The Vegetable Work

Preface.

already completed; which indeed to many—as I perceive—was not unwelcome. Nevertheless, it also awakened a misunderstanding among several people, contrary to my intention, as if I were seeking thereby to fully reveal in oral conversation to everyone who might approach me the most difficult points of the Philosophical Workoriginal: Philosophischen Wercks; referring to the Magnum Opus or the "Great Work" of alchemy, the ultimate goal of which was the creation of the Philosopher's Stone., which have remained secret for so many hundreds of years, and which countless of the most learned and subtle men have had to leave misunderstood until their very end; and as if I intended to keep none of these points in secrecy. This would truly be a great and hellish, punishable outrage, since God, through His philosophers from the beginning of this art, has decreed that the extraction and use of this divine Armeniac Saltoriginal: Salis Armeniaci; ammonium chloride. In alchemy, this "volatile salt" was considered a crucial agent for dissolving metals and was often shrouded in metaphorical language. shall be revealed and made known by none other than He, the Searcher of Heartsoriginal: Hertzenkündiger; a traditional epithet for God, implying that alchemical success is a divine gift granted only to the morally pure. alone, to His predestinedoriginal: prædestinirten; the idea that certain individuals were chosen by God to succeed in the "Art" of alchemy. servants—under the decree of a wretched curseoriginal: Vermaledeyung that shall come upon anyone who would dare to break this sealoriginal: Siegel brechen; a common alchemical metaphor for revealing sacred secrets to the uninitiated or "unworthy.".

I shall leave it at that. However, whatever voluntary offering was made in my little book concerns only one or another righteous lover of God and the art