THE ALCHEMICAL INITIATION
THIRTEEN UNPUBLISHED LETTERS
ON THE
PRACTICE OF THE GREAT WORK

BY ALBERT POISSON
WITH
PREFACE BY D' YARC HAYEN
AND A PORTRAIT OF ALBERT POISSON

ALBERT POISSON

The memory of our friend Fish is still so alive among us, it seems so probable that tomorrow we will see him arrive with his calm step, wrapped in his blue cape, so obvious that a good, serious, instructive talk will bring us together tomorrow again, that we experience a sort of astonishment at writing his biography, at publishing letters from him, at persuading ourselves that he is no more, that we must speak of him in the past tense. Moreover, our absolute conviction is that his spirit, living in those who loved him, remains present and active in all the manifestations of high science in which his personality would have been affirmed if he had lived longer.

His death was devastating: on Saturday evening, he was still working, searching the old manuscripts of the Nationale; Sunday won. But this brutality of death was only apparent: if he was standing at his workstation the day before, it was thanks to his admirable energy. From week to week, for the past year, the illness that was burning him became more intense and each day the road was more painful for him to drag himself from the rue Saint-Denis to the Arsenal or to the Nationale. He arrived feverish, voiceless, suffocating, shaken by incessant coughing fits; but his will kept him at the work table, without weakness, all the time he had decreed to remain there.

These are higher teachings of wisdom than even the most beautiful pages of his books: for the book is nothing and the act is everything. At the age of twelve, Poisson sacrificed his savings to buy old alchemy books; at eighteen he sacrificed an easy career where he would not have lacked protection, to the pursuit of stone, to the difficult and discouraged life of the hunter of the impossible; At twenty-four he sacrificed the last breaths of his life to perfect the work undertaken and already so largely outlined, to set the example of self-sacrifice. Those who do not recognize his titles, grades and Rosicrucian signature have not yet read the great book of initiations.

It would be useless, even tedious for most, to give here a detailed biography of Albert Poisson: whether he lived in 1880 in Toulouse or in Paris, whether he entered college in May or December, that matters. little. What will be more striking to those who are interested in the life of our brother will be to know that at thirteen he was already keeping vigil near his lit athanor and running the quays on Sundays in search of old alchemy books - easier to discover then than today - that his few school pennies were spent on purchases of retorts, vitriol and coal, and that he was already starting with a few friends, more curious than serious, hermetic societies where under his control and under his energetic autocracy there was more work perhaps than in many other societies founded by those older and more titled than he was then. Later, at the age when one seeks entertainment, the easy life of cafés and clubs, Poisson spent his days in the chemistry laboratory of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, his evenings in libraries or among his brothers ( i), his nights, for the most part, near his stove, lit, at the cost of the greatest difficulty in his old room on rue Saint-Denis.

In the summer, he gradually set up a laboratory in the south of which several photographs have been preserved and which promised to be, if time had permitted, the unique place of his work at the same time as a model of the alchemical laboratory-oratory. It is from this period that his first works date. He first published the Letter on the Prodigies of Nature and Art, by Roger Bacon, then the Five Treatises on Alchemy, the Theories and Symbols of the Alchemists, and finally, Nicolas Flamel and Alchemy. in the 14th century, the translation of the Book of Fires by Marcus Groecus, serious studies, in which not a word is taken lightly and which, all of which, reveal the enormous amount of chemical, historical and hermetic knowledge that Poisson, from his youth , had known how to acquire. From the fact that one of his works was crowned by the Academy and presented by Professor Gautier to this illustrious society, I do not want to conclude that he was better than anyone else; but this homage paid by the alchemist to official science by submitting his work to it is the mark of a spirit where pride had not penetrated and which respected truth and science wherever they manifest themselves.

