Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy - A Bardon Companion

"As Popes with Cardinals of dignity,
Archbyshops with Byshops of high degree
With Abbots and Priors of religion, With Friars, Hermites, and Preests manie one,
And Kings with Princes and Lords great of bloode,
For everie estate desireth after goode;
And the Merchaunts alsoe, which dwelle in fiere
Of brenning covetise, have thereto desire;
And common workmen will not be out-lafte
For as well as Lords they love this noble crafte.
As Gouldsmithes, whome we shall leaste repreuve
For sights in their craft meveth them to believe;
But wonder it is that Brewers deale with such werkes,
Free Masons, and Tanners, with poore parish clerkes;
Ailors and Glaziers woll not therefore cease,
And eke sely Tinkers will put them in prease
With great presumption; yet some collour there was
For all such men as give tincture to glasse;
But manie Artificers have byn over swifte,
With hastie credence to sume away their thrift;
Yet ever in hope continued their hearte;
Trustinge some tyme to speede right well,
Of manie such truly I can tell;
Which in such hope continued all their lyfe,
Whereby they were made poore and made to unthrive:
It had byne good forthem to have left off
In seaon, for noughte they founde except a scoffe,
For trewly he that is not a great clerke,
Is nice and lewd to medle with this werke;
Ye may trust me it is no small inginn,
To know alle secrets pertaining to this myne.
For it is most profounde philosophye
This subtill science of holy Alkimy" (59).
Many usurped the title of the adepts, who had no knowledge even of the preliminaries of the Art;
sometimes deceiving, at others, being themselves deceived; and it has been principally from the
fraudulent pretensions of those dabblers that the world has learned to despise alchemy, confounding
the genuine doctrine with their sophistical and vile productions; and a difficulty yet remains to
distinguish them, and segregate, from so great an interspersion of darkness, the true light. For a
multitude of books were put forth with the merest purpose of deception, and to ensnare the unwary;
some indeed affirming, that the truth was to be found in salts, or niters, or boraxes; but others, in all
vegetable bodies indiscriminately, committing a multifarious imagination to posterity. Not did these
alone content the evil spirit of that day, but it must introduce mutilated editions of the old masters,
filled with inconsistencies, and the wicked inventions of designing fraud; and thus, as the adept
observes, they have blasphemed the Sacred Science, and by their errors have brought contempt on men
philosophizing.
"As of that Monke which a boke did write
Of a thousand receipts in malice for despighte,
Which he copied in manie a place,
Whereby hath byn made manie a pale face
And manie gowndes have been made bare of hewe,
And men made fals which beforetimes were trewe" (60).
Nor has the literature alone suffered from such knavish interpolation; but the social consequences are
described, at the time, as deplorable; rich merchants, and others, greedy of gain, were enduced to trust