The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
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The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
As in the beginning all things were created new, so there is a kind of new creation out of the first substance in our Art. Now although God warned Adam generally not to reveal this first substance—viz, the moist and the dry elements—yet He permitted him to impart the knowledge to his son Seth. Abel discovered the Art for himself, by the wisdom which God had given him, and inscribed an account of it on beechen tablets. He was also the first to discover the art of writing ; further, he f»retold the destruction of the world by the Flood, and wrote all these things on wooden tablets, and hid them in a pillar of stone, which was found, long afterwards, by the children of Israel Thus you see that our Art was a secret from the beginning, and a secret it will remain to the end of the world. For this reason it is necessary carefully to consider all that is said about it, and especially the words of the Lord to Adam : for they exhibit in a succinct form the secret of the whole Art.
Explanation of the Saying of Abe.
This saying partly explains itself, and is partly explained by what we said about God's words to Adam. — Yet I will add a few remarks concerning it Man hath within him the virtue and efficiency of all things, whence he is called a small world, and is compared to the large world, because the bones which are beneath his skin, and support his body, may be likened to the mountains and stones, his flesh to the earth, his veins to the rivers, and his small veins to the brooks which are discharged into them. — The heart is the sea into which the great and small rivers flow ; his hair resembles the growing herbs—and so with all other parts of his body. Again, his inward parts, such as the heart, lungs, and liver, are comparable to the metals. ^ The hairs have their head in the earth (ZZ, the flesh) and their roots in the air, as the Sages say, that the root of their minerals is in the air, and their head in the earth. "That which ascends by distillation is volatile, and is in the air; that which remains at the bottom, and is fixed, is the head, which is in the earth. Therefore, the one must always exist in conjunction with the other if it is to be effectual. Hence man may be compared to an inverted tree : for he has his roots, or his hair, in the air, while other trees have their hairs. or their roots, in the earth.
And of our Stone, too, the Sages have justly said that it has its head in the earth, and its root in the air. "This similitude has a two-fold interpretation. First, with regard to the place in which our Matter is found ; secondly, with regard to the dissolution and second conjunction of the Stone. For when our Stone rises upward in the alembic, it has its root in the air; but if it would regain its virtue and strength, it must once more return to its earth, and then it has its head and perfect potency in the earth. Hence our Stone, too, is not inaptly denominated a small world ; it is called the mountain of mountains, from which our ore is derived, since it is evolved from the first substance in a way analogous to that in which the great world was created. Know that if you bury anything in [the] earth, and it rots, as food is digested in the human body, and the gross is separated from the subtle, and that which is fetid from that which is pure, then that which is pure is the first Matter which has been set free by decay. If you understand this, you know the true Art. But keep it to yourself, and cast not pearls before swine ; for the vulgar regard our Art with ignorant contempt.
Explanation of the Saying of Seth, Som of Adam.
By * acid which is to be subjected to coction, and transmuted into ashes," the Sage Seth means distilled water, which we call seed. If this, by diligent coction, is condensed into a body— which he calls ashes—the body loses its blackness by being washed till it becomes white; for, by constant
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