PHILOSOPHICAL LETTER OF PHILOVITE

1751

BOOKSELLER'S WARNING TO THE READER



Is it folly, temerity and imprudence or wisdom, charity and humanity to bring to light a Philosophical Letter , sealed with the seal of Hermes, which fell into my hands by chance?

An unknown philosopher, no doubt one of those phoenixes wandering in this vast universe, of which the novels praise the phenomenon, addressed it, under a cabalistic name, to one of his friends, whom he seems to want to angarier and initiate into his occult. wisdom, not as a dish of vulgar philosophy, but as an exquisite delicacy from the table of the gods; and I do not know how to savor its delights, not even daring to lay my profane hand there (I have that in common with many others). There are some mixed feelings on the pros and cons, yes or no of the reality of this science, among some connoisseurs. But the rest of the world, the most numerous opinions and the most common, almost general opinion, lodges a philosopher of this ilk in small houses and his Letter to the store of fairy tales, as an illusion of beautiful and flattering chimeras.

As for me, I nod, because I am not at all indoctrinated with the secrets of the Judaic cabal to be able to judge for myself, knowingly, the truth or the error of this natural, enigmatic philosophy. and obscure.

I know the wisdom and its practice towards our sovereign creator and preserver and, for moral conduct towards our neighbor and ourselves, I make it my duty and my observance as an honest man and as a Christian, and I don't know any other than that which relates to it.

If nature and art have some individual or secret part of this wisdom in their department, in the hand and in the power of man, finally, a science hidden under enigmas, for the marvelous effects which the author announces to us , this is what I absolutely ignore and I leave the epilogue to the true connoisseurs, curious and censors.

The subject seemed to me so interesting and the novelty of this philosophy, in itself so curious and scholarly that I thought I could share it with the public, along with a few other works on the same subject, to submit them to all its trials and his judgment.

If this material does not satisfy his curiosity, his intelligence and his desire, at least it will fill his mind with astonishment at the profound madness which he will find in it learnedly enlightened.

But if, by chance, some partisan of this secret wisdom recognizes in the darkness the true light, that he knows how to pick roses in the thorns and make his profit from them, he will be grateful to me and will be under the obligation of his discoveries.

To this double reason, I add that of awaiting an impartial and equitable decision; and it will be my touchstone and that of sensible people.

PHILOSOPHICAL LETTER PHILOVITE TO HELIODORUS, SALVATION

Studious investigator, disciple of Hermes, child of philosophical science, do not imagine that it is easy to climb the rungs of the ladder of sapience and to reach the top, to win the palm of victory over the earthly infirmities, which is attached to its height. The way to heaven is narrow, thorny, rough and steep; it is the same with that of wisdom. We do not reach it and we cannot enter it without the wings of genius, that is to say without rising by means of a superior spirit, very penetrating, straight and simple, above the vulgar madman and the learned fools of the earth. For this science is fine and surpasses the ordinary forces of the mind.

The character of a true and perfect philosopher does not consist in possessing the practice of the hermetic work and its desired object without the theory, science and knowledge of the virtues and properties which God has diffused therein, nor in reputing their sovereign excellence and their marvels as a secret indifferent to his omnipotence and to the grace he wishes to grant to the salvation of souls and bodies. For the dignity of such a great gift of his grace constitutes, in the person of the wise and the adept, a true character of being illuminated by the Father of lights, of interpreter of his oracles, of minister of his wonders, of connoisseur of nature and its invisible and visible principles.

Such a happy mortal must therefore, by condition, recognize the very divinity in its work and in its effects, as the source of all wisdom and perfection, since, according to S.
It belongs only to the true sages, these stars of the earth, by their profound meditations and penetrations of the things made and visible of nature, to pass consequently to understand with the ears of intelligence and to see with the eyes of the mind things invisible and in operative power and to contemplate eternal virtue and divinity, which are necessarily and absolutely its secret agents. This is how they easily read, in the great book of life, this divine word, which works all the miracles in the world. For the soul is in the spirit of man what the eye is in his body; both see, the one intelligible and comprehensible things, the other sensible things, and reason wills it without contradiction.

Son of science, since the curiosity of your penetrations, by a happy disposition and a natural emulation, which seem to come from the bottom of your soul, leads you to deepen the high secrets and the sublime mysteries of the sages, we would be delighted with the joy of to see, in your person, increase the small number of the elect of natural philosophy; all the more so, as our dear brother, the learned Cosmopolitan, says very well, since the company of the wise should not be limited by a place or by the number of children of science, when it is possible to find and form true proselytes and followers, since it is to be hoped that this noble company could spread throughout the whole inhabitable earth, and principally where Jesus Christ is adored, where his law reigns, where virtue is known and where reason is followed ,Proverbs XX, 19, which pronounces the anathema and launches the lightning of the celestial vault against the one who, by a fraudulent conduct, will vulgarly reveal the mysterious mysteries of wisdom and science, which must be concealed; and according to the words of this great sage, the multitude of the possessors of this sapience is the salvation and the health of the whole world; Wisdom VI, 26 and Proverbs X, 14; XII, 23; XIV, 8 and 33; XV, 2 and 7; XX, 15 and 19; XXV, 2 and 9.

