The Brass Goggles Occult Society...The Esoteric Order of the Brazen Dawn...

[Grimnr Veilwalker]

in relation to my runeworking, How do i inscribe the necessary runes onto the tools i will be consecrating and using solely in my rune work?

would it be acceptable to use (unconsecrated) tools i already own to do this? or would it be better to get new ones and consecrate them, without inscribing anything on them, and if so, would it be sacrilege to then use those once used tools for day to day use or should i keep them so i end up with two sets of ritual tools, one inscribed and one plain?

The answer to this will be a debate (at least with some of the people I know). Personally a tool is a tool. I have a "Hammer" that I use in ritual I have also used it to drive tent stakes in the ground. My ritual athame is razor sharp and if I needed to I would use it in the kitchen. The Vikings used their everyday tools to do both religious work as well as house work. If it was good enough for them its good enough for me. If I need to make a strictly magical item I create it then consecrate the item after.

The debate comes from Traditional magic vs eclectic magic. 

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

The Astrological Practice of Physick
by Joseph Blagrave, 1672.
( 10 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 1/11/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[stockton_joans]

The answer to this will be a debate (at least with some of the people I know). Personally a tool is a tool. I have a "Hammer" that I use in ritual I have also used it to drive tent stakes in the ground. My ritual athame is razor sharp and if I needed to I would use it in the kitchen. The Vikings used their everyday tools to do both religious work as well as house work. If it was good enough for them its good enough for me. If I need to make a strictly magical item I create it then consecrate the item after.

The debate comes from Traditional magic vs eclectic magic. 

so basicly your saying that if i want to create a set of consicrated tools for carvig/colouring runes etc there would be no problem in using the tools i alreasdy have to create these?

this is what some other people i have asked have said as well so it seems that this is the way to go, thanks for the advise.

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy
by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Translated into English by
Robert Turner, 1655.
( 14.7 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 1/13/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

Mr. Culpepper's Treatise
of Aurum Potabile, 1656.
( 19.7 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 1/16/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

Three Books of Occult Philosophy
by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, 1651.
( 30.5 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 1/22/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

The Archidoxis :
Comprised in Ten Books
by Theophrastus Phillippus
Aureolus Bombastus
von Hohenheim, 1660.
( 11 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 1/29/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[Khem Caigan]

'Astrologies' Conference

Saturday 25 - Sunday 25 July, 2010

Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute
16-19 Queen Square,
Bath BA1 2HN,
UK

This conference will, for the first time,
bring together academics to investigate
the theory and practice of astrology in
the modern world, from roughly 1800 to
the present day.

The conference will be held in the gracious
surroundings of the Bath Royal Literary and
Scientific Institute, one of the most elegant
buildings in eighteenth-century Bath. Bath
itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site, one
of the most beautiful cites in the world.

Sophia Centre for the
Study of Cosmology in Culture
Department of Archaeology,
History and Anthropology,
University of Wales, Lampeter 

[Khem Caigan]

Magical Revival :
Occultism and the Culture of
Regeneration in Britain,
Circa 1880-1929
by Jennifer Walters

A thesis submitted for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English Studies
University of Stirling
2007

Abstract

This thesis is a cultural study of the
Magical Revival that occurred in Britain,
1880-1929.

Magical Revival denotes a period in the
history of occultism, and the cultural
history of Britain, during which an
upsurge in interest in occult and magical
ideas is marked by the emergence of
newly-formed societies dedicated to the
exploration of the occult, and into its
bearing on life.

Organisations discussed are the Theosophical
Society, the Golden Dawn, and the less
well known Astrum Argentum <sic>.
( Argenteum Astrum )

'Magical Revival' has further significance
as the principal, but overlooked, aim of
those societies and individuals was
regeneration.

Scholarship on late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century occultism is influenced
by a longstanding preference for the
esoteric over the exoteric aspects of
occultism. It has tended to emphasise
themes of abstraction, the psychological,
and the esoteric, and has promulgated a
view of occultism as static and impervious.

From the outset, however, this thesis
argues that approaching the Magical Revival
from the purview of the esoteric is limiting,
and that it screens its own significant
themes and affinities with mainstream
culture.

It suggests that what needs to be prepared
is a study which reads occultism with a
close attention to its own terms of
engagement and description.

This is the aim of this thesis.

The thesis offers a way of reading the
occult activity of the period that privileges
its exotericism. It seeks to pursue the
links between an identifiable culture of
occultism and conventional cultural
discourses and activities towards an
understanding of the movement as one
actively constituting itself and producing,
rather than obscuring, knowledge in
relation to the social and cultural moment
from which it arose.

