The Most Secret Secrets: Egyptian-Greek Hieroglyphics

Preface

which are held in the hands of the learned, in almost every paragraph of which the gods and heroes of the Gentiles original: "gentilium" are mentioned. This has provided scholars with a cause to diligently investigate what exactly was understood by those gods and heroes. Some were found who reduced these accounts to history, as if those gods and heroes had been kings and men in ancient times, and had performed the holy things written about them. Others applied them to the forming of morals or to the natural order of this world.

However, since these interpreters often proposed the most absurd things—worthy neither of those first, wisest men who created the veils, nor of the readers themselves who sought to unfold them—and since they largely corrupted the accounts with their own inventions, produced without any consensus of facts, they left more doubt than certainty in the minds of readers. Many, therefore, desired that what truly lay beneath those gods and heroes of the Gentiles might be thoroughly explained. For it is certain and credible that this was not some trivial matter originating from history, nor something to be dragged toward morals or other concerns, which held almost the whole world and so many wise men within it involved and blinded, not just for a hundred years (which would be too long), but for three thousand years or more.

Meanwhile, among those who treat of chemistry, some have presented themselves who affirm that the gods and goddesses of the Gentiles took their first origin from chemical works; among whom were Braceschus, Robert Vallensis, and several others. Yet, since they adapted individual points poorly to their subjects, and did not sufficiently render the rationale and harmony of all things in a convenient method, and since chemistry itself is held by the judgment of many to be empty, futile, and useless, nothing certain could be determined by the learned regarding these matters.

Therefore, I have at last taken this task upon myself, induced by various reasons: namely, to declare and, in one treatise, to submit to the eyes of readers what things were originally understood by the gods, goddesses, and heroes of the Gentiles, and in what manner those fables have been propagated through the ages until now. My purpose is both so that the truth of Christian doctrine, which shines sufficiently by itself, might be more and more illuminated once these shadows are removed, and so that Chemistry—not Alcumia the false art of base metal deception (that nurse of so many scoundrels and mother of deceptions, which adulterates metals and does not truly transmute them), but that which serves the production of the Golden Medicine, most ancient and most true, might be demonstrated...