Alchemical Writings (Stone of Philosophers)

Now, in offering for the first time to the English reader the three very curious treatises which constitute the chief literary remains of Edward Kelly, it is not necessary, as it would be in fact without reason, that the editor should accept an indiscriminate brief for the defence A legal metaphor meaning a pre-prepared argument to protect someone's reputation regardless of the facts of the alchemist who wrote them. To the collector of curiosities in science and unheard-of things original: "choses inouies" in literature, the interest which may attach to them will be unimpaired by the mummeries or crimes of their author. For the student of Hermetic antiquitiesThe study of ancient alchemy, magic, and esoteric philosophy attributed to the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus, it will become evident, and he may already be aware, that the value of the two treatises original: "duo tractatus" and their complement is not that they are the work of an adeptA master alchemist who has achieved the Great Work and discovered the secret of transmutation, but that they comprehend a careful digest or consensus of alchemical philosophers, while the interest which attaches to the man is created by his possession for a period of the two tincturesThe 'White Tincture' and the 'Red Tincture,' alchemical substances believed to transform base metals into silver and gold, respectively of alchemical philosophy, and not in his ability to compose them. At the same time, the adventures and imprisonments of Kelly, with