You must therefore, by the force of your intelligence, search and penetrate into the most secret spiritual springs of nature, in order to be able to discover and find there the virtues of the celestial and supercelestial influences, which the Most High has infused in all his works and in all flesh from the beginning. They are there the assemblage of superior properties and powers in inferior things. For there resides therein a double force, which constitutes the wisdom and the admirable economy of this immense universe, with the harmony which you see distributed and reigning in all its parts.

God created the unique matter of wisdom with a living spirit, which he poured out into it, and all health and healing virtues, which he gave to it. He wanted to join, to these properties and powers, those of having the proper instruments for his work for all the generations he considered in his eternal ideas. And he put it and spread it in all nature, as his principle of animation and salvation of souls and bodies.

The divine Word, in the highest heavens, is the source of wisdom which, by the energetic and universal virtue of its influence, pushes itself and carries to all beings, whom it fills with its vivifying fecundity and the spirit salutary with which it is endowed. Why Solomon in his Wisdom VII, 25, 26, attests to it a vapor of the virtue of God, a candor of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the majesty of the Almighty and the image of his goodness.

From this pure emanation of the clarity of the Most High, coming from the empire, his surcelestial throne, in the elements and in all the mixtures, there is formed a spiritual fluid of four elemental parts, under three celestial principles and three sublunary principles. , which the sages call, viz. the first, principiant principles and first agents, triple or triune virtue of the archaea in unity; and the second, principled principles and second agents, sulphur, mercury and salt, also in unity, but not the vulgar earthly ones. And what is admirable, in which one must not cease to adore the divinity, is that, by a love and a grace of the God of virtues for his creatures, the first agents are infused and incorporated into the latter, with a mutual magnesia and sympathy which he gave them to adhere for the composition,

The harmonious union of these initial and incremental substances makes our birth, our life and our preservation. Because their mission and stay in corporeal matter, in the form of a central essence, creates all things, forms them, moves them, animates them, spiritualizes them and preserves them. This is our fire of life, essentially unspecified or determined, although proper and personal to the subject in which it dwells. For it is the general soul of the great world, as of the microcosm and of all living beings, more or less ordered and dignified in each individual, where it penetrates and passes in the whole circumference and in the capacity of the whole, as well as in its finest and finest portions, by a circular work of the motor power of the eternal spirit archectypimotivivitectonic. And it is also our daily food, which comes to us from his mouth and is gratified to us by his reign for our health, and the extermination of the impure spirits of earthly corruption, enemy of our flesh and worker of destruction. For this spirit of wisdom has the virtue and the power to send them back to the low places assigned to their dwelling and to prevent them from harming us by the evils and the deadly plagues which, by inclination, make all their prerogative and their continual militia .

In the spiritual fluid, we recognize a motor and life spirit and a spiritual virgin earth, in which it is embodied by love. What is pure spirit is not corrupted and is not affected by any blemish. Why from the expression of Solomon, Wisdom VII, 22, 23, 24, 25, nothing defiled enters into this divine essence.
We see there, through the eyes of the spirit, the virtue of heaven, the perpetual and circular movement, in everything and in its most modest particles, and the sublunar virtue, which retains in itself the igneous force of heaven and is its tabernacle, which the philosophers have called magnesia, as being filled with sympathy to unite to operate and preserve all productions and generations.
This double force, which we call spiritual, is corporeal and middle nature, animated and animating, because it is a spiritual mineral, which has life and gives life, a living and salutary being. She loves purity, because of herself she is pure; and though she resents impurity, she is incorruptible.

She delights with all creatures and dwells in them, so long as they can preserve her from the impressions of corruption, her incompatible enemy, and make her untouched by the fits and assaults of the sinful, poisonous, and murderous qualities of the infernal demon and the legions of his impure spirits, who ceaselessly seek to ravage and destroy his abode, by disturbing the harmony and the homogeneity of the elemental qualities and the constitutive principles.
She delights, as it is said in Proverbs VIII, 31, to dwell and take root with the children of men, like the subject, according to Ecclesiasticus XXIV , 16, 18, 19 and 25, the most honored and dignified by nature and the most capable of preserving its grace and deposit. Whoever sins against her, adds Solomon in his Proverbs VIII, 36, will wound her vital soul and all those who hate her, neglect her or despise her love death. Why the Ecclesiasticus assures us, IV, 12, 13, 14, that he who loves wisdom loves life; and Solomon in his ProverbsIV, 10, 13, 22, gives the reason, saying that it is because wisdom is its own life; man has the choice of good or evil, life or death, which are at his free will, in his power and before him, and he will have as share what he pleases to choose; the Ecclesiasticus warns us of this again, XV, 17 and 18 and XxxIII, 15. The intelligence of the mind alone makes us conceive these truths, for they are too far removed from the vulgar senses.