The dominant idea of ​​these works, what emerges for any attentive reader, is that the grimoires deemed fanciful and mystificatory of the ancient alchemists are serious, understandable books, and whose language, although mysterious, is not. less very precise in the same way as the hexagons of Kekule and the chemical equations which an ignorant person could laugh at as incomprehensible mystifications;

2° That in these symbols deciphered and translated - hieroglyphs of a more modern time - into the scientific language of the day, true notions on matter, on its life, on its evolution, unexpected lights on the harmony of the spheres of above with the atoms below, a universal scientific philosophy appears, all notions which science had abandoned, which it ignores, and which must nevertheless serve as a basis for its progress, for a new surge of discoveries.

This courageous clearing of lands deemed impenetrable, arid, and even somewhat haunted by demons formidable to the human brain, was the work of Albert Poisson, and before his work all chemists, all occultists bowed; no one contradicted his work, so much strength and truth were felt in it,

He wanted to add many more pages to these first works: he had drawn up the plan of an alchemical encyclopedia, history, practice, theory and bibliography. But death awaited him: he went, full of health, to do a year of military service at Sens, where the sterile overwork of the barracks left him, typhoid, in a hospital bed. He got up only to fall again, his lungs damaged. Without hope of recovery, knowing it, he took his fate wisely, and did not stop in his work without respite until the day before his death. We have published some letters addressed to MR.. by Albert Poisson and which appear in his notes among his alchemical correspondence with different hermeticists from France or abroad. These letters will be valuable to beginners, they contain a lot of practical information and point out many pitfalls to avoid. We hope to be able to continue this publication and thus give to the public, little by little, and without retouching, the last manuscripts that Albert Poisson left unfinished when he left us. May these pages raise up disciples, additional friends, and, Heaven willing, a successor.

Dr. MARC HAVEN.

NOTE
(1) Albert Poisson gave the support of his presence, his work, his enlightenment, to all the initiatory societies, to all the study groups where occultism, psychic sciences, symbolism and especially hermeticism were welcomed, studied or taught, without distinction of school or sect, hoping to find there, if not the light, that each man finds only in himself, at least friends and brothers. Perhaps he also wanted to sow the good seed in all these circles and then harvest followers for his Hermetic Society in which he had a lot of confidence. In any case, Albert Poisson, unlike so many others, has always shown himself to be very respectful of all initiatory centers, Martinism, Rosicrucianism, even Freemasonry - and very faithful to each of them.

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THE ALCHEMICAL INITIATION

UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE

OF Albert Poisson to F::: RBT of St-Dizier, alchemist

Sens, April 4, 1892.

MY DEAR SIR,

My friend and master Papus communicates to me your last letter and asks me to to enter into correspondence with you, I eagerly seized the opportunity; alchemists are rare today; we can count them as courageous researchers who, in the face of modern science, study old alchemy at the risk of being considered enlightened.

Let me first introduce myself to you. Albert Poisson, medical student, chemist, who, under the name of Philophote, writes in the Initiation and deals with alchemy. This is what charmed me in your letter, it is that you have perfectly seen which side we must look for for the Great Work, this is the side that the followers have most sought to conceal in their works; I therefore placed very little emphasis on this point in my work Theories and Symbols.

The material, in short, can vary and not all alchemists worked on the same thing; but what does not vary is the force with which we implement the matter. Those who spoke about it said very little about it, and even then they covered this little with allegories, with symbols; most say nothing of it, and let the blowers get entangled in the degrees of lamp fire, solar fire, horse manure, etc.

This force that Paracelsus calls archaeus, the cabalists call it, with Eliphas Lévy, astral fire, great serpent. It can be removed from the astral atmosphere where vital germs, missed embryos, larvae, lemurs, elementals roam.

Here is a passage taken from the introduction to the philosophy of the ancients which entirely approves what I have just put forward.

It is in the air that the vital spirits of animals are formed, which are formed from its purest substance, closest to light.

For light, which is the general motor of all things, comes to communicate its moving virtue to that which comes closest to it, which is the purest air, this air carries its favorable qualities, as from the center to the circumference by different degrees to plants, animals and minerals produced and to be produced.

This is why many alchemists worked on silk, hoping to find condensed astral in it, and they were not wrong; but, as you know, the best that can be collected is that of March 21, the beginning of the Hermetic year.

