36o PARACELSUS 



external experiments as useless in the end, and it seems 

 to be more than probable that, even in such chemical 

 experiments as may have succeeded, something more 

 than merely chemical manipulations was required to make 

 them successfal.^ 



" The heavenly fire which comes to us from the sun, 

 or acts within the earth, is not such a fire as is in 

 heaven, neither like our fire upon the earth ; but the 

 celestial fire is with us a cold, stifi", frozen fire, and this 

 is the body of gold. Therefore nothing can be gained 

 from gold by means of our fire, except to render it fluid 

 in the same sense as the sun renders fluid the snow and 

 turns it into water " {Coelum Philos.)} 



Astrology is intimately connected with medicine, magic, 



tion is to be evaporated again, and the remaining powder mixed with its 

 own weight of corrosive sublimate of mercury. This powder is to be 

 dissolved again in the menstruum phUosophicum (diluted muriatic acid), 

 and distilled until a red oily substance passes into the receiver. If you 

 obtain this oil, you may take some newly prepared chloride of silver, satu- 

 rate it gradually with the oil, and dry it. Put one part of this powder 

 into five parts of molten lead, separate the lead again from the silver 

 (by cupellation), and you will find that one-third of the silver has been 

 transformed into gold. 



1 There is a considerable amount of historical evidence of a trustworthy 

 character that goes to prove that pure gold has been artificially made, but 

 it is, to say the least, doubtful if this was done in a way that could be 

 successfully imitated by one who is not an alchemist. According to a 

 trustworthy report, coming from a source whose veracity is not doubtful, 

 a certain alchemist was kept imprisoned by the Prince-Elect of Saxony 

 at a fortress at Dresden in the year 1748, because the Prince wanted to 

 obtain through him artificial gold. This adept produced four hundred 

 pounds of gold by alchemical means, and finally escaped from the prison 

 in some unexplained manner. Flamel is said to have made artificial gold 

 on April 25, 1382. 



2 Tiffereau has repeatedly succeeded in transmuting inferior metals 

 into gold, by exposing for a long time solutions of chemically pure silver 

 or copper to the sunshine in tropical countries, and he presented a con- 

 siderable quantity of such gold to the Academy of Science in Paris. The 

 gold thus obtained differed in some respects from the natural gold 

 (Tiffereau, " L'Or," Paris). One of the best modern treatises on Alchemy 

 in its physical aspects is August Strindberg's "Sylva Sylvarum " (Paris, 

 1896), which goes to show that all chemical substances are only modes 

 of vibration of one primordial substance, and can be changed one into 

 another by changing the state of etheric vibration. 



