Title page, ‘Philosophie Naturelle’ by Arcade d’Orient Vial

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is the continuation and conclusion of the ‘Panorama of Alchemy throughout the Ages’, of which we published the first part some time earlier, also extracted from volume one of Arcade d’Orient Vial’s ‘Philosophie Naturelle’, Delaroque Jeune, Paris, 1820. From pages 102 to 115. This is a teasing-mode satire, a well informed tongue-in-cheek display of somebody who does not really believe in his obviously exaggerated rant, but offers here and there discreet hints pointing us to real gems-waiting-to-be-discovered, as someone who knows more than what he chooses to disclose. We will publish soon more from the same source: An interesting hermetic allegory, a true dream-like account.

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Part II 

Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan friar, who died in 1284 and Albert the Great, a German Dominican and bishop of the city of Ratisbon, who died two years before him, are the first European that taught Alchemy with brilliance and who, if we ought to believe the public rumors, were in possession of the philosophical stone. Albert the Great is also noted for being the patron of conjurors and Roger Bacon is remembered as having discovered gun powder, but it appears that he owed this discovery to a Greek named Mark, whose manuscript titled ‘Liber Ignium‘ can still be seen at the Royal Library. Both left many disciples, among them we find Thomas Aquinas, Arnaud de Villeneuve, Ramon Llull and Nicolas Flamel; all of them knew the Elixir of the Wise and for the main public, they were ‘great gold makers’. Ramon Llull wrote about salts and acids and also upon the rectification of the spirit of wines. He died a martyr in northern Africa, in the year 1315.

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In the fifteen century, we see Basile Valentine, a monk from Erfurt, who for long was thought to be imaginary, and pseudonymous Bernard Trevisan, who lost all of his real fortune in the gold making process; and Jacques Coeur, who stacked a impressive fortune by combining besides an alchemical process, the more lucratives and swift paths of theft and concussion. By the end of this very century, lived, Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and both died in a state close to poverty. There is a story told about Augurelli: Having dedicated his poem, ‘Chrysopoeia,’ to Pope Leo X, he was presented by him with a great empty purse, because said the Pope,’He, as a gold maker, only needed a place to put it‘.

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Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who became famous under the name of Paracelsus, was then making quite some noise in the world. He was born in 1493, in the township of Zurich, according to Erasmus; or according to Haller, in the township of Appenzell. Endowed with a brazen character, he was a visionary and a lover of folklore; calling himself, ‘medicine’s reformer‘, ‘prince of the Arcana‘, ‘Monarch of the Chemists’; he practiced magic and claimed to be able to create artificial human beings in his laboratory stills; more agile than our modern chemists who have only created so far, some elements! His writings are un-fathomable, barbarous, without any method and full of coarse contradictions; nevertheless, all these attracted him quite a gigantic reputation; he wrote them in cabarets and inns, and it is there he eventually died in 1541 at the age of forty eight years old, after boasting to be able to prolongate the life span for centuries!

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We’d rather keep quiet about George Agricola, Keller the Englishman, Thomas Erasmus a doctor in Basel, Blaise de Vigenère and last but not least, Bernard Palissy, because they were not real adepts; alike Denis Zachaire, who after losing all of his wealth, finally found the philosophical stone, and did not become richer! This dangerous stone even proved more fatal to Alexander Sethon, a.k.a. the Cosmopolite, of Scottish origins; because the sounding fame of the marvels he was operating came-for his demise-to the ears of the Elector of Saxony, a stingy prince, who preempted this ‘living treasure’ and locked him up under the surveillance of forty chosen men. In vain, he used threats and promisses; the Cosmopolite kept obstinately mute about his process. A gentleman of the name of Michael Sendivogius helped him to escape, hoping to learn about it as a reward what he refused to tell to the Elector: but the alchemist showing him his bruised and dislocated limbs told him: -‘Look, this is what I endured for keeping my mouth shut…Judge by that how great is the secret I must keep.’ Eventually, he gifted him an ounce of his transmutation powder, enough to ensure a stable wealth. The unfortunate Sethon did not enjoy his newly found freedom, as he died a few months later in the year 1603.

