The Most Secret Secrets

...we will convince the reader that this science was most common and almost native to Egypt, as we deal with it in this first book. The most ancient and first inventors of this art, or Golden Medicine original: "Medicinæ aureæ"; a reference to the Philosopher's Stone or the pinnacle of alchemical achievement, considering that its subject, form, efficient cause, and effects shared a commonality with the principal parts of the world—namely with the 1. Concerning the Gods of the Egyptians hieroglyphic Sun, Moon, Fire, air, water, and earth, and the rest of the wandering stars—gave the art's components names derived from them. For in the Subject of the art, two things are considered, of which one possesses the nature of the male and the other the nature of the female; therefore, they called the former Osiris or the Sun, and the latter Isis or the Moon. Mercury, who is joined to the Sun and Moon, is common to both, since no conjunction of the Sun and Moon occurs in the greater world unless Mercury is also present, for he always runs alongside as a satellite to the Sun. And just as these two are spouses, so too are they held to be brother and sister, to whom a certain third red and burning spirit is joined, called Typhon, who cuts his brother of the same womb, Osiris, into the smallest parts and limbs This refers to the alchemical process of dissolution or "chemical death," allegorized by the myth of Typhon/Set dismembering Osiris.. These, therefore, are the four primary personae among the Egyptians, of which of which three—Osiris, Isis, and Mercury—are accepted as gods, while Typhon is seen as a malignant demon. To these they add Vulcan, or external fire; Pallas Athena, or the wisdom of working; Oceanus, the generator of the gods, or the mother Thetis, or for both of them the Nile (that is, water); and the earth, the mother of all, who as Orpheus says, bestows riches; then Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Apollo, Pluto, and other Gods. Although in subsequent times these names were commonly originally and almost always accepted by the common people as the names of Gods or of the planets and celestial bodies of the stars, they were nonetheless originally introduced by the restorers and propagators of Chemistry original: "Chymiæ"; in this context, Maier specifically means the alchemical art of transmutation for the concealment concealment of their art. This is clearly seen from all the circumstances of each, both among Greek and Egyptian writers; especially in Diodorus, whose opinions on the Egyptian gods we will examine, and we will weigh their correspondence with Chemical matters. "Besides the said Gods," he says, "whom they call celestial and e- Book I, chapter 7. ternal, they report others moreover born from these, who were..."