TO THE READER.

"You are young, as are your children who shall be born from you: for your brothers are like you, equal to you in age; your body was created most bright, most heavy, highly compact and visible; your only two colors are blue and red, which contain all the colors of the Universe; and she who shall transform you into black darkness is a white and red virgin; at each turn you will bear ten children to her, while your virginity remains unharmed; since you and your children are established as Light, whose parts are whole, and neither heat nor cold nor any sharpest sword shall loosen your bond; for Salt is your father, and the Moon your mother The speaker uses alchemical allegories: Salt represents the "fixed" or physical principle, while the Moon represents the "volatile" or reflective principle.: therefore hear all things without seeing, and see without hearing, and speak inwardly in silence: All in One; then you will know the twofold, united One in All; and you will be able to loosen the eternal bond, and to bind it, without loss of time."

With these things said, a profound shuddering awe original: "horror" pervaded me, and soon turning toward my own kind, I saw countless men there of all nations—learned and unlearned, Sages, noble and ignoble, young men with the old—who were all divided against each other in a struggle for the sake of knowledge and the science of truth. I, seeing the depth of this division, attempted by a vow to prepare myself for the grafting of mutual Harmony original: "Concordiæ". I first noticed that a certain small book—part of another yet to follow—titled Unheard-of Medical Works original: "Opuscula Medica inaudita"; this refers to a collection of treatises published by the author's father, Jan Baptiste van Helmont, in 1644., had partly stirred up this disagreement. This book had called back pious young students and other cultivators of truth from the long and murky night into the dawn, so they might believe that a more perfect light, hitherto unknown, remained, from which this dawn might shine for them. And the more deeply they inspected the aforementioned little book, the more they rejoiced that they found in it the promised arrival of the desired Perfection of Light.

This so increased their spirit that one of them did not fear to propose this parable in a loud voice in public to certain University Professors—men otherwise famous and Christian, yet ungrateful—prefacing it with Questions and Warnings: "It is no wonder that these words of ours seem harder to the Flesh, since they are spiritual, concerning which the flesh cannot pass judgment; just as he spoke who had never looked upon the light because of a disease of his sight: and when he saw even the smallest bit of Light, he detested it, claiming among other things that it was the worst poison, because it brought him intolerable pain. For that reason he remained incurable—he who in his stubbornness could suffer no mention of a cure, since he loved darkness rather than light, and so was made a son of that same darkness."

Some of the Professors realized this simile was aimed at them; unable to restrain themselves and seized by fury, they shouted: "You novices and seditious sowers of heresies, it would be fitting to burn you alive with your followers!" Having said this, the raging men rushed toward the house of the Senior Professor, and there they called an assembly by night, so they might foresee what was beginning...

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