PRECEPTS AND INSTRUCTIONS OF FATHER ABRAHAM TO HIS SON CONTAINING TRUE HERMETIC WISDOM
Library of Chemical Philosophers
1741
Translated from the Arabic Omnia mecum. Nosce te ipsum (1).
1. My dear son, as the last fate of the militant life of all men is death, in the hope that their bodies, reduced to rot and ashes, must one day resume a new glorious and immortal life, I want you to renew this idea and convince you of the truth which our great God has transmitted to us through our great legislator, to find on earth the anticipation of this triumphant life. This anticipation is found in wisdom; who loves it loves life.
2. You must therefore put yourself in the way of the Lord, if you want to understand his marvels and draw upon you the dew of his graces, more precious than gold and silver, according to our great prophet king.
3. Lift up therefore your heart to the creator of all things and conceive, by the speech which I make to you, his power, his goodness and his infinite wisdom, which shines in the least of his creatures, but especially in the precious stones and the philosophic metals, which are above the sun and the moon, which, perfect as they are, cannot be spotless, as are our admirable stones and metals, to which God compares his sacred word; which should make them valued infinitely more than all the celestial stars.
4. Having thus initiated you, my dear son, in the healthiest philosophy, which is to know God, his Word and the Holy Spirit, who are but one and the same essence, I want you to adore his goodness in having given to man the brightest lights of his creator in a mysterious art, which he revealed to his true worshipers, who are called magi, that is to say, perfect philosophers of all kinds.
5. But beware of the erroneous opinions of these false rabbis and vain philosophers, according to science and worldly and vulgar elements or principles; which, from a divine science, have made it a diabolical one, condemned everywhere in our sacred books and by the great humanized God, dead and risen, to whom you must be attached until the last moment of your breathing.
6. What I teach you will be clearly intelligible to you, to have faith in all the miracles described by the sages. Learn to revere this profound mystery, of three, one, which must be truer to you than what art and nature will make known to you by experience.
7. You will find, my dear child, thousands of writings by philosophers of all times, of all ages, from different countries. But don't stop at what I tell you. Take advantage of it for the glory of the Most High and the usefulness of your neighbour. I will be as brief as possible, so as not to embarrass your mind. 8. Learn that all bodies are made up of four elements, fire, air, water and earth. They are always mixed in themselves and in the bodies they constitute. According as they dominate more or less in these bodies, their species is different, which goes on ad infinitum.
9. Water is properly the first element, which gives birth to all created bodies to produce or to be produced. Art with nature can help in production; which causes philosophers to produce one that can perfect an imperfect metal into a perfect one. If nature did not make gold, what is called Saturn, art can. It is necessary, for that, to compose a salt which has this quality and this virtue. This salt is made of gold or silver conjoined with Argentine water. It is necessary to draw this primitive and celestial water from the body where it is and which is expressed by seven letters according to us (2), signifying the first seed of all beings and not specified nor determined, in the house of Aries, to engender his son.
10. It is to this water that the philosophers have given so many names, calling it first the divine essence, then the spirit of life, vinegar, oil, fire, sulphur, earth, salt, mercury, quicksilver; it is the universal solvent, the life and health of all flesh.
11. The philosophers say that it is in this water that the sun and the moon bathe and resolve themselves into water, their first origin. It is by this resolution that they are said to die, but their spirits are carried to the waters of that sea, where they were buried.
12. This spirit, like a phoenix reborn from its ashes, clothes itself in a black, white and red body, with the help of the elementary fire, which acts continuously, but by degrees, on this first matter which, wishing to free itself from corruption, reunites at the highest point of the crystalline sphere, whence it is forced to descend by the vapors of the putrefied bodies, which gradually take away its volatility and force it to take shape with them. Philosophers call this sublimation, trituration, ascension, distillation, imbibition, inceration. This dew waters the earth to produce precious fruit in its time.
13. This circulating dew, in the philosophical vessel, demonstrates the pleasant colors of the iris, by the different refractions of the light on the misty clouds, which rise from the earth. The eye and the senses are delighted with admiration of these phenomena.
14. Gold and silver have no seeds, properly speaking. And when these philosophers say that we must extract the seed from their gold and their silver, we must mean nothing other than to reduce them to the same form as the vegetables are reduced, which bear a seed which resolves in the earth into a kind of sticky water, which happens to their sun and moon, sown in our water, which is like their earth and their womb.
15. It is then said that these bodies are rotten and reduced in their first nature, such as they were first in the bosom of the mine where, by homogeneous composition, impregnated with certain salts and sulphurs, they become solid bodies, soft and docile under the hand of man, incapable of being destroyed except by the silvery water, which does not wet and which nature produces in the bosom of the universal mother of vegetables and minerals, from which the artist, however, draws it by the magic steel.
