Michaelis Maieri viatorium, hoc est, de montibus planetarum septem, seu metallorum

PREFACE TO THE READER.

Battus, therefore, corrupted by the hope of a reward,
"They were in the mountains," he said, "and they were
under those mountains;"
Indicating where they were grazing; because of which perfidy Mercury changed him into a stone, which is found placed at the crossroads as a marker. But what the ancients understood by the cows, and indeed by Mercury and Apollo themselves Mercury symbol (☿) appears here, has been sufficiently explained by us elsewhere (namely, in our Hieroglyphica Ægyptio-Græca Egyptian-Greek Hieroglyphics). Here, by the cows of Apollo, just as there, we understand the Philosophical matter, which many who are occupied in chemical pursuits have long since desired to know in which mountain it was hidden by Mercury. Others sought it in diverse places, such as fields, gardens, meadows, plains, rivers, streams, springs, and valleys (that is, of vegetables, or of animals, or of minerals), but they did not find it at all, even if they had labored at it for their entire life. Not rarely, like that Corydon of Virgil, searching for the most beautiful Alexin,