golden chain of homer
re-awakening an alchemical masterpiece
by Justitius
Whatever the true origins of this book, no one will doubt that it is indeed a masterpiece of alchemical literature. Written in down-to-earth language, one can begin to understand alchemical principles and thus, unveil the mysteries that shroud the Holy Science of Alchemy. The footnotes alone form a compendium of data that is of enormous value. It may be of interest to the reader to be aware of a question asked by the R.A.M.S. producer of one recognised as an alchemical master. The question was: “If your house was on fire and you could save only ONE book from your library, which one would you save”? The alchemical teacher, for so he was, smiled a secret smile and replied: “Well, it would be the Golden Chain of Homer”. Pressing this point the producer then asked: “Is this then, THE most important book of alchemy, or, at least, ONE of the most important books”? The teacher looked away for a moment, reflecting and answered: “Yes. IF you can understand it!!” So, courteous reader, you have in your hands a book deemed by those who know, as being VERY important and so it is more germane, you will find it to be immensely understandable.
Hans W. Nintzel
prologue
Despite having collected alchemical books for over 30 years, I am not ashamed to admit that I had only just recently heard of this book. Much to my surprise, everyone here at Inner Garden already knew about it, or had even read it, actually it happened in the exact same way with the Barbault's Gold of the Thousand Mornings... Why both books eluded me for so long is still a mystery, but I can partly attribute this to it not being mentioned enough (or at all) in the PON (Philosophers of Nature) lessons and publications. I focused on PON materials as they were the only alchemical curriculum I could access 30 years ago. PON seemed to be the best place to start in the vast array of alchemical books, with no obvious starting point for operative alchemy. A formidable labyrinth that every serious practicioner of our Art faces sooner or later...
“The author shows in this work beyond doubt the real origin of all things in the so-described general spirit of the world, that the modernists hate so much, that he who does not applaud to these enlightened rules is basking in his own blindness. For the more flexible, inquisitive-minded, however, the light will come to shine to which he would be looking in vain in other philosophic literature. For miraculously as the past has taught us, most of the philosophers contradict each other in their various systems. Many modern philosophers are not concerned with the spiritual nature of things, but try to explain everything according to the laws of mechanical movements. That is why most of them stay with the artificial nature; others, however, who have realised that there is no basis for this, instead of giving up the prejudices which they have held since childhood and of becoming enhanced with the truth, prefer to stay with the most tasteless scholastic melancholy.” “Each and every thing” - says Homerus himself - “is nothing but just this general world spirit in a more or less coagulated or firm condition.”
from the Preface to the 1. edition
the problem
I've had 'the book' on my PC for about 10 years, having bought it on a USB stick from R.A.M.S. (Restorers of Alchemical Manuscripts Society – ramsdigital.com). However, I found the format and transliterations difficult to read, which meant I really didn't read it, just glanced lightly without fully grasping the magnitude of the text in front of me.
It was a post from one of the Brethren on our Forum that made me take this book more seriously. Some might say a coincidence, but I don't believe in those anymore... After delving into the subject more seriously, I realised that there are many versions of the two volumes (and a supposed third), as outlined extensively in one of the appendices to the book. I searched online and soon found a few versions with symbols that varied from one to another, mostly due to translation efforts from German into English. Some symbols were indistinguishable because they had been drawn and redrawn by hand. I have recently started converting my collection of PDF books to EPUB format, as it is much easier to read on an e-reader where you can adjust the text size. Now that I'm starting to need reading glasses, this has become a major issue — I no longer have to keep zooming in and out of PDFs, constantly scrolling left and right & up and down.
"Everything, therefore, has originated in ONE, that is, in the above-mentioned waters. And (according to the known tenet of all true sages: Out of which a thing becomes, into the same it can also be changed back) therefore everything can be changed back into that ONE, into a fiery active water. This our students must henceforth deeply imprint upon their minds for further consideration."
from the Chapter 2, 1. edition
the process
I knew Br. Moreh had created the Archemy font with beautiful symbols, so despite some obvious typos and the constant need to flip back and forth to access the endnotes, I decided to transliterate it so it would be readable without numerous interruptions, like a flow — at least for me, initially. And so I started, copy/paste was easy, finding typos was assisted with the spell checker function in Libre Office Writer, but there were many Latin & German words at which spell cheker struggled and was flagging them as "mistakes" so the process was not as automated as I wanted. I learned at the end that I would need to designate "language" to every sentence not being in English, so if there are any volunteers, I would be glad to acquaint them with the specifics of what (still) needs to be done :).