Everything is one, by one and in one, principle without principle, animator and preserver of all things. All beings, whether physical or metaphysical, cannot subsist without their principle and fall into decomposition and resolution of their elements, because their natural principles, which were animated, vivified and ordered in homogeneity with the qualities elemental by the first agent, fall also in confusion and cease to nail and fix the quadruple element, to spiritualize it, to signify and to harmonize it in the individual body. The virtue of God is this unique instrument, principle or agent, operating the union and incorporation of the spiritual and material parts, that is to say of the three natural principles and the four individually elemental qualities, which constitute and organize with harmony, relative to that of the heavens,

The outpouring of the supercelestial influence of the divine breath is an active, vivifying and invisible power which, by the will and love of God for his creatures, descends from above and mingles, according to Basil Valentin, with the virtues and properties of the stars and, of these mixed together, there is formed a third between terrestrial and celestial, which is the first production that the air and the elements translate to all individuals, of which they are only the weavers. For the agent principles, fundamental and constitutive, administer the work and the work, carrying with them the moving soul and spirit, with which the Most High has vivified them, in the form of a liquid salt of sapience, which the wise call salt of vital nitre, catholic essence, universal spirit, vital, nutritious, mercury of life and triangular stone,

The spiritual principle of life is therefore in the nature of each being, for its existence and its conservation, but it is also there for its repair. Happy passage of the Red Sea, for anyone who knows how to pass or cross and cross it on dry foot! Here is the book, the torch, the mirror, the tutor and the guide of natural philosophy, the knowledge of all nature, of our author and of ourselves, where we learn the means of sprinkling, as with celestial salt, all the misfortunes of this world.

In the leaves and pages of this great book of life, we see the sign of God's covenant with men and the adorable object of the redemption of our salvation, which he has kindly sent to us and granted to wash our offenses in the merit of the precious blood of our divine Saviour, light of the world and who gives all life; effect of the goodness of his infinite wisdom, which is the seat of the catholic soul and the probationary pool, as the spirit in man is the chariot of his soul and the reservoir of life, rolling the waters of the dew salutary and regeneration in all the corridors of the body.

Lack of knowledge of the first principles and agents of nature is the cause of all the ignorance that is in the world, and this only arises from non-application to the study of the same nature. For it contains everything and lacks none of the celestial properties. This science is the only one which borrows nothing from the others, because it is superior to all which, to be true and solid, can only derive from it, since it is the foundation and the rule of everything. The Foolish Man, Said David, PsalmsXCI, 5 and 7, will neither know nor understand these marvels of God. Wisdom teaches things and not words.

It is up to the child of science to understand some and to obtain the revelation of others, hidden from the wicked and unworthy under parables, for divine reasons, for which we must not ask the holy Providence, which governs everything in measure, in number and in weight and opens its treasures only where, to whom and when it pleases. Why the reprobate, seeing, will not see and, hearing, will not understand the mysterious mysteries of wisdom.

The insignia attributes, qualities and properties that the sages have recognized in the matter of wisdom have made them call it, according to Chopinel, the vivifying fountain, the river of all remedy, the regenerative water, which purges and purifies of all old ferment. filthy and renews life. They have also called it water that gives life to its mining, vegetable water, spiritual brandy, land of the living, philosophable land, Adamic land, because it is made as soon as man, that he does not is only through it and does not live without it; what it has in common, under certain characteristics and distinction, with all the animate beings which are made up of it and feed on it more or less perfectly, according to the dignification which it has pleased the sovereign creator to distribute and share among them. For she is one to all kingdoms,

In the center of the interior of the double celestial and sublunary force, the sages know how to extract, prepare and operate, by the virtue of their magic steel and the burning sword of Pythagoras, the instrumental principles of hermetic wisdom, to bring out, of her virginal lap and of her work exalted in perfection, the fruit of life or the active life, vivifying every individual, because she is the universal foundation. And as this sapience has the infusion of the gift of the seven spirits of God and the seven virtues, Solomon called his science the science of the saints. Why philosophers have found in it the symbols of the most adorable mysteries of the Christian religion, alone, unique and true, since it is founded on the very divinity and on the spiritual principles of life of souls and bodies.
It is true that when we have drawn philosophical matter from its mine to make it into the confections of art, the elementary quintessence rests as in its sabbath or in lethargy, without developing or exercising its vivifying and working virtue, until what, the artist having suitably employed it in the glassy matrix of the philosophers, which they call the headdress of the fetus, the cockpit of the chicken or the nest of the bird of Hermes, he excited and set in motion his agent who, although transported at rest on the juice of the marine and pontic waters, has soul and spirit which, after the great eclipse of the sun and the moon, must bring light out of darkness, by the will of God who allows it and wants it so.

Our spiritual, bodily, and mid-nature extraction in this state is called chaos, prime matter, chaotic, hyleal, primordial hyle, and vegetable saturnia, because its confusion of liquid with solid resembles the image of the former chaos and represents all its operations and events. It has life, because it is truly a living thing; it gives, preserves and strengthens life, because it is the prolific principle of life, that is to say, it is included in it, as the natural animal heat is insite in the egg from which comes the chicken. Because, if this heat were once extinguished, suffocated or dissipated, to return anew iliad in the universal immensity, there would be no more vegetation, production and generation in the egg.
However, the life of our philosophical embryo has limbo to undergo and, if it does not seem to die, it will not be reborn to a more glorious life and will not produce any fruit.