16. Whatever they say, my son, that there are other ways of resolving these bodies into their first matter, stick to the one that I declare to you, as I have known it by experience and as our Elders have transmitted it to us. For I am not at all of the opinion of these so-called enlightened, who want all the sentences of the wise to relate to their chimerical matters, not conceiving that the parable can be explained to infinity, although it has only one true meaning, which contains in secret an inexhaustible treasure.
17. You must therefore conceive that bodies can be destroyed, that is to say changed in form, without ceasing to subsist; and that their parts can join with other bodies, to make them more perfect. Hence it is that an opaque body can become transparent, as you know that glass is made of stone, which is a body through which light cannot be seen, and that a transparent and frangible body can be made solid, resistant to hammer without breaking, and even become ductile, as our ancestors taught us in the example of glass made malleable.
18. It is certain that one cannot deny, according to the reasoning of good physics, that art cannot make a metal more perfect than it has been by nature, so much the better as experience has confirmed for several centuries. But, letting these skilful reasoners err in their feelings, content yourself, my son, with exercising your admiration on what practice will show you. You must be constant, gentle and patient, following nature.
19. When you begin to operate, remember that the heat of the ram's belly gently warms the king and queen in their nuptial bed, where they will sleep peacefully for at least forty days and, sometimes, fifty. At the end of this time, there will come out of their bodies a sulphurous vapor, which will cover the surface of the earth. This sulphur, thickening day by day, will form a cloud which is nothing other than the resolution of the royal bodies in their first being. The spirit of the earth, seeing itself offended by it and wanting to triumph over the defeat of those who had begotten it in the bosom of Cibel, will rise to the vaults of the palace, which it will traverse until it is itself forced to descend on the precious ashes of the destroyed bodies which, by the pungent vapors which they exhale,
20. He will try several times to get up, but finally he will be forced to expire with them. They will become nothing more than a putrid, blackish and fetid substance. It is there that the Ancients gave subject to exercise the subtlety of curious minds, which cannot understand the meaning of their enigmatic allusions. What makes them err is lack of application to the knowledge of the rich nature.
21. Our Magi call our water dragon, lion, toad, serpent, python; and they say that it is the venom it carries that kills the king and then the dead body, similar to Apollo, kills the serpent python with its arrows. They call this putrefaction of the three bodies the crow's head.
22. Here then is the color black, through which the stone must pass, and this happens at the beginning of the fourth sign. Allow the heat to act which, having reduced the whole compound to ashes, will calcine it little by little. Continue the fire, adding a third thread to your wick, until everything becomes white, which will be at the end of three other signs, and this material will erase the snow by its brilliance. You can then use it to make all bodies of metals similar to silver.
23. So, if you want to reach red, which will arrive at the end of three other signs, you must increase a fourth thread to acquire the celestial ruby. Observe that these threads of increase are those of the temperature of continued cooking, which acquires strength and degrees by daily and future addition to those of the past. So it is with the seasons and four times of the year. But, above all, remember to share patience.
24. When you possess this crimson stone, you will be able by it, if you are prudent, to prolong and preserve your days in perfect health, even to transmute all these vile metals into very pure gold; finally, you will have in your hand the keys of nature, its richest and most virtuous treasures. By means of them, you will be able to untie everything and open, bind everything and close.
25. If your white or red salt is not fusible, add your essence to it and let the whole be soft like the first mass, passing it through all the degrees of heat, as you did in the preceding operation; and repeat until your salt has become like wax. Praise God in your heart, praying earnestly to give you the light you need to use it prudently.
26. My son, understanding this little summary, you will easily be able to reconcile the philosophers who, indeed, have possessed the same wisdom. There is only one truth, but its clothes are diverse. If one presents it to us pompously adorned with fine gems and the purest gold, the other, just as truthful, covers it with mire and rotten manure; a third exclaims: O happy scholars! Of which divine science finds in the invisible an indivisible point, which alone can compose the miracle of art.
27. These three, of course, tear the veil from you and reveal to you in plain sight the loving truth. It will be up to you to follow its precepts and by it, easily, you will develop the hieroglyphics and all the fictions. You will see, not without astonishment, this agitated red sea turning back, making your way to the promised land. You will contemplate its serpents which, engulfing themselves, will destroy themselves before your frightened gaze; and Mercury, watering this pregnant arena, will cause them to reproduce to adorn his rod with which, striking the lettuce that covers his head, everything will merge in the first earth.
