Basil Valentine Revived or the Shining Star of Alchemy

art deals with nothing other than the hidden sciences of the wise, etc. Thus, to understand and learn it, as a most necessary requirement, belongs world-wisdom natural philosophy, to which no one will deny the title of a noble art; how much more noble and certain must Alchemy be, since philosophia philosophy, and especially physica natural science, is only counted as a necessary part, and one can rightly say: Ars non habet osorem nisi ignorantem The art has no enemy except the ignorant.

BASILIUS Basil Valentine, in his Antimony Triumph-Car, writes the following regarding such censuring ignoramuses:

Oh inexperienced human, do not judge so rashly of this noble art, and do not condemn that which you can grasp neither through your reason nor common learning. Such despisers of the art seem to me like the fox in the fables of Æsopus Aesop, who gladly wanted to enjoy some pears from a tree standing before him, but when he saw the impossibility of attaining them, he scolded their sourness and despised them to the utmost, of which he had not yet felt the slightest taste, and thus could judge neither of their bitterness nor their sweetness; all despisers of the art can take note of this.

Those who understood the worth of the art better have written and spoken of its excellence...