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virtue that it can never be wholly  baulked of its effect.
A Eucharist of some sort should most assuredly be consummated daily by every magician, and he should
regard it as the main sustenance of his magical life. It is of more importance than any other magical ceremony,
because it is a complete circle. The whole of the force expended is completely re-absorbed; yet the virtue is
that vast gain represented by the abyss between Man and God.
The magician becomes filled with God, fed upon God, intoxicated with God. Little by little his body will
become purified by the internal lustration of God; day by day his mortal frame, shedding its earthly elements,
will become in very truth the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Day by day matter is replaced by Spirit, the human
by the divine; ultimately the change will be complete; God manifest in flesh will be his name.
This is the most important of all magical secrets that ever were or are or can be. To a Magician thus renewed
the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel becomes an inevitable task;
every force of his nature, unhindered, tends to that aim and goal of whose nature neither man nor god may
speak, for that it is infinitely beyond speech or thought or ecstasy or silence. Samadhi and Nibbana are but its
shadows cast upon the universe.
II
If the Master Therion effects by this book nothing else but to demonstrate the continuity of nature and the
uniformity of Law, He will feel that His work has not been wasted. In his original design of Part III he did not
contemplate any allusion to alchemy. It has somehow been taken for granted that this subject is entirely
foreign to regular Magick, both in scope and method. It will be the main object of the following description
to establish it as essentially a branch of the subject, and to show that it may be considered simply as a particular
case of the general proposition  differing from evocatory and talismanic Magick only in the values which are
represented by the unknown quantities in the pantomorphous equations.
There is no need to make any systematized attempt to decipher the jargon of Hermetic treatises. We need not
enter upon an historical discussion. Let it suffice to say that the word alchemy is an Arabic term consisting of
the article  al and the adjective  khemi which means  that which pertains to Egypt
This etymology differs from that given by Skeat; I can do no more than present my submission.
. A rough translation would be  The Egyptian matter . The assumption is that the Mohammedan grammarians
held traditionally that the art was derived from that wisdom of the Egyptians which was the boast of Moses,
Plato, and Pythagoras, and the source of their illumination.
Modern research (by profane scholars) leaves it still doubtful as to whether Alchemical treatises should be
classified as mystical, magical, medical, or chemical. The most reasonable opinion is that all these objects
formed the pre-occupation of the alchemists in varying proportions. Hermes is alike the god of Wisdom,
Thaumaturgy, therapeutics, and physical science. All these may consequently claim the title Hermetic. It
cannot be doubted that such writers as Fludd aspired to spiritual perfection. It is equally sure that Edward
Kelly wrote primarily from the point of view of a Magician; that Paracelesus applied himself to the cure of
disease and the prolongation of life as the first consideration, although his greatest achievements seem to
modern thinkers to have been rather his discoveries of opium, zinc, and hydrogen; so that we tend to think of
him as a chemist no less than we do of Van Helmont, whose conception of gas ranks him as one of those rare
geniuses who have increased human knowledge by a fundamentally important idea.
The literature of Alchemy is immense. Practically all of it is wholly or partially unintelligible. Its treatises,
from the  Asch Metzareph of the Hebrews to the  Chariot of Antimony are deliberately couched in
hieratic riddles. Ecclesiastical persecution, and the profanation of the secrets of power, were equally dreaded.
Worse still, from our point of view, this motive induced writers to insert intentionally misleading statements,
the more deeply to bedevil unworthy pretenders to their mysteries.
We do not propose to discuss any of the actual processes. Most readers will be already aware that the main
objects of alchemy were the Philosopher s Stone, the Medicine of Metals, and various tinctures and elixirs
possessing divers virtues; in particular, those of healing disease, extending the span of life, increasing human
abilities, perfecting the nature of man in every respect, conferring magical powers, and transmuting material
substances, especially metals, into more valuable forms.
The subject is further complicated by the fact that many authors were unscrupulous quacks. Ignorant of the
first elements of the art, they plagiarized without shame, and reaped a harvest of fraudulent gain. They took
advantage of the general ignorance, and the convention of mystery, in just the same way as their modern
successors do in the matter of all Occult sciences.
But despite all this, one thing is abundantly clear; all serious writers, though they seem to speak of an infinity
of different subjects, so much so that it has proved impossible for modern analytic research to ascertain the true
nature of any single process, were agreed on the fundamental theory on which they based their practices. It
appears at first sight as if hardly any two of them were in accord as to the nature of the  First Matter of the
work . They describe this in a bewildering multiplicity of unintelligible symbols. We have no reason to
suppose that they were all talking of the same thing, or otherwise. The same remarks apply to every reagent
and every process, no less than to the final product or products.
Yet beneath this diversity, we may perceive an obscure identity. They all begin with a substance in nature
which is described as existing almost everywhere, and as universally esteemed of no value. The alchemist is in
all cases to take this substance, and subject it to a series of operations. By so doing, he obtains his product. This
product, however named or described, is always a substance which represents the truth or perfection of the
original  First Matter ; and its qualities are invariably such as pertain to a living being, not to an inanimate
mass. In a word, the alchemist is to take a dead thing, impure, valueless, and powerless, and transform it into
a live thing, active, invaluable and thaumaturgic.
The reader of this book will surely find in this a most striking analogy with what we have already said of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]