People of Alchemy
From New Age Village
Fabre, Pierre Charles: (French Alchemist — Fl. 1630.) Hardly any biographical details concerning this French alchemist are forthcoming. Mr. Waite, in his Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, declares that Fabre was a native of Montpellier; but we do not find any evidence to support this statement, and it is possible that he has confounded Fabre the alchemist with a painter of the same name, who was born at Montpellier, and after whom the Musee Fabre at that town is called. Pierre Jean Fabre appears to have been a doctor of medicine, and to have been renowned in his own day as a scholar of chemistry, a subject on which he compiled several treatises; while, though it is not recorded that he ever won any marked successes in the field of alchemy, he certainly wrote numerous things dealing wholly or partly with that topic. Of these the most important are Alchitnista Christianus and Hercules Pischymicus, both published at Toulouse, the first in 1632, the second two years afterwards ; and in the latter he maintains that the mythological" labors of Hercules " are allegories, embodying the arcane of hermetic philosophy. The philosopher's stone, he declares complacently, may be found in all compounded circumstances, and is formed of salt, mercury and sulphur.
Ferarius: This alchemist is supposed to have been an Italian priest of the thirteenth century, but nothing is known concerning his career. Various chemical writings ascribed to him are embodied in that curious collection, the Theatrum Chimicum, prominent among them being De Lapide Plnilosophorum and Thesaurus Philosophies ; and in the former the author observes, rather tritely, that in alchemy the first thing to be ascertained is what is really signified by the myrionimous argentum vivum sapientium. But he does not volunteer any information in this particular, and his works in general are obscure, and of but little interest.
Fritzlar, Martin Von: German alchemist. (Circa, 1750.) The dates of the birth and death of this alchemist have never been ascertained, but he is known to have lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, while he appears to have been a Hessian, resident chiefly at the village of Firtzlai. While a young man, he studied pharmacy, intending to make it his profession; but he soon grew interested in the quest of gold-making, and, when the celebrated alchemist, Lascaris, came to Germany, Martin hastened to his presence with a view to gleaning his secrets.
Flamel, Nicholas, was born at Pontoise, of a poor but respectable family, about the beginning of the fourteenth century. He received a good education, of which his natural abilities enabled him to make the best use. Repairing to Paris, he obtained employment as a public scrivener,—sitting at the corner of the Rue de Marivaux, copying or inditing letters and other documents. The occupation brought with it little profit, and Flamel tried in succession poetry and painting with an equally unsatisfactory result. His quick wits suggested that as he could make no money by teaching mankind, it might be more profitable to cheat them, and he took up the pursuit of Astrology, casting horoscopes and telling fortunes. He was right in his conjectures, and soon throve so vigorously that he was enabled to take unto himself a wife named Petronella. But those who begin to study the magic art for profit or amusement generally finish by addicting themselves to it with a blindly passionate love. Nicholas devoted himself both day and night to his fascinating but deceptive pursuits; and soon acquired a thorough knowledge of all that previous adepts had written upon the elixir vita, the universal Alkahest, and the Philosopher's Stone. In 1297 he lighted upon a manual of the art which would have been invaluable if it had been intelligible. He bought it for two florins. It contained three times seven leaves written with a steel instrument upon the bark of trees. The calligraphy was as admirable as the Latin was cryptical. Each seventh leaf was free from writing, but emblazoned with a picture; the first, representing a serpent swallowing rods; the second, a serpent crucified on a cross; and the third, the arid expanse of a treeless desert, in whose depths a fountain bubbled, with serpents trailing their slimy folds from side to side. The author of this mysterious book purported to be " Abraham, the patriarch, Jew, prince, philosopher, Levite, priest, and astrologer," who added to his other claims upon the wonder of mankind a knowledge of Latin. He had included within these precious pages a complete exposition of the art of transmuting metals; describing every process, explaining the different vessels, and pointing out the proper seasons for making experiments. In fact, the book would have been perfect, but for one deficiency; it was addressed not so much to the tyro as to an adept, and took it for granted that its student was already in possession of the Philosopher's Stone. This was a terrible obstacle to the inquiring Flamel. The more he studied the book the less he understood it. He studied the letterpress, and he studied the illustrations ; he invited the wise men of France to come and study them, but no light was thrown upon the darkness. For thrice seven years he pored over these perplexing pages, until at length his wife suggested that a Jewish Rabbi might be able to interpret them. As the chiefs of the Jews were principally located in Spain, to Spain went Flamel, and there he remained for two years. From one of the Hebrew sages he obtained some hints which afforded a key to the patriarchal mysteries, and returning to Paris he recommenced his studies with a new vigor.
