Manuscripts for Friends of Secret Sciences

P r e f a c e .

I know that after death, not everything ceases and perishes.

I know that the chasm which receives the surviving part of us is not so unreachably deep that its return toward us must be counted as an impossibility.

I believe, and in part I know, that there are still beings of more than one kind who know much that I do not know, who are capable of what I am not, and who, like me, are links in the chain of the Infinite: The original German "Unermeßlichen" refers to the immeasurable or the vastness of God's creation..

Given these premises, one will no longer find it strange that I believe in a God and—what is even more—in Christ, however ridiculous this may seem to most of our Enlighteners: Referring to the "Aufklärer," the thinkers of the Enlightenment who often viewed spiritualism and alchemy as mere superstition. and "enlightened" ones; and that I have the heart to confess all this publicly, to assure that I am convinced of all these things, and to wish that everyone might find as much peace in them as I do. Since I distance myself in such essential points from the principles of my "enlightened times" and so many of my contemporaries, it will be no surprise if I am equally dissonant: From the German "mißtönig," meaning out of harmony or sounding a clashing note against the prevailing opinions of the day. with them in many other matters, and if I do not always hold the same high opinion of the discoveries made since the last two...