to God's will, is no contemptible calling. The noble and virtuous Brethren of the Rosy Cross holds this truth sacred that "Virtue flies from no man;" therefore how desirable a thing is Virtue. She teaches us, first, wisdom, then charity, love, mercy, faith, and constancy; all these appertain to Virtue; therefore it is physically possible for any well-inclined man to become an adept, provided he lays aside his pride of reasoning, all obstinacy, blindness, hypocrisy, incredulity, superstition, deceit, etc.
An adept, therefore, is one who not only studies to do God's will upon earth, in respect of his moral and religious duties; but who studies, and ardently prays to his benevolent Creator to bestow on him wisdom and knowledge from the fulness of his treasury; and he meditates, day and night, how he may attain the true aqua vita--how he may be filled with the grace of God; which, when he is made so happy, his spiritual and internal eye is open to a glorious prospect of mortal and immortal riches:--he wants not food, raiment, joy, or any other thing--he is filled with the celestial spiritual manna--he enjoys the marrow and fat things of the earth--he treads the wine-press, not of the wrath, but of the mercy of God--he lives to the glory of God, and dies saying "Holy, holy, holy Lord of Sabaoth! blessed is thy name, now and for evermore! Amen.
" Therefore, to be an adept, as we have before hinted, is to know thyself, fear God, and love thy neighbour as thyself; and by this thou shalt come to the fulfilment of thy desires, O, man; but by no other means under the scope of Heaven. When thy soul shall be made drunk by the divine ambrosial nectar, then shall thy understanding be more clear than the noontide sun;--then, by thy strong and spiritualized intellectual eye, shalt thou see into the great treasury of Nature, and thou shalt praise God with thy whole heart;--then wilt thou see the folly of the world; and thou shalt unerringly accomplish thy desire, and shalt possess the true Philosophers' stone, to the profit of thy neighbour. I say, thou shalt visibly and sensibly, according to thy corporal faculties; not imaginary, not delusively, but real… [Abridgement here] Now we will hasten to the manner of preparation necessary to qualify a man for the attainment of these sublime gifts.
Of the Preparation of a Man to qualify him for the Search of this Treasure; and of the first Matter (prima materia) of the Stone. LESSON I. THE preparation for this work is simply this:--Learn to cast away from thee all vile affections--all levity and inconstancy of mind; let all thy dealings be free from deceit and hypocrisy; avoid the company of vain young men; hate all profligacy, and profane speaking.
LESSON II. Keep thy own, and thy neighbours' secrets; court not the favours of the rich; despise not the poor, for he who does will be poorer than the poorest. LESSON III.
Give to the needy and unfortunate what little thou canst spare; for he that has but little, whatever he spares to the miserable, God shall amply reward him. LESSON IV. Be merciful to those who offend thee, or who have injured thee; for what must that man's heart be, who would take heavy vengeance on a slight offence?
Thou shalt forgive thy brother until seventy times seven. LESSON V. Be not hasty to condemn the actions of others, lest thou shouldst, the next hour, fall into the very same error; despise scandal and tattling; let thy words be few.
LESSON VI. Study day and night, and supplicate thy Creator that he would be pleased to grant thee knowledge and understanding; and that the pure spirits may have communication with, and influence, in thee. LESSON VII.
Be not overcome with drunkenness; for, be assured, that half the evils that befall mankind originate in drunkenness: for too great a quantity of strong liquors deprive men of their reason; then, having lost the use of the faculty of their judgment, they immediately become the recipient of all evil influences, and are justly compared to weathercocks, that are driven hither and thither by every gust of wind; so those who drown the reasonable power, are easily persuaded to the lightest and most frivolous pursuits, and, from these, to vices more gross and reprobate; for the ministers of darkness have never so favourable an opportunity of insinuating themselves into the minds and hearts of men, as when they are lost in intoxication. I pray you to avoid this dreadful vice. LESSON VIII.
