Monseigneur Jean de Meung has

spoken in his Mirror of Alchemy: "Our

science is body science, made of one

and by one."

Indeed, the mode by which the

Absolute is sought and conquered is

unique.

He who strides toward true perfection

rises above nature, and he who is

above nature can govern it.

This is how you will be able to work

miracles and transmute metals and

precious stones.

Do you understand at this point, disciple, the subtle difficulty of the Work?

You will not obtain the Stone until you are perfect, and you will never be

perfect if you seek the Stone for the riches that accompany it. For when

you possess the Stone, you will only, by your perfection, have a sovereign

contempt for the material advantages it will lavish upon you.

For then you will be in ecstasy, you will be able to become invisible, and

you will traverse the greatest distances in an instant.

You will live a super-exalted life that will feed and subsist by itself and that

will leave you free from needs and desires.

See how the common man closes himself in strange sophisms: "If you had

the Stone, you would be enormously rich and would be exultant with joy!"

Others, lacking faith in the soul and purity in the heart, have opened the

books of the alchemists. They have manipulated substances, blown into

the furnaces, calcined mixtures without understanding that one must

spend time in the Oratory before daring to enter the Laboratory.

And before the fatal failure, filled with vanity, they declare the word of the

masters to be deceptive and delusive, before wanting to acknowledge

their error!

Put aside the opposition and the shameless antics of these ignorant and

vainglorious censors. They mock the Alchemists who have died poor and

unknown, but know, my disciple, that when you possess the Stone you

will literally despise the making of physical gold, because you will be a

sage and will govern the elements.

When you reach the threshold of infinity, lost in the supreme

contemplation of the Absolute, what emotion will you still feel before

temporal riches? Could you be perfect if you still depended on vital needs,

if all human desire had not died in you?

That is why Grosparmy states: "It is not specially remembered that a

miser has possessed the Stone." It is absolutely evident.

The practice of the Stone and the desire for gold are incompatible.

Undertaking the Great Work to enrich oneself is entering, in reverse, the

Way of the Absolute.

Then they will obey a malevolent instinct, and you should have none

within you. How could you govern nature if you do not first govern

yourself?

This does not mean that one day you might, for a higher reason, attempt

the Work on the physical plane and transmute metals materially. Several

adeptes, such as Nicolas Flamel, Jean Saunier, Zechariah, and others have

done so. Perhaps you will be forced, well separated from the world, by

transcendent obligations.

But remember that another, and not you, will use the riches that will flow

forth abundantly from your atanor. And this being, endowed with a fiery

and wildlife, brilliant and impetuous like a beast of the forest, but cruel

and soulless like them, will sow disorder, fear, and misfortune everywhere

until the day he succumbs under the invisible blows of one of your

brothers in wisdom, who, having recognized in him an incarnation of evil!

Grillot de Givry