Omniana/Volume 2/Spectral Flowers
198. Spectral Flowers.
When Christina of Sweden visited the Propaganda College, Kircher prepared many curious and remarkable things for her inspection. "She stayed some time to consider the herb called Phœnix, which resembling the Phœnix, grew up in the waters perpetually out of its own ashes. She saw the fountains and clocks, which by virtue of the loadstone turn about with secret force. She saw the preparation of the ingredients of herbs, plants, metals, gems, and other rare things for the making of treacle and balsome of life. She saw them distil with the fire of the same furnace sixty five sorts of herbs in as many distinct limbecks. She saw the philosophical calcination of ivory and the like. She saw extracted the spirits of vitriol, salt, and aqua fortis, as likewise a jarre of pure water, which with only two single drops of the quintessence of milk was turned into true milk, the only medicine for shortness of the breath and affections of the breast."
Presently it is added, that "she honoured particularly the blood of St. Esuperantia, a virgin and martyr, which after a thousand and three hundred years is as liquid as if newly shed.
Priorato's History of Christina. Engl. Trans, p. 430.
This passage affords a curious instance of Christina's superstition, and a curious display of the quackeries practised under the sanction of so celebrated and so learned a man as Kircher. What the herb Phœnix may be I know not; its peculiar name and its growing in water seem to show that the trick of the resurrection of plants is not meant.
How this remarkable trick was performed I have never seen explained. It is thus described by Gaffarel, in a book containing a most curious mixture of superstitious notions and good sense. "Though plants," he says, "be chopt in pieces, brayed in a mortar, and even burnt to ashes; yet do they nevertheless retaine, by a certaine secret and wonderfull power of nature, both in the juyce and in the ashes the selfe same forme and figure that they had before: and though it be not there visible, yet it may by art be drawne forth and made visible to the eye, by an artist. This perhaps will seem a ridiculous story to those who reade only the titles of bookes; but those that please may see this truth confirmed if they but have recourse to the workes of Mr. Du Chesne, S. de la Violette, one of the best chymists that our age hath produced, who affirmes, that himselfe saw an excellent Polish physician of Cracovia, who kept in glasses the ashes of almost all the hearbes that are knowne: so that, when any one out of curiosity, had a desire to see any of them, as for example, a rose, in one of his glasses, he tooke that where the ashes of a rose were preserved; and holding it over a lighted candle, so soon as ever it began to feele the heat, you should presently see the ashes begin to move; which afterwards issuing up, and dispersing themselves about the glasse, you should immediately observe a kind of little dark cloud; which dividing itself into many parts, it came at length to represent a rose; but so faire, so fresh, and so perfect a one, that you would have thought it to have been as substantial, and as odoriferous a rose as any that growes on the rose tree. This learned gentleman sayes, that himself hath often tryed to do the like: but not finding the successe to answer all the industry hee could use. Fortune at length gave him a sight of this prodigy. For as he was one day practising, with M. De Luynes, called otherwise De Fomentieres, Counseller to the Parliament, having extracted the salt of certaine nettles burnt to ashes, and set the lye abroad all night in a winter evening; in the morning he found it all frozen; but with this wonder attending it; that the nettles themselves, with their forme and figure, were so lively and so perfectly represented on the ice, that the living nettles were not more. This gentleman, being as it were ravished at the sight, sent for the said Counceller, to be a witnesse of this secret, the rarity whereof he exprest in these verses:
Secret, dont on comprend, que, quoy que le corps meurs
Les formes font pourtant aux cendres leur demeure.
"But now this secret is not so rare, for M. de Claves, owe of the most excellent chymists of our times, shewes the experiment every day.
