Preface

...so that they are held in the hands of the learned, in almost every paragraph of which mention is made of the gods and heroes of the nations; this gave the cause to the erudite to diligently investigate what exactly was understood by those gods and heroes. Therefore, some were found who reduced them to history This approach is known as Euhemerism, the theory that gods were originally historical kings or heroes., as if those gods and heroes were kings and men in ancient ages, and performed such great and numerous things as are written of them; others applied them to the formation of morals or to the natural reasoning of this world.

But since these people frequently produced things most absurd—worthy neither of those first, wisest men to wrap up, nor of themselves to unwrap—and for the most part corrupted them with their own fictions produced without any agreement of reality, they left more doubt than certainty in the minds of readers. Many have therefore wished that what truly lay beneath those gods and heroes of the nations might finally be thoroughly expressed. For it is certainly credible that it was not some trivial thing, arising from history, nor to be drawn toward morals or other matters, that existed at the start; a thing which involved nearly the whole world and so many wise men in it, not for a mere hundred years (which would be too much), but for thirty times a hundred or more—that is, three thousand years—and held them involved and blinded.

Meanwhile, among those who treat of chemical matters, some have come forward who assert that the pagan gods and goddesses took their first origin from chemical works. Among these were Braceschus Giovanni Bracesco (c. 1481–1555), an Italian alchemist who wrote dialogues interpreting Geber and Aristotle., Robertus Vallensis Robert Duval (c. 1490–1567), author of the first history of alchemy., and several others. But since they partly accommodated individual things to their own private concerns, and did not sufficiently render the reasoning and harmony of all things in a convenient method, and partly because chemistry itself is held by the judgment of many to be vain, futile, and useless, hence nothing certain could be judged by the learned concerning these matters.

Therefore, I have finally taken this labor upon myself, led by various causes: namely, to declare and set before the eyes of readers in one treatise what things were originally understood under the gods, goddesses, and heroes of the nations, and by what reasoning those fables have been propagated until now through the ages of the world. This is done both so that the truth of Christian doctrine, shining sufficiently by itself, may be more and more illustrated once these shadows are removed, and so that Chemistry—not Alchemy Alcumia: Maier uses this term pejoratively here to distinguish "puffers" and fraudulent "gold-makers" from the true philosophical art of "Chymia." (that nurse of so many rascals and mother of deceptions, which adulterates metals and does not truly transmute them), but that which serves to produce the Golden Medicine, the Most Ancient and Most True, may be demonstrated...