Now, as far as projecting one's astral light is concerned, one can only achieve this through training and long work. I will teach them to you if you wish, I have started myself, but it is very long, and I will hardly be able, true Athanor, to be ready for next March 21.

I hope that we will enter into regular correspondence, we are so few alchemists that we must stand together and march in tight battalions towards the light.

Dear colleague in Hermès, I cordially shake your hand.

A. POISSON S:;: 1:;:

Sens, April 22, 1892.

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DEAR SIR AND BROTHER,

Your letter gave me great pleasure, I place myself entirely at your disposal for any information you may need and that it would be in my power to give you. Alchemy is the branch of the occult sciences that I have chosen to confine myself to. I know a lot about the subject, but I still have how many more things to study! Until further notice, it seems to me that you could completely abandon your studies or readings on spiritualism, magic and Kabbalah, but you could profitably continue your work on animal magnetism and carry it out in parallel with your hermetic studies.

You ask for the path that leads to the work, I am not a fan of speaking with the authority of a teacher, and for the rest I would be, that I would not speak, I am simply a lover of the Truth, like you I seek science for it. even, I am simply an alchemist, and not an adept. Also I will speak to you as a brother and never as a teacher; by uniting what we each know on our own, we will succeed more easily.

I don't know if you have in your hands my work Theories and Symbols of the Alchemists (on sale at the Merveilleux bookstore), but you will notice that, in the part which deals with the Great Work, I have only provided the material part, only vaguely indicating the spiritual part without which nothing can be done. Well ! this secret esoteric part, if you want, we will study it together.

Whatever material we choose for the work, we must animate this material. That's what I know. Now, does matter retain this life or does it have to undergo special preparation? That's what I don't know. But how can you project your astral fluid? That's the question. Some people have the unconscious faculty of projecting it and thus producing more or less bizarre phenomena; these are mediums. But generally this faculty does not exist in ordinary mortals; However, it can be acquired little by little through training; the fakirs in India, the marabouts in the Muslim East achieve this through prayer and fasting.

The method I suggest is longer: it consists first of all in developing the will; to do this, eliminate useless habits that make you their slave, for example: tobacco, the use of alcohol outside of meals. Do you have any faults, fight until you have obtained victory: in a word, I ask you to fight against yourself at all times; your soul, your will, must be able to completely dominate your body, to make it a docile instrument. In a future letter, if you are interested, we will continue this interview. manages to completely dominate your body, making it a docile instrument. In a future letter, if you are interested, we will continue this interview. manages to completely dominate your body, making it a docile instrument.

In a future letter, if you are interested, we will continue this interview.

Dear brother, I shake your hand while waiting for your next letter.

A. POISSON S:;: l

Sens, May 11, 1892.

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MY DEAR SIR,

I have been waiting for your letter for several days; not receiving a response, I was worried when last Sunday Papus, whom I saw in Paris, explained to me. why didn't you answer me? So I waited. Your last letter gave me great pleasure, I see that apart from a few points of detail you are carrying out excellent, very orthodox studies, which will certainly lead you to a result.

Magnetism will indeed help you get used to the manipulation of fluids, and when you are a good magnetizer, you will then strengthen yourself in ceremonial magic.

It is then that, knowing how to recognize, condense, direct the vital fluids of man (astral fluid), the still little-known fluids which circulate in the atmosphere which surrounds us, it is then that you will possess the secret of the philosophers , it is then that you will be able to prepare the !~ and the A of the philosophers, who are not dead, and who contain life within them. But, before coming there, what disappointments, what disappointed experiences! You will have, my brother, to fight against life, against your parents, against the inertia of matter, against yourself, and also against the invisible peoples of the Astral who seek to defend their secret treasures against the adepts. May the love of holy Science support you, think of the great examples left to you by N. Flamel, Lulle, Philalethes, finally remember that you are not alone and that there are still sons of Hermes in the world who suffer the same pains as you and you can count me in this number. Only one thing is favorable to me, a very great facility for the study of these sciences.

