PREFACE.

NATURAL laws. 36 I offer a defiance to you, you slanderer Calumniant: a person who maliciously utters false charges; a slanderer, if you can prove—from the books of Holy Biblical Scripture, the Great World-Book of NATURE, and also the rational monuments original: "Monumentis"—referring to the lasting written works or records of the ancients. of authentic philosophers—
cryptic symbols or shorthand notation: km 11 u scr / 7 1/2

that what I have written concerning the subject of the Philosophers’ Stone LAPIDIS Philosophorum: The legendary substance of alchemy capable of transmuting base metals into gold and curing all diseases. and its conditions is unnatural or unphilosophical. Come forth! if you can do so, strut like a peacock; let us hear it!

This is (praise be to GOD) the twenty-third year that I have occupied myself with ALCHEMY, both theoretically and practically original Latin: "& theoreticè & practicè". In such time, I have read through not a few—both written and printed, bad and good—alchemical books. I have had many a strange roast-bird Brathvogel: literally "roast bird," a contemporary slang term for an eccentric person, a "strange bird," or perhaps a charlatan before me; I have copied and labored Laboriret: from the Latin "laborare," meaning to perform physical chemical work or experiments in a laboratory over many wondrous recipes and processes; and I have burned many a fine cartload of coal Fuder Kohlen: A "Fuder" was a large cart-load or measure of weight; the author is emphasizing the massive scale and physical cost of his experiments, partly by my own hand in the chemical laboratory, and partly through others...