Thus, it is expedient, necessarily, that this life appears to be lost and extinguished in darkness, to rise again more triumphantly and communicate its monified and perfect virtues to the bodies which have suffered from it alteration. It cannot be concealed that it is necessary to love one's soul well, to have a great love for life, much courage, faith, patience, for a more excellent regeneration, to make a similar sacrifice in the image of death, in the elementary quadrature of the circle of the Egyptian serpent devouring its tail. However, without corruption, there is no generation to hope for, because it is its beginning,

Our divine matter gives a quintessence and an elixir of life which have the admirable, invisible power and virtue of visibly increasing and multiplying the being where it acts, because the principle of movement, which makes and constitutes life, is its driving force, the only organizer of its work and its labors. He is perfectly united with a virgin nature, his matrix in which and with which he operates. The artist does not do, manipulate or plow anything in any way. It is enough for him to employ his industry in the extraction, preparation, closing and simple administration by the exciting external agent, in imitation of a hen which, brooding its eggs, puts there and introduces through the pores its own heat. nature, which awakens, excites and moves the generative life principle, asleep in the compact mass of each nine.

This industry is not small, we agree; it is even essential and the success of the work depends on it. But a skilful philosopher, knowing the instruments of nature, easily uses Ariadne's net to find the exit from this maze or labyrinth.

Do not believe, however, that the knowledge of this quintessence as well as the acquisition of its divine work are given to the ungodly, the ignorant, the insipid, the wicked or the unworthy and profane. God does not allow it and even very expressly forbids it. The sages, who only speak of them with fear, to avoid profanation and abuse, have hidden them from them under riddles and parables, which they have often only explained by other cabalistic riddles and which can only be understood by the studious meditator. It is indeed of the utmost importance that this science should never be heard or known openly to the inept and ignorant, any more than to the vulgar; and it is the duty of the sage to keep it secret, without ever revealing it indiscreetly. Because, if this misfortune happened to the world, everything would perish, everything would be reversed and confused. And the precautions that the philosophers have taken and carefully brought, to entrust their secret only to the silence of Harpocrates or to steal it by hieroglyphs, are a very commendable prudence and a faithful obedience to the orders of the supreme will.

The knowledge of such a high science is only the share of the favorite souls of heaven, of transcendent geniuses, of industrious and patient people, of refined minds, sequestered from the quagmire of the century and cleansed of the filthiness of the muddy earth, which is the avarice by which the ignorant are tied down, with their noses to the ground, in this world, the abode of all poverty, folly or blindness. Why, says Philalethes very aptly, are fools and ignoramuses so obstinate in their error and of such hard brains to be able to understand that, even if they saw marked signs and miracles, they would not abandon their false reasonings? and their sophisms to enter the straight path of truth.

Solomon, in his time, deplored this misfortune, saying, Ecclesiastes VII, 30, with the author of Ecclesiasticus I , 6, that there are very few chosen by God who have the revelation of the root of wisdom and who know its tricks and subtleties. Blessed is he who finds her, for she is his own life and the health of all flesh, adds the same in his Proverbs III, 2, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22, 35 and VIII, 10, 11 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 34, 35 and XIV, 6, 12, 30 and Ecclesiasticus XXV , 13.

If you are once happy enough to possess this precious repository of divine virtues, you will possess everything. For Solomon protests you in his WisdomVII, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 27 and VIII, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, that it is an infinite and priceless treasure for men; that there is nothing in the world more rich, opulent and abundant, since wisdom alone operates and procures all things.

The rest of the sciences, of human and earthly bliss, are no longer, after that, but transitory fables, of which the world, hospital of the mentally ill and of the dying insane, feeds greedily, with ridiculous vanity in its ignorance, be it said without being cynical. The human race has this perversity that it gives headlong and loses itself in depravity and in things that are contrary to it. We do not desire, in fact, what we do not know; insipidity makes unknowing and unknowing negative reason. The vulgar, hardened by his prejudices, does not want to believe that there is in nature an occult means of remedying all its evils and all its misfortunes and that the only sage has the key, which he reserves for himself.

A madman, says Solomon, esteems, reputs and calls all other men mad. Such is a drunken man, of whom the misguided reason of the brain is no longer known, who thinks he sees the earth and the objects turning and finds no one more reasonable than himself.

The universe is flooded with errors and an infinity of ignoramuses have degraded our divine philosophy. This is why a prudent investigator must always watch and be on his guard, to avoid and flee people steeped in worldly prejudices, the sophists of the time, the infamous chemists, charlatans and false philosophers, as well as their deceptive recipes, which dishonor and even render shameful and contemptible the holy science of alchymy, by their processes contrary to the subject and the way of the beautiful and simple nature. For all their works, in the ocean of the superficial science of the century in which they swim, drown and submerge them therein, precipitating them to perdition and death, since on the faith of Solomon in his ProverbsXII, 28 and XIII, 14, life is only in wisdom and in its work. Any other way, any other resource, any other subject infallibly leads man to his ruin; and he cannot avoid it nor repair its ruin without the help of this source of life. He who loves danger will perish there.

Know then, child of adoption and predilection, that the philosophers, envious and jealous of a science so high and important, have veiled its subject, theory and practice under different allegorical names, either at the origin and at influence, either to residence and operations, or finally to virtues and properties, to embarrass the brains without judgment and to be heard only by those who study nature, by only opening up to capable people.

They commonly say the compound, a divine liquor, a heavy, viscous, lustral water and the great universal solvent, the spirit and the soul of the sun and the moon, the essence, the fountain, the cistern, the well, the pontic water, the water of the earthly paradise, the bain-marie, the tree and the wood of life; unnatural fire, secret damp fire, occult, invisible ; the very strong vinegar of the mountains of the sun and the moon; the spouting of these two great luminaries, the fifth essence, the saturnial antimony reintruding all bodies, with the preservation of their kind in nobler and better form and generation; and all are right in their sense and in the subtle meaning that they understand it, for all these qualifications and many others are suitable or analogous to it.

