On the Art of Fermentation

Preface.

A large, stylized drop-cap letter M beginning the word 'Magna'.

The great hunger for possessing gold has always tormented men; the greater desire for making gold and silver has, for many centuries, so possessed both the learned and the unlearned that they have publicly and privately claimed to be initiated into the mysteries of this divine art. As this art is very ancient and has been described in various ways, so there is no lack of testimonies ^1) by which it is confirmed that ignoble metals have been made more noble through the tincture and the philosopher's stone.

It is a wondrous thing to profess an occult art—open to the initiated, inaccessible to the profane—and to teach it again and again through obscure writings; even more wondrous is the controversy stirred up on this side and that, but hitherto so settled that one might exclaim to the litigants: you have done well.

1. Ol. Borrichius, De ortu et progressu Chemiae Dissertatio, Hafniae [Copenhagen], 1668, p. 103 et seq.; Idem, Conspectus Scriptorum Chemicorum illustrium, Lib. postumus, Hafniae, 1697.

2. D. G. Morhof, Vom Goldmachen, Baireuth, 1764, p. 90, 110, 121 et seq.; J. L. Hannemann, Iason, sive Catalogus testimoniorum veritatis metamorphosin metallorum ignobiliorum in aurum nativo praestantius asserens, Kilonii [Kiel], 1709, p. 1 et seq.; A. Khoni, Transmutatio metallica curiosa et genuina, 1713, p. 4, 5; J. C. W. Moehsen, Beschreibung einer Berlinischen Medaillen-Sammlung, Part 1, p. 117 et seq.; Part 2, p. 19, 26, 53; Die Richtigkeit der Verwandlung der Metalle von M., Leipzig, 1783; cf. Verae Alchymiae artisque metallicae, citra aenigmata, doctrina, Basileae, 1561, especially J. A. Augurellus, Chrysopoeia, p. 269, to whom Pope Leo X is said to have given a sack of immense size as a reward.