Book 1. Of the Aegyptio-Greeks.

we shall treat this in the first book.

1. Concerning the Hieroglyphic Gods of the Egyptians.

The most ancient and first inventors of this art, or Golden Medicine, considering its subject, form, efficient cause, and the communion of its effects with the principal parts of the world—namely with the Sun, Moon, Fire, air, water, and earth, and the other wandering stars—denominated the same from them. For in the Subject of the art, two things are considered, one of which holds the nature of the male, the other of the female; therefore they called the former Osiris or the sun, and the latter Isis or the moon. Mercury, who is joined to the Sun and the Moon, is common to both, since there is no conjunction of the Sun and Moon in the greater world unless Mercury is also present, as he always runs as a satellite to the Sun. And as these two are spouses, so they are also considered brother and sister, to whom a third, red and burning spirit is joined, called Typhon, who dissects his uterine brother Osiris into the thinnest parts and members. These four, therefore, are the principal persons among the Egyptians, three of whom, Osiris, Isis, and Mercury, are accepted as gods, and Typhon as a malignant demon. To these, they add Vulcan, or external fire; Pallas, or the wisdom of working; Oceanus, the generator of the gods; or the mother Thetis; or for both, the Nile, that is, water; and the earth, the mother of all things, as Orpheus says, distributing riches; then Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Apollo, Pluto, and other Gods. Although these names in later times have been commonly and always taken by the vulgar for the deities of gods or for the bodies of planets or celestial stars, they were originally introduced by the restorers and propagators of Chemistry to conceal the art; which is clearly visible from all the circumstances of each, both among the Greeks and the Egyptians; especially in Diodorus, whose opinions concerning the Egyptian gods we shall run through, and whose agreement with the Chemical art we shall touch upon.

Book 1, ch. 2.

Besides the said Gods, he says, whom they call celestial and eternal, they say there are others born of them, who were