Gloria Mundi

This text is included in theMusaeum Hermeticum of 1625, though it was first published in German as Gloria Mundi sonsten Paradeiss Taffel, Frankfurt, 1620. Contained in the third part is an explanation of the Emerald Tablet"... 

But of course discoveries such as these were only incidental to the quest for the Philosopher s Stone, which was often described by European alchemists in paradoxical ways. For example, according to the sixteenth-century work on alchemy, the Gloria Mundi, the Philosopher s Stone is... 

The Gloria Mundi seems to imply that anyone who found the Philosopher s Stone would surely fail to recognize it. Yet thousands of alchemists, some relatively unlearned and others with a vast knowledge of alchemical literature, continued to seek it. They pored over cryptic alchemical recipes and performed intricate experiments in their quest for the Stone, which they called the Great Work. ... 

Poisson, Theories et Symboles, 54 Cette figure se trouve en tete du Gloria mundi dans le Museum hermeticum. The rest of this page, an Explication de la planche V, provides a detailed iconographic explanation of the Philosophers Tree. 

Plate 19. Gloria Mundi. Alias, Paiadysi Tabula. In Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1624. By permission of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam. First pubhshed in Michael Maier s Symbola (cf. supra, Plate 17). 

From Gloria Mundi, dated 1526, quoted in Read, Prelude to Chemistry p. 130. 

The same conception is repeated in the later writings of Basil Valentine. Moreover, a writer in Gloria Mundi expounds a related conception in which the Stone is likened to the biblical stone which the builders rejected The Stone is cast away and rejected by all. Indeed it is the Stone which the builders of Solomon disallowed. But if it be prepared in the right way, it is a pearl without price, and, indeed, the earthly antitype of Christ, the heavenly Comer Stone. As Christ was despised and rejected in this world by the Jews, and nevertheless was more precious than heaven and earthy so it is with our Stone among earthly things. ... 

Figure 17.2. Sic transit gloria mundi. The SGHWR at Winfrith is pulled down.

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