Genre:

Serial—Introduction; Short Fiction

Subjects:

Ancient Authorities, Astrology, Alchemy, Magic, Astronomy

    Notes that members of the Society of the Rosicrucians 'gave themselves up to the enchantments of H Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, and the magical craft of William Lilly, the bold and splendid empiricism of Paracelsus, the 'abstruse and visionary rhapsodies of Robert Fludd' and the 'treatises of Sandivogius on mineralogy which, loose and fanciful as they are, yet more closely approach the order of a scientific prolusion'. Notes how these philosophers gave up 'youth, health, fortune, love, friendships' to pursue such goals as the 'elixir vitae' and the 'philosopher's stone'. (266) The following narrative includes a description of Count Aureole, a 'student of the stars', who believed in the guiding influence of his natal star and whose 'simple name' of '"astronomer" sheltered and preserved from public notice whatever else was more abstruse, dark, and forbidden' (269). Aureole gazes at his natal star and later, he mixes herbs and 'metallic ingredients' in a crucible, and after waving a rosy cross in 'mystic circles' and muttering 'certain words' out of a 'weird book', turns the sky black and conjurors up the 'ghastly' form of a gorgon. (270)