CHAPTER IV
ON CERTAIN ALCHEMISTS
NICHOLAS FLAMEL belongs to alchemy exclusively, and he enters into our consideration only because of the hieroglyphical book of Abraham the Jew, in which the scrivener of the rue Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie found the absolute keys of the Great Work. This book was founded on the Keys of the Tarot and was simply a hieroglyphical and Hermetic commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah. We find as a fact, by the description of Flamel himself, that the leaves were twenty-one in number, making twenty-two with the title,1 and that they were divided into three septen-aries, having a blank leaf at every seventh page. Let us here bear in mind that the Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic summary of all occult types, also divided its symbols into three septenaries, between each of which there is silence in heaven, thus instituting a striking analogy with the uninscribed leaf in the mystic book of Flamel 2 The septenaries of the Apocalypse are (a) seven seals to open, meaning seven mysteries to be learned and seven difficulties to be overcome; (b) seven trumpets to sound, being seven utterances to understand; (c) seven vials to empty, which signify seven substances which must be volatilised and fixed.
In the work of Flamel the first seventh leaf has as its hieroglyphical character the wand of Moses overcoming the serpents brought forth by the magicians of Pharaoh. They are seen devouring one another, and the figure as a whole is analogous to the Victor of the Tarot, yoking to his cubic chariot the white and black sphinxes of Egyptian Magic. The symbol in question corresponds to the seventh dogma in the creed of Maimonides: we acknowledge but one prophet, who is Moses. It represents the unity of science and the work; it represents further the Mercury of the Wise, which is formed by the dissolution of composites and by the reciprocal action of the Sulphur and Salt of metals.
The emblem on the fourteenth page was the Brazen Serpent set upon a cross. The cross represents the marriage of the purified Sulphur and Salt, as also the condensation of the Astral Light. The fourteenth Trump card in the Tarot depicts an angel, who is the spirit of the earth, mingling the liquids in two ewers, one of gold and one of silver. It is the same symbol formulated after another manner. On the 21st leaf of Flamel's book there was the type of space and universal life, represented by a desert with springs of water and serpents gliding hither and thither.1 In the Tarot, space is typified by the four signs allocated to the cardinal points of heaven, and life is represented by a naked girl dancing in a circle. Flamel does not specify the number of springs and serpents, but the former would probably be four, springing from one source, as in the Pantacle of Eden; the serpent would be four, seven, nine or ten.
On the fourth leaf was the figure of Time, preparing to cut off the feet of Mercury. Close by was a rose-tree in blossom, the root being blue, the stem white, the leaves red, and the flowers golden.2 The number four is that of elemental realisation. Time is atmospheric nitre; his scythe is the acid which is extracted from this nitre, and the Mercury is fixed thereby, being transformed into salt. The rose-tree represents the Work and the successive colours which characterise its stages: it is the mastery passing through the black, white and red aspects, out of which gold is produced as a blossom that buds and unfolds.
The number five is that of the Great Mystery, and on the fifth page blind men were represented digging up the ground round the rose-tree in search of the grand agent which is present everywhere. Some others, who were better advised, were weighing a white water, resembling a solidified air.3 On the reverse side of this page was the massacre of the innocents, with the sun and moon descending to bathe in their blood. This allegory, which is the literal secret of Hermetic art, has reference to that process of taking air into air, as Aristeus4 puts it; or, to speak intelligible language, of using air as force, expanding it by means of Astral Light, just as water is changed into steam by the action of fire. This can be accomplished by the aid of electricity, magnets and a powerful projection of the operator's will, when directed by science and good intent. The children's blood represents that essential light which is extracted by philosophical fire from elementary bodies. When it is said that the sun and moon come down to bathe, the meaning is that the silver therein is tinctured into gold, and that the gold acquires a grade of purity by which its sulphur is transformed into the true Powder of Projection.
We are not writing a treatise on alchemy, although this science is really Transcendental Magic put into operation; we reserve its revelations and wonders for other special and more extended works.
Popular tradition affirms that Flamel did not die and that he buried a treasure under the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. According to illuminated adepts, this treasure, contained in a cedar box covered with plates of the seven metals, was the original copy of the famous book attributed to Abraham the Jew, with commentaries in the writing of Flamel and sufficient specimens of the Powder of Projection to transmute the sea into gold, supposing that the sea were Mercury.
