Book 1. Of the Hieroglyphics.

Egyptian letters were introduced. He taught rhetoric, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music. For nothing is done in art, just as in nature, without number, weight, and measure. Thus Raymond Lull, Theory of the Testament, Chapter 50: "Nature," he says, "has in itself the philosophy and science of the seven liberal arts by which it works: since it carries in itself every geometric form and terminates every thing by the virtue of its arithmetic through the equality of a certain number, and through rhetorical knowledge leads your intellect from potentiality into action." These are his words. Mercury himself is the interpreter of all, called Hermes by the Greeks, whose counsel Osiris uses greatly, because nothing is done without Mercury. To him belong the sacred olive oils, as the most excellent of all oils, which can harden things that are too soft and soften things that are hard, with one and the same fire. The rest pertaining to Mercury and Vulcan will be explained in the following. But why did Isis establish everything of gold, and indeed so many entire temples, to her parent and the other gods? Since otherwise it is unheard of in any age that even a single temple was established of gold, especially in this more recent time, where there is a thousand times greater abundance of gold extracted from mines and rivers than in ancient times, when gold is said to have been first discovered. Or why did Isis hold the workers of bronze and gold in honor? The reason is at hand; she is indeed the Golden Goddess. The same is said to be both sister and wife of Osiris, just as Juno is to Jupiter and Rhea to Saturn, who are narrated as their progenitors. This is the one most evident and proper mark of Chymia Alchemy; whose subject consists of an acting male and a patient female, as brother and sister, and indeed as spouses, as will be demonstrated throughout. Osiris therefore and Isis, just as Vulcan and Mercury, are the principal intellectual chemical gods, not celestial, but subterranean, and born from art. And since Isis is Ceres and Osiris is Bacchus or Dionysus among the Greeks, we shall hand down their other gifts and marks below. But Osiris, as Diodorus narrates in the same place: "Since he was a good man and desirous of glory, he gathered a huge army to travel the world and teach mortals to plant