They were rewarded with success. On the I3th of February,"1382, o.s., Flamel made a projection on Mercury, and produced some virgin silver. On the 25th of the following April he converted some Mercury into gold, and found himself the fortunate possessor of an inexhaustible treasure. But his good fortune did not end here. Flamel, continuing his researches discovered the elixir of life, which enabled him to prolong his him— and accumulate gold—to the venerable age of 116. He further administered the life-giving potion to his wife, who reached nearly as great a longevity as himself, dying in the year preceding his own death, A.D. 1414. As they had no children, they spent their wealth upon churches and hospitals, and several of the religious and charitable institutions of France still attest their well-directed benevolence. There is no doubt that Flamel practiced alchemy, and one of his works on the fascinating science—a poem entitled The Philosophic Summary—was printed as late as 1735. In Salmon's valuable and very curious Biblio~ theque des Philosophes CAimiques are preserved same specimens of the drawings in Abraham's treatise on metallurgy and of his own handwriting. But Flamel was neither an enthusiast nor a dupe. His alchemical studies were but the disguises of his usurious practices. To account for the immense wealth he acquired by money-lending to the young French nobles, and by transacting business between the Jews of France and those of Spain, he invented the fiction of his discovery of the Philosopher's Stone. He nevertheless obtained great repute as a magician, and his followers believed that he was still alive though retired from the world, and would live for six centuries.
Fludd, or Find, Robert: This Rosicrucian and alchemist was born in 1574 at Milgate House, in the parish of Bearsted, Kent, his father being one Sir Thomas Fludd, a knight who enjoyed the patronage of Queen Elizabeth, and served her for several years as " Treasurer of War in the Low Countries." At the age of seventeen Robert entered St. John's College, Oxford, and five years later he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts; while shortly afterwards, on his deciding to take up medical science, he left England and went to prosecute his studies on the Continent. Going first to Spain, he traveled thence to Italy, and subsequently stayed for some time in Germany, where he is said to have supported himself by acting as pedagogue in various noble households; but soon he was home again, and in 1605 his alma mater of Oxford conferred on him the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Medicine, while five years later he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. Having thus equipped himself thoroughly for the medical profession, Fludd went to London and took a house in Fenchurch Street, a quiet place in those days, though now a noisy centre of commerce; and here he soon gained an extensive practice, his success being due not merely to his genuine skill, but to his having an attractive and even magnetic personality. But busy though he was in this way, he found leisure to write at length on medicine; while anon he became an important and influential member of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, and at the same time he commenced alchemistic experiments. He preached the great efficacy of the magnet, of sympathetic cures, of the weapon-salve; he declared his belief in the Philosopher's Stone, the universal alkahest or solvent, the elixir vita; he maintained that all things were animated by two principles—condensation, the Boreal, or northern virtue ; and rarefaction, the Austral, or southern virtue. He asserted that the human body was controlled by a number of demons, that each disease had its peculiar demon, each demon his particular place in the frame of humanity, and that to conquer a disease—say in the right leg—you must call in the aid of the demon who ruled the left, always proceeding by this rule of contraries.