After Flamel came Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine and other famous alchemists. The twelve Keys of Basil Valentine are at once Kabalistic, magical and Hermetic. Then in 1480 appeared Trithemius, who was the master of Cornelius Agrippa and the greatest dogmatic magician of the middle ages. Trithemius was an abbot of the Order of St. Benedict, of irreproachable orthodoxy and unimpeachable conduct. He was not so imprudent as to write openly on occult philosophy, like his venturesome disciple Agrippa. All his magical works turn on the art of concealing mysteries, while his doctrine was expressed in a pantacle, after the manner of true adepts. This pantacle is excessively rare, and is found only in a few manuscript copies of his tract De Septem Secundeis. A Polish gentleman and man of exalted mind and noble heart, Count Alexander Branistki possesses a curious example which he has kindly shewn to us. The pantacle consists of two triangles joined at the base, one white and the other black. At the apex of the black triangle there is a fool crouching, who turns his head with difficulty and gazes awe-struck into the triangle, where his own likeness is reflected. On the apex of the white triangle stands a man in the prime of life, armed as a knight, having a steady glance and an attitude of strong and peaceful command. In this triangle are inscribed the letters of the divine Tetragram. The natural and exoteric sense of the emblem may be explained by an aphorism as follows: The wise man rests in the fear of the true God, but the fool is overwhelmed by the terror of a false god made in his own image. By meditating on the pantacle as a whole, and thereafter on its constituents successively, the adepts, however, will find therein the last word of Kabalism and the unspeakable formula of the Great Arcanum. In other words, it is the distinction between miracles and prodigies, the secret of apparitions, the universal theory of magnetism and the science of all mysteries.
Trithemius composed a history of Magic, written entirely in pantacles under the title: Veterum Sophorum Sigilla et Imagines Magica. In his Steganography and Polygraphy he gives the key to all occult writings and explains in veiled terms the real science of incantations and evocations. Trithemius is in Magic the master of masters, and we have no hesitation in proclaiming him the most wise and learned of adepts.
It is otherwise with Cornelius Agrippa, who was a seeker all his life and attained neither science nor peace. His books are full of erudition and assurance; he was himself of an independent and fantastic character, so it came about that he passed for an abominable sorcerer and was persecuted by the priesthood and princes. In the end he wrote against the sciences which had failed to bring him happiness, and he died in misery and abandonment.
We now come to the mild and pleasing figure of that learned and sublime Postel, who is known only by his over-mystical love for an elderly but illuminated woman. There is something far different in Postel from the disciple of Mother Jeanne, but vulgar minds prefer to disparage rather than to learn and have no wish to see anything better in him. It is not for the benefit of these that we propose to make known the genius of William Postel.
He was the son of a poor peasant, belonging to the district of Baren ton in Normandy; by force of perseverance and much sacrifice he contrived to teach himself and became the most learned man of his time; but poverty pursued him always and want occasionally compelled him to sell his books. Full of resignation and sweetness, he worked like a labouring man to win a morsel of bread and then went back to his studies. He acquired all known languages and sciences of his period; he discovered rare and priceless manuscripts, including the apocryphal gospels and the Sepher Yetzirah; he initiated himself into the mysteries of the transcendental Kabalah,1 and in his simple admiration for that absolute truth, for that supreme reason of all philosophies and dogmas, it was his ambition to reveal it to the world. He therefore spoke the language of mysteries openly and wrote a book entitled the Key of Things kept Secret from the Foundation of the World.2 He dedicated this work to the fathers assembled at the Council of Trent, entreating them to enter the path of conciliation and universal synthesis. No one understood him; some accused him of heresy and the most moderate were contented to say that he was a fool.
The Trinity, according to Postel, made man in Its image and Its likeness. The human body is dual and its triadic unity is through the union of the two halves. The human soul is also dual; it is animus and anima, or intellect and emotion; it has also two sexes, the male being resident in the head and the female in the heart. Redemption in its completion must also be dual in humanity; the mind by its purity makes good the errors of the heart, and then the generosity of the heart must rescue the egoistic barrenness of the brain. Christianity, from Postel's standpoint, has been so far understood only by the reasoning mind and has not entered into the heart. The Word has been made man, but the world will be saved when the Word shall have been made woman. The sublime grandeurs of the spirit of love will be taught by the maternal genius of religion, and then reason will be harmonised with faith, because it will comprehend, interpret and restrain the sacred excesses of devotion.