What you tell me about your sung prayers is very good, you must get used to composing your prayers yourself, if necessary to improvise them, to mix them with quarter-hour meditations, on a mystical text or cabalistic at your choice. Prayer is essential to the alchemist; let us not forget that one of the favorite mottos of the followers of the Middle Ages was this:

“Read, read, read and reread, work, pray, and you will find. »

In prayer, we must isolate ourselves as much as possible from the outside world, if necessary cover our ears and close our eyes. We go completely into ourselves. I would also advise you to turn towards the East in prayer. Through prayer, magical work and reading philosophers you will arrive; by magical work I mean the study of magnetism in the sense indicated at the beginning of this letter. Beware of magical evocations, they are always dangerous and the beings evoked are generally deceptive. You tell me about my work: Theories and Symbols, you have noticed that there is a big gap, I preferred to remain silent than to fully expose hermeticism, I say enough to keenly interest the curious and attract him, not enough to put him immediately on the path.

While waiting for your response, dear brother, I cordially shake your hand.

A. Poisson

Sens, May 22, 1892.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

I asked you what volumes you owned in order to know the authors who guided you. The Treatise on Hermetic Chemistry is excellent and it is one of the rarest, but it is not enough, all followers advise reading as many authors as possible, because what one hides, the other reveals, and by completing one with the other we can arrive at the truth. I would therefore strongly advise you to first obtain Figuier's book, Alchemy and the Alchemists.

From a hermetic point of view, the author is useless, but his book will be useful to you for the quotations it contains and for the history of famous transmutations which will interest you very much. I also recommend 1° Collesson, Perfect Idea of ​​Hermetic Philosophy; 20 Jean de la Fontaine, the Fountain of science lovers; 3° Pernety or Mythohermetic Dictionary; 4° the Alchemy Text and the Green Dream.

Don't learn Hebrew, it's useless, limit yourself for the moment to alchemy and magnetism and also to prayer practiced magically. Remember this magnificent alchemical motto:

“Read, read and reread, work, pray and you will find.” »

I cannot at the moment try to project my astral to you, it would be dangerous. I don't know if you are aware of this, but I am currently doing my year of military service, and doing such an experience in a barracks, in a room of twenty-four men, would be too dangerous for me. When my service is over, I will go see you one day in Saint-Dizier, in November or December, unless you come to Paris at that time. Your idea of ​​magnetizing your apprentice and making him a subject is excellent; but spare yourself for the moment, keep your fluid and do not disperse it unnecessarily. The characters you give me at the end of your letter have a lot of resemblance to the magical characters found in grimoires and clavicles,

Farewell, dear brother, I shake your hand.

ALBERT POISSON

Sens, June 17, 1892.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

I have the pleasure of informing you that I will have a little more time available; having been placed with the major for the health service, I will be able to study my medicine, also the dear alchemy, to which I could previously only devote short periods of time.

Remember what follows: it is a glimmer that I saw and which I hasten to pass on to you, hoping that it will be useful to you. You know that one of the occult bases is the ternary. Now, there is material, the astral, the divine; the material world corresponds to matter, the astral world to movement, the divine world to force. Each world in turn presents a ternary division: SULFUR, SALT, MERCURY for the material world; in the astral world, we will have: movements, forms and elementals; in the divine world or forces, material forces, psychic forces and finally the divine tetragram rtlïh. We can arrange these nine terms according to a spiral which will paint for us another law, evolution; we will see the scale of beings from the lowest term solid matter SULFUR to the highest term…(Hebrew letters).

