Essais chimiques d’eckartshausen

CHEMICAL ESSAYS OF ECKARTSHAUSEN
Second Edition of this Manual of Rosicrucian Alchemy, augmented with Annotations and an unpublished Booklet.

A few words about this edition

The CHEMICAL ESSAYS were published for the first time in French by Éditions de Psyché in 1938. It is this same text that will be found here, followed by the summary of a pamphlet that D'Eckartshausen had published in Munich, in 1798. The two texts, brought together here, complement and shed light on each other. The CHEMICAL ESSAYS are in a way the practical adaptation of the theoretical data exposed in the Memoir which follows it, although chronologically earlier, and whose title, a little long, is: The most recent Discoveries on Light, Heat and Fire, intended for Lovers of Physics and Chemistry.

Under the appearance of a fairly translucent "chemical" terminology, this last booklet condenses what can be given of Rosicrucian Alchemy. The enigmatic Rosicrucians have caused much ink to flow and many erudite feathers to squeak. Between those who trace the creation of their Fraternity back to the earliest times of the world and those who utter the word mystification about it, there is room for a number of more nuanced, if not more convincing, opinions!

The only people really qualified to light up our lantern are silent, let people talk and write, and smile silently every time that some group is founded, here or there, often to the sound of a horn, some group which takes their former title as a sign. I will not take it upon myself to situate D'Eckartshausen in the Rosicrucian or para-Rosicrucian hierarchy. It is enough for me, among other things, to read it to know that there was rank.

The following pages differ from most of the Hermetic writings published for two or three centuries in that they are not particularly focused on practical work, in the laboratory, but are very broad. place for the principles which command and justify it. The speculative data dominate in the Memoir of 1798, the operative technique in the CHEMICAL ESSAYS. Because, as the author says, “When a substance is really present, it must be shown and certified by experience. "

Another originality of D'Eckartshausen's “manner” is that it only borrows rare items from the classical vocabulary of the Hermetists. Our author speaks a simple language. And this simplicity is one of the major difficulties of his work. Even more than the chemists, alchemists and blowers of his time, we are complicated, cerebral,

full of abstractions. And we are struggling to free ourselves from the grip of our stereotypical, technical or philosophical formulas and our familiar terminologies. It seems to me that D'Eckartshausen writes less for those who know or think they know than for "amateurs" worthy of knowledge, whatever their training, learned or ignorant depending on the world. Disconcerted, I admit, at first reading, it took me a long time to realize the author's perfect mastery of the two Ways of the Work, both equally legitimate in his eyes, and to situate his technique, traditional in the main lines, original in certain innovations. And that's why I risked a few brief comments. CHEMICAL ESSAYS give the Aspirant a thin but strong Breadcrumb trail. However, to him, the honor and the peril of confronting the Minot re, with the help of Ciel, who will not fail to the seeker, este, sincere and prudent. I'll do my best to get him to the threshold of the Labyrinth. To go further would be to go too far.

A. SAVORET.

FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR

There was a time when metallic transmutation was considered possible only under the condition of the radical dissolution of the noble metals: only, as this dissolution was held to be impossible, transmutation was also held to be impossible.

But experience proves that man should not prejudge too early on things of which he has no practical notion, and the modest one only says: "According to current knowledge of chemistry, it does not seem possible. ., perhaps we lack a higher knowledge ”.

So I thought. And this meditation led me to the reality of the dissolution of metals, in which the possibility is proved to satiety; for experience is the best syllogism.

What if someone asks me, "So can you make gold?" "; I would answer him: "Analyzing metals and then synthesizing them is still a long way from producing them". We know, for example, how to separate the elements of different bodies and then bring them together, without however being able to artificially produce similar bodies.

If someone asks me, "Is artificial gold production possible?" "; then I answer: “I won't deny it as long as I am not convinced of the absolute impossibility; but I believe that demonstrating the impossibility of the practical production of gold is just as difficult as making gold. "

Among other things, I flatter myself that, through my experience, I have rendered a service to chemistry, because it thus leads us more towards the knowledge of nature. The gold I'm looking for is the truth!