Observe, he remarks, how religion is understood by the majority of Christians; it is only as an ignorant and persecuting partiality, a superstitious and stupid stubbornness, and fear—base fear—above all. Why is this? Because those who profess it have not the woman-heart, because they are foreign to the divine enthusiasms of that mother-love which explains all religion. The power that has invaded the brain and binds the spirit is not that of the good, understanding and long-suffering God; it is of the wicked, imbecile and cowardly Satan. It comes about in this manner that there is far more fear of the devil than love for the Divine. The frozen and shrivelled brain weighs on the dead heart like a tombstone. What an awakening will it be for understanding, what a rebirth for reason, what a victory for truth, when the heart shall be raised by grace! Why am I the first and almost the only person to comprehend this, and what can one who has attained resurrection perform alone among the dead, who can hear nothing? Come therefore and come quickly, O mother-spirit, who appeared to me at Venice in the soul of a virgin inspired by God; descend and teach the women of the new world their redeeming mission and their apostolate of holy and spiritual life.
It is a fact that Postel owed these noble inspirations to a pious woman named Jeanne, whose acquaintance he had made at Venice. He was the spiritual adviser of this elect soul and was drawn into the current of mystic poetry which eddied about her. When he administered the Eucharist to her she became radiant and transfigured in his eyes, and although she was more than fifty years old the poor priest confesses innocently that he would have taken her for less than fifteen: so did the sympathy of their hearts transform her in his eyes. One must have followed the life of asceticism to understand such celestial hallucinations and lyrical puerilities, such a mystic marriage between two virginal beings, such extraordinary enthusiasms of love in two pure souls. In her he discerned the living spirit of Jesus Christ by which the world would be regenerated. I have seen, says he, this light of the heart which will drive the hideous spectre of Satan from all minds; it is no chimera of my dreams; she has appeared in the world, has taken flesh in a maid, in whom I have hailed the mother of the world to come. This is analysing rather than translating Postel, but the rapid abridgment of his sentiments and language will make plain that he spoke figuratively, and, as maintained by the learned Jesuit Desbillons in his notice on the life and works of Postel, that nothing was further from his thoughts than to represent, as some have pretended, a second incarnation of divinity in this poor hospital sister who had only drawn him by the brightness of her humble virtues. We are utterly certain that all those who have slandered and ridiculed Postel are not worth one Mère Jeanne.
The mystical relations of Postel and the nun continued for about five years, at the end of which time she died, assuring her confessor that she would never be parted from him but would help him when freed from the bond of material life. “She kept her promise,” says Postel; “she has been with me at Paris, has enlightened me with her own light and has harmonised my reason and my faith. Two years after her ascent into heaven her spiritual body and substance descended into me and permeated sensibly my whole body, so that it is she rather than myself who lives in me.” After this experience Postel always regarded himself as a risen being and signed himself Postellus Restitutes. As a matter of fact, one curious result followed: his white hair became again black, his wrinkles disappeared and the ruddy colour of youth was assumed by his countenance, previously made thin and pallid by his allsterities and vigils. His derisive biographers assert that he dyed his hair and painted his face; it was insufficient to picture him as a fool, and so out of his noble and generous character they produced a juggler and charlatan. Assuredly the imbecility or bad faith of cold and sceptic minds, when they pass judgment on enthusiastic hearts, is more wonderful than the eloquent unreason of the latter.
“It has been imagined,” writes Father Desbillons, “and is still, I understand, believed that the regeneration supposed to have been accomplished by Mother Jeanne is the foundation of his system; it had however been completely developed before he was aware of her existence, and he never departed from it, unless indeed he did so a few years before his death. It had come into his mind that the evangelical reign of Jesus Christ, established by the Apostles, could be no longer maintained among Christians or propagated among infidels unless enforced by the light of reason. To this principle, which affected him personally, he added another, being the destination of the King of France to universal monarchy. The way of the Second Advent must be prepared by conquest of hearts and conviction of minds, that there may be henceforth but one faith and Jesus Christ reigning over the whole world in the person of a single king and in virtue of one law.” According to Father Desbillons, this proves that Postel was mad. Mad for having thought that religion should reign over minds by the supreme reason of its doctrine, and that the monarchy, to be strong and permanent, should bind hearts together by the victories of public prosperity under the dominion of peace. Mad for having believed in the coming of that kingdom about which we say daily—His kingdom come. Mad because he believed in reason and justice on earth. Well, well, they spoke truly; poor Postel was mad. The proof of his madness is that he wrote, as already said, to the Fathers of the Council of Trent, entreating them to bless the whole world and to launch anathemas against no one. As another example, he tried to convert the Jesuits and cause them to preach universal concord among men—peace between sovereigns, reason among priests, and goodness among the princes of this world. In fine, as a last and supreme madness, he neglected the benefits of this world and the favour of the great, lived always humbly and in poverty, possessed nothing but his knowledge and his books, and desired nothing but truth and justice. May God give peace to the soul of poor William Postel.
