Alchemical Catechism of Baron ...

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Alchemical Catechism
In his
Ritual de la Haute Magie
, chapter 19, Eliphas Levi, describes a manuscript of Paracelsus supposedly in the
Vatican, entitled "the Chemical Pathway or Manual". He claims that a this was transcribed by Sendivogius and used
by Baron Tschoudy when composing the Hermetic Catechism in his
L'Etoile Flamboyant ou la Société des Franc-
Maçons considerée sous tous les aspects
, 1766. I have not been able to locate the Paraclesus work in the Vatican nor
Sendivogius' transcription, however, the Hermetic Catechism of Baron Tschoudy is a fine piece of hermetic
philosophy. The version here has been taken from A.E. Waite's translation published in the two volume Hermetic
and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, which he heavily edited of masonic remarks of Tschoudy.
A SHORT CATECHISM OF ALCHEMY
Q. What is the chief study of a Philosopher?
A. It is the investigation of the operations of Nature.
Q. What is the end of Nature?
A. God, Who is also its beginning.
Q. Whence are all things derived?
A. From one and indivisible Nature.
Q. Into how many regions is Nature separated?
A. Into four palmary regions.
Q. Which are they?
A. The dry, the moist, the warm, and the cold, which are the four elementary qualities, whence all things originate.
Q. How is Nature differentiated?
A. Into male and female.
Q. To what may we compare Nature?
A. To Mercury.
Q. Give a concise definition of Nature.
A. It is not visible, though it operates visibly; for it is simply a volatile spirit, fulfilling its office in bodies, and
animated by the universal spirit-the divine breath, the central and universal fire, which vivifies all things that exist.
Q. What should be the qualities possessed by the examiners of Nature?
A. They should be like unto Nature herself. That is to say, they should be truthful, simple, patient, and persevering.
Q. What matters should subsequently engross their attention?
A. The philosophers should most carefully ascertain whether their designs are in harmony with Nature, and of a
possible and attainable kind; if they would accomplish by their own power anything that is usually performed by the
power of Nature, they must imitate her in every detail.
Q. What method must be followed in order to produce something which shall be developed to a superior degree than
Nature herself develops it.
A. The manner of its improvement must be studied, and this is invariably operated by means of a like nature. For
example, if it be desired to develop the intrinsic virtue of a given metal beyond its natural condition, the chemist
must avail himself of the metallic nature itself, and must be able to discriminate between its male and female
differentiations.
Q. Where does the metallic nature store her seeds?
A. In the four elements.
Q. With what materials can the philosopher alone accomplish anything?
A. With the germ of the given matter; this is its elixir or quintessence, more precious by far, and more useful, to the
artist, than is Nature herself. Before the philosopher has extracted the seed, or germ, Nature, in his behalf, will be
ready to perform her duty.
Q. What is the germ, or seed, of any substance?
A. It is the most subtle and perfect decoction and digestion of the substance itself; or, rather, it is the Balm of
Sulphur, which is identical with the Radical Moisture of Metals.
Q. By what is this seed, or germ, engendered?
A. By the four elements, subject to the will of the Supreme Being, and through the direct intervention of the
imagination of Nature.
Q. After what manner do the four elements operate?
A. By means of an incessant and uniform motion, each one, according to its quality, depositing its seed in the centre
of the earth, where it is subjected to action and digested, and is subsequently expelled in an outward direction by the
laws of movement.
Q. What do the philosophers understand by the centre of the earth?
A. A certain void place where nothing may repose, and the existence of which is assumed.
Q. Where, then, do the four elements expel and deposit their seeds?
A. In the ex-centre, or in the margin and circumference of the centre, which, after it has appropriated a portion, casts
out the surplus into the region of excrement, scoriae, fire, and formless chaos.
Q. Illustrate this teaching by an example.
A. Take any level table, and set in its centre a vase filled with water; surround the vase with several things of various
colours, especially salt, taking care that a proper distance intervenes between them all. Then pour out the water from
the vase, and it will flow in streams here and there; one will encounter a substance of a red colour, and will assume a
tinge of red; another will pass over the salt, and will contract a saline flavour; for it is certain that water does not
modify the places which it traverses, but the diverse characteristics of places change the nature of water. In the same
way the seed which is deposited by the four elements at the centre of the earth is subject to a variety of
modifications in the places through which it passes, so that every existing substance is produced in the likeness of its
channel, and when a seed on its arrival at a certain point encounters pure earth and pure water, a pure substance
results, but the contrary in an opposite case.