Avoid gluttony, and all excess--it is very pernicious, and from the Devil -- these are the things that constantly tempt man, and by which he falls a prey to his spiritual adversary; for he is rendered incapable of receiving any good or divine gift. Besides, the divine and angelic powers or essences delight not to be conversant about a man who is defiled, and stinking with debauchery and excess. LESSON IX.
Covet not much gold, but learn to be satisfied with enough; for to desire more than enough, is to offend the Deity. p. 66 LESSON X.
Read often these ten preparatory Lessons to fit thee for the great work, and for the receiving of higher things; for the more pure thou art in heart and mind, by so much quicker shall you perceive those high secrets we teach, and which are entirely hid from the discernment of the vicious and depraved, because it never can happen that such a source of treasure can be attained merely to satisfy our more gross, earthly, and vain desires and inclinations, because here nothing must be thought to be grasped, or wrested out of this book, but to the fulfilling of a good end and purpose. When thou shalt have so far purified thy heart, as we have spoken is indispensably necessary for the receiving of every good thing, thou shalt then see with other eyes than thou dost at present--thy spiritual eye will be opened, and thou shalt read man as plain as thou wilt our books; but, for all this, depend not on the strength of thy own wisdom, for even then, when we think our hearts secure, if we do not watch them that they sleep not, the Devil, or his ministers, immediately take us at this unguarded moment, and tempts us into the actual commission of some sin or other: either he excites our appetite for lust and concupiscence, or any other deadly sin; therefore, using our blessed Redeemer's words--"What I say unto you, I say unto you all--watch! " Perhaps, I do not doubt but, there are some that will say, when they look at our works, this fellow is all rant, all preaching--he tells us what we knew before as well as himself.
To such I say, let them read our book but twice; if they do not gather something that they will acknowledge precious, (nay, be convinced that it is precious, to their own satisfaction) I will burn these writings, and they shall be no more remembered by me. To conclude this Part: we say that the First Matter (Prima Materia) Adam brought with him out of Paradise, and left it, as an inheritance, to us his successors; had he remained in his original purity, he would have been permitted to have used it himself; but the eternal fiat was passed, that he was to "earn his bread by the sweat of his brow;" therefore he could not effect what was afterwards performed by some of his offspring. Hermes Trismegistus, that ancient philosopher, wrote touching the attainment of this stone, which he pronounced to be of all benefit to man, and one of the greatest blessings he could possess; and although his writings contain much of the excellency of truth, being wrapped up in such symbolical figures, it renders them exceedingly difficult to be understood, yet, if comprehended, they, no doubt, contain some very great secrets by which mortal man may profit.
Now it belongs to our purpose to know what it is from which we must extract the first matter of this stone to go on with our process, because we must have materials to work upon; for all philosophers agree that, the first matter being found, we may proceed without much difficulty. For the first matter, (I shall speak as plainly as possible) first, the grand question in debate is--Where is it to be found? --I say it is to be found in ourselves.
We all possess this first matter, from the beggar to the king; every mothers' son carries it about him; and, could our ingenious chemists but find a process for the extracting, how well would all their labours be repaid. The next question naturally comes to us--How are we to draw, or attract the secret matter of the stone out of ourselves? --Not by any common means; and yet it is to be drawn into very action, and that by the most simple means, and in a manner that the attaining of the philosophers' stone would very soon follow it.
I pray you, my friend, look into thyself, and endeavour to find out in what part of thy composition is the prima materia of the lapis philosophorum, or out of what part of thy substance can the first matter of our stone be drawn out. Thou sayest, it must either be in the hair, sweat, or excrement. I say in none of these thou shalt ever be able to find it, and yet thou shalt find it in thyself.
Many great philosophers and chemists, whom I have the pleasure to know, affirm that, admitting of the possibility of transmutation, it (i. e. the first matter) must be taken from the purest gold.
To this I say it must not; neither has it any thing at all to do with extrinsical gold. They will say then that the pure ens of gold may be drawn from gold itself. True, it may so; but then I would ask if they could ever produce more gold than that out of which the soul or essence was extracted; if they have, they have indeed found out a secret beyond the powers of our comprehension; because it is against reason to suppose that if a pound of gold yields a drachm of the soul or essence, that that only will tinge any more than a pound of purified lead, or ☿ because we have tried various experiments, and I have, in some of my first essays, turned both lead and mercury into good gold; but no more than that out of which the soul was extracted.
