The Wayfarer

Hence those very authors of Chymia alchemy protest that whoever desires the truth of the art through the medium of books will hardly ever arrive at it, namely because of the intricacies and inextricable errors of the books. No one is wise enough at first glance to decline or avoid these, unless perhaps the experience of a long, tireless, and incessant time renders him circumspect and learned after immense labors have been exhausted and no small expenses have been interposed, and Natura Nature opens and shows her bosom to him, according to the inscrutable counsel of Dei God. And although the causes of their obscurity are indeed very probable, namely so that the unworthy may not ascend to the summit of the most secret hill at all, nor the worthy, except after many preliminary vexations, yet these are not enough to involve and obscure all truth in shadows and errors even for those most teachable sons of the art. To find some more suitable remedy for this, I, who have been detained for a long time in this very Labyrinth, not ignorant of what desire and success each beginning and ending has had, or what can be sought or found under which mountains, decided to traverse, investigate, and ascend all the Montes planetarum mountains of the planets, and to descend most deeply into each of their mines, and to set before the eyes of all those gifted with reason what can be elicited or had from which and how, so that they themselves, unless they are entirely incredulous or ignorant of all things,