The most used term is the double mercury, distinguished under three qualities. The first, the weakest, is to minerals and metals, of which vulgar gold and silver are the most exalted; the second, quite dignified and virtuous, is for vegetables, which particularly regard vines and wheat, the blood and fat of the earth, as being the most favored by the vivifying dew of heaven for the nourishment of man; the third, infinitely more noble, powerful and divine, is for animals, in which the dew of the breath of life, much more triturated, pushed and rectified, that is to say freed from the enveloped filth that it has contracted in the the air and the commotion of the elements, works more marvelously; which must be understood especially of the chief who dominates over all the others of the three kingdoms,
Thus, in the perfect animal the essential principles are also more perfect, because it gathers, composes, rectifies and dignifies the qualities of the metallic mineral and of the vinous and wheaten vegetable; he is even an extract of all the celestial and terrestrial creatures whose creation preceded his; he still sucks them and corporifies them daily; which is generated mainly in the liver, from where the decoction derives, perfecting itself in the caves for this purpose.

Learn then, lover of hermetic truths, learn to penetrate the truth of natures within. You will find that the nature of the earth's minerals contributes most to the quality of the earth. And as the earth of itself does not engender another earth similar to it, similarly, the mineral and metallic bodies, after they are drawn from their mines, no longer grow and can no longer of themselves beget their fellows; especially as they lose mineral life by fusion in Gehenna and martyrdom in the fire.

This incapacity and impotence does not happen to plants, which have the purest and most perfect nature, contributing the most to the quality of the water. Consequently, by their roots and seeds, they can of themselves, without other human artifices, procreate, engender and pullulate their fellows.

It is the same and more superiorly with animals, which have their seed first and specified in themselves, neither rooted nor attached to the earth. Their sulfur is more spiritualized and subtle than that of the plants themselves, and their mercury more pure and perfect; their salt is also more spirituous and dignified and their mineral earth bears more virtue and property than that of vegetables. But, among the animals, the privileged family still has these attributes much in superiority, dignity, command and empire over all the other families of this kingdom, which are subordinated to it by the order of God, as it is said in the Genesis , according to the natural property of the elements of nature, in which each being participates more or less.

The reason for these differences is quite simple and I am going to give you another example, which should open your eyes and convince you of the truth.
The minerals, as well as the metals which are their production or, rather, which are perfected minerals, derive most from the nature and quality of the earth, which is the minimum base and like the dregs of the other elements, water, air and fire. . Therefore, minerals and metals are an earthly compound and, thus, least in dignity, virtue and property. They are, therefore, unfit to serve as principles to generation, unless they are reincruded, reanimated, and spiritualized by their first and sovereign principle; what nature, in the bowels of the earth, cannot do and which the artist manages through his science.

In this it can and does more than all the strength of mineral nature. However, he does not operate such a high marvel without the first and second agents well disposed. For the work is a marvelous contest of animated and animating nature and art; one cannot complete it without the other and the latter does not dare to undertake it without her. Thus, it is a masterpiece that limits the power of both. Why it is right to say that the great work of the wise holds the first rank among the most beautiful things, the most sublime and exalted. It is therefore the highest point where the force of human genius has ever been able to penetrate.
Plants, of the nature and quality of water, are purer, less imperfect than minerals, but they do not have the imperative and absolute degree of exaltation and perfection. They can only acquire them by the same means and the universal principle of all nature in sovereign power.

Animals, which hold most of nature and the quality of the air, which is the envelope and the vehicle of fire, are much purer, perfect and subtle than water or than the bodies which are mainly and copiously compounds; and for the same reason they are infinitely more ignified, spiritualized, virtuous and accomplished than the plants.

One could say that the inhabitants of the air, the airy, celestial bodies, the eagle, the salamander, the bird of paradise, which participate most in the nature and quality of the celestial fire, to which they are closest, and who carry within them an ignition more disengaged from the leavens of the subordinate elements, are also purer, more spiritual, perfect, powerful and virtuous than the beings of the inferiority of the air. And it is not without reason that the sages have named them aerial spirits, celestial geniuses, whose essential principles are extremely spiritualized, rarefied, potential, volatile and active. They also relate to our work.

We must therefore reput and judge the metallic and terrestrial minerals as imperfect, having only being and not the faculty of growing and multiplying by themselves, that is to say, being deprived of the prolific, generative and multiplicative. For if they had it, the whole earth would be covered with perfect and imperfect minerals and metals, as well as stones, which likewise only have being. This is why the work of the formation of the mineral in the earth, although it is like the source and the origin of the work of the production of the vegetable and the work of the generation of the animal on earth, is, however, much inferior to them; especially since the bodies that come closest to deprivation and non-being have less perfection than the others, further from this nothingness, because those who cling most to existence and to the vital and animating principle or to their proximity are, consequently, more advantaged in the prolific, spermatic and seminal virtue.

