The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

2The effort to conceal the art has brought slander upon both the art and its practitioners. For when the unsuccessful plunderers of the Golden Fleece, through their own lack of skill, realized that their vain attempt had been defeated and that they fell far short of such great men, they were carried away by furious despair. Like Bacchants, they blazed against those men’s reputation and the glory of the science, denying that anything beyond their own discernment and powers of mind could be other than emptiness. Because they had not devoted themselves to the work without suffering harm, they never ceased accusing the leaders of secret philosophy of falsehood, Nature of impotence, and Art of trickery. Their only reason was that they rashly condemned what they did not know. Nor does condemnation satisfy their desire for revenge unless their added fury also tears the innocent apart with a disgraceful bite. By Hercules, I pity the fate of those who, in accusing others, provide the means of their own conviction, although they rightly suffer their own Fury.