The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
into his kingdom and showed me all the treasures and riches of the whole world, till I was obliged to confess, that so far from exaggerating his power, the Queen had not told me the half of it. Of gold and precious carbuncles there was no end. "There was also to be found renewal and restoration of youth, and of the natural faculties, and recovery of lost health, with a never failing panacea for all diseases. What pleased me most of all, was that the people of that kingdom knew, feared, and honoured their Creator, and asked and obtained of him wisdom, understanding, and, after this life, eternal glory and beatitude. May this latter be given to us also by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Trinity, to Whom belong praise, glory, and honour, world without end, Amen.
———
^ul tisl ^. dilepmm ied niae bsedlumn cni
THE GOLDEN AGE
RESTORED:
HAVING NOW APPEARED A SECOND TIME, FLOURISHED
BEAUTIFULLY, AND BROUGHT FORTH FRAGRANT AND
GOLDEN SEED. THIS RARE AND PRECIOUS
SEED IS SHEWN AND IMPARTED TO ALL
THE SONS OF TRUE WISDOM AND
THE DOCTRINE,
BY
HOENEY MAIDATEH ANAS.
E z
** Jf any of you lack swisdom, let him ask of God, who Qzves sinply, and without upbraiding, and it shall be
: a P : Q7ven to him."—]AMES i, 5.
MOTTO OF THE AUTHOR:
'" The Centre of the World—a Grazn of Sand."
DIRUSSDUASCU.
To the Worthy and Christian Reader.
ELOVED and pious reader, above all, ye who are Sons of Wisdom and the Doctrine, some years ago Almighty
God, in answer to my daily prayers, opened my eyes by the light of His Holy Spirit (Who was sent us through
Christ by the Father, and from Whom we receive all wisdom), and enabled me to discover the True Centre in the Centre ofthe Triangle and the one true Matter of the precious Philosopher's Stone, so that I now hold it in my hands; but it took me five years longer to discover how the blood of the Red Lion and the glue of the White Eagle were to be extracted, and how these were to be mixed in their natural proportions, enclosed, sealed, and committed to the secret fire. — Nor did I even then find the arcanum without constant and untiring application. — I have, indeed, studied the writings, parables, and various figures of the philosophers with singular industry, and laboured hard to solve their manifold wonderful enigmas, most of which are simply the vain products of their imaginations. It was long before experience taught me that all their obscure verbiage and high pretensions are mere folly and empty phantasms (as is amply testified by our leading Sages) "Then I understood that their preparations (of which we read in Geber, Albertus Magnus, and others), their purgations, sublimations, cementations, distillations, rectifications, circulations, putrefactions, conjunctions, solutions, coagulations, calcinations, incinerations, mortifications, revivifications, &c., as also their tripods, athanors (furnaces), reverberatory alembics, excrements of horses, ashes, sand, stills, pelican-violas, retorts, fixatories, &c., are mere plausible impostures and frauds. This must be apparent to any one who considers the truth ofthe matter. Nature, who, in her noble simplicity, delights in her own proper substance, knows nothing of these futilities. — Hence "Theophrastus (Sec. Mag. de Phil. Lap.) rightly says of those who seek the substance of the Stone in wine, imperfect bodies, blood, bismuth, mercury, sulphur, wine, dung, orpiment, and in plants, as chelidonia, hyssop, ivy, &c., that they are full of lies and thievery—deceiving the credulous, milking their purses dry, and, as to the rest, following their own foolish fancies, that are quite unable to realise the requirements of Nature. (Tell menow who will help me with the minerals of the earth, distillations of water, &c.?) Some of them take new wine and urine for the purpose of changing them into metals. To hear them talk, you might suppose all that is sold at the apothecaries to be good for metals. Thou foolish man, dost thou not perceive that none of these things have anything to do with them ?