"From hence we may draw this conclusion, that the ghosts of dead men which are often seen to appeare in churchyards, are naturall effects, being only the formes of the bodies, which are buried in those places; or their outward shapes, or figures; and not the souls of those men, or any such like apparition, caused by evill spirits, as the common opinion is. The ancients thought, that these ghosts were the good and evill genii which attended alwaies upon armies: but they are to be excused; seeing they knew not how to give any other reason of these apparitions: it being most certain, that in armies, where, by reason of their great numbers, many die, you shall see some such ghosts very often, (especially after a battle); which are, as we have said, only the figures of the bodies excited and raised up, partly by an internall heat, either of the body, or of the earth: or else by some externall one; as that of the sun, or of the multitudes of the living, or by the violent noise, or heat of great guns, which puts the aire into a heat.
"I have elsewhere handled the curious history of spirits; wherein I have propounded these following questions, touching these ghosts: namely, whether or no we may by these explaine all the visions that are mentioned by writers? Whether these wonderfull effects, which we attribute to demons or spirits, may proceed from these figures, or not? and then, whether they have any power at all, or not? and if so, whence they have it."
Of the instances which are recorded of this Palingenesia, as it was called, a great number may certainly be explained by the imagination of the experimentalist, as Boyle perceived. Et sane magnopere vereor, says that good man, ne qui se ejusmodi plantarum simulacra in glacie vidisse projitentur, imaginationem non minus quam oculos ad hoc spectaculum adhibuerint. And of this his own rience convinced him,. . enim vero nos ipsi cum non ita pridem optimæ æruginis, quæ salinas uvarum particulas in cuprum ab ipsis corrosum coagulatas copiose continet, soiutionem pulcherrimè virescentem sale et nive congelassemus, figuras in glacie minusculas vitium speciem eximie referentes non sine aliquâ admiratione conspeximus. Yet the Abbe de Vallemont could quote this passage, and say of it, cette scule experience sufit pour fonder tout ce qu'on a raporté de la Palingenesie des plantes et des Animaux par leurs sels.
The beautiful forms of crystallization led to this notion, and the revivification of metals was supposed to be an analogous fact;. . a theory was all that was wanting, and this was found in the opinion that salts retained the nature and property of the body from which they were extracted; for this there was the authority of Geber, and it was an easy step to suppose that the essential form of all bodies was in their salts. But it is with this subject, as with some of more importance,. . allow as much as is possible for actual appearance and for the beholder's state of mind, there still remains something which can only be explained by intentional deceit. With whom the deceit originated in this instance, my reading upon such points is too casual and far too limited for me to have discovered. I find it in Paracelsus, in his book De Resuscifatione Rerum naturalium, where among the facts and fables which this extraordinary man always mingled together, the following paragraph occurs. Resuscitatio autem et restauratio ligni est difficilis et ardua, attamen naturæ possibilis, sed sine insigni solertiâ & industriâ fieri nequit. Ut autem revivificetur, tali maxime modo id fit: Recipe lignum quod primum fuerit carbo, postea cinis, et pone in cucurbita, una cum resinâ, liquore & oleitate illius arboris; omnium sit idem pondus, misceantur, & in leni calore liquefiant; et fiet mucilaginosa materia, atque ita habes tria principia simul, ex quibus scilicet omnia nascuntur et generantur, nempe phlegma, pinguedinem et cinerem. Phlegma est mercarius, pinguedo est sulphur, cinis est sal. Nam omne quod igni fumat et evaporat, est Mercurius; quod flagrat et comburitur est sulphur, et omnis cinis est sal. Cum jam ista tria principia simul habes, pone ea in ventre equina, et putrefac ad suum tempus. Si postea ilia materia in pingue solum sepeliatur, vel infundatur, videbis eam reviviscere, et arborem vel lignum parvum inde nasci, quod quidem in suâ virtute multo est nobilius priore. Hoc verò lignum est, et vocatur resuscitatum lignum et renovatum, et restauratum, quod ab initio quoque lignum fuit, sed mortificatum, destructum, et in carbones et cineres, et in nihilum redactum, et tamen ex illo nihilo aliquid factum et renatum est. Hoc sane in Luce Naturæ magnum est mysterium. . . A great mystery indeed, thou Prince of Chemists, and most celebrated Physician and Philosopher, Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenheim!. . a great mystery indeed! but what is that to thy receipt for making the Homunculus, that arcanum super omnia arcana, which thou didst not scruple to call miraculum & magnale Dei, . . unum ex maximis secretis quæ Deus mortali, et peccatis obnoxio, homini patefecit! Oh that this Prince of Chemists, as he was deservedly called in his own age, should deserve to be called the Prince of Liars in all ages!