Material World	Sulfur	Salt	Mercury	World of atoms
Astral World	Movement	Forms	Elementary	World of forms
Divine World	Material forces	Psychic forces	Hebrew letters	World of principles

It follows that everything that exists in one of the worlds has its analogue in the immediately higher world. To complete the work, therefore, take a triple material and one duly prepared; I give you all this for what it is worth, as a first inspiration which is likely to be perfected. Take from it what you can, give me your opinion. Speaking of psychic visits, I tried this experience once, and I managed to see people going to bed for a few moments, but this is a tiring and dangerous experience, one should not believe that knowledge of Hebrew and Kabbalah will be enough to give you the key to the sanctuary; many followers did not possess it and they were nonetheless in possession of the divine stone. The works of the Philaletus and Flamel alone, if well thought out, would be enough to put us on the path. Be wary of the ideas that come to you, only accept them after having sifted them, they are often suggested by evil entities from the astral, jealous of seeing men perfect themselves and reach the divine world. A voucher. condom is prayer. Remember the magnificent epigraph of the silent book: Read, read and reread, pray and work, you will find.

Dear Brother, all yours in Hermes.

A. POISSON

Sens, July 11.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

You must accuse me of forgetting, it has been almost a month since you wrote to me and I have not yet responded to you. My new condition kept me very busy and I had a lot of work to do for various publishers, so I had very little time. If you wish, we will write regularly to you from the 25th to the 30th of each month, and to me from the 10th to the 15th. It goes without saying that in extraordinary circumstances there could be more of them; but in the meantime we will each regularly write a letter per month, we will make it as extensive as we please. Regarding your ternary that you sent me in your last letter,

You see that it makes some difference. You ask me for the explanation of arcana intelligent forces ascend to heaven and again descend. Read the first act of Goethe's Faust, where with the help of his collarbone he sees the astral forces circulating between the stars, some come from the sun, pass over the earth and go to the moon, from where they will pass into the sun; others follow the path in the opposite direction. If we pass to the alchemical explanation, we see that the man who ascends is mercury and the one who descends is sulfur; at the top the salt, point of balance, is represented by a sphinx. In the Tarot of Oswald Wirth there is an error, the Sphinx is marked "SULFUR", and the Devil "SALT" or , it is a mistake, we have the inseparable trinity of the fixed "SULFUR" and the volatile  balanced in “SALT”.

Now, who is coming up here? The dog man, therefore it is . Who is coming down? The Devil, therefore, is “SULFUR”. Who is in balance? The Sphinx, therefore it is “SALT”. The wheel has another meaning than just now, it relates to these mysterious turns of wheels about which the alchemists were all silent. Now to you, my brother, I will say it. A turn of the wheel includes two operations, (arrow down) and (arrow up) that's all, and this being said in general; you therefore see the general principles designated in this arcana. The operations, the fire at the bottom of the serpent wheel is the hermaphrodite matter of the stone, the green dragon and the red lion. You ask me what the centripetal force is, it is the air we breathe; the oxygen in the air attaches to the blood globules: this is what nourishes our astral and constantly repairs it. Centrifugal force is, as you say, this glow that Colonel de Rochas sees coming from the ends of his subjects' fingers. So stick to pure cabalism, orthodox magic, the alchemy of the adepts.

Why let your imagination wander? He. It is quite certain that you have constructed theories for yourself, which only you understand. You deny talking about sonic fluid, magnetic phosphorescent fluid, metallo-ferruginous fluid. What do you mean ? Me, I have never found these terms in any treatise on alchemy or magic, not even in Eliphas. O my brother, study the treatise of Papus, study my poor book: Theories and Symbols, reread constantly and, when you know them almost by heart, then seek for yourself to construct theories, but now be careful. O my dear brother, would it be too much to ask you to send me your photograph so that I can see you near me?

All yours,

A. POISSON.

December 26.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

Your letter gave me great pleasure, you have finally oriented yourself, you now see the three ways, whereas before you only knew one. I am happy to have been able to direct you in this direction, now it remains for you to choose your path, the material one which results in the transmutation of metals, the spiritual one which gives the elixir of long life and the magical power, the divine which leads through ecstasy to direct contemplation of the Most High. Choose a branch, and be convinced that, when you have studied one of them more deeply, the other two will be known to you thanks to the analogy. Know, O my brother, that there are two main species of fire, the spiritual fire which is life, the pneuma, the astral breath, and the ordinary fire which burns. Matter must be above all else, before having to undergo the attacks of ordinary fire, matter, I say, must be animated by archaea.