The occult topics and tendencies identified
include evolution; ceremonial magic and
astral travel; the body in occultism; and
the nature of the occult experience.

Others include the life and medical
sciences; the philosophy of religion; and
physical culture.

The following questions underpin the thesis:

In what ways did the Magical Revival connect
with contemporary concerns?

What does its activities, written records,
literary and other material productions
reveal about the nature of those connections?

What does a closer attention to the textual
and lived culture of the Magical Revival
contribute to existing understanding of
its place in late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century culture?

In answering those questions the thesis
proposes that, in its systematic
identification and addressing of cultural
and social needs, general and specific,
the Magical Revival should be viewed as
closer to the social mainstream than is
presently appreciated.

Moreover, that the occultists' efforts
towards individual and cultural
regeneration, take place within a broader
cultural movement away from social thought
dominated by degeneration, towards thinking
directed towards regeneration.

The complete .PDF is available @ STORRE :
The Stirling University
Online Research Repository
http://tinyurl.com/yh9kedn

[Voltin]

Please excuse my late arrival. I would like to formally request membership into The Esoteric Order of the Brazen Dawn. I have studied the paranormal since I was a small child and believe I might have somethings to contribute to the group.

I have done a search here for a mysterious figure in history which is none other than The Count of St. Germain with no results. Please forgive me if he has been discussed here on the forum before.

I always thought that the character Dorian Gray had some similarity's of The Count of Saint Germain.
Was Oscar Wilde inspired by the strange tales of the Count being immortal? Does the Count walk among us today?
And if so who or what is the Count?

[Khem Caigan]

I agree that it is rather more than likely
that Wilde was inspired by tales of the
Rosicrucian Adepti, and it is quite possible
that he indirectly drew upon the legend of
Sanctus Germanus by way of Edward
Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni.

In that story ( which opens during the
Revolution - it is said that St. Germain
was in Paris at that time ) Zanoni's
master goes by the name Mejnor,
which is an anagram of Jermon.

Welcome, Voltin, to the Order of the
Brazen Dawn!

[Voltin]

Most interesting indeed!
Thank you for the reply and also welcoming me into the fold.

[Khem Caigan]

The Mysteries of Magic :
A Digest of the Writings of
Eliphas Levi
by Arthur Edward Waite, 1909.
( 2.83 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 2/20/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

[darkshines]

So I am giving a talk at the Asylum in Lincoln on mesmerism. What would you like to know about the art? I plan on giving an introduction to Mesmer and his predessors, and the actual pocess of mesmerism itself. I will then talk about how it progressed into Victorian society and its three main uses as described in my Masters disertation (medical, spiritual and villainy) in both literary and factual accounts. I want to use some quite extraordinary examples and make it a bit light hearted and weird. I mean, if you knew nothing of mesmerism, etherology or psychic ability, what would you want to know? How can I make this engaging without a practical demonstration?

[Theosophus Grey]

*wishing desperately that he could attend*

Actually, I've always wondered why some people will drop off like a bag of rocks when hypnotised, while others like myself feel no effects whatsoever - ?

Congrats on the speaking engagement!  Best, Theo

[Khem Caigan]

In honor of Joseph Curwen's birthday
(February 18th, 1663, in what is now
Danvers, Massachusetts), I am posting
my collection of the better excerpts
regarding the subject of palingenesis,

Since they make up a largish chunk
of text, I have tucked them all away
within a spoiler :

The Palingenesis -- The Apparitional
or Artificial Plant

Spoiler: ShowHide

This most extraordinary of by-gone arts,
the Palingenesis, has yet to be described.

It ought, though doubtlessly once considered
far otherwise, rather, we think, to be classed
with the clever and often inexplicable illusions
of magic, than to be gravely registered
amongst the achievements of science.

"The alchemists of the sixteenth century,"
says Mr. Tighe, in his erudite notes to his
poem on the Rose, ( vide his Plants,)
"speak of this apparent resuscitation as a
thing easy and well known.

The seeds, or the ashes, pounded, and
prepared principally with dew, are to be
exposed to heat in a close, glass vessel,
when there will appear a stem, leaves,
and flowers, in short, the apparition of a
perfect plant, rising from the midst of its
ashes. On removing the heat, the image
vanishes; and it can be revived again in
the same manner.

