Month: November 2020

"St. Augustine, who attributes the whole of these arts to the Christian scapegoat, the devil, is flatly contradicted by Ludovicus Vives, who shows that all such would-be magical operations are the work of man's industry and deep study of the hidden secrets of nature, wonderful and miraculous as they may seem. Podocattarus, a Cypriote knight, [...]

"Asbestos , which was known to the Greeks under the name of Ασβεστος, or inextinguishable, is a kind of stone, which once set on fire cannot be quenched, as Pliny and Solinus tell us. Albertus Magnus describes it as a stone of an iron color, found mostly in Arabia. It is generally found covered with [...]

"There are some peculiar preparations of gold, silver, and mercury; also of naptha, petroleum, and other bituminous oils. Alchemists also name the oil of camphor and amber, the Lapis asbestos seu Amianthus, the Lapis Carystius, Cyprius, and Linum vivum seu Creteum, as employed for such lamps. They affirm that such matter can be prepared either [...]

"Chemists and physicists deny that perpetual lamps are possible, alleging that whatever is resolved into vapor or smoke cannot be permanent, but must consume; and as the oily nutriment of a lighted lamp is exhaled into a vapor, hence the fire cannot be perpetual for a want of food. Alchemist, on the other hand, deny [...]

"Taking no account of exaggerations, and putting aside as mere unsupported negation the affirmation by modern science of the impossibility of such lamps, we would ask whether, in case these extinguishable fires are found to have really existed in the ages of "miracles", the lamps burning at Christian shrines and those of Jupiter, Minerva, and [...]