PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH
EDITION
THE HERMETIC MUSEUM RESTORED AND ENLARGED was published in Latin in
Frankfort, in the year 1678, and, as the title implies, it was an enlarged form of an
anterior work, which, appearing in 1625, is more scarce, but, intrinsically, of less
value. Its design was apparently to supply in a compact form a representative
collection of the more brief and less ancient alchemical writers; in this respect, it
may be regarded as a supplement to those large storehouses of Hermetic learning
as the Theatrum Chemicum, and that scarcely less colossal of Mangetus, the
Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, which are largely concerned with the cream of the
archaic literature, with the works of Gerber and the adepts of the school of
Arabia, with the writings attributed to Hermes, with those of Raymond Lully,
Arnold de Villa Nova, Bernard Trevisan, and others.
THE HERMETIC MUSEUM would also seem to represent a distinctive school in
Alchemy, not altogether committed to certain modes and terminology which
derived most of their prestige from the past, and sufficiently enigmatical as it was,
still inclined to be less obscure and misleading than was the 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 Magnum Opus and its mystical
quest, which was weary of unequipped experiment, weary of wandering
"multipliers", and pretentious "bellows-blowers," while it was just being awakened
to the conviction that if Alchemy were true at all, it was not be 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
intitiation-- 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 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 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; Eireneaus
Philalethes, equally revered and unknown by all devout Spagyrites, is supposed to
have been the most lucid of hierorphants, and the "Open Entrance" to be the
clearest of all his works. Helevetius was an illustrious chemist, and Michael Maier
is a person of some repute in the Rosicrucian controversy. Micheal 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, ths 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