And then the matter is vivified, only then can it be enclosed in a mattress and heated over an ordinary fire but very lightly to begin with. I could hardly go see you now, the doctor recommended the greatest precautions until spring; so here is my journey back. For the hermetic society I think about it constantly, in the spring it will see the light of day. I am currently doing a study on alchemy in the 19th century; do you want your bio to be there, either under your real name or under a pseudonym. If so, I would ask you to send me the date and place of your birth, then how you got involved in alchemy and in what year, with the incidental details that you deem appropriate to give. Remember that the collective sympathies of readers towards you will repel the hatreds that pursue you and will be like a fluidic shield for you.

Farewell, dear brother, I give you a friendly shake on the right while impatiently awaiting your response.

A. POISSON

January 27, 1883.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

Aristaeus gives, it is true, a method different from Liber mutus for collecting the astral, but basically the result is the same. Note that, if he reveals what few alchemists talk about, because it is a great secret, on the other hand he says nothing about  and  which must be worked, then mixed. This is because no alchemist has ever completely revealed the preparation of matter, and that he, Aristaeus, having spoken of a very important point, dispensed with describing the preparation of  and  on which all other followers have expanded sufficiently. So the alchemical truth remains one. Here now is the very exact summary of the beginning of the unveiled Hermes which is not found in Papus. Cyliani walks at the foot of a tree and there he has a dream. A nymph of celestial essence appears to him, the nymph leads him to a temple where the matter is found. But the door is guarded by a dragon that must be killed to enter.

The nymph gives him a spear which he must burn in the fire to kill the monster. Cyliani makes the spear redden, he dissolves the lock of the temple with a liquid provided to him by the nymph, he opens the doors and sees himself facing the dragon which he lays dead with a blow from his incandescent spear. He takes two crystal vases from the temple, one topped with a golden crown with four florets and labeled:

Cyliani makes the spear redden, he dissolves the lock of the temple with a liquid provided to him by the nymph, he opens the doors and sees himself facing the dragon which he lays dead with a blow from his incandescent spear. He takes two crystal vases from the temple, one topped with a golden crown with four florets and labeled: Cyliani makes the spear redden, he dissolves the lock of the temple with a liquid provided to him by the nymph, he opens the doors and sees himself facing the dragon which he lays dead with a blow from his incandescent spear. He takes two crystal vases from the temple, one topped with a golden crown with four florets and labeled:

“Material containing both materials or metallic natures. » The other vase, crowned with a silver crown of nine stars, bears a label: Astral Spirit. After this operation, Cyliani experiences great fatigue, he is close to fainting. His nymph reappears to him, and, having comforted him, she disappears; here the dream ends and the chapters reported by Papus begin. You see, my brother, how much the alchemists agree, what I have revealed to you in no way invalidates what Aristaeus says, and Cyliani corroborates everything.

The teaching is the same, similar to the method from Hermes to the present day. The adept only reveals part of the work and will never speak of it as a whole. Sometimes he only dwells on operations, sometimes on colors, and if he talks about preparation, he says little about the rest. It is thanks to this method that the secret was able to be transmitted from generation to generation, reserved only for the Hermetic philosopher. Meditate well friend, he was an adept, at least he says so himself, but above all re-read the first volume of Greek and Egyptian fables, the light begins to shine in your mind. The more you advance from now on, the more you will benefit now that you are on the path, and you will see that I am not wrong and that I only affirm what I am sure of, after having, on this subject, meditated on the multitude of hermetic works. However, O my brother, read and reread constantly, pray and do not. only begin material work when, confident in yourself, you are certain of obtaining a convincing result, however slight it may be. Once you grab one end of the breadcrumbs, you will head through the maze into full light. This is what I wish for you, my brother, because you are worthy of success and becoming a follower. you will make your way through the maze into full light. This is what I wish for you, my brother, because you are worthy of success and becoming a follower. you will make your way through the maze into full light. This is what I wish for you, my brother, because you are worthy of success and becoming a follower.

