The Secret Work of the Hermetic Philosophy

Historical Reception: The Prefaces of 1893

The following two prefaces are reproduced as historical English reception documents. Their biographical dates, attributions, Rosicrucian affiliations, gender theories, and claims about transmutation remain the responsibility of the 1893 writers. References to “the present editor,” “our present delicate manners,” and the pages of “this volume” refer to that historical edition. They are distinct from the new translation from Latin and the Diotimos commentary. Spelling is retained; line-end divisions and clear recognition errors are regularized.

Preface to Collectanea Hermetica

Hermetic students find very great difficulty in securing copies of the old Rosicrucian tracts and other notable volumes of occult lore, and I have been urged by many earnest members of the Rosicrucian Society to undertake the Editorship of a series of small volumes, which are to provide some of the texts of the greatest value in Hermetic research. Among my personal friends and fellow-students are many who have made a long study of the Occult Sciences, of the Kabalah, of Alchemy, and of the Higher Magic, and these have assured me of their support in this undertaking. The Notes which are added to each volume are partly taken from mediæval commentators, and are partly those of my coadjutors. The Societas Rosicruciana, as an Institution, is not answerable for the opinions expressed; all responsibility falling upon the actual writers.

The Notes are intended to assist those who have made some progress in the study of Hermetic Philosophy; to the casual reader they may be as incomprehensible as the text itself, and where the general reader finds a simple definite statement, such is probably a Reveiling and not a Revelation.

W. W. W.

Preface to the Arcanum

The Arcanum Hermeticum has been chosen for the first volume of the Collectanea Hermetica, because since its first publication in 1623, in the Latin language, no alchymic tract has been more widely read, and no other has been so often reprinted, alike in Latin, German, French and English.

The author, Jean d’Espagnet, was sometime President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, he flourished from 1600 to 1630, and obtained a great reputation as an Hermetic philosopher and alchymist. Two of his alchymic works are alone extant; Enchiridion Physicæ Restitutæ, and Arcanum Philosophiæ Hermeticæ; of these, the former treats of those theories of chemical constitution upon which the possibility of Transmutation of Metals depends, and the latter of the Practice of Alchymy. The Arcanum was first published in 1623 in France; five subsequent French editions in the original Latin are known, and an edition in the French tongue was printed in 1651 from the translation of Jean Bachon. Several editions were also published at Geneva, Kiel, Lubeck, Tubingen and Leipzig. The works of Espagnet are also included in Manget’s Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa and in the Bibliotheca Chemica of Albineus.

Jean d’Espagnet followed the usual Rosicrucian custom of using a motto instead of his name when publishing Hermetic books. The Hermetic Arcanum is signed ‘Penes nos unda Tagi;’ he also at times added the motto, ‘Spes mea in Agno est.’ These mottoes are anagrams. Each contains the letters of ‘Espagnet,’ and the two taken together contain also the letters of ‘Deus (IHVH with the Shin interposed) omnia in nos,’ but there are two letters over, ‘As.’ The French biographer says, in error, that only one letter, an ‘e’—his initial—remains over.

Espagnet was not only an Alchymist, but a Mystic as well; he contributed a preface and a sonnet to a work by Pierre de Lancre, entitled Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvaises Anges, 1612. He is also notable as having taken a leading part in the prosecution of persons who were supposed to be black magicians, living in the district called Les Landes and among the Pyrenees; but this action appears to have been the result of his position in the Parliament of Bordeaux.

He ornamented the façade of his house in the Rue de Bahutiers, at Bordeaux, with allegorical sculptures and devices; the house has been destroyed, but these ornaments are still to be seen preserved in the gardens of the mayoral residence.

As a natural philosopher, Jean d’Espagnet declined to be led by the notions of Aristotle, and preferred those of the Alexandrian schools. He postulated the ideal of one material universal basis, or hyle, from which all varieties of matter have been evolved by stages of development, a necessary doctrine for one who taught the mutual convertibility of the so-called chemical elementary substances. He also insisted upon the importance of representing all manifestation as separable into three worlds, elementary, celestial, and archetypal; this division is related to the scheme of the Four Worlds of the Kabalists, by a concentration which is recognized by such philosophers. He taught the origin of created things from the chaos of the first matter, which under the energetic impulse of the Divine Force, proceeds from stage to stage of development into heterogeneity. He recognized three stages of matter, the subtle, the mean, and the gross: analogous to the airy, moist, and earthy natures of the Hermetists. Upon these bases his Enchiridion is almost a text-book of Rosicrucian Philosophy.