But, however, not to lose our time in vain and ridiculous disputation, know that whatever prodigious things or experiments have been tried with respect to the first matter, by external subjects, either in the mineral, animal, or vegetable kingdoms, as they are called, I say in us is the power of all wonderful things, which the supreme Creator has, of his infinite mercy, implanted in our souls; out of her is to be extracted the first matter, the true argent vive, the ☿ of the philosophers, the true ens of ☉, viz. a spiritual living gold, or waterish mercury, or first matter, which, by being matured, is capable of transmuting a thousand pts. of impure metal into good and perfect gold, which endure fire, test, or cupel.
PART II. OF THE MANNER OF EXTRACTING THE FIRST MATTER OF THE PHILOSOPHERS' STONE, AND THE USE IT IS PUT TO IN PURIFYING THE IMPERFECT METALS, AND TRANSMUTING THEM INTO GOOD GOLD. LESSON XI.
TAKE the foregoing instructions as thy principal instrument, and know that our soul has the power, when the body is free, as we before said, of any pollution, the heart void of malice and offence; I say the soul is then a free agent, and has the power, spiritually and magically, to act upon any matter whatsoever; therefore I said the first matter is in the soul; and the extracting of it, is to bring the dormant power of the pure, living, breathing spirit and eternal soul into act. Note well that every agent has its power of acting upon its patient. Every essence that is distilled forth is received into a recipient, but that recipient must first be made clean.
Even so must the soul and heart of man: the vile affections must be thrown away, and trampled under foot; then shalt thou be able to proceed in thy work, which do in the manner following. LESSON XII. The expence thou must be at will be but a trifle: all the instruments necessary are but three, viz.
a crucible, an egg philosophical, and a retort with its receiver. Put your fine gold, in weight about 5 pennyweights, file it up, put it into your philosophic egg, pour upon it the twice of its weight of the best Hungarian ☿, close up the egg with an Hermetic seal, put it for three months in horse-dung, take it out at the end of that time, and see what kind of form thy gold and ☿ has assumed; take it out, pour on it half its weight of good spirit of sal ammoniac, set them in a pot full of sand over the fire in the retort, let them distil into a pure essence, add to one point of this ☿ two points of thy water of life, or prima materia, put them into thy philosophical egg, and… LESSON XIII. set them into horse-dung for another three months; then take them out, and see what thou hast--a pure etherial essence, which is the living gold; pour this pure spiritual liquor upon a drachm of molten fine gold, and you will find that which will satisfy thy hunger and thirsting after this secret; for the increase of thy gold will seem to thee miraculous, as indeed it is.
Take it to a jeweller's or goldsmith's; let him try it in thy presence, and thou wilt have reason to bless God for his mercy to thee. Do thy duty as he has commanded thee, and use all the benefit thou shalt receive, in actions worthy of thy nature. LESSON XIV.
When thy spiritual eve is opened, and thou shalt begin to see to what end thou wert created, thou Shalt want no necessary thing either for thy comfort or support; only keep in the rules we have prescribed in the beginning of this little treatise--Fear God, and love thy neighbour as thyself; be not hasty to reveal any secrets thou mayest learn, for the good spirits, both day and night, will be thy instructors, and will continually reveal thee many secrets. Think not that thou canst either profit or benefit so much by the instruction of those who profess great advantages in classical education and high schooling; be assured they are, in spiritual knowledge, much in the dark: for he who desires not spiritual knowledge cannot attain it by, any means, but by, first, coming to God; secondly, by purifying his own heart; thirdly, by submitting himself to the will of the Holy Spirit, to guide and direct him in all truth, to the attaining of all knowledge, both human and divine; and by arrogating nothing to our own power or strength, but by referring all to the mercy and goodness of God. --Amen.
End of The Jewel of Alchemy by Francis Barrett Read by Dan Attrell If you would like to support more work such as this, please visit patreon.