While waiting for the pleasure of reading you, I affectionately shake your hand. Last letter disabused me, I hasten to repair my error.

For my letters, there is no hurry; You will bring them back to me when you come to Paris and, on your next trip, I will return them to you. You can magnetize bare matter, it will keep the fluid, in the same way the magnet keeps its magnetism, the whale keeps electricity indefinitely once it is charged; your matter will retain in a latent state the force with which you imbue it, it begins to manifest under the action of fire; look, my brother, I cannot compare matter better than to an egg. What do you have in an egg? Matter and force. The material matters little to us here; but strength is life; the egg is vivified matter; if you want the life it contains in a latent state to manifest, it is necessary to apply a new force to it; this secondary force is fire, heat, whether produced by the hen or by the artificial incubator, it does not matter; the important thing is not to exceed a certain level above which we have hatched eggs and above boiled eggs, what we need is to have chicks.

Note that the egg cannot be broken during incubation, otherwise goodbye chicks, finally the chick once born will be the seed of a multitude of beings of its species. O my brother, what a parable full of teaching! The occult sciences are like a sanctuary, no one enters unless he has the key; this key is analogy, apply yourself in the meantime to using this method and you will find wonderful things.

My dear brother, our Soc::: Herm::: will finally exist. On March 21, this manifesto will be launched in the Veil of Isis and I will await support. So I won't be able to go see you this month. But don't let that stop us from working. Collect the subject, rather collect more, what will not be of use to you, you will keep. Be careful when closing your mattress and when heating it; what I fear is your inexperience with chemical manipulations, take as many precautions as possible, in chemistry as in alchemy we fight with brutal forces, we must continually be on the defensive, a moment of forgetting, the force revenge on man, one explosion, and it's over. Take care, my brother, be careful, I am finishing Nicolas Flamel's story: you will see in this volume (which I will offer you) the conduct of the true adept. Flamel must be a model for us all.

Today is Mid-Lent, what a fool man is! I will not go out today, this stupid orgy of crude joy gives me repulsion, on holidays I am sad and I take refuge in the arms of alchemy, the divine mother. All yours, my dear. brother.

I shake your hand.

AP

Sunday, May 8, 1893.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

I was worried about not receiving any news from you and I was going to write to you today, fortunately I received your letter this morning which reassured me. I told you, it seems to me, in my last letter, that ultimately the material material of the stone does not matter, it is however preferable to take a metallic material; what matters most is the force with which we charge the matter. Likewise, the shape or material of an electrical device does not matter: in itself, it is inert, what gives it life, movement, what allows it to act, is electricity. The archaeus of Paracelsus could not directly transmute a molten metal, because such a body is in a static state, that is to say of perfect balance, in the same way the soul can act directly on the body. But let's take a rather metallic body, open it, torture it, so as to dissociate its molecules, to break its balance, then saturate this body with archaea, we will then have the stone, that is to say a means to act on metals; here the soul is united with the spirit and through the latter it can act on the body.

I think my comparison is pretty clear, so that's why the material of the stone may differ. This is why the stone obtained by one adept only transmuted its weight, while that prepared by another transmuted ten, a hundred or a thousand parts. Likewise, the physical and chemical effects that you will obtain with the same bottle of Leyden will differ depending on the quantity of electricity that has been condensed in the device.

For your tests, remember this rule: as long as the colors appear in order, continue; but, if you notice any disturbance, for example if red appears immediately after black, then abandon your experiment and start another, in this way you will save yourself time and expense.

Finally, the essential control is the appearance of the colors, don't worry about the rest, the chemical operations that take place inside the egg differ slightly depending on the material used; what is immutable is the succession of colors.

My dear brother, it would have been a pleasure to see you before leaving, but that is not a sufficient reason to disturb you, especially since you are working on the work at the moment.

I will continue to actively correspond with you. Write to me before the end of this month, because I will be leaving in the first days of June, I will give you my new address.

My brother, I shake your hand.