Q. After what manner do the elements procreate this seed?
A. In order to the complete elucidation of this point, it must be observed that there are two gross and heavy elements
and two that are volatile in character. Two, in like manner, are dry and two humid, one out of the four being actually
excessively dry, and the other excessively moist. They are also masculine and feminine. Now, each of them has a
marked tendency to reproduce its own species within its own sphere. Moreover, they are never in repose, but are
perpetually interacting, and each of them separates, of and by itself, the most subtle portion thereof. Their general
place of meeting is in the centre, even the centre of the Archeus, that servant of Nature, where coming to mix their
several seeds, they agitate and finally expel them to the exterior.
Q. What is the true and the first matter of all metals?
A. The first matter, properly so called, is dual in its essence, or is in itself of a twofold nature; one, nevertheless,
cannot create a metal without the concurrence of the other. The first and the palmary essence is an aerial humidity,
blended with a warm air, in the form of a fatty water, which adheres to all substances indiscriminately, whether they
are pure or impure.
Q. How has this humidity been named by Philosophers?
A. Mercury.
Q. By what is it governed?
A. By the rays of the Sun and Moon.
Q. What is the second matter?
A. The warmth of the earth -otherwise, that dry heat which is termed Sulphur by the Philosophers.
Q. Can the entire material body be converted into seed?
A. Its eight-hundredth part only-that, namely, which is secreted in the centre of the body in question, and may, for
example, be seen in a grain of wheat.
Q. Of what use is the bulk of the matter as regards its seed?
A. It is useful as a safeguard against excessive heat, cold, moisture, or aridity, and, in general, all hurtful
inclemency, against which it acts as an envelope.
Q. Would those artists who pretend to reduce the whole matter of any body into seed derive any advantage from the
process, supposing it were possible to perform it?
A. None; on the contrary, their labour would be wholly unproductive, because nothing that is good can be
accomplished by a deviation from natural methods.
Q. What, therefore, should be done?
A. The matter must be effectively separated from its impurities, for there is no metal, how pure soever, which is
entirely free from imperfections, though their extent varies. Now all superfluities, cortices, and scoriae must be
peeled off and purged out from the matter in order to discover its seed.
Q. What should receive the most careful attention of the Philosopher?
A. Assuredly, the end of Nature, and this is by no means to be looked for in the vulgar metals, because, these having
issued already from the hands of the fashioner, it is no longer to be found therein.
Q. For what precise reason?
A. Because the vulgar metals, and chiefly gold, are absolutely dead, while ours, on the contrary, are absolutely
living, and possess a soul.
Q. What is the life of metals?
A. It is no other substance than fire, when they are as yet imbedded in the mines.
Q. What is their death?
A. Their life and death are in reality one principle, for they die, as they live, by fire, but their death is from a fire of
fusion.
Q. After what manner are metals conceived in the womb of the earth?
A. When the four elements have developed their power or virtue in the centre of the earth, and have deposited their
seed, the Archeus of Nature, in the course of a distillatory process, sublimes them superficially by the warmth and
energy of the perpetual movement.
Q. Into what does the wind resolve itself when it is distilled through the pores of the earth?
A. It resolves itself into water, whence all things spring; in this state it is merely a humid vapour, out of which there
is subsequently evolved the principiated principle of all substances, which also serves as the first matter of the
Philosophers.
Q. What then is this principiated principle, which is made use of as the first matter by the Children of Knowledge in
the philosophic achievement?
A. It is this identical matter, which, the moment it is conceived, receives a permanent and unchangeable form.
Q. Are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, the Sun, the Moon, etc., separately endowed with individual seed?
A. One is common to them all; their differences are to be accounted for by the: locality from which they are derived,
not to speak of the fact that Nature completes her work with far greater rapidity in the procreation of silver than in
that of gold, and so of the other metals, each in its own proportion.
Q. How is gold formed in the bowels of the earth?
A. When this vapour, of which we have spoken, is sublimed in the centre of the earth, and when it has passed
through warm and pure places, where a certain sulphureous grease adheres to the channels, then this vapour, which
the Philosophers have denominated their Mercury, becomes adapted and joined to this grease, which it sublimes
with itself; from such amalgamation there is produced a certain unctuousness, which, abandoning the vaporous
form, assumes that of grease, and is sublimised in other places, which have been cleansed by this preceding vapour,
and the earth whereof has consequently been rendered more subtle, pure, and humid; it fills the pores of this earth, is
joined thereto, and gold is produced as a result.