As soon as the doctrines of the Rosy Cross Brotherhood were promulgated Fludd embraced them with all the eagerness of which his dreamy-intellect was capable; and several German writers having made an attack upon them, he published a defense in 1616, under the title of Apologia Compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea-Cruce Suspicionis et Infamia Maculis Asper-samAbluens, which procured him a wide-spread reputation as one of the apostles of the new fraternity. He met with the usual fate of prophets, and was lustily belabored by a host of enemies—by Mersenne, Gassendi, and Kepler. Fludd was by no means discomfited, and retorted upon his opponents in an elaborate treatise, Summum Bonum, quod est Magice, Cabala, Alchimice, Fratrum Roseee-Crucis Verorum, et adversus Mersenium Calumniatorem. He made at a later period and adventurous attempt to identify the doctrines of the Rosicrucians with what he was pleased to call the Philosophy of Moses (Philosophic. Mosaica, in qua sapientia et scieniia Creationis explicantur), published at Ghent, 1638, and wrote numerous treatises on alchemy and medical science. He founded an English school of Rosicrucians. Fludd is one of the high priests of the Magnetic Philosophy, and learnedly expounds the laws of ostral medicine, the doctrines of sympathies, and the fine powers and marvelous effects of the magnet. When two men approach each other—such was his theory—their magnetism is either active or passive; that is, positive or negative. If the emanations which they send out are broken or thrown back, there arises antipathy, or Magnetismus negativus: but when the emanations pass through each other, the positive magnetism is produced, for the magnetic rays proceed from the centre to the circumference. Man, like the earth, has his poles, or two main streams of magnetic influence. Like a little world, he is endowed with a magnetic virtue which, however, is subjected to the same laws as, on a larger scale, the magnetic power of the universe. How these principles may be developed in the cure or prevention of disease, the reader must learn from the mystic pages of Robertus a Fluctibns himself.
Fludd died in 1637 at a house in Coleman Street, to which he had removed a few years before; but ere his demise he had won a fairly wide reputation by his chymical ability, and had also issued a considerable number of books, prominent among them being Tractatus Apologeticus integrita-tem Societatis de Rusae Cruce defendants, Leyden 1617, Veri-tatis Proscenium, Frankfort 1621, Medicina Catholica, Frankfort 1629, Monochordum Mundi Syhiphoniacum, Frankfort, 1622.
Fontaine, John: This Flemish alchemist and poet appears to have lived at Valenciennes towards the close of the thirteenth century. Two books are ascribed to him, La Fontaine des Amoweux de Science and La Fontaine Perilleuse. both of which are written in French and were published at Paris, the first-named in 1561 and the second eleven years later. His claims to the authorship of the latter work have frequently been disputed, but the former is almost certainly his, and a curious production it is. At the outset the author professes himself an adept in hermetic philosophy, and thereafter he proceeds, in poetry of an allegorical style which recalls The Romawtt of the Rose, to describe the different processes to be gone through ere achieving a transmutation. There is little in this metrical treatise which indicates that the writer was an alchemist of any great ability, but he certainly possessed a distinct gift for making pleasant if hardly powerful verses.
Glauber, Johann Rudolph: German mediciner and alchemist, born at Carlstadt, in 1603. No authentic records concerning bis life appear to exist, although he was a profuse writer and left many treatises on medicine and alchemy. He discovered and prepared many medicines of great value to pharmacy, some of which are in common use, for example the familiar preparation known as Glauber's Salts. He was a firm believer in the Philosophers' Stone and elixir vita. Concerning the former, he states: " Let the benevolent reader take with him my final judgment concerning the great Stone of the Wise; let every man believe what he will and is able to comprehend. Such a work is purely the gift of God, and cannot be learned by the most acute power of human mind, if it be not assisted by the benign help of a Divine Inspiration. And of this I assure myself that in the last times, God will raise up some to whom He will open the Cabinet of Nature's Secrets, that they shall be able to do wonderful things in the world to His Glory, the which, I indeed, heartily wish to posterity that they may enjoy and use to the praise and honour of God." Some of Glauber's principal works are, Philosophical Furnaces, Commentary on Paracelsus, Heaven of the Philosophers, or Book of Vexation, Miracultim Murdi, I'u Prosperity of Germany, Book of Fires.
Gustenhover: A goldsmith who resided at Strasburg in 1603. In a period of much danger he gave shelter to one M. Hirschborgen who is described as good and religious. In return for the hospitality of his host he gave him some powder of projection and departed on his journey.
Gustenhover indiscreetly made transmutation before many people, which in due course reached the ears of Rudplph II. himself, an amateur alchemist. He forthwith ordered the Strasburg magistrates to send the goldsmith to him. He was accordingly arrested and guarded with the greatest vigilance. On learning that he was to be sent to the Emperor at Prague he disclosed the whole business and requesting the magistrates to meet together asked them to procure a crucet and charcoal, and without his coming near them to melt some lead. On the metal being molten he then gave them a small quantity of a reddish powder on which being thrown into the crucet produced a considerable amount of pure gold.