This Palingenesis, as they called it, was
not confined to the rose, though that plant,
according to the relation, was used most
frequently; nor was it confined to the
vegetable kingdom: lobsters, pounded in
a mortar, are said to have re-appeared
in the same manner to Sir Kenelm Digby,
Scottus, and others. See these authors
---Kircher's Mundus Subterraneus,
and Guillemeau, page 200, who quotes
also Quercetan, (du Chesne,) physician
to Henry IV, and De Claves, as vouchers
for this story; and says that the Emperor
Ferdinand III purchased the secret at a
high price. Baker, in his work on the
Microscope, speaks thus of it:---

"The famous physician Quercetanus,
tells a strange story of a Polonian doctor,
who showed him a dozen glasses
hermetically sealed, in each of which was
a different plant; as a rose in one, a tulip
in another, a clove (July)gilly-flower in a
third, &c.

When these glasses were first brought
to view, you saw nothing in them but
a heap of ashes at the bottom; but on the
application of some gentle heat under any
of them, there presently arose out of the
ashes, the idea of the flower, and stalks
belonging to those ashes; and it would
shoot up and spread about to the due
height, and dimensions of such a flower,
and had the perfect colour, shape,
magnitude, and all other accidents, as if
it were really the flower.

But, whenever the heat was withdrawn
from it, as the glass and the included air
and matter cooled by degrees, so would
this flower sink down little by little, till it
would bury itself in its bed of ashes; and
thus it would do as often as a moderate
heat was applied or withdrawn." ~ M.L.B.

~ from :
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement,
and Instruction,
Volume XXVIII.
by Reuben Percy, John Timbs,
John Limbird, 1836.
Pages 132-133.
Downloadable @GoogleBooks
http://tinyurl.com/chaq35

=========================

"Let us speak naturally, and like philosophers.
The forms of alterable bodies in these sensible
corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine,
wholly quit their mansions; but retire and
contract themselves into their secret and
inaccessible parts; where they may best
protect themselves from the action of their
antagonist.

A plant or vegetable consumed to ashes to
a contemplative and school-philosopher
seems utterly destroyed, and the form to
have taken his leave forever; but to a
sensible artist the forms are not perished,
but withdrawn into their incombustible part,
where they lie secure from the action of that
devouring element.

This is made good by experience, which can
from the ashes of a plant revive the plant,
and from its cinders recall it into its stalk
and leaves again.

" In the correspondence of Sir Thomas Browne
will be found a letter addressed to him by Dr.
Henry Power, intreating "an experimental
eviction" of "so high and noble a piece of
chemistry, viz. the re-individuality of an
incinerated plant." And among Dr. P's papers
in the British Museum, (MSS. Sloane 1334,
folio 33) is preserved, under the head of
"Experiments and Subtilties," the following :
An admirable secret of representing the
very forme of plants by their ashes
philosophically prepared. Spoken of by
Quercetanus [Joseph Duchesne] and
Angelus Salae.

" Take (saith hee) the salt, both the fixed
and the volatile also. Take the very spirit
and the phlegme of any herbe, but let
them bee rightly prepared; dissolve them
and coagulate them, upon which if you put
the water stilled from May-Dew, or else
the proper water of the hearb you would
have appeare; close them all very well in
a glasse for the purpose, and by the heate
of embers or the naturall heate of ones body,
at the bottom of the glasse, the very forme
and idaea thereof will be represented; which
will suddenly vanish away, the heate being
withdrawn from the bottome of the glasse."

We cannot refrain from giving a passage on
this subject from D'Israeli's Curiosities of
Literature.

" Never was a philosophical imagination more
beautiful than that exquisite Palingenesis,
as it has been termed from the Greek, or a
regeneration; or rather, the apparitions of
animals and plants.

Schott, Kircher, Gaffarel, Borelli, Digby, and
the whole of that admirable school, discovered
in the ashes of plants their primitive forms,
which were again raised up by the force of
heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in nature;
all is but a continuation, or a revival.

The semina of resurrection are concealed in
extinct bodies, as in the blood of man; the
ashes of roses will again revive into roses,
though smaller and paler than if they had
been planted: unsubstantial and unodoriferous,
they are not roses which grew on rose-trees,
but their delicate apparitions; and, like
apparitions, they are seen but for a moment!

The process of the Palingenesis, this picture
of immortality, is described. These philosophers
having burnt a flower, by calcination disengaged
the salts from its ashes, and deposited them
in a glass phial; a chemical mixture acted on
it, till in the fermentation the assumed a bluish
and spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by
heat, shoots upwards into its primitive forms;
by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is
returning to its destined place, we see distinctly
the stalk, the leaves, and the flowers, arise :
it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly
forth from its ashes. The heat passes away,
the magical scene declines, till the whole
matter again precipitates itself into the chaos
at the bottom.

This vegetable phoenix lies thus
concealed in its cold ashes, till the presence
of heat produced this resurrection-as in its
absence it returns to its death."

The following experiment by Sir Thomas
Browne, preserved in his hand-writing in
the British Museum, will throw light upon
the real character of these supposed
vegetable resurrections.