To Gentlemen alchemists, I write the following:

“Alchemists and lotto players have almost the same fate; each of the first vainly hopes for its universal in each operation, just like the last, with each drawing of the "quine". "

I want to tell you my opinion on alchemy: it seems to me that he who seeks gold does not find it; but he who seeks God, as the primordial Force of all forces, he could well find everything in God. It also seems to me that it is not written without reason: Seek above all the Kingdom of God, the rest will be given to you in addition. This truth leads to another: if you do not seek the Kingdom of God first, the rest, in divine order, will not be given to you.

But what is the kingdom of God? The perfect possession of Jesus Christ in our heart, reigning in him as in his temple, with Wisdom and Love, and illuminating by his Spirit our reason, from the inside out, so that we can perceive the outside of nature.

When we are in possession of this universal Spirit (that is, the Spirit of Christ within us), then may we, by His Grace, be able to come to know the exterior of the universal spirit of nature, better than ordinary philosophy knows it.

As long as man does not intimately possess the art of inner separation (Scheidekunst) from the sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure, neither does it happen to me, in the exterior, to separate the blessing of the curse; for the outer blessing is exactly proportioned to the inner. Simple science is insufficient for this Science, which I consider to be the most; it is also necessary to join to it the practice and, for the practice, the power, and for the power, the force which comes from on High and which no man can share with another.

Whoever thinks anything else on this matter is in a deep error. He deceives himself or is deceived by others since he does not know the chain of the inner laws of the Godhead with the outer laws of nature. I know very well that some say: “Nature follows immutable laws; sulfur and mercury generate cinnabar at all times; arsenic and sulfur, always the well-known orpiment; two times two is always four, whether those numbers are expressed by a good man or a bad man. Therefore, it is the same with the highest chemistry. When we finally know the material, if we know its composition, if we have observed or learned it from others, we can do things as well as anyone; nature cannot steal her treasures from us, when we constrain it by its own laws. "

In this way, those who want to enter the sanctuary by climbing the roof are shrinking. In doing so, they forget that some were, at the door, summoned to return his property to the Master of the house.

It is true that there is a plan which, at first glance, seems unanswerable and which possesses so much exterior coloring that it has already won over many men of high intelligence. Alone, he who knows how close God and nature are, how God constantly and infallibly directs his mechanism; he who conceives of this great truth of which Saint Paul speaks: in ipso vivimus, imoveimur et sumus, he easily understands that God never lets the reins fall from his sacred hands and that he will never entrust them to anyone who is not deeply united to him. This nature would not be the work of an infinite Wisdom, if its author had not taken care, at the same time, that its power, its secrets, its hidden springs could never be within the reach of

It would also be a presumption, close to blasphemy, to want to attribute to the highest Being the capacity to abandon the purest, the most sacred and the highest of physical nature to profane hands. I therefore consider it a real temerity to want to attain the holiness of nature (which is known to very few and will always be the prerogative of the fewest number), without having made an effort, first, to attain the holiness of Grace within.

Whoever, probing the Bible with a clairvoyant eye, would follow the school of the Prophets, that one would find that gold would be an inferior production, if he did not give us the knowledge of the primordial physical essence of things. , to which are connected much higher and more amazing forces of nature.

Who can make claims about the primordial essence of physical forces? Is this really the work of the wrestler and the researcher? Or is it not, rather, a work of Grace and pity?

What I am saying here is not bigotry (Frömmelei), but steadfast and pure truth. And, precisely, this truth has always been kept away from all those who indulged in alchemy, sold its secrets, or pretended to teach them. I have heard a lot of it, but very few have found a pure understanding of it.

I do not deny that the desire to get rich has led some to new and useful discoveries, nor that ordinary chemistry owes much to alchemy. But, as far as the supra-universal is concerned, it seems to me that only the supra-universal can distribute it; that it is reserved for a great goal of which God alone is master and before which we must bow with humility, without wanting to penetrate it, however the way in which what is to happen will be accomplished.

The gold I seek is Truth; my currency is Wisdom, and my philosopher's stone is the knowledge of my nothingness and the omnipotence of God in the depths of nature.