TO ALL

SEEKERS OF THE CHEMICAL

Ornamental woodcut initial 'C' featuring a circular scene with two human figures in a landscape, surrounded by decorative foliage and a bird perched at the top.SINCE I saw, most excellent lovers of natural and hidden arts, that many fraudulent books and false Recipes Latin: Recepta, as they call them, are circulating everywhere among students of Alchemy Alchemy: the historical practice of chemical philosophy, often seeking the transmutation of base metals or the discovery of a universal medicine, by which many have been deceived and are still being misled, I judged that I could do nothing more useful than to put forward a work of this kind. From this work, the truth of nature might appear, and the long-established falsehoods among so many might be exposed. Not a few friends encouraged me in this task—men whose authority I could not entirely disregard, nor whose wishes I could simply ignore. And in-