" The water distilled out of the roote of
bryonia alba, mixed with sal nitri,
will send forth handsome shootes.
Butt the neatest draughts are made in
the sand or scurvie grasse water, if you
make a thin solution therein of sal
ammoniac, and so let it exhale; for
at the bottom will remain woods and
rowes of filicular shaped plants, in an
exquisite and subtle way of draught,
much answering the figures in stones
from the East Indies."
~ MSS. Sloane 1847.---Ed.

Sir Thomas Browne's Works.
Religio Medici.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
Books 1-4
by Thomas Browne
Edited by Simon Wilkin
page 69-71.
Downloadable @GoogleBooks
http://tinyurl.com/cb4vzt

Thomas Browne
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/dhtxo6

====================

"The chemists demonstrate that the
palingenesis, or a sort of restoration
or resurrection of animals, insects,
and plants, is possible  and natural.

When the ashes of a plant are placed
in a phial, these ashes rise, and
arrange themselves as much as they
can in the form which was first
impressed on them by he Author of
Nature.

Father Schott, a Jesuit, affirms that
he has often seen a rose which was
made to arise from its ashes every
time they wished to see it done, by
means of a little heat.

The secret of a mineral water has
been found by means of which a
dead plant which has its root can be
made green again, and brought to
the same state as if it were growing
from the ground. Digby asserts that
he has drawn from dead animals,
which were beaten and bruised in a
mortar, the representation of these
animals, or other animals of the
same species.

Duchesne, a famous chemist, relates
that a physician of Cracow preserved
in phials the ashes of almost every
kind of plant, so that when any one
from curiosity desired to see, for
instance, a rose in these phials, he
took that in which the ashes of the
rose-bush were preserved, and
placing it over a lighted candle, as
soon as it felt a little warmth, they
saw the ashes stir and rise like a little
dark cloud, and, after some movements,
they represented a rose as beautiful
and fresh as if newly gathered from
the rose-tree.

Gaffard assures us that M. de Cleves,
a celebrated chemist, showed every
day plants drawn from their own ashes.
David Vanderbroch affirms that the
blood of animals contains the idea of
their species, as well as their seed...

~ from :
The Phantom World :
~ Or ~
The Philosophy of Spirits,
Apparitions, &c
By Augustin Calmet
Translated by Henry Christmas,
1850.
Page 361.
Downloadable @GoogleBooks
http://tinyurl.com/ck49bh

Antoine Augustin Calmet
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/cmsefu

====================

" Origen, in his second book against
Celsus (continues the reverend Father
Dom Augustin Calmet), relates and
subscribes to the opinion of Plato,
who says "that the shadows and
images of the dead, which are seen
near sepulchres, are nothing but the
soul disengaged from its gross body,
but not yet entirely freed from
matter."

From the same old book, which is
probably read by few, I cannot
forebear transcribing the following
curious account, which, however
impossible, appears to have been
at one time generally believed:---

" If there is any truth in what we are
told by the learned Digby, chancellor
to Henrietta, Queen of England, by
Father Kircher, a celebrated Jesuit, by
Father Schott of the same order, and
by Gaffarel and Vallemont, concerning
the wonderful mystery of the
Palingenesis, or resurrection of plants,
it will help to account for the shades
and phantoms which many will confidently
assert they have seen in churchyards."

The account which these curious
naturalists give of their performing the
wonderful operation of the Palingenesis
is as follows:---

"They take a flower, and burn it to ashes,
from which, being collected with great care,
they extract all the salts by calcination.
These salts they put into a glass phial; and,
having added to them a certain composition
which has the property of putting the ashes
in motion upon the application of heat, the
whole becomes a fine dust of a bluish colour.

From this dust, when agitated by a gentle
heat, there arise gradually a stalk, leaves,
and then a flower; in short, there is seen the
apparition of a plant rising out of the ashes.

When the heat ceases the whole show
disappears, and he dust falls into its former
chaos at the bottom of the vessel. The return
of heat always raises out of its ashes this
vegetable phoenix, which derives its life from
the presence of this genial warmth, and dies
as soon as it is withdrawn."

Then follows the manner in which Father
Kircher endeavours to account for the wonderful
phenomenon; and the author continues with
an assertion that the members of the Royal
Society at London had (as he was informed)
made the same experiment upon a sparrow,
and were then hoping to make it succeed
upon men. "

~ from :

Zophiel;
or,
The Bride of Seven
By Maria Del Occidente
(Maria Gowen Brooks)
Edited by
Zadel Barnes Gustafson,
1879.
Notes to Canto Second,
pages 215-216.
Downloadable @GoogleBooks
http://tinyurl.com/chst6d

Maria Gowen Brooks
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/c2d7rs

===================

The Imperial Secret of Ferdinand III
by Fra. Athanasius Kircher

1.) Take four pounds of the seed of
the plant which you mean to raise
from its ashes; the seed must be
thoroughly ripe. Pound it in a mortar,
put it in a glass bottle, perfectly clean,
and of the height of the plant: close
the bottle well and keep it in a
moderate temperature.