Q. How is Saturn engendered?
A. It occurs when the said unctuosity, or grease, passes through places which are totally impure and cold.
Q. How is Venus brought forth?
A. She is produced in localities where the earth itself is pure, but is mingled with impure sulphur.
Q. What power does the vapour, which we have recently mentioned, possess in the centre of the earth?
A. By its continual progress it has the power of perpetually rarefying whatsoever is crude and impure, and of
successively attracting to itself all that is pure around it.
Q. What is the seed of the first matter of all things?
A. The first matter of things, that is to say, the matter of principiating principles is begotten by Nature, without the
assistance of any other seed; in other words, Nature receives the matter from the elements, whence it subsequently
brings forth the seed.
Q. What, absolutely speaking, is therefore the seed of things?
A. The seed in a body is no other thing than a congealed air, or a humid vapour, which is useless except it be
dissolved by a warm vapour.
Q. How is the generation of seed comprised in the metallic kingdom?
A. By the artifice of Archeus the four elements, in the first generation of Nature, distil a ponderous vapour of water
into the centre of the earth ; this is the seed of metals, and it is called Mercury, not on account of its essence, but
because of its fluidity, and the facility with which it will adhere to each and every thing.
Q. Why is this vapour compared to sulphur?
A. Because of its internal heat.
Q. From what species of Mercury are we to conclude that the metals are composed?
A. The reference is exclusively to the Mercury of the Philosophers, and in no sense to the common or vulgar
substance, which cannot become a seed, seeing that, like other metals, it already contains its own seed.
Q. What, therefore, must actually be accepted as the subject of our matter?
A. The seed alone, otherwise the fixed grain, and not the whole body, which is differentiated into Sulphur, or living
male, and into Mercury, or living female.
Q. What operation must be afterwards performed
A. They must be joined together, so that they may form a germ, after which they will proceed to the procreation of a
fruit which is conformed to their nature.
Q. What is the part of the artist in this operation?
A. The artist must do nothing but separate that which is subtle from that which is gross.
Q. To what, therefore, is the whole philosophic combination reduced?
A. The development of one into two, and the reduction of two into one, and nothing further.
Q. Whither must we turn for the seed and life of meals and minerals?
A. The seed of minerals is properly the water which exists in the centre
And the heart of the minerals.
Q. How does Nature operate by the help of Art?
A. Every seed, whatsoever its kind, is useless, unless by Nature or Art it is placed in a suitable matrix, where it
receives its life by the coction of the germ! and by the congelation of the pure particle, or fixed grain.
Q. How is the seed subsequently nourished and preserved?
A. By the warmth of its body.
Q. What is therefore performed by the artist in the mineral kingdom?
A. He finishes what cannot be finished by Nature on account of the crudity of the air, which has permeated the pores
of all bodies by its violence, but on the surface and not in the bowels of the earth.
Q. What correspondence have the metals among themselves?
A. It is necessary for a proper comprehension of the nature of this correspondence to consider the position of the
planets, and to pay attention to Saturn, which is the highest of all, and then is succeeded by Jupiter, next by Mars,
the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and, lastly, by the Moon. It must be observed that the influential virtues of the planets do
not ascend but descend, and experience teaches us that Mars can be easily converted into Venus, not Venus into
Mars, which is of a lower sphere. So, also, Jupiter can be easily transmuted into Mercury, because Jupiter is superior
to Mercury, the one being second after the firmament, the other second above the earth, and Saturn is highest of all,
while the Moon is lowest. The Sun enters into all, but it is never ameliorated by its inferiors. It is clear that there is a
large correspondence between Saturn and the Moon, in the middle of which is the Sun; but to all these changes the
Philosopher should strive to administer the Sun.
Q. When the Philosophers speak of gold and silver, from which they extract their matter, are we to suppose that they
refer to the vulgar gold and silver?
A. By no means; vulgar silver and gold are dead, while those of the Philosophers are full of life.
Q. What is the object of research among the Philosophers?
A. Proficiency in the art of perfecting what Nature has left imperfect in the mineral kingdom, and the attainment of
the treasure of the Philosophical Stone.
Q. What is this Stone?
A. The Stone is nothing else than the radical humidity of the elements, perfectly purified and educed into a
sovereign fixation, which causes it to perform such great things for health, life being resident exclusively in the
humid radical.
Q. In what does the secret of accomplishing this admirable work consist?
A. It consists in knowing how to educe from potentiality into activity the innate warmth, or the fire of Nature, which
is enclosed in the centre of the radical humidity.
Q. What are the precautions which must be made use of to guard against failure in the work?
A. Great pains must be taken to eliminate excrements from the matter, and to conserve nothing but the kernel, which
contains all the virtue of the compound.