28. In the philosophical egg, you can discover these two ancient dragons of the race of the gods. The secret fire will be manifested in your eyes and the icy sea will suddenly appear to you. The golden branch will be in your power. Lilies and roses you will pick with your hands. Of the fruit of the quiet Hesperides possessor, you will be able to share the happiness of the gods and drink from their cup, with long lines, their nectar or their ambrosia.
29. See, without astonishment, this horrible dragon which has no other food than that of itself, this phoenix reborn from its ashes and this charitable pelican towards its young. In the same picture will be represented to you the famous mountains of Vulcan, as well as the various works of the Cyclopes. You will also see the powerless Titans defeated by Apollo, the light-bearing son of the sun.
30. Penetrating the dark chaos, which formed the universe, see from a terrible deluge the submerged earth reborn in a short time lucid and purified. The truth always overcame the lie. Remember that it is naked and one and that it can only appear to the gaze of the wise, because the vulgar are blind to it.
31. Reflect on the story of Jason and that of Cadmus. Consider Aeneas in the underworld, the beautiful Ganymede transported to heaven. See the rough sea. From the father of our gods who, with boiling foam, gives birth to the goddess Venus before your eyes, mother of loves in his wake.
32. Ha! Remember, dear child, our sacred letters. Penetrate the meaning, you will find life. Yes, you will be able to explain to yourself, with unspeakable satisfaction, the ravishing pictures of human genius. Take your pencil in hand, to form a point; he alone can instruct you, since he contains everything.
33. Ecstatic with supernatural admiration, consider this point, conceive its center, see its circumference, judge of the extent, which joins one with the other. Happy, my son, if the Father of lights, by a ray of his divine spirit and a radiant fire of intelligence embracing your heart, reveals to you in secret the multiplication of this point by its center.
34. This inseparable triune, who procreated everything, eternal foundation, is discovered in you, image of your God. Meditate on his works and, following nature, see his beginning, his progress and his end. There thrilled with admiration, adore the Almighty.
35. Review in your memory this simple operation that you did before my eyes, picking a plant furnished with its roots as well as its seed, which you putrefied to extract a volatile salt. Then, consuming the rest by the ardor of the flames, you were left with a precious ash, which returned to you a fixed crystalline salt. By some means uniting the two, they became one, which you played with Vulcan. And withdrawing this flaming salt, you live, O astonishing prodigy! That the weight of a grain of millet, in the sown earth, reproduced for you a great number of plants, surpassing by far, in beauty, the first destroyed. Did not this palingenesis prove to you the resurrection of plants?
36. You admired with me, in the game of nature, the indestructible germ to each creature. Seeing the miracle of vegetation, you understood that it could consequently happen in the other two kingdoms and you also understood the mystery of the universal resurrection. Suddenly you exclaimed: Ha! if the vile creature performs this wonder, could our faith deny the supreme creator the power and sovereign virtue to regenerate us into more perfect bodies, to enjoy eternal life forever, we, I say, soul of his soul, spirit of his spirit, whom his paternal love has created his privileged children, the most powerful and virtuous in his image and likeness?
37. Be convinced then that the salt of all individuals contains within it this true germ, clean and living, which can regenerate and multiply ad infinitum. This salt is the box which contains the balm of sulfur and the mercurial liquor, which we call Phison or river of living waters, circulating in all the earth of life, where the gold of nature is born; and from the expression of our learned legislator, the gold of this earth is very good, true, perfect and exquisite. Brimstone is a more powerful fire than elemental fire, so the form it holds cannot be destroyed by it; mercury is the good companion that provides all that is needed for multiplication.
38. Yes, this open door presents you with a happy passage to arrive at the sanctuary of nature, closed by three different keys. The first is of iron, the second of very pure silver and the third is of dazzling gold. But, above all, remember to join each key to its own lock, so that you can find the universal key to the wonders of the world.
39. If the divine spirit procures entrance into it, bending the knee, adore the immortal and almighty Eternal. Receive, from the hands of wisdom, this sacred bulb, which recalls the dead from the depths of their tombs and whose crimson oil strikes down the demon to the depths of hell and confounds, in a moment, the blind ignorance which perishes humans.
40. Dear child, remember the lessons of your father. Be sober and temperate in the midst of riches, relieving your needy brothers of this spirit of life. Realize that little is needed to preserve bodies and that they have living souls only through it. By giving you the knowledge of this truth, I obey the command that the Lord God gives us through the mouth of his prophet Isaiah 38, 19 Unicuique Deus manda vit de proximo suo (3).
NOTES
1. “Everything with me. Know thyself. »
2. Note: in Greek, it is expressed by seven letters, in Latin, by five, which are specific to his appointment and his quality.
3. “To each God has commanded concerning his neighbour. »