The New Light of Alchemy

There are texts, as it seems to me, which stand apart from all others in alchemical literature for their note of extraordinary certitude and for a certain inspired accent. They are those of the New Light of Alchemy, ¹ under the name of Michael Sendivogius, and of the Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King, under that of Eirenæus Philalethes. ² They might almost pass for the work of the same hand, were it not that some sixty years intervened between their respective dates of publication. Moreover, a cosmopolitan claim ³ was arrogated to himself by both of these writers, as persons who were abroad in the world to proclaim the gospel of Alchemy, the first by ocular demonstrations in private and public, the second apparently by the scattering of texts in manuscript. Eirenæus was more especially a Cosmopolite in the sense—as he termed himself—of a fugitive over the face of earth, to escape from the hands of those who sought undue knowledge of his secret treasure. He is without exception the most problematical person in Alchemy: (1) by his claim on attainment at the age of twenty-two as a result of individual studies and its virtual stultification in respect of the second clause when he appealed to the vows which bound him; (2) by his long confusion with a mystical alchemist who was in evidence at the same time, who was almost unquestionably born in the same year and who adopted a similar but not identical pseudonym ⁴ ; and (3) by the fact that he is more difficult to identify than the true author of the Letters of Junius, all attempts having indeed failed. About the author of the New Light the position, if not so utterly obscured, is but little better. The name of its self-accredited writer is hidden on the title page in an anagram which decodes as Michael Sendivogius ¹ ; but it has been settled long since—whether for once and all is another question—that this personage made a false claim on the text and that it was the work in reality of a Scotchman named Alexander Seton, about whom nothing whatever is forthcoming prior to his travels in Alchemy, which I will now proceed to relate.