2.) Expose the pounded seed to the
night dew, choosing for this operation
an evening when the sky is perfectly
clear; spread it upon a large dish that
the seeds may be thoroughly
impregnated with the vivifying virtue
which is in the dew.

3.) Spread a large cloth, which must
be perfectly clean, in a meadow,
stretched out and fastened to four
stakes, and with this collect eight pints
of of the same dew, which you must
put in a clean glass bottle.

4.) Replace the seed which has been
impregnated with the dew in its bottle,
before the sun rises, lest the vivifying
virtue should evaporate, and place the
bottle, as before, in a moderate
temperature.

5.) When you have collected dew enough
you must filter and afterwards distil it,
in order that no impurities may remain.
The dregs must be calcined to extract a
salt from them.

6.) Pour the distilled dew imbued with
this extracted salt upon the seed, and
then close the vessel with pounded glass
and with borax. It must then be kept for
a month in a hot bed of horse-dung.

7.) Take out the vessel and you will see
that the seed at the bottom has become
like jelly; the spirit will float on the top
like a thin skin of divers colours; between
the skin and the thick substance at the
bottom you will see a kind of greenish dew.

8.) Expose the vessel, being well closed,
during the summer to the sun by day,
and to the moon by night. When the
weather is thick and rainy, it must be
kept in a dry and warm place.
Sometimes the work is perfected in
two months, sometimes it requires
a year. The signs of success are, when
you see that the muddy substance
swells and raises itself; that the spirit
or thin skin diminishes daily, and that
the whole is thickening. Then when
you see in the vessel by the reflection
of the sun, subtle exhalations rising
and forming light clouds, verily these
are the first rudiments of the renascent
plant.

9.) In fine, of all this matter there
ought to be formed a blue powder,
and from this powder when it is excited
by heat, there sprouts the stem, leaves,
and flowers, in one word the whole
apparition of the plant rises out of the
ashes. As soon as the heat ceases,
the whole spectacle disappears, and
the whole matter becomes deranged,
and precipitates itself to the bottom of
the vessel to form there a new chaos.
The return of heat always resuscitates
this vegetable Phoenix which lies hid in
its ashes; and as the presence of heat
gives it life, its absence causes its death."

~ from :

Mundus Subterraneus, L.XII.
Sect IV. Cap. 5, Exp. 1.

Athanasius Kircher
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/c99jkh

[Khem Caigan]

The excerpts continue below :

Spoiler: ShowHide

"Take any whole herb, or flower, with
its root, make it very clean, and bruise
it in a stone mortar quite small; then
put it into a glass vessel hermetically
sealed; but be sure the vessel be two
parts in three empty: then place it for
putrefaction in a gentle heat in balneo,
not more than blood warm, for six
months, by which it will be all resolved
into water. Take this water, and pour
it into a glass retort, and place a receiver
thereunto, the joints of which must be
well closed; distill it in a sand heat until
there comes forth a water and an oil;
and in the upper part of the vessel will
hang a volatile salt. Separate the oil
from the water, and keep it by itself,
but with the water purify the volatile
salt by dissolving, filtering, and
coagulating.

When the salt is thus purified, imbibe
with it the said oil, until it is well
combined.

Then digest them well together for a
month in a vessel hermetically sealed;
and by this means will be obtained a
most subtle essence which being held
over a gentle heat of a candle, the spirit
will fly up into the glass where it is
confined, and represent the perfect idea
or similitude of that vegetable whereof
it is the essence; and in this manner
will that thin substance, which is like
impalpable ashes or salt, send forth
from the bottom of the glass the
manifest form of whatever herb it is
the menstruum, in perfect vegetation,
growing little by little, and putting on
so fully the form of stalks, leaves and
flowers, in full and perfect appearance,
that any one would believe the same
to be natural and corporal: though at
the same time it is nothing more than
the spiritual idea endued with a spiritual
essence.

This shadowed figure as soon as the
vessel is taken from the heat or candle
returns to its caput mortuum, or ashes
again, and vanishes away like an apparition,
becoming a chaos or confused matter.

