Sax Rohmer's Preface to Apollogia Alchymiae by R. W. Councell
Channel: Dixon Kinqade
Date: 2023-03-03

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Sax Rohmer's Preface to Apollogia Alchymiae: A Re-statement of Alchemy by R. W. Councell

INTRODUCTION

"Sax may also have become a member of a Rosicrucian Society, and by this I mean a branch rather less well known and rather more significant than the brotherhood which currently operates under this name in the United States. Rudyard Kipling is said to have been admitted to the Society at the same time. The Society, which came into existence at least as early as the sixteenth century, is international, with lodges or orders in all civilized countries. What goes on within these lodges is not much known outside. It is known only that the Society is founded on a belief in the existence of a fund of secret wisdom handed down through the ages and transmitted only to the initiated."

"Sax's introduction to these societies came through Dr. R. Watson Councell, who was the Ward family doctor and had treated Margaret Ward [Sax's mother] during her final illness. Dr. Councell was an enthusiast of the occult, and became Sax's mentor in this area over a period of years. When, some years later, Dr. Councell's book Apologia Alchymiae was published (London: John M. Watkins, 1925), it contained a Preface by Sax Rohmer, the only known instance when Sax wrote introductory matter for another person's work." 

- Master of Villainy  p29-30. Cay Van Ash and Elizabeth Sax Rohmer. Ed. Robert E. Briney.

Only 500 copies of Apologia Alchymiae were printed.

PREFACE

Of the illusions which amuse the childish mind of man, that of Scientific Progress is not the least absurd. It is the most popular toy in the nursery called Modern Civilization. The wisdom of yesterday is the jest of today, the superstition of tomorrow. Human experience shows this to be the case. Yet we go on believing we are making discoveries. In the days of the Regency a physician looked upon a patient who refused to be bled in much the same way that a modern practitioner regards an appendicitis case who declines to have the inflamed fragment removed. Harley Street, in 1923, assures us that old time surgery resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths from loss of blood. Harley Street, in 2023, will probably declare that our present method resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths from loss of the appendix. We believe we understand the phenomena of solar and lunar eclipses, and believe that we have measured the distances from this our earth to the visible planets. Five hundred years hence our calculations will almost certainly be proved ridiculous. Nevertheless, we go on believing we are making discoveries. A day must surely come when crowds shall throng the waiting room of some consultant, famous for his having established the efficacy of cupping; when all shall know that eclipses are not due to the earth's shadow; when to common knowledge this same earth be stationary, whilst stars, moon and sun revolve around it.

What, then, do scientific discoverers discover? They discover (with certain notable exceptions) new bottles to contain old physic. They exhibit for our awe a tube of brick coloured powder, which they have named something ending in "ium." It has always been, that brick coloured powder. An earlier race, dwellers, perhaps, in a great Sun City now lost beneath an ocean, used it to dye their beards. They proclaim radium. And one day, it may be in some forgotten tomb, a practical radium lamp is found still alight. They bear witness to the triumph of steel by erecting, in New York or elsewhere, the worlds highest building; forgetting that somebody or another built the Great Pyramid. They acclaim certain Japanese craftsmanship the finest of its kind until among the treasures of a buried pharaoh yet finer examples are unearthed. Signor Marconi can talk to his friends who are hundreds of miles away. So could Apollonius of Tyana. The cinematogragh shows us moving figures of those who have passed over. Any high priest of Osiris could have shown us the same; so could Moses. The churches assured the world that we had emerged from the black ages of barbarism and were civilized. Thereupon we plunged into the most savage and sanguinary war recorded in the annals of man.

What, then, is Evolution? That it is a slow process in the case of humanity, experience would seem to show; but since Lord Rayleigh calculates the age of Mother Earth to be 925 million years, the possibility of endless cycles suggests itself. That, by means of a ceaseless chemical operation, the elements (which we are constantly and confidently "discovering") become merged in forms variously known as coal, diamonds, lead, gold, and a host of other commercial practicabilities, would seem to be a Truth as opposed to a Theory. And since many natural processes can be artificially reproduced, why not this wedding of atom to atom?

Professor Richardson, speaking of recent experiments relating to the structure of the nucleus of atoms...