For minerals are like the apprenticeship, so to speak, of working nature and like the compound of coarse and impure matter, which it dignifies, it is true, but without admitting to it a soul and a spirit of life of prolific self. . Vegetables and animals are like the masterpiece of this same nature, generated from the purest and perfect substance of minerals, by natural resolution, although invisible, joined to nature and qualities of the more spiritualized elements, of which they participate. more than them. For minerals are like the apprenticeship, so to speak, of working nature and like the compound of coarse and impure matter, which it dignifies, it is true, but without admitting to it a soul and a spirit of life of prolific self. .

Vegetables and animals are like the masterpiece of this same nature, generated from the purest and perfect substance of minerals, by natural resolution, although invisible, joined to nature and qualities of the more spiritualized elements, of which they participate. more than them. For minerals are like the apprenticeship, so to speak, of working nature and like the compound of coarse and impure matter, which it dignifies, it is true, but without admitting to it a soul and a spirit of life of prolific self. . Vegetables and animals are like the masterpiece of this same nature, generated from the purest and perfect substance of minerals, by natural resolution, although invisible, joined to nature and qualities of the more spiritualized elements, of which they participate. more than them.

The mineral virtue, by a universal fusion in the immensity of the globes and which is invisible to us, but which we conceive, readily joins the seminal virtue of plants; and both, through various iliads, are also magnetically joined to animal virtue, which impels, exalts, perfects and virtualizes them, by corporifying them. Their connection in unity and homogeneity causes the spiritual animal body to partake of the light of the minerals and to contain it more perfectly than it is contained.

in them, because, by resolution, the subtlest part of the mineral has been transmuted to the spiritual body, with the mixture of water. Thus, the animal contains in itself the mineral virtue and the vegetable virtue very eminently, with virtual power to bring them, reduce and convert them despotically to its quality of living homogeneity and animated perfection, by making them pass into effective act identically to its substance, by natural triturations and coctions or functions of nature.

These marvelous and admirable effects are brought about by the action of the universal circulation, which is their principal instrument, in the four elements and the four elemental qualities or temperament of nature, where these same elements, acting on each other others, by the action of opposites, are often transmuted, by the force of the dominant superior, in his capacity. For all the work of nature rolls on four perpetual pivots, which the creator has assigned to it as its four terms, namely the descending, the ascending, the progressive and the circular. But these same four terms and the action of opposites have their motion only by the impulsive and repulsive virtue of the eternal spirit, which according to Solomon, EcclesiastesI, 5 and 6, illuminating all the immensity in circuit, pushes itself into everything and, perpetually, returns to the circles it traverses.

Son of science, you must well recognize, by the mysteries that I have revealed to you, that the sulphurous mercury of minerals and plants is only one with the mercurial sulfur of animals and that there is mineral, the principles of these three kingdoms being there linked and incorporated by a marvelous link of the adorable omnipotence of God. Infer from this and conclude how much greater are the virtue and power of the celestial and fiery spirits and how much more marvelous are their effects. Thus, be attentive to find a solar and lunar gold, in a river which Moses calls Phison and which circulates in the delicious garden of all the earth, which he names Hevilath, watering and surrounding the whole continent. Gold is born there and the gold of this land is very good; but it is a spiritual mineral gold, in virtual power only and which is not the vulgar, that is to say, it is a fire of nature, hidden in the marrow of mercury and which the wind has carried in her womb to be the true magnesia of the body and the philosophical orient.

In the choice that you will make of the essential principles which must compose your matter, unique by the homogeneity of the different qualities of the elements and the kingdoms of nature, you must apply yourself to find them in perfect serenity, to make of them your admirable quintessence, which nature will administer to you in its most favorable effervescence, by means of your industry. For an evil crow, says the Cosmopolitan, lays a bad nine.

For more precaution in the preparation of your philosophical confection, consider well and be able to judge if it is brought to the degrees of its coction, to the dispositions and qualities required by the philosophers. You will recognize it by the symbols and characters that they gave it during its elaboration, saying it mercurial water, sulphurous water, fire and water, dry and humid, hot and cold, vegetable, animal and mineral fire, the soul of the world, the cold element, fire, light and heat, movement and principle of life, holy water, water of the sages, mineral water, water of celestial grace, virginal milk, living water, wells of living and vegetable waters, philosophical mercury , body mineral, mining of gold and silver, generalissimo mercury, virtue, ferment, the living body, the perfect medicine in spirituality,Proverbs V, 15 and Song of Songs , and in the well of Democritus, whence it was drawn without rope and without pulley; finally, a mineral-like substance.

This hermetic compost must be amalgamated with an elementary sperm, which the followers have named rebis, hermaphrodite, agent and patient. For, if matter did not have an instrumental cause in it, there would be no movement, action, operation and generation, the instrument being the agent of conception and vegetation. Why do the sages add that, in their matter, they have the secret of finding solar fire and lunar water, soul, spirit and body; and that between them is desire, friendship and sympathetic society, magnesia, spiritual concupiscence, love as between male and female, because of the closeness of their similar nature. And in this sense, water is said to be the vessel of fire, the belly, the womb, the receptacle of the solar igneous tincture, the virgin earth, the nurse, the fountain of celestial ignition, which virtualizes it and makes it conceive. and by which nature has in itself a certain inherent movement and, according to the true way,

Take care, therefore, henceforth, not to get lost in your researches and in your procedures, which Flamel explains to you very well under the word processions of the hermetic work. Take advantage of these clarifications. Read, reread and meditate often on the authors of good grades. Above all, never stray from the subject you want to discuss. This is the only necessary point. Philalethes recommends to you a single vessel, a single material and a single furnace; he speaks the truth and never does such a philosopher, jealous as he may be, impose. He may be shrewd, cunning and subtle, but not a liar; for he is a sworn and faithful partisan of the truth. If it seems to have contradictions, the reason is that one cannot easily disentangle and understand its obscure enigmas; and when one has succeeded in having the key to it, by concordance and reconciliation with what others have said, because one book is explained by another, we find and we recognize that he was not involved and that he spoke with accuracy, in agreement with himself and with all the wise men unanimously and with one common voice, ingenious to each in his own way. This is the method that Philalethes followed.

