Part I Synthesis: An Exoteric View of the Progress and Theory of Alchemy

Part I looks at the Hermetic art from the outside. It covers the art’s public history, its theory of transmutation and its central text. Atwood’s central claim is that one sacred and experimental science runs through the whole tradition. That science works on a single living subject, the “mercurial first matter” (I.2 ¶3). Its true masters were sincere and hid it on purpose. Its public disgrace came from frauds and from readers who took its veiled language literally (I.1 ¶53, ¶76, ¶86). The history is there to show that her later propositions “are not gratuitous” (I.1 ¶4). The theory links the subject to the Ether and concludes that the Stone is this Ether, perfected by its own Light (I.2 ¶12–15, ¶44). The Golden Treatise, read through Atwood’s footnotes, shows that subject being dissolved, purified, reunited and multiplied (I.3 n7, ¶49).

How the argument unfolds

A Preliminary Account of the Hermetic Philosophy, with the more Salient Points of its Public History sets out the testimony. Atwood begins with Hermes and the Smaragdine Table, which is said to contain “the working principle and total subject of the art” (I.1 ¶9). She follows the art from Egypt through Greece, Alexandria, the Arabians and the medieval and later adepts. Two points recur. First, the masters wrote “under coverts” (I.1 ¶15) and each “disclosed but a parte” (I.1 ¶83), so that “the roots of the Hermetic science are fairly stated; but the practice most carefully concealed” (I.1 ¶39). Second, pretenders put out books placing the truth “in salts, or niters, or boraxes”, and so the world “learned to despise alchemy” (I.1 ¶53). Atwood argues that the art cannot simply be a delusion, because transmutation “was a proof addressed to the senses” (I.1 ¶76), and that many adepts gave up wealth (I.1 ¶79). The world rejects the art because the adepts never declared “even the common Subject of their Art” (I.1 ¶82). The chapter ends by turning from history to “the theoretic ground and matter” of transmutation (I.1 ¶86).

Of the Theory of Transmutation in General, and of the First Matter takes up that question. Endorsing Arnold, Atwood says transmutation acts not on species but on the “subject-matter” or “radical moisture” beneath them (I.2 ¶2, ¶4). The first work is “Solution”, reducing the body “into water, that is, into mercury” (I.2 ¶5). She then sets out “to identify this mercury” (I.2 ¶12) and links it to the ancients’ “pure and hidden fire”, the Ether (I.2 ¶12). This spirit is “occultated” and “defiled” inside the beings it sustains (I.2 ¶20). The work must therefore reverse nature’s ordinary course: the fixed is made volatile and the volatile fixed (I.2 ¶20). The spirit is to be trapped as it nears annihilation, as in the fable of Proteus (I.2 ¶23–24). The many names of the matter mark stages of one process (I.2 ¶39). The chapter concludes that the Stone is “the pure Ethereality of nature, separated by artificial means, purified and made concrete” by multiplying its own Light (I.2 ¶44). It ends by introducing the Golden Treatise (I.2 ¶50).

The Golden Treatise of Hermes Trismegistus Concerning the Physical Secret of the Philosophers’ Stone, in Seven Sections gives the text in full. Atwood’s footnotes apply the theory of chapter 2 to its images. Hermes says “Decoction lessens the matter, but the tincture augments it” (I.3 ¶7). Atwood reads this as the whole process: dissolution to near-annihilation and revival, then a “Second Work” that perfects the “newly informed embryo” (I.3 n7). The work is “with you and about you” (I.3 ¶8). She takes this to mean that the inquirer seeks Universal Nature within himself (I.3 n8). Hermes states the key plainly: the matter “dies by the taking away of the spirit” and “lives in the return” (I.3 ¶49). Atwood closes by saying the Treatise never shows “whence, when or how the Matter is to be taken” (I.3 n71). The Part therefore ends where chapter 1 ended: the subject is described, but how to obtain it is still withheld.

What this Part contributes to the Work

Decoding keys. The Part supplies these keys:

• “the One Thing” (I.1 ¶9), “universal subject” (I.1 ¶24), “one only thing” (I.3 ¶38): the single subject of the work. It is never openly named (stated, I.1 ¶64, ¶82).
• Mercury / philosophic water: the philosophers’ first matter (I.2 ¶5). It holds “its own good sulfur, or vital flame” (stated, I.3 n5).
• Ether / Quintessence / “Free Ether”: the all-pervading hidden fire, which the magi said could be had “compact and tangible without heterogeneity” (stated, I.2 ¶14, ¶16).
• “a stone and no stone”: per Belus, “This very permanent water is the stone, but whilst it is water it is no stone” (stated, I.2 ¶29).
• Salt, Sulfur, Mercury: “modes of being of the same thing” (stated, I.2 ¶39), read as agent, patient and offspring, not literal substances (I.3 n30).
• “elements”: “elements of the Mercury, properties of the universal spirit” (stated, I.2 ¶26). They are understood “not corporally but spiritually and wisely” (I.3 n4).
• Sulfur / Light: “the seed of gold” (I.3 n40). “Light is the true fermental principle” (stated, I.2 ¶44).
• Vulture / crow: one Spirit of life, active or passive. Night is putrefaction and day resurrection (stated, I.3 n12).
• Dragon: “the self-willed spirit”; in practice, the first blackness of the matter (stated, I.3 n31).
• King: “the Rational Efficient” (stated, I.3 n50).
• Catholic nature: the stone “cast forth upon the dunghill”, despised in common life (stated, I.3 ¶32, n40).
• Ixir: “living gold”; the seven bodies are “inferior spheres of vitality” (stated, I.3 n65).
• King’s seal: “the great Law of Light” (stated, I.3 n69).
• Blood: in Bacon’s phrase, the understanding (stated, I.1 ¶86).
• Azoth: “the Universal Mercury” (Khunrath, I.1 ¶81).
• Proteus / Pan: the one subject in its many forms (I.2 ¶36–37). Green lion, toad, magnesia, acetum, milk and Red Stone name successive stages (stated, I.2 ¶40).
• Venus: “the central light of nature”, transient without “the masculine tincture” (I.3 n49).
• Heaven and Earth: “the two invisible poles of the Spirit”, joined through the Water, “the mercurial quintessence” (I.3 n63).
• Kibric and Zibeth: soul and spirit, in Maria’s account (I.3 n67).

Subject. The subject is one root substance common to all things. Once freed it is also “the thing transmuting” (I.2 ¶8). Atwood ventures a definition: “the simple generated substance of life and light, immanifestly flowing throughout nature” (I.2 ¶34). It lies hidden in nature and in the inquirer (I.2 ¶20; I.3 n8).

Agent. The subject carries its own active light (I.3 n5). Mercury “dissolves and coagulates itself” without foreign addition (Aquinas, endorsed by Atwood, I.2 ¶11). The philosophers’ fire is “magical, creative, vital” (I.3 n41). Chapter 1’s “divine water” and Khunrath’s Azoth point the same way (I.1 ¶20, ¶81); reading them as the same agent is an interpretation.

Stages and signs. Solution or decoction comes first, and the philosophic work begins only “after the dissolution” (I.2 ¶5; I.3 n56). Blackness, quoting “the sage”, is the “happy gate” (I.3 n42). The White Stone comes before the Red (I.1 ¶60). The finished tincture is ruby-red and very heavy, and is projected on mercury (I.1 ¶57, ¶76). The medicine grows stronger with each repeated dissolution (I.3 n38).

Operator. The operator needs “study, experience, and the divine benediction” (I.3 n1), pure motives (I.1 ¶41) and teaching by a master or by mouth (I.1 ¶36, ¶42). He “shuts himself within”, leaving the senses for a higher consciousness (I.3 ¶15, n19).

Impediments. Avarice, literal reading and scrambled texts stand in the way (I.1 ¶53, ¶82). So do mechanical heat that drives off the spirit (I.2 ¶24) and the belief that only common fire exists (I.3 n41).

Result. Gold, healing and the moral regeneration of the maker (I.1 ¶57, ¶66). In man the result is a divine Image, embryonic in this life (I.2 ¶46). Atwood asks, as a question only, whether the Stone is “Light essentialized … into an immutable magnet” (I.3 n70).

Threads carried forward

• The Matter’s source. “whence, when or how the Matter is to be taken” remains unshown (I.3 n71). The Subject Matter and certain preliminaries are “constantly concealed” (I.1 ¶64).
• The vessel. Hermes hides it, so reason must find it (I.3 n48).
• The universal subject. Atwood promises a later explanation of the epitaph’s contradictions (I.1 ¶24).
• The three kingdoms. These are left unnamed (I.1 ¶6), though the method is said to be the same in all three (I.2 ¶49).
• The Rational Ferment. It is linked to the Perscrutinator and deferred (I.3 n32).
• Self-Knowledge. The “Hermetic method of Self-Knowledge” is deferred (I.3 n46).
• Why the operator cannot work “alone”. The reasons are deferred (I.3 n17).
• The theosophic schools. Atwood expects to show that they rested on “a similar experimental ground” (I.1 ¶17).
• Open readings. Which terms pair in “separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross” (I.1 ¶9), what the Phoenix is (I.1 ¶37–38), and the seed/earth match of sulfur and mercury (I.3 n29) are all left open.