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At the same time, in Germany, a society of alchemists and rascals was being formed under the name of ‘Brethren of the Rose-Cross‘, composed of immortal characters, free of all diseases and the authorities in order to get rid of them, fancied to have all of them hanged. The princes were not amused by these dispensators of good fortune, who arrogantly were unwilling to fill up their empty vaults! The more they were promulgating threatening edicts, the more Alchemy was becoming a household fashion, as everybody was lusting after gold, and those who did not succeed by the mean of the crucible, were widely compensated through various scheming scams: therefore, this period is filled with colorful charlatans, prodigal in words but petty in their deeds. Above this little fauna of the empirical sciences, rose to a preeminent position the Belgian Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, who called himself: ‘A philosopher by trial of fire‘, and the German Johann Rudolf Glauber, who discovered a few salts; both were never skilled gold makers. It is quite a different story that unfolds with Eirenaeus Philalethes, born in England in 1612, even though he was not struck with the lightnings of genius, he knew how to acquire a deep knowledge in the elusive act of transmutation; a science he revealed in an enigmatic way to the educated world in a treatise named: ‘Introitus Apertus‘.

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I ought to report here the well-spoken Olaus Borichius, of whom we have much admired the prodigious acumen. He was born in 1626 in Dennemark; and better than all of his predecessors, he knew the secret of the philosopher stone, because he knew how to get rich and keep the good favors of his king!

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At this time ends the proper history of Alchemy, as an exact science, clear and truthful. Johann Joachim Becher appears on the stage, having prepared by the mean of his ‘Underground Physics‘ the revolution that was for Georg Ernst Stahl to consolidate and strengthen. Professor Spire saw him being born in 1625 and he is thought to have died in London in 1682. This chemist taught about three elementary earths: 1. The fixed earth, that resists to fire, that comprehends all the known primitive earths. 2. The inflammable earth, which is what Stahl calls ‘phlogistic’, the igneous matter. 3. And the mercurial earth, proper to metals, that is still to be discovered. It is said that Becher, without precisely seeking the philosopher stone, through out of a few peculiar random events, ultimately found it. His reputation overshadowed those of Robert Boyle and Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel, itself being overshadowed by the glory that Stahl accumulated in imagining or discovering the ‘phlogiston’.

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Georg Ernst Stahl was born in Anspach in Bavaria, in the year 1660 and died in Berlin in 1734. We know that the Stahlian school retained the scepter of chemistry until the usurpation of Lavoisier: the extraordinary events of this memorable war are related in details in the preceding chapters. Eventually, Stahl was found to be not very knowledgeable in the art of kabbalistic Alchemy, which had lost a lot of its ancient luster. The last known transmutations, the available chronicles preserved the memory of, were performed by doctor James Price in Guildford in 1782: they did not convince the opponents of Alchemy; and when he was pressured to resume his experiences, the alchemist thought wiser to commit suicide.

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Conclusion

In the preceding historical panorama (Part I & II ), I have reported simply facts the way they were found, without getting into the bottom of the question (of Alchemy). What do I say? This very question, is it one for the Pneumatists? Long ago did they assert, with their known confidence-a poise that nothing astonishes-that metals are simple bodies: it is absurd to be willing to change a simple body into another body. But what proves that they are simple bodies? It is, they answer, that it is not possible to change them. Which means we ought not to transmute them because they are simple: It is true, one could not be more logical, but is it not explaining an effect by the effect itself? which add up to explaining nothing.

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When we consider that the other classes of the mineral realm showcase a considerable amount of objects, very diverse in aspects, properties and nature; and the chemists, despite their pronounced desire to see everywhere simple substances, could not discover in those very classes more than nine primitive earths, even though these findings are contested without mercy; then, when we push further those mature considerations, who would not, in good sense, think that it is not possible that metals would be only perfectly homogeneous bodies? But, however, O tempora! O mores! (O bloody epoch! O bloody customs!) the Pneumatists do count nothing less than thirty eight metallic substances: they saw more elements in metals than of metals themselves; and due to their creative spirit, the science of simple principles is made more complex than that of the composed ones. Such insanity does not need more comments. Lets listen to to the great Swedish scientist Carl von Linné: ‘The metamorphosis of the metals, still hides for us in the temple of Vulcan; or it is rather in the inmost sacred part of nature that we ought to seek it: a few parents produced many bastards; Mars, without fail, fathered many of them through his polygamous life.‘ (‘Natural System, T.III, page 26.)

