64 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2Bd g. No 56., Jan. 24. '57. 



serpent is winged, and represents the Ahyssus Vo- 

 latile Superior, and the under serpent, the Abyssus 

 Fixum Inferior. The motto is frona the Psalms, 

 " Deep calleth unto Deep." In the middle of the 

 circle is the cabalistic Agla, or Shield of David, 

 with the signs of the planets, and the divisions of 

 nature, animal, vegetable, &c. There is an Erh- 

 Idrung Abyssi Duplicatce, before the plate, in 

 verse.* 



The A. C. H. consists of two parts ; Part I. 

 treats Of the Generation of Things, Part II. treats 

 Of the Corruption of Things and their Anatomy. 

 Some notion of its character may be gained fi'om 

 the concluding paragraph in the author's preface : 



"Now he who proposes to contemplate the existence 

 (manner of being) of Natural Things, their Birth, Life, 

 and Death, must consider the source of Nature from be- 

 ginning to end ; that is, How, and From What, Nature 

 produces, sustains, and again destroys, the things con- 

 tained in the Four Elements, and in each of them sepa- 

 rately, as the Meteora Universalia, Animals, Vegetables, 

 and Minerals : How Nature herself dissolves and coagu- 

 lates, resolves and regenerates (Wie die Natur selbe sol- 

 vire, coagulire, resolvire, und regenerire) ; For what 

 Nature makes, and by what means she makes it, through 

 the very same means she destroys all again. Thus every- 

 thing has its Coagulator and Resolver, its Life and Death, 

 within its own self, through which it is produced and 

 sustained, and again broken-up and destroyed. For from 

 diversities of operations and of modes of operation, pro- 

 ceed a different working and effect." f 



Our author follows the Egyptians and moat 

 ancient sages, in regarding Nature as a Series of 

 Rings or Revolving Circles, foi-ming a vast Chain, 

 which links the Deity with His humblest creature. 

 However, he deals not so much with the Scale of 

 Creatures, as with that Protean Chain of Metamor- 

 phoses and Transmutations, which unites in one 

 the Dyads or Bipolarities of Life and Death, Ge- 

 neration and Corruption, Corruption and Rege- 

 neration, Coagulation and Dissolution, Evaporation 



* In accordance, I suppose, with the Caduceus of 

 Ilei'mes, and the instructions of Cornelius Agrippa, " Pinge 

 duos Angues, §-c." See his Occult Philosophy. Vaughan 

 says, " Take our Two So-pents, which are to be found 

 everj'where on the face of the earth," &c. And, after 

 various directions, adds, " Do this, and thou hast placed 

 Nature in the horizon of Eternity. Thou hast performed 

 that command of the Cabalist, 'Unite the End to the 

 Beginning as the Flame is united to the coal ; for the 

 Lord is superlatively One and admits of no second.' 

 Consider what it is you seek ; you seek an indissoluble, 

 miraculous, transmuting, uniting Union ; but such a tie 

 cannot be without the First Unity, &c." — Lumen de 

 Lumine, p. 62. 



f The Burmese appropriately call the world " Logha," 

 which signities alternate Destruction and Reproduction. In 

 Ovid (Tlfef., lib. xv.) we have a good specimen of the old 

 Egyptian philosophy on this head, as taught by Pytha- 

 goras. Cf the A. C. H., Favrat's edition, §§ 71-2., 242-3., 

 and 915., the last in the book ; pp. 25, 82-3., and p. 406. 

 in the German. Among other works of Paracelsus, our 

 anonymous author evidently studied his Three Books of 

 Philompky written to the Atheuiana, and his treatise Of the 

 Transmutation of Things. 



and Condensation, Volatilisation and Fixation, 

 &c. &o. 



In P£t,rt II. cap, iv. pp. 335 — 6., we have a cu- 

 rious passage on Transmutation, an expansion of 

 the idea in the Religio Medici, and as quaintly 

 expressed as by the English knight himself, viz. : 



" ' All flesh is grass ' is not only metaphorically, but 

 literalh', true ; for all those creatures we behold are but 

 the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them, or more 

 remotely carnitied in ourselves." — Rei. Med., § xxxvii.* 



Coleridge, too, in the conclusion of his Aids, 

 speaking of the magic metamorphoses wrought by 

 the occult power oi' Assimilation, has an eloquent 

 passage on this point : 



_ " The germinal power of the plant transmutes the fixed 

 air and the elementary base of water into grass or leaves; 

 and on these the organific principle in the ox or the ele- 

 phant exercises an alchemy still more stupendous. As 

 the unseen agency weaves its magic eddies, the foliage 

 becomes indilftrently the bone and its marrow, the pulpy 

 brain, or the solid ivory, &c." — Aids, 6th ed. vol. i. p. 328.-|- 

 As the A. C. H. is essentially an Hermetic book, 

 and the Paracelsic phraseology (such as Evestrum, 

 Alcahest, &e.) is employed throughout, I need not 

 in these pages attempt an analysis of its contents. 

 The best and shortest summary that could be 

 given of its contents may be attained by quoting 

 the following passage from an old Hermetic 

 treatise called The Secret of Secrets, ascribed to a 

 certain King Kalid : | 



" We have taught how a body is to be changed into a 

 spirit ; and again hovv the spirit is to be turned into a 

 bodj', viz. how the fixed is made volatile, and the volatile 

 fixed again : how the earth is turned into water and air, 

 and the air into fire, and the fire into earth again : then 

 the earth into fire, and the fire into air, and the air into 

 water, and the water again into earth. Now the earth, 

 which was of the nature of fire, is brought to the nature 

 of a Quintessence. Thus we have taught the waj's 

 of transmuting performed thro' heat and moisture; 

 making out of a drj', a moist thing, and out of a moist, a 

 dry one: otherwise natures which are of several pro- 

 perties or families, could not be brought to one imiform 

 thing, if [unless?] the one should be turned into the 

 other's nature. And this is the perfection according to ' 

 the advice of the Philosopher. Ascend from the earth 

 into heaven, and descend from the heaven to the earth ; 

 to the intent to make the body which is earth into a 

 spirit which is subtil, and then to reduce that spirit into a 

 body again which is gross; changing one element into 

 another, as earth into water, water into air, air into fire ; 

 and fire again into water, and water into fire ; and that 

 into a more subtil nature and Quintessence. Thus have 

 you accomplished the treasure of the whole World.'^ § 



* Cf. Paracelsus' Athenian Philosophy, book i. text 7. 



f Coleridge possibly had in mind a passage in Herder's 

 Ideen, book v. cap. iii. 



J Liber Secretorum Regis CaUd, Francof., 1615, 8vo. 

 Cf. Theat. Chem., vol. v., and Lives and Select Treatises oj 

 Alchemystical Philosophers, Lond. 1815, p. 362. 



§ These Transmutations remind one of the nursery 

 tale of The Old Woman bringing her Kid to Market, which, 

 as well as I remember, Mr. Halliwell, in his work on 

 Nursery Rhj'mes, traces to an allegorical rabbinic parable 

 of Transmutation. I am sorry I have not the book at 

 hand to refer to. 



