Sendivogius. Novum lumen chymicum. 1628
[SENDIVOGIUS, Michael], [SETHON, Alexandre], Le Cosmopolite.
Novum lumen chymicum.
E natura fonte et manuali experientia depromptum in duas partes divisum. Quarum prior XII tractatibus de mercurio agit. Posterior de sulphure altero natura principio. Authorsum qui Divi Leschi Genus Amo.
(Genève), Jean de Tournes, 1628.
1600 €
12mo (5,8x3,1 inches) of 202-(2) pages. binding: Twentieth-century full stiff vellum. Browned. Joints starting to split at the head.
Found in this rare edition Geneva: "De Mercurio. - Ad filios veritatis. Praefatio in a Aenigma Philosophicum. - Dialogus Mercurii, and alchymistae naturae. - Novis Luminis chymici pars altera. Altero naturae of Sulphur principio.
Latin edition (first in 1604) of one of the most celebrated treatise on alchemy ever published.
The author's name given on the title page "Divi Leschi Genus Amo" is an anagram of Sendivogius but is in reality from Alexender Sethon.
Sethon Alexander spent his life convinced of the reality of alchemy.
Completely disinterested, he went from town to town to convince the most incredulous by making transmutes lead into gold.
The product of its transmutations is given to the public.
His reputation was growing and he was called to the course of the Elector of Saxony, Christian II, where he made a transmutation.
Gold produced withstood all tests. Then told to give her secret. Sethon refused, he was tortured and imprisoned in vain.
He was released by Michael Sendivogius to whom he gave his supply of philosopher's stone and manuscripts. He died shortly afterwards from his injuries.
After marrying his widow, Sendivogius Sethon treaties under the name of Cosmopolitan.
Here the evidence of a transmutation performed before the scientific and Wolfgang Jacob Zwinger Deinheim (in de medicina Miberali. Argentorate. 1610)
"In 1602, writes Dr. Dienheim, when in the middle of summer I returned from Rome to Germany, I found myself next to a man singularly spiritual, small in size but big enough, a face colored of a sanguine temperament, wearing a brown beard trimmed to the fashion of France. He was wearing a black satin dress and had every sequence a single servant, that could distinguish among all by his red hair and beard the same color. The man was Alexander was born Sethonius.Il Molia, an island in the ocean. In Zurich, where the priest gave him a letter Tghlin for Dr. Zvinger, we hired a boat and we went by water to Basel. When we arrived in this city, my companion said: -
"You remember that, throughout the trip and the boat. you attacked alchemy and alchemists. You will also recall that I promised to answer, not demonstrations, but by a philosophical action. I still await someone I want to convince the same time as you. so that the opponents of alchemy cease their doubts about this art. "
It was then looking for the man in question, I knew only by sight and who did not live far from our hotel. I learned later that it was Dr Jacob Zvinger, whose family has so many famous naturalists. We went every three workers in a gold mine, with several sheets of lead that had Zvinger removed from his house, a crucible that we took a goldsmith, and sulfur that we bought in ordinary way. Sethon not touched anything. He made the fire, ordered to lead and sulfur in the crucible, place the lid and shake the ground with sticks. Meanwhile, he chatted with us. After a quarter of an hour. He says: -
"Take this little paper in the molten lead, but the middle and try that nothing falls into the fire !...»
In this paper was a pretty heavy powder, a color that seemed to lemon yellow; the rest, he must have good eyes to distinguish. Although also incredulous that St. Thomas himself, we did everything we had ordered. After the mass had been heated about a quarter of an hour, and continuously stirred with rods of iron, the goldsmith was ordered off the pot by pouring water on it, but there was the slightest trace of lead, we found the purest gold, which, in the opinion of the goldsmith, surpassed even as the fine gold of Hungary and Saudi. It weighed as much as lead, which he had taken the place. We sat stunned with astonishment was scarcely dare we believe our eyes. But Sethonius, mocking us:
- "Now, he says, where are you with your pedantry? You see the truth of the matter, and is more powerful than everything, even your sophistry. -
Then he cut a piece of gold, and gave a souvenir to Zvinger. I also kept a piece that weighed about four ducats, and I kept in mind that day. As for you, unbelievers, you will laugh perhaps what I write. But I still live, and I am a witness ready to say what I saw. Zwinger is still alive but he will not keep quiet and will testify about what I say. Sethonius still live and his servant, the latter in England and the first in Germany, as we know. I could even say exactly where he lives, if there were not too indiscreet in which research should engage to find out what happened to this great man, this saint, this half -god. "
Jacob Zwinger, including Dr. Dienheim invokes the testimony, was a physician and professor at Basel, outside of these titles, he enjoyed a high reputation for learning, and he left a highly respected name in the history of German medicine.
This impeccable witness died of the plague in 1610. But from the year 1606, it confirmed until the last detail the story of John Wolfgang Dienheim in a Latin letter Emmanuel Konig, professor at Basel, had printed in his Almanac.
The same letter tells us that before leaving Basel Sethon made a second attempt in the house of the silversmith Andrew Bletz, where he changed in several ounces of gold lead. As for the piece of gold he had given Zwinger, we read in the library of chemical Manget that the family of the doctor kept and made him long to see foreigners and curious.
RARE EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT TREATY ON CONVENTIONAL ALCHEMY.
references: Duveen [543].
