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    Apollogia Alchymiae: A Restatement of Alchemy
    Apollogia Alchymiae: A Restatement of Alchemy
    Apollogia Alchymiae: A Restatement of Alchemy
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Apollogia Alchymiae: A Restatement of Alchemy

    By Richard Watson Councell

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    About this ebook

    Privately printed in 1925, the Richard Watson Councell’s essay Apollogia Alchymiae, drawn from his private library and considered one of the best texts to discover the mysteries and secrets of Alchemy, has been an esoteric treasure for Occultists for nearly a century. A singular and mysterious character, Richard Watson Councell was a great Initiate, an Alchemist, a Theosophist and a Freemason. He collaborated, writing fundamental articles, with the prestigious magazine The Occult Review. According to some sources, he was secretly the father of the famous thriller writer Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward), who was initiated by him into the esoteric sciences and who wrote the preface to this essay.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEdizioni Aurora Boreale
    Release dateFeb 2, 2023
    ISBN9791255042297
    Apollogia Alchymiae: A Restatement of Alchemy

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      Book preview

      Apollogia Alchymiae - Richard Watson Councell

      SYMBOLS & MYTHS

      RICHARD WATSON COUNCELL

      APOLLOGIA ALCHYMIAE

      A RESTATEMENT OF ALCHEMY

      LOGO EDIZIONI AURORA BOREALE
      Edizioni Aurora Boreale

      Title: Apollogia Alchymiae. A Restatement of Alchemy

      Author: Richard Watson Councell

      With a preface by Sax Rohmer

      Publishing series: Symbols & Myths

      Editing by Nicola Bizzi

      ISBN: 979-12-5504-229-7

      LOGO EDIZIONI AURORA BOREALE
      Edizioni Aurora Boreale

      © 2023 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

      Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato - Italia

      [email protected]

      www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

      PREFACE

      Of the illusions which amuse the childish mind of man, that of Scientific Progress is not the least absurd. It is the most popular toy in the nursery called Modern Civilization. The wisdom of yesterday is the jest of today, the superstition of tomorrow. Human experience shows this to be the case. Yet we go on believing we are making discoveries. In the days of the Regency a physician looked upon a patient who refused to be bled in much the same way that a modern practitioner regards an appendicitis case who declines to have the inflamed fragment removed. Harley Street, in 1923, assures us that old time surgery resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths from loss of blood. Harley Street, in 2023, will probably declare that our present method resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths from loss of the appendix. We believe we understand the phenomena of solar and lunar eclipses, and believe that we have measured the distances from this our earth to the visible planets. Five hundred years hence our calculations will almost certainly be proved ridiculous. Nevertheless, we go on believing we are making discoveries. A day must surely come when crowds shall throng the waiting room of some consultant, famous for his having established the efficacy of cupping; when all shall know that eclipses are not due to the earth’s shadow; when to common knowledge this same earth be stationary, whilst stars, moon and sun revolve around it.

      What, then, do scientific discoverers discover? They discover (with certain notable exceptions) new bottles to contain old physic. They exhibit for our awe a tube of brick coloured powder, which they have named something ending in ium. It has always been, that brick coloured powder. An earlier race, dwellers, perhaps, in a great Sun City now lost beneath an ocean, used it to dye their beards. They proclaim radium. And one day, it may be in some forgotten tomb, a practical radium lamp is found still alight. They bear witness to the triumph of steel by erecting, in New York or elsewhere, the worlds highest building; forgetting that somebody or another built the Great Pyramid. They acclaim certain Japanese craftsmanship the finest of its kind until among the treasures of a buried pharaoh yet finer examples are unearthed. Signor Marconi can talk to his friends who are hundreds of miles away. So could Apollonius of Tyana. The cinematogragh shows us moving figures of those who have passed over. Any igh priest of Osiris could have shown us the same; so could Moses. The churches assured the world that we had emerged from the black ages of barbarism and were civilized. Thereupon we plunged into the most savage and sanguinary war recorded in the annals of man.

      What, then, is Evolution? That it is a slow process in the case of humanity, experience would seem to show; but since Lord

      Rayleigh calculates the age of Mother Earth to be 925 million years, the possibility of endless cycles suggests itself. That, by means of a ceaseless chemical operation, the elements (which we are constantly and confidently discovering) become merged in forms variously known as coal, diamonds, lead, gold, and a host of other commercial practicabilities, would seem to be a Truth as opposed to a Theory. And since many natural processes can be artificially reproduced, why not this wedding of atom to atom?

      Professor Richardson, speaking of recent experiments relating to the structure of the nucleus of atoms, declared the artificial transmutation of chemical elements to be now an established fact. In short, it would almost seem that we find ourselves upon the eve of discovering the Philosopher’s Stone of medieval Alchemy. Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale, recently startled the world by announcing that a German chemist had succeeded in making synthetic gold from base metals by means of an electric vacuum furnace. Referring to this alleged experiment, in an interview with a representative of the Daily Mail, Dr. Irvine Masson, of University College, London, said: «So far no definite transmutation of an element by building up heavy atoms of gold from lighter metals has been achieved. On the other hand, Sir Ernest Rutherford has disintegrated certain of the lighter elements into one still lighter. While one cannot say it is impossible, there seems no reason why gold should be specially singled out by Nature to be the ultimate product of a building-up or breaking-down process. Supposing a certain amount of gold had been found to be a product of change, the question would arise as to the utility of the process. At present the only transmutation that has been affected has been, from the productive point of view, extraordinarily ineffective and extravagant. I think that most scientists are interested in these alleged discoveries, but are inclined to be somewhat skeptical until definite proofs are forthcoming, which is my position in the present case».

      But whatever the facts may be regarding this modern operation, the attitude of leading scientists toward the possibilities of the German’s vacuum furnace; yet the author of the present work, whose researches into the subject of Alchemy have been exhaustive, appears to have found good reason to believe that some of these made synthetic gold! In the preface to his Alchemy, Ancient and Modern. Mr. Stanley Redgrave says: «The number of books in the English language dealing with the interesting subject of Alchemy, is not sufficiently great to render an apology necessary for adding thereto. Indeed, at the present time, there is an actual need for a further contribution on this subject».

      The present work is apparently written with a view to rectifying certain misconceptions which are held by those who have criticized adversely the claims of the old alchemists. This the author has sought to do by quoting verbatim from the alchemystical writers themselves. That he has an extensive library dealing with this subject, goes without saying; and of his deep and wide personal inquiries mention has already been made.

      His style betrays a profound belief in alchemy or, as he terms it, «the law of evolution as applicable to metals and minerals». In this he evidently does not stand alone, as men eminent in science are to-day holding this view as an hypothesis, and are making more than tentative experiments to test it.

      The Periodic Table of Mendeleeff points in this direction, at least as certainly as fossils do in the evolution of animal and vegetable life. Sir Edward Thorpe and others have indicated definite numerical relations between the members of the halogen group of Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, and Iodine. Also in the case of the nitrogen group of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Arsenic, Antimony, and Bismuth. Apparently similar relations can be shown to exist between the members of the following

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