On being brought into the presence of the Emperor he confessed that he had not himself prepared the magical powder and was wholly ignorant of the nature of its composition. Then the Emperor refused to believe in spite of the repeated Erotestations of the goldsmith. The powder being exhausted, Gustenhover was set to the now impossible task of making more gold. He sought refuge from the fury of the Emperor by an alchemical blasphemy accursed by all sons of the doctrine. Convinced that the alchemist was concealing his secret, the Emperor had him imprisoned for the rest of his life.
It is believed that Hirschborgen who presented Gustenhover with the powder was no other than Alexander Sethon (q.v.), who at that period was traveling Germany in various disguises.
Lasearis: (Alchemist of the Eighteenth Century.) It is impossible to determine the date at which this mysterious personage was born, or to say, exactly, whence he came and where he chiefly lived. He is commonly supposed to have been active about the beginning of the eighteenth century, while Germany is held to have been the principal scene of his activities ; but everything recorded concerning Mm reads like a romance, and suggests the middle ages rather than the day before yesterday. Sometimes he assured people that he was of Oriental origin, sometimes he maintained that his native land was the Ionian Isles, and that he was a scion of the Greek royal house of Lasearis; while on other occasions he declared that he was an archimandrite of a convent in the Island of Mytilene, and that his object in coming to Europe was to solicit alms for the ransom of Christian prisoners in the East. Such was his tale when, about 1700, he commenced wandering in Germany, and, while sojourning at Berlin, he happened to fall ill and sent for medical aid. This appeared shortly in the shape of a young apothecary, Johann Friedrich Botticher by name, who chanced to be deeply interested in alchemy, so a friendship sprang up between physician and patient and ere Lasearis left the Prussian capital he gave Botticher a packet of transmuting powder, at the same time instructing him how to use it successfully, yet refraining from telling him how to manufacture the powder itself. Nothing daunted, Botticher set to work speedily, concocted considerable quantities of gold and silver, grew rich, and was raised to the peerage ; while simultaneously he began to find his society, and more especially his services as a scientist, courted by kings and nobles. Meanwhile, however, his-supply of the precious powder had run short, and being unable to make more he found his reputation waning apace ; while worse still, he had spent his newly-acquired wealth speedily, and now he found himself reduced to penury. Ultimately he was incarcerated, but during his period of durance vile he set himself to the manufacture of porcelain, and by the sale of this he eventually restored his fallen fortunes.
We presume naturally that it was gratitude to his physician which inspired the crafty alchemist to give Botticher the powder, but why did Lasearis make an analogous present at a later date ? The recipient on this occasion being one Schmolz de Dierbach, a lieutenant-colonel in the Polish Army. He, like the German apothecary, succeeded in making a quantity of gold, and, though we hear no more about him after this transmutation, we learn that a certain Baron de Creux was likewise favored by Lasearis, the Baron's experiments proving just as successful as those of the others aforesaid. Nor were these the only people on whom our alchemist bestowed his indulgence, for one Domenico Manuel, the son of a Neapolitan mason, was-likewise given a packet of transmutatory powder, and, armed thus, he wandered through Spain, Belgium, and Austria, performing operations before princes and noblemen, and reaping wealth accordingly. Pride was the inevitable result of this, and though there is no reason to suppose that any patent of nobility was ever conferred on Domenico, we find him styling himself now Comte Gautano, now Comte di Ruggiero; while in one town he maintained that he was a Prussian major-general, and elsewhere he declared that he was field-marshal of the Bavarian forces. Going to Berlin in the course of his perambulations, he offered to make gold in the presence of the king; but alas ! his operation proved utterly futile, and he was hanged as a charlatan in consequence. This was in 1709, and in the-same year, according to tradition, Lasearis himself performed some successful transmutations before a German politician named Liebknech, a citizen of Wurtembourg. Nothing further is heard of the mysterious Greek alchemist, however, so it may be assumed that he died soon after these events. His was a curious career indeed: his generosity having scarcely a parallel in the whole history of hermetic philosophy.
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