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I was not present, in 1667, when Helvetius performed a transmutation, or when Claude Guillermet de Bérigard, a.k.a. Claudius Berigardus and Van Helmont performed the transmutation of mercury, nor did I witnessed the projection that truly performed emperor Ferdinand in 1648, or the elector of Mainz in 1658; there is about these facts a certain something that we cannot fend off with doubt, or we are then obliged to distrust all historical documents…It is a fact that we know all too well so many examples of daring scams among the huge crowd of those who claimed to be practicing alchemists, that their bad reputation did harm the real adepts, if there were such people: a raw cupidity was the motive of their futile labors, they deserved to be disappointed! But, there are in the arts so many well documented invention that were used some days and then later forgotten, that it is impossible, without bias, to deny the existence of the philosophical stone because its impossibility cannot be demonstrated. Without digging into the archives of Alchemy, we only need to mention the Damascus swords once very popular, whose manufacturing process is now lost: they were of a steel so firm and at the same time so flexible that one could bend the blade towards its handle and cut through the most hard bodies; the blade was the result of a half-transmutation and a metallic substance in-between iron and mercury.

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Even though the transmutation of metals would be deemed impossible, in good faith would it prove that they are simple substances? Nobody, I presume, would fancy to transform a topaz into a precious gem, or a crude stone into a pure agate-even knowing that for nature there is only a short step. Chemistry knows how to analyse diamonds; or to speak more precisely, it knows how to destroy it: but with all the carbons and the oxygens of the world, it would not know how to re-composed it, even the slightest part. It is the same with metals, to destroy them is a known procedure; but the art, in all existing probabilities, will always be unable to re-compose them by their elements.

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Oxidation is the destruction of metals whom from a perfect state migrate into the oxide state, acidic alkali, earth. The Pneumatists do not agree, I said it earlier, as they maintain that an oxidated metal does not lose anything and it is ‘disguised‘ by the oxygen. Based upon this pretty reasoning, we ought to say that soda and potash are real metals, only ‘masked’. Who could doubt this, they say, because we extract from them metals?  All right: they are metals, because they contain a small portion of metallic principles. But then, what would you think if I say that corumdums are iron oxides and spinels and beryls are chrome oxides, the very plants metallic oxides? Because all substances contain as much metals than many of what we call oxides. Let’s agree then that in the oxides a part of the metal is destroyed. Even though the metals are destructible, they are not elementary bodies.

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The metals, in our system, are earthly substances mineralized by fire. Therefore, they contain in essence fire and earth; and their variety does not come from the varied proportion of the aerial element that comes in second in their composition. And as earth and air, by combining, constitute salts, I therefore define every metal as common salt loaded with as much fire than its nature can bare. We understand with this definition that a mineral reduced to its metallic state, is unable to receive a greater quantity of fire: the overabundance of this element would only serve to volatilize the metal. Therefore, when the earth is dense, loaded with fire, has become a liquid mercury, it cannot absorb more, but a new fire would sublime it; and as soon as ice is impregnated with ether, having reached its liquide form, the new additions of the celestial fluid don’t add to its fluidic form, and only lead the water into becoming steam. Because it would be a mistake to believe that the water that warms only evaporates when it has reached its boiling degree, which is eighty in Reaumur’s thermometer: it evaporates at the very moment any heat penetrates it.

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Therefore, it follows that if transmutation is possible, it can only happen by the addition of a salt, that changes the intimate nature of lead or of mercury into that of gold or silver: such may have been the philosophical stone. This opinion may seem rather silly to men who do not go beyond the surface of things, but, we have to support us the authority of a Torbern Bergman or a Carl Wilhelm Scheele. These two brilliant chemists are upon this matter completely on the same page than ours: because they thought that ‘all metallic earths are but diverse sorts of acid.’ (Scheel, ‘A treatise of fire & air chemistry‘, article LXXIII.)

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The intimate nature of metals hasn’t been studied enough. (Via-Hygeia note: we are in 1820) What we know only is that chrome, molybdenum, tungsten, arsenic are subject to oxidation up to the point of reaching the state of true acids; but chemistry did not expand its research further. Nevertheless, I dare say that, some results that have been communicated recently enable us to hope that in-a-not-so-remote-time we will finally reach the original earth of a metal.

Perhaps it would not be superfluous to bring some light into this difficult subject and lead towards a path of truth, to present here the summary of the general observations we have made upon the metamorphosis of metals, awaiting that we will give further developments into our own theory of colors, of which they are closely connected. Here is how we have observed, the walk of time in the successive alterations that bring the metal back to a pure earth: ‘Metal, black oxid or grey, yellow oxide, orange oxide, red oxide, blue oxide, white oxide, lime, alumina, elementary earth’.

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‘Man, born to suffer,

Prodigy of ignorance,

Where to you get 

Your stupid arrogance?‘

( Louis Racine, ‘La Religion’, 1742)

Original French

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Source

Philosophie Naturelle, tome 1 & 2

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