The title line credits A. E. Waite with this translation, and Waite's own preface declines the credit. He "must not be accredited with the translation", which is "the work of a gentleman who is said" to know the literature well, an unnamed hand whose version Waite "subjected to a searching revision". He adds that it gives the sense of the 1678 Latin "without the original's prolixity", which is to say the English is condensed. Both points matter to anyone quoting it. Waite is the reviser and editor, the translator is anonymous, and a sentence found here may compress a longer Latin one rather than render it. Where exact wording matters, the Frankfurt Latin is the text to check.
The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
Open to all
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
page 2
The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
habit,of the older masters. For it belonged to a period which had inherited a bitter experience of the failures, impostures, and misery surrounding the ZZagzum Opus and its mystical quest, which was weary of unequipped experiment, weary of wandering * multipliers, and pretentious * bellowsblowers," while it was just being awakened to the conviction that if Alchemy were true at all, it was not to be learned from books, or, at least, from any books which had hitherto been written on the subject. Running through all the tracts which are comprised in the following volumes, the reader will recognize traces of a central claim in alchemical initiation— that the secrets, whatever they were, must be understood as the property of a college of adepts, pretending to have subsisted from time almost immemorial, and. revealing themselves to the select and the few, while the literature, large as it is, appears chiefly as an instrument of intercommunication between those who knew. At the same time, it may also be regarded as a.sign and omen to the likely seeker, an advertisement that there was a mystery, and that he must go further who would unravel it.
While the treatises now translated are for the most part anonymous, as befits veiled masters, the literary reader will remember that the name of John de Meung connects the allegorical * Romance of the Rose" with the parables of Alchemy ; Flamel will be familiar to all Hermetic students as the most celebrated of the French adepts ; the saintly name of Basil Valentine, investigator of the properties of antimony, will not even now be unhonoured by the chemist; Eirenaeus Philalethes, equally revered and unknown by all devout Spagyrites, is supposed to have been the most lucid
VE UE POINTE) INQUE NGHE AST. BETON. x of hierophants, and the *Open Entrance" to be the clearest of all his works. Helvetius was an illustrious chemist, and Michael Maier is a person of some repute in the Rosicrucian controversy. Michael Sendivogius was an uninstructed disciple of Alexander Seton, and the * New Chemical Light," which he published and claimed as his own, was really the work of his master, who has been called the chief martyr of Alchemy. It may be added in this connection that some critics have cast doubt upon the genuine nature of the " Testament of John Cremer," and it is true that the annals of Westminster do not include an abbot of that name.
It should be understood that the writer of this brief note must not be accredited with the translation which it seeks to introduce. That is the work of a gentleman who is said to have had a life-long acquaintance with alchemical literature; it has been subjected to a searching revision at the hands of the present editor, who may himself be permitted to claim some experience in Hermetic antiquities; the version as it stands does not uncreditably represent both the spirit and the sense of the original without the original's prolixity. While affording to the modern student of secret doctrines an unique opportunity for acquiring in English a collection of alchemical writers, this edition of THE HERMETIC MUSEUM also claims consideration at the hands of the historian as a contribution of real value to the early history of chemistry.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
a SON ;
IA MU bos
Piel EA:
C
CI" ima
T UMS n
Vs.
T HB*T PRERBSACEB
OD THE ORIGINE bIDIZJTZdI|GIT:
ADDRESSED TO THE CANDID READER.
all the arts invented for the use of life by the reason of man, that of Acemy is the most noble and glorious.
For all philosophers exclaim, as it were, with one voice, albeit in many languages, that this art is not only true, but (after the Divine Law by which our souls are saved) the best and most magnificent gift bestowed upon man by God; and that it should therefore be investigated with all zeal and with the greatest pains. But as good wine needs no praise, so neither does this art require a herald ; for its truth is undoubted, and its utility in human life universally acknowledged, and shewn forth, not only in the Art of Medicine, in Pharmacy, and many other sciences, but more especially in the Art of Transmuting Metals, is so clearly and perspicuously demonstrated, that it in no way requires to be adorned by the splendour of oratory, or tricked out with the device of language. I will not enlarge upon the blessing which the elaboration of minerals and metals has bestowed upon our race. I merely point it out, but refrain from discussing it at length. Different men devote themselves to the study of this science from different motives. The philosopher is impelled by the love of truth, and the thirst after wisdom. He delights in knowledge for its own sake. He
A
| T would be unjust to doubt, most gentle reader, that of