He was so mild and so good that his ecclesiastical superiors took pity upon him and, thinking probably, as was said later on of La Fontaine, that he was more silly than wicked, they were contented with shutting him up in his convent for the rest of his days. Postel was grateful for the quiet thus ensured towards the close of life, and he died peaceably, retracting everything that his superiors required. The man of universal concord could not be an anarchist; he was before all things the sincerest of catholics and humblest of Christians. The works of Postel will be rediscovered one of these days and will be read with wonder.
Let us pass to another maniac who was called Theophrastus Aureolus Bombast and was known in the World of Magic under the famous name of Paracelsus. There is no need to recapitulate what has been said concerning this master in our Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, but something may be added on the occult medicine restored by Paracelsus. This truly Universal Medicine is based upon a spacious theory of light, called by adepts fluid or potable gold. Light, that creative agent, the vibrations of which are the movement and life of all things; light, latent in the universal ether, radiating about absorbing centres, which, being saturated thereby, project movement and life in their turn, so forming creative currents; light, astralised in the stars, animalised in animals, humanised in human beings; light, which vegetates in plants, glistens in metals, produces all forms of Nature and equilibrates all by the laws of universal sympathy—this is that light which exhibits the phenomena of magnetism, divined by Paracelsus, which tinctures the blood, being released from the air as it is inhaled and discharged by the hermetic bellows of the lungs. The blood then becomes a true elixir of life, wherein ruby and magnetic globules of vital light float in a slightly gilded fluid. These globules are actual seeds, ready to assume all forms of that world whereof the human body is an abridgment. They can become rarefied and coagulated, so renewing the humours which circulate in the nerve? and in the flesh encompassing the bones. They radiate outside, or rather, in rarefying, they are drawn by the currents of light and circulate in the astral body—that interior and luminous body which is dilated by the imagination of ecstatics, so that their blood sometimes colours objects at a distance when these have been penetrated and identified with the astral body. In a special work on occult medicine that which is stated here will be proved, however strange and paradoxical it may seem at first sight to men of science.1 Such were the bases of medicine as put forward by Paracelsus; he cured by sympathy of light; he administered medicaments not to the outward material body, which is entirely passive, which can be rent and cut up without feeling anything when the astral body has withdrawn, but to the inward medium, to that vehicle which is the source of sensations. The quintessence of these he renewed by sympathetic quintessences. For example, he healed wounds by applying powerful reactives to the spilt blood, thus sending back its physical soul and purified sap to the body. To cure a diseased limb he made a limb of wax and, by will-power, transferred thereto the magnetism of the diseased limb. Then he treated the wax with vitriol, iron and fire, thus reacting by imagination and magnetic correspondence on the sick person himself, to whom the limb of wax had become an appendix and supplement. Paracelsus knew the mysteries of blood; he knew why the priests of Baal made incisions with knives in their flesh, and then brought down fire from heaven; he knew why orientals poured out their blood before a woman to inspire her with physical love; he knew how spilt blood cries for vengeance or mercy and fills the air with angels or demons. Blood is the instrument of dreams and multiplies images in the brain during sleep, because it is full of the Astral Light. Its globules are bisexual, magnetised and metalled, sympathetic and repelling. All forms and images in the world can be evoked from the physical soul of blood.
