The Golden Fleece

Treatise and Travels

I saw that I could observe all kinds of arts with this Gentleman original: "Centilon," a corruption of the Italian gentiluomo., especially as the head lab assistant was very loyal to me. He placed all sorts of arts into my hands and informed me that his generous master spent thirty thousand crowns a year on such arts. He paid cash for every kind of book brought to him in all sorts of languages and showed great honor to those who brought them. I saw this truly with my own eyes: a man named Sarlamethon brought a tincture Tincture: An alchemical substance—often a powder or liquid—capable of transmuting base metals into gold or silver. written in the Greek language from foreign lands, for which he was paid 6,000 crowns in cash. The Gentleman immediately had this translated into German and placed it in my hands; I worked through it in fifteen weeks.

Copper, lead, silver

With this, I transmuted three metals—Venus (copper) ♀, Jupiter (tin) ♃, and the Moon (silver) ☾ While the margin mentions lead, the symbols in the text represent copper, tin, and silver.—in great quantities, all into the finest gold. And all of this was kept hidden from others.

The Gentleman became so magnificent and powerful—and as they "marry the sea" The Sposalizio del Mare (Marriage of the Sea), a major Venetian ceremony where the Doge threw a golden ring into the Adriatic to symbolize Venice's dominion over the waters. every year, leading the entire choir out onto the water to throw a golden ring set with precious stones into the sea—this Gentleman also appeared with his own ships in great splendor. Then a storm arose upon the sea, drowning many great lords; thus this great Gentleman also went to the bottom. Consequently, his noble family ceased all laboratory work, and all the lab assistants were paid in full and dismissed, though the head lab assistant was retained.

So I traveled from Venice to an even better place, where I was entrusted with Kabbalistic and magical books in the Egyptian language. These I had translated into the Greek language, and from that into Latin. There I found and seized the entire "Treasure of the Egyptians." I also saw there what the subject Subiectum: Also known as the Subjectum Physicum, this refers to the primary base matter or "starting material" required to begin the alchemical Great Work. was, and that the greatest pagan kings had used such tinctures and worked them themselves—namely King Xophar, King Sunsfor, King Xogar, King Xopholat, King Iulaton, King Xoman, and others. All of these possessed a great treasure of the tincture. And it is a thing of wonder that the Eternal Deity revealed such things to the pagans.