Q. Why does this medicine heal every species of disease?
A. It is not on account of tile variety of its qualities, but simply because it powerfully fortifies the natural warmth,
which it gently stimulates, while other physics irritate it by too violent an action.
Q How can you demonstrate to me the truth of the art in the matter of the tincture?
A. Firstly, its truth is founded on the fact that the physical powder, being composed of the same substance as the
metals, namely, quicksilver, has the faculty of combining with these in fusion, one nature easily embracing another
which is like itself. Secondly, seeing that the imperfection of the base metals is owing to the crudeness of their
quicksilver, and to that alone, the physical powder, which is a ripe and decocted quicksilver, and, in itself a pure fire,
can easily communicate to them its own maturity, and can transmute them into its nature, after it has attracted their
crude humidity, that is to say, their quicksilver, which is the sole substance that transmutes them, the rest being
nothing but scoriae and excrements, which are rejected in projection.
Q. What road should the Philosopher follow that he may attain to the knowledge and execution of the physical
work?
A. That precisely which was followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world, by
observing how the chaos was evolved.
Q. What was the matter of the chaos?
A. It could be nothing else than a humid vapour, because water alone enters into all created substances, which all
finish in a strange term, this term being a proper subject for the impression of all forms.
Q. Give me an example to illustrate what you have just stated.
A. An example may be found in the special productions of composite substances, the seeds of which invariably
begin by resolving themselves into a certain humour, which is the chaos of the particular matter, whence issues, by a
kind of irradiation, the complete form of the plant. Moreover, it should be observed that Holy Scripture makes no
mention of anything except water as the material subject whereupon the Spirit of God brooded, nor of anything
except light as the universal form of things.
Q. What profit may the Philosopher derive from these considerations, and what should he especially remark in the
method of creation which was pursued by the Supreme Being?
A. In the first place he should observe the matter out of which the world was made; he will see that out of this
confused mass, the Sovereign Artist began by extracting light, that this light in the same moment dissolved the
darkness which covered the face of the earth, and that it served as the universal form of the matter. He will then
easily perceive that in the generation of all composite substances, a species of irradiation takes place, and a
separation of light and darkness, wherein Nature is an undeviating copyist of her Creator. The Philosopher will
equally understand after what manner, by the action of this light, the empyrean, or firmament which divides the
superior and inferior waters, was subsequently produced; how the sky was studded with luminous bodies; and how
the necessity for the moon arose, which was owing to the space intervening between the things above and the things
below; for the moon is an intermediate torch between the superior and the inferior worlds, receiving the celestial
influences and communicating them to the earth. Finally he will understand how the Creator, in the gathering of the
waters, produced dry land.
Q. How many heavens can you enumerate?
A. Properly there is one only, which is the firmament that divides the waters from the waters. Nevertheless, three are
admitted, of which the first is the space that is above the clouds. In this heaven the waters are rarefied, and fall upon
the fixed stars, and it is also in this space that the planets and wandering stars perform their revolutions. The second
heaven is the firmament of the fixed stars, while the third is the abode of the supercelestial waters.
Q. Why is the rarefaction of the waters confined to the first heaven?
A. Because it is in the nature of rarefied substances to ascend, and because God, in His eternal laws, has assigned its
proper sphere to everything.
Q. Why does each celestial body invariably revolve about an axis?
A. It is by reason of the primeval impetus which it received, and by virtue of the same law which will cause any
heavy substance suspended from a thread to turn with the same velocity, if the power which impels its motion be
always equal.
Q. Why do the superior waters never descend?
A. Because of their extreme rarefaction. It is for this reason that a skilled chemist can derive more profit from the
study of rarefaction than from any other science whatsoever.
Q. What is the matter of the firmament?
A. It is properly air, which is more suitable than water as a medium of light.
Q. After the separation of the waters from the dry earth, what was performed by the Creator to originate generation?
A. He created a certain light which was destined for this office; He placed it in the central fire, and moderated this
fire by the humidity of water and by the coldness of earth, so as to keep a check upon its energy and adapt it to His
design.
Q. What is the action of this central fire?
A. It continually operates upon the nearest humid matter, which it exalts into vapour; now this vapour is the mercury
of Nature and the first matter of the three kingdoms.
Q. How is the sulphur of Nature subsequently formed?
A. By the interaction of the central fire and the mercurial vapour.
Q. How is the salt of the sea produced?
A. By the action of the same fire upon aqueous humidity, when the aerial humidity, which is contained therein, has
been exhaled.
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