AP

La Bastide, July 3, 1893.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

I went so long without writing to you because of my travel, purchases, visits to friends, travel, installation, etc., in short, I am now at peace. Here are the responses to your last letter. To obtain tin chloride, the tin must be heated in hydrochloric acid or spirit of salt. The best is to wash the tin well first with water, then with alcohol; then we put it in the acid and heat it. When everything is dissolved, evaporate to dryness to crystallize.

Mercury nitrogenate is soluble in water.

The material of GO comes from  and  and the material of PO comes from  and . But note that this matter is dead, if you prepare it by ordinary means; it must be opened, its molecules removed, by means of acids; moreover, it must, above all, be revitalized. Condensing a force on a prepared material, that's the whole secret.

Solve, Coagula

Solve: That is to say dissolves, opens, tortures, breaks the matter, destroys the resistance that it could oppose to external forces.

Coagula: That is to say, bring together, gather, then condense on the prepared material the forces which you have succeeded in seizing.

This is the key to the work. This is simple to understand but very difficult to achieve! It takes patience, it takes perseverance. Farewell, dear brother, I shake your hand.

A. POISSON

La Bastide, July 19, 1893.

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MY DEAR BROTHER,

You do well to read the Cosmopolite, he is a good author, although he is quite obscure and can be misled; the preface to the Greek and Egyptian fables is very good. You have there in 214 pages everything you could want on the main points that concern us, and it has the advantage of being methodical, which is enormous especially for you who have a tendency to mix everything up, a tendency which is necessary be wary, because it wastes a lot of time.

A telegraph device is a very ingenious machine, but it is dead, and it requires the passage of a force, of electricity, to animate it. It is the same with our matter. If you don't animate it, there's no point in closing the matras and lighting the lamp, you won't do anything good. You will find that matter is animate because its properties will be different from non-animate matter. As for the alchemist from Bordeaux, who asks for money to help you with his advice, he is either a charlatan or an imbecile, and you could have replied to him: “If your information is valuable, 50 francs, it it's given, the price is ridiculous, you might as well inform the brothers for nothing; if your information is nothing special, it's too expensive. »

In any case, anyone asking for money for information of this kind should be discredited. A follower would rather refuse to answer, but he would not beg.

While waiting for a response, dear brother, I shake your hand.

A. POISSON

La Bastide, August 10, 1883.

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DEAR. BROTHER,

i ° The matter of the Big O; is Now these metals must be worked or opened, that is to say, their molecules must be separated from each other, their cohesive force must be overcome, annihilated in order to allow the forces that the alchemist will apply. Now there are two methods: t ° salts; 2° amalgams. For salts, it is better to prepare chlorides, because nitrates are dangerous in inexperienced hands, they can explode; You prepare gold chloride by dissolving the metal in a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It is then evaporated to the consistency of butter; the ready-made chloride costs 2 francs per gram. 2° You prepare silver chloride by dissolving the metal in nitric acid. When everything is dissolved, you evaporate to dryness and heat until the salt turns black, you then stop, you dissolve in water, what remains is a black powder which is oxidized copper. I suppose that you have taken coins or jewelry which still contain copper, you filter, you add a lye of kitchen salt to the clear solution, a white precipitate is formed which is silver chloride, you filter after adding a little azotic acid. You remove it from the filter and dry it away from light; 3° You prepare mercury chloride by treating the metal with aqua regia, you then evaporate almost to dryness, you remove from the heat and the salt crystallizes. You know the degrees of fire, you therefore know everything for the dynamization of forces, that is to say their projection: you will find in Papus' treatise everything you will need.

Farewell, dear brother, I shake your hand.

A. POISSON

NOTES OF THE THIRTEEN LETTERS.

(1) We wanted, for commercial purposes, to have our friend the late Albert Poisson (Philophote) play a strange role in I don't know what little boxes he had entered at our request. We instruct Poisson to respond himself to these obscure and anonymous slanderers by publishing the following correspondence. Poisson's unpublished manuscripts, which are in the possession of one of our dedicated F:::, will appear when necessary. These letters are enough to put the slanderers in their true place.