A New Light of Alchemy

5In recent years many people of both the highest and lowest rank have seen Diana without her clothing—I speak from knowledge. Some mischief makers, through envy, malice, or fear that their frauds will be exposed, loudly claim that gold’s soul can be extracted and transferred to another body, with a pompous and empty display of deception, at considerable cost in time, labour and money. Let the children of Hermes know for certain that extracting such “souls,” as they call them, from either gold or silver by any ordinary alchemical route is mere persuasion. Many do not believe this, but experience, the one and only teacher of truth, eventually establishes it at their expense. On the other hand, if someone can truly tinge even the smallest quantity of metal with the colour of gold or silver by the philosophical way, without fraud or pretence, and the colour endures every required assay, whether the operation yields a profit or not, I can rightly affirm that nature’s doors stand open to that person for investigating further and higher secrets and acquiring them with God’s blessing.