Book 1 of the Hieroglyphics.

Egyptian letters were introduced: He Referring to Mercury/Hermes from the previous page. taught Rhetoric, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music: For nothing is done in art, as in nature, without number, weight, and measure original: "numero, pondere & mensura"; a reference to the Book of Wisdom 11:20, frequently cited by alchemists to justify the quantitative nature of their work.. Thus Raymond Lully original: "Raijm: Lullius"; a 13th-century polymath to whom many later alchemical works were attributed. says in The Theory of the Testament, Chapter 50: "Nature," he says, "has within itself the philosophy and science of the seven liberal arts, by which it works: Since she carries in herself every geometric form and defines every thing by the power of her arithmetic through the equality of a fixed number, and through rhetorical knowledge leads your intellect from potentiality into action." These are his words. Mercury himself is the interpreter of all things, called Hermes by the Greeks, whose counsel Osiris uses the most; because without Mercury nothing is done. The olive The olive tree and its oil. is sacred to him, as the most excellent of all oils, which can harden things that are too soft and soften things that are hard, by one and the same fire. Remaining matters concerning Mercury and Vulcan will be set forth in the following sections.

But why did Isis establish all things from gold, and indeed so many entire temples, for her parent and the other gods? Since otherwise, in every age, it is unheard of that even a single temple was built of gold, especially in this more recent age, where there is a thousand times greater abundance of gold dug from mines and rivers than in ancient times, when gold is said to have first been discovered. Or why did Isis hold the smiths of bronze and gold in honor? The reason is at hand: she is surely the Golden Goddess. She is said to be both the sister and the wife of Osiris, just as Juno is to Jupiter and Rhea to Saturn, who are said to be their ancestors.

This is the single most evident and characteristic mark of Chemistry original: "Chymiæ"; in this era, the term referred to alchemy and the study of metallic transformation.; its subject consists of a male agent and a female patient, like brother and sister, as well as spouses, as will be demonstrated throughout. Osiris therefore and Isis, like Vulcan and Mercury, are the primary intellectual chemical gods—not celestial, but subterranean, and born from art. And since Isis is Ceres and Osiris is Bacchus or Dionysus among the Greeks, we shall hand down the rest of their gifts and characteristics below. Truly Osiris, as Diodorus Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century BC. narrates in that same place, since he was a good man and desirous of glory, gathered a huge army so that he might travel across the world and teach mortals how to plant...