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sleeping-potion or a healing-pillula, that if one has the
correct ingredients, ’t is but to mix them together, set them
over the fire, and lo! the gold is there. Such lies are
circulated by catch-pennies and ignoramuses—whom may the
devil take! Cannot the fools understand that if ’t were so
simple a process, the world would be swimming in gold?
For although learned authors have held, and surely with
reason, that only a certain part of matter can be clarified
in the form of gold, yet even so we should be flooded. Nay,
the art of the gold-maker is costly and exacting. It requires
a fortunate hand, and there must be certain constellations
and conjunctions in the ascendant, if the gold is to flow
properly. ’T is not every year that matter is equally
gold-yielding. You have but to remember that it is no mere
distillation nor sublimation, but a very re-creating of nature
that is to take place. Nay, I will dare to say that a tremor
passes over the abodes of the spirits of nature whenever
a portion of the pure, bright metal is freed from the
thousand-year-old embrace of materia vilis.”
“Forgive my question,” said Ulrik Frederik, “but do
not these occult arts imperil the soul of him who
practises them ?”
“Indeed no,” said Burrhi; “how can you harbor such
a thought? What magician was greater than Solomon,
whose seal, the great as well as the small, has been
wondrously preserved to us unto this day? And who imparted
to Moses the power of conjuring? Was it not Sabaoth, the
spirit of the storm, the terrible one?” He pressed the stone
in one of his rings to his lips. “’T is true,” he continued,
“that we know great names of darkness and awful words,
yea, fearful mystic signs, which if they be used for evil,
as many witches and warlocks and vulgar soothsayers use
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