In the narrow sense of the word, alchemy is the pretended art of making gold and silver, or transmuting the base metals into the noble ones.
The author of these receipts is not under any delusion that he is transmuting metals; the MS. is merely a workshop manual in which are described processes in daily use for preparing metals for false jewellery, but it argues considerable knowledge of methods of making alloys and colouring metals.
Already, only eighty years after More's execution, hagiography had taken possession of the facts and was transmuting them into an edifying legend.
His ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances are voluminously set forth in his Physica Subterranea (Frankfort, 1669); an edition of this, published at Leipzig in 1703, contains two supplements (Experimentum chymicum novum and Demonstratio Philosophica), proving the truth and possibility of transmuting metals, Experimentum novum ac curiosum de minera arenaria perpetua, the paper on timepieces already mentioned and also Specimen Becherianum, a summary of his doctrines by Stahl, who in the preface acknowledges indebtedness to him in the words Becheriana sunt quae profero.
Let this light sweep out the pyramid, transmuting any negative energies into positive ones.