To make a vegetable more quickly yield
its spirit, take of what vegetable you
please, whether it be the seed, flowers,
roots, fruits or leaves, cut or bruise them
small, put them into warm water, put
upon them yeast or barm, and cover them
up warm, and let them work three days,
in the same manner as beer; then distill
them, and they will yield their spirit very
easily. Or else take of what herbs, flowers,
seeds, etc, you please; fill the head of a
still therewith, then cover the mouth with
coarse canvas, and set on the still, having
first put into it a proportionable quantity
of sack or low wine; then give it fire, and
it will quickly yield its spirit; but observe,
that, if the colour of the vegetable is
wanted, you must take some of its dried
flowers, and fill the nose of the still
therewith, and you will have the exact
colour of the herb."

~ Ebenezer Sibly
A New and Complete Illustration
of Astrology, 1784.

Ebenezer Sibly
(1781-1800)
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/d5muyz

[ see also :

Plate VIII
- Ebenezer Sibly demonstrating
the procedures necessary for
palingenesis, in his book, A
New and Complete Illustration
of Astrology, 1784
~ from :
The Chemical Philosophy
by Allen G. Debus,
Page 101
http://tinyurl.com/ckk7ux ]
==================

THE LIFE OF HIS EXCELLENCY
SIR WILLIAM PHIPS, KNT.

1.)" IF such a renowned chymist as
Quercetanus, with a whole tribe of
"labourers in the fire," since that
learned man, find it no easie thing
to make the common part of mankind
believe that they can take a plant
in its more vigorous consistence,
and after a due maceration,
fermentation and separation,
extract the salt of that plant,
which, as it were, in a chaos,
invisibly reserves the form of
the whole, with its vital principle;
and, that keeping the salt in a
glass hermetically sealed, they
can, by applying a soft fire to
the glass, make the vegetable
rise by little and little out of
its ashes, to surprise the
spectators with a notable
illustration of that resurrection,
in the faith whereof the Jews,
returning from the graves of their
friends, pluck up the grass from
the earth, using those words of the
scripture thereupon, "Your bones
shall flourish like an herb:" 'tis
likely, that all the observations
of such writers as the incomparable
Borellus, will find it hard enough
to produce our belief that the
essential salts of animals may
be so prepared and preserved,
that an ingenious man may have
the whole ark of Noah in his own
study, and raise the fine shape of
an animal out of its ashes at his
pleasure : and that, by the like
method from the essential salts of
humane dust, a philosopher may,
without any criminal necromancy,
call up the shape of any dead
ancestor from the dust whereinto
his body has been incinerated.

The resurrection of the dead will be as
just, as great an article of our creed,
although the relations of these
learned men should pass for incredible
romances: but yet there is an anticipation
of that blessed resurrection, carrying
in it some resemblance of these
curiosities, which is performed, when
we do in a book, as in a glass,
reserve the history of our departed
friends; and by bringing our warm
affections unto such an history, we
revive, as it were, out of their
ashes, the true shape of those
friends, and bring to a fresh view
what was memorable and imitable in
them. "

~ from :

Magnalia Christi Americana :
~ Or ~
The Ecclesiastical History of New-England;
from Its First Planting, in the Year 1620,
Unto the Year of Our Lord 1698.
In Seven Books
By Cotton Mather,
Thomas Robbins,
Samuel Gardner Drake
Translated by Lucius Franklin Robinson,
1855, Page 165.
http://tinyurl.com/dn25lp

Cotton Mather
From Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/d85w4r

========================

That (then) it is not repugnant or
unconsonant to the holy scripture to
suppose that a comparatively small
quantity of the matter of a body, being
increased either by assimilation or other
convenient apposition of aptly disposed
matter, may bear the name of the former
body, I think I may reasonably gather
from the three following expressions I
meet with in the Old and New Testament.

For first, St Paul in the 15th chapter of his
First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he
professedly treats of the resurrection, and
answers this question, But some man will say,
How are the dead raised up? and with what
body do they come?' (I Corinthians xv, 35),
he more than once explains the matter by
the similitude of sowing, and tells them:
'That which thou sowest, thou sowest not
that body that shall be, but bare grain, it
may chance of wheat, or of some other grain
(Ver. 37), adding that God gives this seed
'a body as he thought fit, to each seed its
own body (Ver. 38). Now, if we consider
the multitude of grains of corn that may
in a good soil grow out of one, insomuch
that our Saviour, speaking in the parable
de agro dominico of a whole field, tells us
that the grain may well bear a hundred for
one, we cannot but think that the portion
of the matter of the seed that is in each of
the grains (not to reckon what may be
contained in the roots, stalk, and chaff)
must be very small.

