Methods that employ ordinary fire and others that dispense with it entirely; operations performed with minerals, metals, plants, and even those despised materials that philosophers never scorned; methods for capturing the Universal Spirit, the preparation of the Solar Powder, and a very long etcetera (*) form the fabric of this book, the fruit of many years of patient examination and countless processes in which I was personally involved.
These pages do not present an isolated doctrine nor a speculation born in the seclusion of study. Rather, they gather and compare diverse paths of the Art, examined with the rigor that only continuous practice can provide. From this comparison gradually emerges the essential core of our subject, that discovery as simple as it is devastating, which can only be revealed after years of systematic work, repeated observation, and comparison between seemingly disparate methods.
I have not been alone in this endeavor. Throughout this journey, I was accompanied, discreetly but decisively, by fellow alchemists, whose experience, combined with my own, illuminated many obscure points and discarded not a few errors perpetuated by tradition.
Thus, after traversing a veritable labyrinth of processes, materials, and theories, the sought-after substance finally appears before our eyes with an almost disconcerting clarity. Then we understand that it was always there, waiting to be recognized, and that it is with this substance—and only with this substance—that the true work must be undertaken.
I confess that this book is the most rigorous, critical, and tenacious of all I have written. In it, I have endeavored to record my direct observations without indulgence or artifice, setting aside, as far as possible, the rhetorical veils so prevalent in Hermetic literature.
For here, more than insinuating, I have set out to point out and reveal—with the prudence the subject demands, but without unnecessary detours—the central matter of our practice.
(*)Almost 400 pages of experiments on all kinds, from simple materials like dew to dangerous ones like antimony. Illustrated in full color.
0 Reviews:
Publicar un comentario