Christoph Gottlieb von Murr on the True Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Order of Freemasons: Together with an Appendix on the History of the Knights Templar

he, whom he helped to collect herbs and prepare medicines, and who sometimes read aloud from the writings of Paracelsus. The great fame of the latter caused Thurneisser to resolve to accomplish similar things, and to become just as famous through chemistry, especially with the combination of astrological and theosophical whims, particularly since he did not lack a thirst for knowledge, nor knowledge of metallurgy, botany, the art of drawing, and the like; but he had no school studies at all, so that he only learned Latin in the 46th year of his age. His travels through England and France in 1548 and 49, to Scotland in 1560, to Spain and Portugal in 1561, and then to Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Greece, etc., where he acquired some knowledge of the Greek and some Oriental languages, gave him the courage to seek to equal a Paracelsus, and to study nature from its works, while he read more books than the latter had read, who did not care much for reading books at all. Thurneisser's truly not insignificant knowledge of mathematics also...