In the ninth week, you can start to drink a glass of wine, to get your stomach used again to rich food and to digest it. past ten weeks, get outdoors, at the beginning for a quarter. Do that for some days till your body gets used again to living in the open air. Then leave that place and look for another one where nobody knows you.
In this way our ancient changed and renewed all their nature, all their strengths, and even their minds; in fact, they did become clever and learned and acquired the faculty to attract supernatural strengths. Furthermore, they even picked up very powerful heavenly strengths, they penetrated all the spirits of nature and nothing remained unknown to them. The whole of nature and all the creatures must be at their service, even before them the spirits of darkness quivered and run away. In fact, if where there is such a man there is also a spirit of darkness, he can order it to move out at once. Furthermore, he learns the language of nature, so he can talk to everything and can read in them, he foresees the future and knows what to do. Fire and air, earth and water must be at his service for whatever he wants, and – as I’m going to show you in the next chapter – he can force them, in the name of God, to carry out his orders.
Twelfth Chapter
How to shake Sky and Earth.
If you want to shake Sky and Earth, that’s to say all the elements, do as I’m telling you. In March, when it rains and the moon is full, start to pick up the rainwater in stone vessels and keep it with care in a cool place till it will come in useful. Then, when you want rain in your room, thunders, and flashes of lightning even when the weather is fine, do the following: take a leakproof stone vessel, put it in a movable oven which you will place either indoors or outdoors, pour in it two measures of the above-mentioned rainwater. Keep handing a bowl prepared with the electrum, as we have taught you in the divine magic. This bowl must be empty, as inside you have to put two ounces of pure sulfur and three ounces of purified saltpeter. Seal the bowl with a linden wood plug and plunge it into water. Then heat with a fire that keeps the water only slightly evaporating; in this way, the sun and moon will attract it to them and after a while, the sky will be covered with clouds. Then increase the fire to make the water in the glass start boiling, in this way the air will become hot and dark and after not long it will start to rain. To increase the fire a little more to make the water noisily boil: throw inside one grain of lapis microcosmi and get hold of a pear wood stick to shield you from the storm so it cannot cause any damage. So in the air thunders and lightning and scaring quivering will occur. This will last as long as there is water in the bowl. When this will be completely evaporated the sky will clear again and the dark clouds suddenly disappear. If you instead want the sky to send ice and hail as well, pour in the bowl, wherein you have already put one grain of lapis, just one measure of cold rainwater, so cold and hot very soon will start fighting each other; in this way, it will start to rain and hail. Nevertheless, as soon as the water will heat, again and start to boil, the thunders will get back; and this stops when all the water will evaporate. He who doesn’t understand these phenomena thinks it is magic and tends to attribute them to hell, while they are natural at all, in fact in nature it happens the following:
Rainwater has in within the spiritus universalis, the spirit which is in the air attracts it powerfully in the bowl, which is made out of electrum which has been melted accordingly to the asters position. Thus the planets of the constellation got affected and attract the sulfur and saltpeter, which get dissolved and dispersed making noise, rain, lightning, and thunders. In fact, the planets clash with each other and shake and fight one against the other. but in order not to make disasters, throw in the bowl one grain of your lapis microcosmi and shield yourself from the bad weather thanks to the power the Highest has granted you and with the rod you hold. You could also shake the skies and damage everything, but this is against divine justice. You can operate in the same way in your room too; in this case, you shouldn’t take the same quantity of water, as one pound is enough, and you should proportionally decrease the weight of sulfur and saltpeter. You see, thus, what a magus can do. Now I will tell you what a magus can do to make grow and multiply trees, herbs, wheat, and flowers.
Thirteenth Chapter
What a magus has to do to extraordinary grow up and multiply trees, fruits, herbs, and flowers.
