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Iam constrained even from the works of mercy, for fear of suspicion and arrest. I have experienced this in foreign countries where, having ventured to administer the THE THEOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 379 medicine to sufferers given over by physicians, the instant the cures became known, a report was spread about the elixir, and I have been obliged to disguise myself, shave my head and change my name, to avoid falling into the hands of wicked persons, who would try to wrest the secret from me in the hopes of making gold.”’ The history of the persecution of the alchemists, in spite of the precautions they took to avoid confronting the hostility of the Church, would take long to tell; but for the moment I am concerned with sketching the whole position in its general bearings, and will presently refer the reader to books in which the broad statements here put forward can be followed out in their details. The common herd of materialistic critics have sup- posed that if the alchemists had been really successful, their secret would have been extorted from them, con- sidering the treatment many of them received, and the modern tendency of thought has always been to dis- believe in the existence of any secret that is not disclosed. But already our partial familiarity with the conditions of occult knowledge gives us the clue to the mystery. When the first step to be taken towards acquiring the power to transmute lead into gold, was to transmute one’s human into a semi-divine nature, it was obvious that the mere avaricious gold-seeker would be unable to take it,—unable probably to understand the idea, or to look upon such an explanation as other than a device for baulking his curiosity. A comprehension, in short, of the elementary principles of occult science at once illuminates all the otherwise insoluble riddles of the alchemical problem. 380 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. But why was the dangerous system of symbology, which concerned itself with gold and silver, adopted by the alchemists at all, if they were really spiritual philosophers ? Was not this directly calculated to stir up the greedy passions of ordinary people and con- front them with pertls as serious, in another way, as those of the Inquisition which they sought to evade? The answer is, that they did not invent, but found the system of symbology in use from a period of antiquity long preceding the era of Roman Christianity and its persecuting priests. The alchemical version of spiritual philosophy dates back to the period of Hermes Tris- megistus, by some authors considered a fabulous person- age, by some an Adept king of Egypt, who lived nearly 2,000 years before the Christian era. At all events the writings assigned to him are of great antiquity, and constitute the fountain-head of that Hermetic philosophy which in the Middle Ages becomes almost entirely merged in its alchemical developments, but which in very recent years, since the Theosophical movement has been in progress, has presented especial attractions to some inquiring minds as constituting a relatively Western stream of occult wisdom. And at all events, until very recent years, the Hermetic mystery summed up occult wisdom for all European inquirers, and its methods, its systems of exposition, were the only methods and systems available for them. Further than this we have always to keep in view the fact that the alchemical symbology must have been especially attractive to many of the medieval students, because they were aware of its double signi- THE THEOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 38% ficance. In the literal sense it referred to the possi- bility of an occult phenomenon, profoundly interesting, of course, to every student of Nature’s obscurer mysteries, all the while that it equally described the sublime spiritual change from the lower human to the higher human or divine nature. I pass on now to make some quotations from alchemical writings in support of the first position here taken up, that the alchemical philosophers had a trans- cendental purpose in view. Many of them, indeed, express this so plainly, that it is difficult to understand how their main purpose could have been misconstrued. In “ A New light of Alchemy,” ascribed to Michael Sendivogius, the author in his preface speaks of the many ‘adulterated books and false receipts’’ put forward by impostors, and of the “ idle and ill-employed fellows who pretend that the soul may be extracted out of gold.’’ Then he goes on: : “Yet let the sons of Hermes know for certain that such a kind of extraction of soul by what vulgar way of alchemy soever is but a mere fancy. On the contrary he which im a philosophical way can without any fraud and colourable deceit make it that it shall really tinge the basest metal with the colour of gold. . . I can justly aver hath the gates of Nature open to him for the inquiring into further and higher secrets, and with the blessing of God to obtain them. . . I would have the courteous reader be here admonished that he understand my writings not so much from the outside of my words as from the possibility of Nature lest afterwards he bewail his time, pains, and costs all 382 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. spent in vain. Let him consider that his art is for the wise, not for the ignorant, and that the sense or meaning of philosophers is of another nature than to be under- stood by vapouring letter-learned scoffers. . . . For it is the gift of God, and truly it is not to be attained to but by the alone favour of God enlightening the under- standing, together with a patient and devout humility, or by an ocular demonstration from some experienced inaster—wherefore God justly thrusts them far from his secrets that are strangers to him.’’ From the text of the book I will take one easily interpreted passage in which the alchemical symbology is employed. “ Sulphur ’’—clearly employed here to symbolise the conscience of Man—" is not the last among the principles because it is a part of the metal’’—Man himself— “yea, and the principal part of the philosopher’s stone, and many wise nien have left in writing divers and very true things of sulphur. Yea, Geber himself in his first book of the highest perfection saith: ‘ Through the most high God it illuminates every body, because it is light from light and tincture.’ ”’ It should be explained that directly we begin to read the alchemists we discover that they have no invariable and recognised code by which we can always recognise the same idea under the same symbol. The spirit of God manifesting as conscience in Man is sometimes spoken of as sulphur, sometimes as mercury. The normal unregenerate Man—the subject of the art and the object of the transmutation—is sometimes spoken of as lead, sometimes as antimony, or even by other THE THEOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 383 of the baser metals, and with an anxious desire to guard all who were capable of appreciating an esoteric mean- ing the alchemists constantly warn their readers that “our ’’ mercury and “ our ”’ sulphur are not the common mercury and sulphur. Then, again, the subject of the transmutation is sometimes written of as ‘‘ Saturn,”’ and astrological terms are employed to designate some of the other ideas handled—Sol, Tuna, and Venus. Each writer is a law unto himself in such matters. Sometimes, moreover, without any formal announce- ment that would be intelligible to the “ignorant ”’ reader, the alchemists drop their symbols altogether, and as though making incidental remarks concerning the nature of the “‘ artist ’’ or seeker after the stone, discuss some of their deepest mysteries in plain language only guarded from the comprehension of the unworthy by not seeming to refer to their subject at all. ‘Thus, in the ‘“‘ New Light of Alchemy,” we read : ‘“‘J,et, therefore, the searcher of this sacred science know that the soul in a man, the lesser world or miuicrocosm substituting the place of its centre, is the king and is placed in the vital spirit in the purest blood. ‘That governs the mind, and the mind the body. . . . Now the soul, by which man differs from other animals, operates in the body, but it hath a greater operation out of the body. . . . So also God, the Maker of all things, works in this world those things which are necessary for the world, and in these he is included in the world, whence we believe that God is everywhere. But he is excluded from the body of the world by his infinite wisdom, by which he works ‘ 384 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. out of the world and imagines much higher things. The soul imagines, but executes not but in the mind, but God doth effect all things the same moment when he imagines them. . . . God, there- fore, is not included in the world, but as the soul in the body. He hath his absolute power separated from the world, So also the soul of any body hath its absolute power separated from the body.”’ The writer of this passage evidently knew a good deal about the higher psychic phenomena now engaging the attention of the most advanced modern occultists. And his view of creation—of the material world as a manifestation of spirit on the physical plane—is on a level with the most profound Theosophical conceptions. It is amusing to contrast such philosophical ideas with the gross caricatures thereof presented to the world as religion by the churches of that day, and to reflect upon the fact that to this day almost all representa- tives of modern culture, except those illuminated by occult teaching, would treat the theologian, even of the Middle Ages, with comparative respect, and the alchemist as a crazy fool, floundering in the silliest superstition.