Then I took the ancient scroll out of the Angel’s hand and ate it, and
it was in my mouth as sweet as honey: but when I had eaten it, my belly was
bitter. Revelation 10: 10
These words of St. John
the Seer, these poetic descriptions of Hermetic changes have proved too much
for mere theologians. Scholars uninitiated
into the secret alchemical underpinnings of this Revelation consistently fail
to understand what is actually being uncovered before their very eyes. And this is to be lamented. If Christ himself were to descend today from the
clouds, he would find few with whom he could converse on these matters. He would meet few diligent practitioners, but
only schools of men repeating their empty philosophies and weak
theologies. He would find few like John,
willing to risk painful poisons in order to consume the secret mysteries.
The ancient scroll here ingested by our Visionary represents chemical changes, represents Transformation. Transmutation – but now in reverse, from the sweet to the bitter, from the noble to the base, from the uncanny to the banal. No longer will it be the changing of lead into gold; that time has passed.
St. Helveticus, writing in the 17th century, was among the first to perfect this transmutation in reverse. Before an audience of his students and fellow professors at the University of Helmstedt in Germany, he demonstrated his processes – but kept several important steps of the procedure secret. His students, in the years after his death, were never able to successfully recreate his work.
Likewise here, St. John the Seer has not described the contents of the book, nor its secrets. He has not told us how these changes will occur. And yet we can know something of the results. After ingesting the words of the scroll, words that changed from sweet to foul as they entered his belly, St. John was instructed to speak again to the nations of the world. He was charged to deliver an account of the transformations that were about to be performed upon the earth, of the transmutations about to occur among the people given to know and to understand the Hermetical secrets.
He would not remain mute. He would speak to princes and to kings. But the kings were indifferent to the matter. And those who were not indifferent were actively hostile to his proclamations. One emperor gave this edict in response to the changes that St. John the Seer described: “From now on, nobody shall, under penalty of felony, multiply gold and silver by means of alchemical transmutations; neither shall they work these changes in reverse.”
The ancient scroll here ingested by our Visionary represents chemical changes, represents Transformation. Transmutation – but now in reverse, from the sweet to the bitter, from the noble to the base, from the uncanny to the banal. No longer will it be the changing of lead into gold; that time has passed.
St. Helveticus, writing in the 17th century, was among the first to perfect this transmutation in reverse. Before an audience of his students and fellow professors at the University of Helmstedt in Germany, he demonstrated his processes – but kept several important steps of the procedure secret. His students, in the years after his death, were never able to successfully recreate his work.
Likewise here, St. John the Seer has not described the contents of the book, nor its secrets. He has not told us how these changes will occur. And yet we can know something of the results. After ingesting the words of the scroll, words that changed from sweet to foul as they entered his belly, St. John was instructed to speak again to the nations of the world. He was charged to deliver an account of the transformations that were about to be performed upon the earth, of the transmutations about to occur among the people given to know and to understand the Hermetical secrets.
He would not remain mute. He would speak to princes and to kings. But the kings were indifferent to the matter. And those who were not indifferent were actively hostile to his proclamations. One emperor gave this edict in response to the changes that St. John the Seer described: “From now on, nobody shall, under penalty of felony, multiply gold and silver by means of alchemical transmutations; neither shall they work these changes in reverse.”
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