To grow up and multiply by means of magic all the trees, all the fruits, herbs, and flowers to produce one hundred, even thousands of times more, you must do the following: take some red tincture, melt in the dew or in rainwater ( for 1/8 ounce of tincture 20 pounds of water). Soak some in this water some wheat, or just wet it, let it dry, and then sow it in good soil; so every grain will produce 50-60 ears and will give many fruits. The same will happen to other seeds.
To make it fertile the trees melt 1 dram of lapis in one pound of rainwater and dig up a hole beside a tree in nearby of the same room. Take a vessel with a little hole on the bottom which allows you to fit a straw. Puts this straw in the hole made in the root, close it well with wax and pour the solution into the vessel. Do this operation at the beginning of the spring when the trees start to blossom; in this way, you will see wonders: these trees become very green and are covered with flowers and fruits. The same will happen with other plants. But if you want to make a tree or a vegetal to grow, and have it blossom in a room during the winter, put it in your room close to the window, not too close to a heat source though, melt your stone in your rainwater and with this solution water sometimes the plant; one-two times a week water it with the liquor which you have extracted from the magnesia; so the tree will begin to grow and blossom. Take care not to water it too much, keep it just humid; so very soon it will produce a great number of fruits. Let them hang on the plant till they grow ripe. The same happens with flowering plants.
Our beloved ancient also took earth from stables, made it leaching, and boiled the lisciva till a salt will residue. Then they made this salt slightly get red hot and melted it in the potable water, so it was ready. With this lisciva, they wet the fruits, which they then sew, and watered the trees, but with caution; in this way they obtained the multiplication. At the beginning of spring on dry days, they watered with it the meadows in the evening so that the sun could not draw it to itself and come down more easily to the land down to the roots; in this way, they multiplied their meadows. They masterly used this method with all kinds of seeds, and they made the simplest flowers become very beautiful, and very sweet the sourest fruits, and bigger the little. They transformed their meadows, gardens, and fields into flourishing paradises laden with fruit. They got a quantity of fruit thousand times more as they well knew what is hidden in the grease of the earth, or better in the marrow of the earth, and knew that this concentrate magnetically attracts the sky dew with the strength to and within itself. Thus they found the mysterium magnum, or better the Hightest’s blessing, everywhere they went. They touched with their hand that ( as Hermes says) what is below is as what is above; they had the evidence that with that substance one can do wonders.
(Archarion’s note: Eckartshausen, in addition, to being a very learned theorist, looks for evidence for his ideas through practical experiments. One of these experiments which – as one can infer from the letters the naturalists exchanged – did succeed, was about the chemical separation of the corruptive matter that masters our earth. The wises filled a flower vase with some purified earth as suited, they put in it a unique grain of wheat, and placed the vase outdoors. Given faster germination and an increasingly growing than that observed in the common soil, this grain produced 100 ears whose grains presented thickness, sizes, and beauty superior to those of all the species of known wheat. The single grains had a golden color so beautiful and natural that they looked coated with pure fine gold. Their taste was way sweeter and more agreeable than the common wheat and they lacked that gluing substance that the wheat flour commonly leaves on the tongue. To the chemical examination the so-called gluten, which is the main cause of flour fermentation and putrefaction, turned missing. A chicken, fed uniquely with grains made out of this flour and water for two years, was killed. To a blood examination the so-called blood gluten, which is the cause of the fast putrefaction, turned missing; additionally, the blood didn’t coagulate but was kept liquid and fresh. Important experiments have been done also with flaxseed. The flax produced in this purified earth did present beauty and strength never seen and, like the straw of the wheat grown in that same earth, was refractory to common fire. From the preface by Joseph Hahn to Karl von Eckartshausen’s Erlösung).
The translation of a fourteenth chapter owing to another edition will soon appear in a coming article in Alchemy & Magic category.
Previous chapters at Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 5.
Next Chapter at Testamentum Fraternitatis and Mirrors through Constellation.
- See also Elias Ashmole and the Prophetic Red Stone ;