The Seven Planets and their Genii
“At Baroche,” says the estimable traveller Tavernier,1 “there is a first-class English house, which I reached on a certain day with the English president, on my way from Agra to Surat. There came also certain jugglers, asking leave to exhibit some of their professional skill, and the president was curious to see it. In the first place they lighted a great fire, at which they heated iron chains, then wound them about their bodies and pretended that they were suffering in consequence, but no harm followed. They next took a morsel of wood, set it in the ground and asked one of the spectators to choose what fruit he liked. His choice fell upon mangoes, and thereupon one of the performers put a shroud about him and squatted on the ground five or six times. I had the curiosity to ascend to an upper room, where I could see through a fold in the sheet what was being done by the man. He was actually cutting the flesh under the arm-pits with a razor, and rubbing the wood with his blood. Each time he rose up the wood grew visibly; on the third occasion there were branches and buds thereon, on the fourth the tree was covered with leaves, and on the fifth it was bearing flowers.
“The English president had brought his chaplain from Amadabat to baptise a child of the Dutch commander, the president acting as godfather. The Dutch, it should be mentioned, do not have chaplains except where soldiers and merchants are gathered together. The English clergyman began by protesting that he could not consent to Christians assisting at such spectacles, and when he saw how the performers brought forth from a bit of dry wood, in less than half an hour, a tree of four or five feet in height, having leaves and flowers as in springtime, he felt it his duty to put an end to the business. He announced therefore that he would not administer communion to those who persisted in witnessing such occurrences. The president was thus compelled to dismiss the jugglers.”
Dr. Clever de Maldigny, to whom we owe this extract, regrets that the growth of the mangoes was thus stopped abruptly, but he does not explain the occurrence. To our mind it was a case of fascination by the magnetism of the radiant light of blood, a phenomenon of magnetised electricity, identical with that termed palingenesis, by which a living plant is made to appear in a vessel containing ashes of the same plant long since perished.
Of such were the secrets known by Paracelsus, and it was in the application of these hidden natural forces to purposes of medicine that he made at once so many admirers and enemies. For the rest, he was by no means a simple personality like Postel; he was naturally aggressive and of the mountebank type; so did he affirm that his familiar spirit was hidden in the pommel of his great sword, and never left his side. His life was an unceasing struggle; he travelled, debated, wrote, taught. He was more eager about physical results than moral conquests, and while first among practical magicians he was last among adepts of wisdom. His philosophy was one of sagacity and, on his own part, he termed it philosophia sagax.1 He divined more than anyone without knowing anything completely. There is nothing to equal his intuitions, unless it be the rashness of his commentaries. He was a man of intrepid experiences, intoxicated with his own opinions, his own talk, intoxicated otherwise on occasion, if we may believe some of his biographers. The works whicn he has left are precious for science, but they must be read with caution. He may be called the divine Paracelsus, understood in the sense of diviner; he is an oracle, but not a true master. He is great above all as a physician, for he had found the Universal Medicine. This notwithstanding, he could not prolong his own life, and he died, while still young, worn out by work and by excesses.2 He left behind him a name shining with fantastic and ambiguous glory, due to discoveries by which his contemporaries failed to profit. He had not uttered his last word, and is one of those mysterious beings of whom it may be said, as of Enoch and St. John: He is not dead, and he will come again upon earth before the last day.
1 There is no reference to a title in the original text.
2 It is stated once only in the Apocalypse that “there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour”. See Chapter VIII, verse, I.
1 The Book 0f Nicholas Flamel describes the symbols as follows: (1) A Wand and serpents devouring one another; (2) a Cross, on which a serpent was crucified; (3) Deserts, in the midst of which were many fair fountains, whence issued a number of serpents that glided here and there.
2 Mercury and Saturn—as Flamel supposed them to be—were depicted on the obverse side of this leaf and the symbolic flower was on the reverse side. It is not said to be a rose, but simply a fair flower. The rose-tree was on the obverse side of the fifth leaf.
3 The original has no reference to solidified air.
4 Otherwise Arisleus, who figures prominently in the discourses 01 the Turba Philosophorum.
1 There is an old story that he translated the Sepher Ha Zohar into Latin, but the manuscript has never been found.
2 It was first published at Basle and afterwards at Amsterdam in 1646. In 1899 the second edition was rendered into French. It deserves and will repay careful reading from the mystic point of view
1 This promise represents another unfulfilled intention of Éliphas Lévi.
1 See Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes, Paris, 1676. There were five French editions, and the work was also translated into English
1 This is really the title of a particular treatise, but as it is exceedingly long and may be said to be de omnibus rebus, it may not he taken unjustly to represent his philosophy at large.
2 The latest and most successful apologist of Paracelsus says that the charge of intemperance was invented by his enemies. See the Life of Paracelsus, by Miss Anna M. Stoddart, 1911