This resuscitatio ligni was a far less beautiful experiment than the resurrection of flowers, of which Kircher has given the receipt, or the Imperial Secret, as it is called, because it was given him by the Emperor Ferdinand III. who purchased it of a chemist. The Imperial secret is this: "1. Take four pounds of the seed of the plant which you mean to raise from its ashes; the seed must be thoroughly ripe. Pound it in a mortar, put it in a glass bottle, perfectly clean, and of the height of the plant: close the bottle well and keep it in a moderate temperature. 2. Expose the pounded seed to the night dew, chusing for this operation an evening when the sky is perfectly clear; spread it upon a large dish that the seeds may be thoroughly impregnated with the vivifying virtue which is in the dew. 3. Spread a large cloth, which must be perfectly clean, in a meadow, stretched out and fastened to four stakes, and with this collect eight pints of the same dew, which you must put in a clean glass bottle. 4. Replace the seed which has been impregnated with the dew in its bottle, before the sun rises, lest the vivifying virtue should evaporate, and place the battle, as before, in a moderate temperature. 5. When you have collected dew enough you must filtre and afterwards distil it, in order that no impurities may remain. The dregs must be calcined to extract a salt from them. 6. Pour the distilled dew imbued with this extracted salt upon the seed, and then close the vessel with pounded glass and with borax. It must then be kept for a month in a hot bed of horse-dung. 7. Take out the vessel and you will see the seed at the bottom become like jelly; the spirit will float on the top like a thin skin of divers colours; between the skin and the thick substance at the bottom you will see a kind of greenish dew. 8. Expose the vessel, being well closed, during the summer to the sun by day, and to the moon by night. When the weather is thick and rainy, it must be kept in a dry and warm place. Sometimes the work is perfected in two months, sometimes it requires a year. The signs of success are, when you see that the muddy substance swells and raises itself; that the spirit or thin skin diminishes daily, and that the whole is thickening. Then when you see in the vessel by the reflection of the sun, subtle exhalations rising and forming light clouds, verily these are the first rudiments of the renascent plant. 9. In fine, of all this matter there ought to be formed a blue powder, and from this powder when it is excited by heat, there sprouts the stem, leaves, and flowers, in one word the whole apparition of the plant rises out of its ashes. As soon as the heat ceases, the whole spectacle disappears, and the whole matter becomes deranged, and precipitates itself to the bottom of the vessel to form there a new chaos. The return of heat always resuscitates this vegetable Phœnix which lies hid in its ashes; and as the presence of heat gives it life, its absence causes its death."