Archemy font by Br. Moreh
After even a few pages of dedicated reading I was immediately struck by the magnitude of 17th-century natural logic and reasoning, and this book has been the centre of my interest for the last eight months (until August 25'). In my opinion, the first part is absolutely a jewel; the second part has countless recipes; and the third part is an attempt to summarise both the first and second parts. I would leave it to the readers to form their own opinion if three parts were written by one or more authors.
"From the above we can now conclude and be sure that the first matter of this great world, after God, is the chaotic water or vapour resolved into water. And, in our view, the latter is one and simple, but twofold in number, that is, water and spirit, visible and invisible; water is Patiens, spirit Agens. Out of these two all and everything is ceaselessly born, preserved and again destroyed, also reborn, till the end of the world."
from the Chapter 2, 1. edition
The hard work started when I started to see slight difference between scanned originals and the translated text, mainly several missing end of sentences as it was quite frustrating to read a sentence without a logical end. Then there were few symbols not known to me and also not found in the Archemy font, so I re-drawn those and add them to the font so transliteration could be done with a single symbols font. I knew having as few fonts as possible would make things much easier when converting the file into EPUB format.
Adding symbol "powder-alchemical" according to Unicode (U+1F74B) to Archemy font
the result
The end result is collection of the 3 books, alegedly all written by Homerus, but apparently, because of the timespan of different editions and writing style this is highly improbable as outlined also in the book. Endnotes were changed to footnotes, relieving the reader to interrupt the reading and flip to the end, then trying to find the thinking thread again during one of the previously 341 endnotes. For the PDF the content index was created together with bookmarks for easier navigation and this was re-used for the EPUB edition. The result is fully searchable PDF/EPUB documents with reading-friendly text resizing for the EPUB edition.
In the beginning, it was one and two.’ Now it is one, two and three, also four and five. It was one in the beginning as a simple water; two, that is a water which had hidden in it the spirit; three, as it had gone into a volatile, half-volatile, half-fixed, and a fixed status, which is, according to the teaching of the chemists, volatile, acidum and alcali; Spiritus, Anima, Corpus; four, as it divided into the four elements, i.e., fire or heaven, air, water, and earth; five, as it presented itself as a perfect indestructible Being aside from the four destructible elements.
from the Chapter 3, 1. edition
credits
I must pay a highest gratitude and respect to Hans W. Nintzel who undertook the task of translating this and many other books on his RAMS project. And who knows, what other 'jewels' are still hiding there, unnoticed? My main source was thus Hans Nintzel's translations, but I also peeked into AMORC version and soon found out that without also looking at the original versions, I would not be able to complete the book(s). In that regard I felt quite lucky as there are several scanned version from different years of which I leaned mainly on 1723, 1781 & 1880. Hans Nintzel's version also had an article from AMBIX magazine that SHAC (Society for History of Alchemy and Chemistry) is publishing until this very day continously from 1931 (!!!) of which, again, I've had no clue whatsover that they exist... even though, after some research, we have the link to their site on our Links page for ages. They maintain all editions from 1931 until present in electronic form and are available for download to members of SHAC. Highly recommended as there are in-depth articles from world-class scientists that have access to materials most others don't. Their interpretations might need some tips from active lab-working Brethren, but overall, a resource of great value, no doubt!
From this everyone can conclude that this water, or reborn Chaos, Spiritus mundi, or dew, snow or rainwater is the universal seed from which everything can be born that was born from the first (Chaos). And from this it may be seen that this water renders the earth fertile and that everything can be generated from it. The farmer or gardener sees this every day in his field and he need not be further convinced to believe it, but he sees with his own eyes that everything moistened by it grows superbly. Few there are, however, who know the core of this mystery, what it is that gives and produces fertility. True, everybody knows and will say: It is Spirit, with the help of water that makes things grow. Indeed, it is Spirit, but as a volatile spirit it can achieve little in the sublunary. For whatever wishes to be of avail in this corporeal earthly realm, in these visible bodies, must also be or become corporeal. One must also be able to grasp, touch and see it. Consequently, this volatile spirit must assume a tangible and visible body, just as the animal, vegetable and mineral seed is visible and tangible.
from the Chapter 10, 1. edition
For the Third Part I must pay gratitude and respect to both; Via Veritatis who translated and Br. Moreh who prepared & published electronic edition in 2018, available at Amazon (click here) and I would like to pay gratitude again to Br. Moreh for his efforts to create outstanding Archemy font.
P.S.
There was also a curious diagram names Scala Pholosoprum Cabalistica Magia included in the RAMS/Nintzel's edition which I didn't included as it doesn't have any relation to GCH, but at that nascent time of starting the work, I didn't know that... For anyone interested, I can send vector file for a large-scale printing (or further editing), contact me either on the Forum or IG Discord.
P.P.S.
The book is dedicated and available only to the members of the Inner Garden.