I will not now consider whether this text
justifies the supposition of a plastic power
in some part of the matter of a deceased
body, whereby, being divinely excited, it
may be enabled to take to itself fresh
matter, and so subdue and fashion it as
thence sufficiently to repair or augment
itself, though the comparison several
times employed by St Paul seems to
favour such a hypothesis.

Nor will I examine what may be argued
from considering that leaven, though at
first not differing from other dough, is,
by a light change of qualities that it
acquires by time, enabled to work upon
and ferment a great proportion of other
dough. Nor yet will I here debate what
may be said in favour of this conjecture
from those chemical experiments by
which Kircherus, a Polonian physician
in Quercetanus, and others, are affirmed
to have by a gentle heat been able to
reproduce, in well- closed vials, the
perfect ideas of plants destroyed by the
fire — I will not, I say, in this place
enter upon a disquisition of any of these
things, both because I want time to go
through with it, and because, though the
resuscitation — supposing the matter of
fact — may give no small countenance to
our cause, yet I do not either absolutely
need it, or perhaps fully acquiesce in all
the circumstances and inferences that
seem to belong to it.

But one thing there is that I must not
leave unmentioned in this place, because
I received it soon after the trial was
made from two eminent persons of my
acquaintance, men of great veracity as
well as judgement, whereof one made
the experiment and the other saw it
made in his own garden, where the trier
of the experiment (for he was so modest
that he would not confess himself to be
the author of it) took some ashes of a
plant just like our English red poppy,
and, having sowed these alkalizate ashes
in my friend's garden, they did, sooner
than was expected, produce certain
plants larger and fairer than any of that
kind that had been seen in those parts.
Which seems to argue that, in the saline
and earthy, i.e. the fixed, particles of
a vegetable that has been dissipated and
destroyed by the violence of the fire,
there may remain a plastic power,
enabling them to contrive disposed
matter so as to reproduce such a body
as was formerly destroyed.

~ from :

Selected Philosophical Papers
of Robert Boyle
by Robert Boyle,
Michael Alexander Stewart,
1991,
Pages 195-196,
'Some Physico-Theological Considerations
About the Possibility of the Resurrection'.
http://tinyurl.com/dx8yq9

=======================

THE FLOWER FROM THE ASHES

Quercetanus, the famous physician of
King Henry the Fourth, tells us a
wonderful story of a Polonian doctor
that showed him a dozen glasses
hermetically sealed in each of which
was a different plant, for example,
a rose in one, a tulip in another, a
clove gilly-flower in a third, and so
on of the rest. When he opened these
glasses to your first view, you saw
nothing in them but a heap of ashes
in the bottom. As soon as he held
some gentle heat under any of them,
presently there arose out of those
ashes the idea of a flower and the
stalk belonging to those ashes,
and it would shoot up and spread
abroad to the due height and just
dimensions of such a flower, and
perfect colour, shape, magnitude
and all other accidents, as if it really
were that very flower.

But when you drew the heat from it,
would this flower sink down by little
and little, till at length it would bury
itself in its bed of ashes. And thus it
would do as often as you exposed it
to moderate heat, or withdraw it
from it. I confess it would be no small
delight to see this experiment with all
the circumstances that Quercetan sets
down.

Athanasius Kircharus at Rome assured
me that he had done it, and gave me
the process of it.

But no industry of mine could effect it.
~ SIR KENELM DIGBY in his
Discourse Concerning the Vegetation
of Plants.

THE FLOWER FROM THE ASHES

An imagined conversation between
QUERCETANUS, a Magician,
and SIR KENELM DIGBY.

In the Laboratory of Quercetanus.

QUERCETANUS
'Tis a master-charm
but few command.
(You own, no industry
of yours avails,
And hence you come
to me.
And you do well).
'Twas from a rare
Polonian doctor old,
Ay, shrunk so far
in silvery age meseemed
He was not other than
that wondrous ash
Enshrined within the
crystal phial slim
That in his spirit-slender
hand he held
For demonstration to
a few elect.
Yet, like the ash within
that phial closed,
His fragile being housed
a vital spark
That made one lamping splendor
of his eyes,
The while he testified:

"This glass, behold,
Hath Beauty lapped in ashes
not of death,
But of a life prepotent
as the seed
That overlives all Winter's
cruel scath,
Biding the sign of Spring
to clothe in green.
That seed 'tis proof
to frosts no summer shoot
Could e'er withstand;
so, even so this drift
Of hoary dust, shut in
by crystal walls,
Is all alive
is all invincible!"

So spake that rare
Polonian doctor then
Shot round upon the
drinkers of his lore
A smile half mockery
angelic half.
Continuing, he caught
his own words up:
"But said I ashes?
Nay, I see a rose!"
And then, to me,
"You do not see it no?
But do not move your eyes.
Regard this glass,
Where even now the
restless life begins."

