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But surely there were alchemistic masters who did not let themselves be blinded by the word gold and sympathetically carried out still further the language of the Smaragdine tablet. They were the previously mentioned lofty-minded men. The covetous crowd of sloppers, however, adhered to the gold of the Smaragdine tablet and other writings and had no appreciation of anything else.
Relative to the technical language, which I must use in the following discussion also, I have to make a remark of general application that should be carefully remembered. It is a peculiarity of the alchemistic authors to use interchangeably fifty or more names for a thing and on the other hand to give one and the same name many meanings.
Their language seems to sound as if they said, “Our gold is not of this world.” Indeed they use expressions that can with absolute clearness be shown to have this sense. He whose eyes are open needs no special hints to see, in reading, that the so-called alchemistic prescriptions did not center upon a chemical process.
That is a rather amusing trait of hermetic literature. We have come to the fight with the lion, which takes place in a den. The wanderer kills the lion and takes out of him red blood and white bones, therefore red and white. Red and white enter later as roses, then as man and woman. I cite now several passages from different alchemistic books.
On the roof of the Grantham they were excellently served; for Barney knew how to order a dinner, and he knew the art, which is an alchemistic mixture of suave diplomacy and the insinuated power and purpose of murder, of handling head-waiters and their sub-autocrats.
In the psychoanalytic consideration of the alchemistic parable it would appear that only the titanic impulses were realized there, e.g., to have the mother as a lover and to kill the father.
Thus it becomes intelligible how the alchemistic hieroglyphic aiming chiefly at chemistry, adapted itself through and through to the hermetic anagogic educational goal, so that at times and by whole groups, alchemy was used merely as a mystical guide without any reference to chemistry. They are, of course, continually linked with images.
Having regard to the period, and to the alchemistic nature of the goods that composed so much of Anne's stock-in-trade at the sign of the Golden Distaff, in Paternoster Row, it may be conjectured that the love-lorn Frances had thoughts of a philtre.
His philters, concocted upon the profound science of alchemistic philosophy, have been sought for by persons of the highest distinction, who have always found them to produce the very effects for which they were intended, to wit, mutual affection between the parties, uniformly ending in matrimony and happiness.
Still the mystical purpose of the authors of those times when the precautionary measures were not necessary appears clearer under the alchemistic clothing, although no general rule applying to it can be set forth. Other reasons, e.g., intellectual and conventional ones, influenced them to retain the symbolism.
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