P r e f a c e.

artists, reports, and anecdotes concerning them and their works, and these occupy no insignificant section of the collection.

In these writings—composed of such varied contents, gathered by many people across such different eras, and written with such contrasting spirits—one frequently encounters, beneath a theory that might evoke pity, the most captivating truths. One finds experiments that would do honor to the most enlightened times, woven into long and obviously false processes for making gold: The alchemical pursuit of transmuting base metals into precious ones.. Even there, where spirits from all elements and planets are summoned in terrifying incantations, the decipherer does not find the millions that the necromancer: A magician who attempts to communicate with or command spirits. commanded those beings to bring; however, one often discovers the rarest medical, technical, and chemical metal preparations: Specific methods for treating or refining metallic substances.. These are all the more delightful because one could neither hope to find them nor have the right to expect them amidst a heap of nonsense and in a chaos of unintelligible words.

These writings, exactly as they are, shall be provided to you over time. In doing so, I have made it a law for myself not to change even the smallest detail in those that are the originals, but instead I let