And then, as steadily
I gazed, I saw
A greening stalk cleave
through that drift of gray;
And from the stalk shot
balanced sprays each side,
And from the branches
leaves; and midmost all
A yearning flame that
shot into a rose
A perfect rose beyond
perfection here,
As if from Paradise
that moment rapt !

SIR KENELM
And was it given you
to touch the flower,
To learn if flower-like
its tissues were,
Or if thin air and flame
its semblance gave?

QUERCETANUS
I? touch the thing
my master's art evoked?
Nay, touched I not,
nor would I seek to touch!
But all that marvel fine
was bloomed and shed
In but the tithe of time
that I have used
To tell you of it
gone most utterly.

SIR KENELM
But in the crystal phial
was there nought?

QUERCETANUS
Even the powdery drift
was seen before.

SIR KENELM
I pray you, may I see
that flower, myself?
I doubt not, featly
works the charm for you,
Though failed the process
that was given me.

QUERCETANUS
A phial I shall
show you presently;
I had it from that
rare Polonian's hand.

SIR KENELM
What! nothing but a
drift of ashes left
In a dark phial Rose,
thy funeral urn!

QUERCETANUS
Some flower-in-ashes
all men hoard away,
Nor know they hoard
until a master's art
In transient Beauty
bids it bloom again.

~ from :

The Flower from the Ashes
and Other Verse
by Edith Matilda Thomas
1915.
Page 3-8
http://tinyurl.com/dfehbj

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
by H. P. Lovecraft, 1927.
@DagonBytes.com
http://tinyurl.com/82jmd

[CorneliaCarton]

How in the blazes did I miss this thread?
I am very much into the Occult. Is it too late to join?

[Khem Caigan]

How in the blazes did I miss this thread?
I am very much into the Occult. Is it too late to join?

As mentioned earlier, one automatically
enters the ranks of this .:August Society:.
by contributing to the discussion here -  and
for all those new members who didn't catch
it a page or so back, once again I bid you all
a very warm Welcome to the .:Order:.!

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

Blagrave's Supplement
to Nicholas Culpepper's
English Physitian
by Joseph Blagrave, 1674.
( 15.8 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 3/1/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.

See also :

The English Physitian : or
An Astrologo-Physical Discourse
of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation,
by Nicholas Culpeper, 1652.
Online @Med.Yale.edu
http://tinyurl.com/36c6c

The English Physitian : or
An Astrologo-Physical Discourse
of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation,
by Nicholas Culpeper, 1765.
( Read/Download .PDF @GoogleBooks )
http://tinyurl.com/yzwg86s

Culpeper's Complete Herbal :
to Which is Now Added, Upwards of
One Hundred Additional Herbs,
with a Display of their Medicinal
and Occult Qualities
by Nicholas Culpeper, 1816.
< Excellent Colour Plates >
( Read/Download .PDF @GoogleBooks )
http://tinyurl.com/yfldzmj

Nicholas Culpeper :
Herbalist of the People
by Dylan Warren Davis
http://tinyurl.com/ma9up

[Celestial Temple]

I most humbly offer myself as a neophyte of the Order. What a marvellous thing, I'm glad I saw this discussion!

[Khem Caigan]

Let the Mystic Circumambulation take
place in the Path of Darkness, with the
Light of Occult Science to guide the Way!

< circumambulates the temple with
steampumpkin and thurible >

Inheritor of a Dying World, We call Thee
to the Living Beauty.

Wanderer in the Wild Darkness, We call
Thee to the Gentle Light.

Child of Earth, long hast Thou dwelt in
Darkness - quit the Night and seek the
Day!

Welcome, Soror Temple, to the Order
of the Brazen Dawn.

[Celestial Temple]

I thank you Frater.
I promise to uphold the highest ideals of the Order, and to never divulge its secrets, except to a sister or brother of the temple.

[Khem Caigan]

Ah - you are referring, I think, to the Divine
Guardians of this Order, who 'journey as upon
the Winds, strike where no man strikes, and
slay where no man slays'?

We had to break them of that abominable habit
when we went "open source", as it were.

Please feel free to divulge anything you like
to anyone at all - just be prepared for the
blank stares in advance.

"No Good Deed goes Unpunished."
~ Clare Boothe Luce

[Khem Caigan]

Another text from the E:.O:.B:.D:. Archives :

Liquor Alcahest, or a Discourse
of that Immortal Dissolvent
of Paracelsus & Helmont,
by J.A. Pyrophilus, 1675.
( 1.91 MB .PDF )

The file is down as of 3/11/2010EV.

If anyone would like a copy, please
feel free to message or email me.