But it does not explain clearly all the other conditions that art requires and that industry must provide you. Thus, you can learn it or make up for it by your genius and your prudence. But it does not explain clearly all the other conditions that art requires and that industry must provide you. Thus, you can learn it or make up for it by your genius and your prudence. But it does not explain clearly all the other conditions that art requires and that industry must provide you. Thus, you can learn it or make up for it by your genius and your prudence.
Think carefully about your goal.

You wish to acquire the medicine of life and health, the sovereign catholicon, the balm of life, to remedy effectively all illnesses, infirmities and even old age. You can only reap what you have sown; if you have sown life, you will reap life. And one only repairs the health of the individuals of nature by its own universal principle, in the different remedies that one brings to it. Wisdom is your object and the fruit of its womb is universal medicine, which alone has and produces all the virtues of other medicines, by an effect much more superior, powerful and prompt, radically. For sapience alone, in the words of Solomon, can do everything and has infinite power to cure all ills. So open the book of life and remember the maxim of the wise, that nature contains nature, nature rejoices in nature, nature overcomes nature, no nature is amended except in its own nature. But do not take the action for the cause nor the effect for the principle, as all the great philosophers of the time did.

However, out of pure goodness, I therefore warn you not to take literally, absolutely, what I told you under the wrapper of a few philosophical subtleties, which I was obliged to use in order not to incur the curse of God and the anathema of the wise. The letter kills; the hidden meaning vivifies, that is to say, it opens and teaches a means of preserving and prolonging life by living beyond ordinary bounds. And you must understand me well, for never wise, since the venerable Hermes, has spoken and written of his science as clearly and sincerely as I do in your favor, by a pure movement of charity and pity, which starts from the deep in the bowels of my humanity for my neighbour. My language and my style are unusual and above the sphere of the vulgar. Self-esteem nor the desire to have the approval of half-scholars, insipid, ignorant and incredulous people give me no flattering spur to be known or to show off what I know and that I owe only to divine grace, to whom I render homage and tribute. .

This science will always support itself. The gates of hell will never prevail against gospel truth, nor against that of wisdom; who attacks one attacks the other, for they defend each other mutually and as a body, as being both daughters of the same Father, who holds them in his hand and in his custody and whose rights they uphold and manifest the power and the virtues to his glory. Moreover, my intention is not to attract anyone to my party, if he does not deserve it and is not capable of it,

The labors of Hercules that you have to endure, the difficulties to overcome and the pitfalls to avoid in the journeys of this philosophical sea, covered with shipwrecks, deserve all your attention. This is why, before undertaking and putting your hand to work, let your ideas be well digested and your conduct perfect in mind, as a skilful architect has in his head an immense building, let him have not yet begun to found and raise. From the excavation, whose materials must support seven columns of your building, to the ridge, which must crown the work, remember that you must be vigilant in taking care of the works, for the regular order of their geometry. astronomical; for there enters more spirit than matter.

When by divine illustration, for it is a gift of the Holy Spirit, your meditations have acquired the knowledge of these sublime mysteries, take advantage of the grace of God and, equipped with the instrument of his sapience, work in his fear and in his love, in imitation of the order and the simple work of nature, of which a sage must be the monkey, since all that is done, on the contrary, is never properly done. And remember that disbelief and impatience are enemies of science.
If you do not achieve perfection, how could you command an earthly power, made and constituted to dominate others? For the lower kingdoms and families of nature can do little or nothing over the superior kingdom and family. Thus, it is essential to find the double key of the source of life and of riches altogether, which will open and close all the doors of nature, of which it is the epitome, the thelem, the epitome, and the arch. - buttress. But do not put your whole heart into gold, to the detriment of your soul and your salvation.

This is how the tree of life, according to Philalethes, in the middle of the earthly paradise, will give leaves and fruits for the health of the nations of the earth. For according to Solomon, in his Wisdom I, 7, 13 and 14, God made them all capable of procuring health by the medicine which, from the expression of Ecclesiasticus XXXVIII , 4, he put on earth and which the wise man will not despise for the preservation and prolongation of his days, until the most distant term, assigned by the will of the Most High.

Indeed, by this only means, you will acquire wisdom, more precious than all the goods of the whole world, which are not comparable to it, and a treasure which will make you despise all the vanities of the world, objects of covetousness and passions. of common men. Because you have nothing more desirable on earth and greater happiness than a very long life in perfect health. They are in your power and in your hand by this knowledge, promised and assured by Solomon in his Ecclesiastes VII, 13, in his Proverbs III, 2 and 18; IV, 5, 9 and 10; V, 15; VIII, 35; IX, 11; XII.28; XIII, 14; XIV, 30; XXVIII, 2; and in his Wisdom VIII, 5; X, 9; XIV, 4; XVI, 7, 8, 12 and 13. David his father gives the same testimony, PsalmsXC, 16. His other psalms resound with it, as well as all the prophecies.

When, in the philosophical term, you draw the blood of your pelican, you will have the blessed possession of the only and true salutary, effective and universal medicine and, by its use according to art and prudence, the marvelous power to restore and restore the natural heat debilitated and dissipated or extinguished and to repair the radical humidity exhausted by the course of nature or else by accident; you will drive away obsolete old age and bring back blooming youth; finally, you will regenerate every nature and every temperament, putting them in a perfect state, in vigor and in well-ordered functions.

Admire in this Providence, which was good enough to bestow upon the simple and humble, despised of the world, such a great gift of its all-powerful virtue. For this sovereign remedy for all diseases, preserver of our lives and our health, contains every medicinal property exuberant in perfect salubrity, potency and action, par excellence infinitely superior to all vulgar medicines, which always sin against the temperament by some defect of homogeneity and exaltation, which are found in it perfectly.

It is for this reason that this cabalistic catholicon reintroduces to the body an analogical balm of life, which makes the just homogeneity of the elements of our constitutions, virtualizes and exalts the principles and maintains them in incolumence, in a good regime.

It tempers the qualities so much that there is no one that can predominate over the others; anger becomes without violence and melancholy without malignity. It corroborates all the interior and exterior parts of the body, expels all peccant ill humors, all external leprosy, all central and eccentric corruption, eradicates all bad leaven, venom and poison, radically cures all diseases and infirmities, such as chronic, inveterate and hopeless of help they can be, and that without any violence or disturbance of nature, because it is pleasant, unctuous and balsamic to it and regenerates it entirely.

In every dangerous paroxysm, incurable by all vulgar remedies, this divine medicine works promptly and perfectly on healing and health, if the decree is not pronounced from above. It is an excellent and singular preservative from the malignity of the vapors of the earth and the air, from impurity and rot, from all pestilence, contagion, and corruption; nor will the devil nor his evil spirits have any access to those who have the good fortune to use them.

It is here the triumph of humanity, by the worship, the possession and the vivifying and salutary portion of wisdom. Now, bless the Lord our God and thank him, at every moment of your life, for such a precious talent, that he does you the favor of granting you through my overtures and revelations of his signal goodness.

Consecrate the fruit of your labor to his glory and to the usefulness and relief of your neighbour, of the needy infirm, of the poor of the Christian republic and of all the afflicted of the human race, by good works which will pour upon you the blessing of God, so that on the last day, you will not be found ungrateful for so many benefits, that he gave you by predilection to an infinity of wise men of the earth, to whom he did not give the same grace, and May you not be condemned in the judgment seat of this just sovereign judge, to whom be eternally given glory, honor and praise in heaven and on earth.

It is what I wish, while finishing my Letter and my reflections symbolically with some texts, which will conclude the attestation of the truth, that I write to you for your happiness.

Sapiens exultat in factura ( 6 ). Solomon, Wisdom .

In manu artificum opera laudabuntur ( 7 ). Ecclesiasticus IX, 24.

Execratio autem peccatoribus cultura Dei ( 8 ). Same , I, 32.

Nihil melius est quam loetari hominem in opere suo, ut pergat illuc ubi est vita ( 9 ). Ecclesiastes III, 22 and VI, 8.

Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua et in operibus manuum tuarum exaltabo ( 10 ). Psalms XCI, 5.

Qui operatur terram suam, satiabitur partibus ( 11 ). Proverbs XXVIII, 19.

Quœrit derisor sapientiam et non inveniet; perverso huic ex templo veniet perditio sua et subtilo conteretur nec habebit ultra medicinam ( 12 ). Proverbs VI, 15.

Viro qui corripientem dura cervice contemnit, repentinus ei superveniet interitus et eum sanitas non sequetur ( 13 ). Proverbs XXIX, 1.

Altissimus creavit de terra medicinam et vir prudens non abhorrebit eam (
14
). Ecclesiastic XXXVIII, 4.

PHILOVITA O Uraniscus,
COSMOCOLA, 1751
NOTES

1. “I believe I see goodness in the land of the living. »

2. “Blessed is he who was able to know the causes of things. »

3. “Entrust me with the secret senses. »

4. “Let there be no one to bring out beyond the threshold what has been said between faithful friends. »

5. “Faithful silence also has a sure reward. I will oppose whoever divulged the mystery of the secret Ceres. »

6. “The wise exults in the work. »

7. “In the hands of craftsmen, the works will be praised. »

8. “ The worship of God is an execration for sinners. »

9. “There is nothing better than a man who rejoices in his work, so that he continues to go where the life is. »

10. “For you have gladdened me, O Lord, in your work, and I will exalt in the works of your hands. »

11. “He who works his land will be satisfied with bread. »

12. “The scoffer seeks wisdom and will not find; the pervert will see his ruin coming to him from the temple; suddenly he will be crushed and will have no more medicine. »

13. “The man who, with a stiff neck, despises the one who takes him back will see sudden death come upon him and health will not follow him. »

14. “The Most High created medicine from the earth, and the prudent man will not abhor it. »