Sect IV. Cap. 5, Exp. I
This imperial secret is as explicit as possible till it comes to the blue powder. The Abbe de Vallemont, in whose curiositez de la Nature et de l'Art sur la Vegetation this passage from Kircher is translated, gives another receipt by M. Dobrzenski de Nigrepont, which seems to be the lie of an impudent quack to puff off his mineral water. It is a shorter way of producing the same effect by virtue of the water. But the Abbé passes on to greater wonders. Quand j'ai dit, he says, ci-devant, que les Physiciens en feroient lant par leurs expériences, qu'ils parviendroient jusqu' à faire l'incomprehensible miracle de la Resurrection, je ne me trompois pas tant. C'est déja une affaire presque fait. On a passé des Vegetaux aux Animaux. And with that upon the authority of that Prænobilis et Reverendus D. Godefridus Aloysius Kinnents a Lowenthurn. Juris utriusque, et sacro-sanctæ Theologiæ Doctor. He tells a story of a sparrow resuscitated in like manner from its ashes, and even gives a portrait of the ghost of the sparrow in its bottle. One cares not what may be said by one of these pre noble and reverend Doctors of Theology, and of both Laws, with their names of a foot and a half long, . . but it is painful to find a direct falsehood gravely affirmed by such a man as Sir Kenelan Digby, and that the story which the Abbé quotes from his works is a direct falsehood, is beyond all doubt, tie says that the Palingenesia of plants is nothing to what he himself had done with animals, being but a shadowy appearance, whereas he had accomplished an actual and substantial reproduction of cray-fish. "Wash the cray-fish well," he says, "to take away their earthiness; boil them two hours in a sufficient quantity of rain water, and keep the decoction. Put them in an earthen alembic, and distil them till nothing more ascends. Preserve that liquor also. Calcine what remains in the alembic, and with the first decoction extract the salt from the ashes, filtrate the salt, and take from it all its superfluous humidity. Then upon this fixed salt pour the liquor which you have obtained by distillation, and put in a moist place, that it may putrify. In a few days you will see little cray-fish move about in it, no bigger than grains of millet. You must feed them with blood till they grow as big as a filbert; then you must remove them into a wooden trough filled with river water and blood, and renew the water every third day. In this manner you will have cray-fish of what size you please." "Cela est plus utile," says M. l'Abbé, "que la Palingenesie des plantes dans les fioles. Il y a la du solide. Il y a plus qu' à voir; il y a à manger; & sur tout des Ecrevisses, qui sont d'un usage excèlent pour purifier le sang." The Abbé believed all these things, but he must not be despised for his credulity, for in that age they were generally believed. "C'est elever la Palingenesie," he says, "an dernier degré du merveilleux, que de se former l'idee de la pratiquer sur les cendres mêmes des animaux, et peut-être des hommes. Que ce seroit un enchantement bien doux, pour Madame la Marquise de ——— de pouvoir joüir du plaisir de voir l'ombre et le fantôme de son défunt parroquet! Franchement ce seroit une jolie chose, que de voir ainsi dans une fiole une parroquet resusciter du milieu de ses cendres. Ce seroit un phœnix. Il seroit plus agréable resuscité dans une fiole, qu'il n'etoit vivant dans sa cage: c'etoit un grand criard. Ce qui faisoit suporter sa criaillerie, c'est qu'il parloit à merveilles. Il avóit été elevé à la cour: il disoit ce qu'il ne pensoit pas. Il y a bien des gens, qui comme les parroquets parlent tout-à-fait machinalement. Si Artemise avoit sû le secret de la Palingenesie, elle n'auroit pas avale les cendres de son Epoux Mausole. Elle les auroit conservées dans une urne de cristal, où l'ombre, les manes du defunt, lui auroient aparu, quand elle l'auroit souhaite." He concludes in a more serious strain:. . "C'est à ceux qui veulent en philosophant, adorer la grandeur de Dieu, à raisonner sur cette exactitude, cette emulation, ce penchant que la matiere se conserve pour s'aranger, autant qu'elle peut, selon la figure que lui avoit d'abord imprimée l'Auteur de la Nature."
So firmly indeed was the Palingenesia believed by men of learning, that it was frequently insisted on by divines as a proof of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Some trick must have been practised by the chemical wonder-workers which duped the spectators. Perhaps the glass was painted with the solutions of cobalt, such as are used to make sympathetic inks. "Fire screens have thus been painted, which in the cold have shown only the trunk and branches of a dead tree and sandy hills, but on their approach to the fire have put forth green leaves and red flowers, and grass upon the mountains." (Botanic Garden Vol. I. p. 56.) What a melancholy thing it is to consider that for some thousand years science was almost exclusively applied to the purposes of deceit!
Cotton Mather introduces his life of Sir William Phips with a happy allusion to these pretended experiments. "If," says he, "such a renowned chymist as Quercetanus, with a whole tribe of labourers in the fire, since that learned man, find it no easy thing to make the common part of mankind believe, that they can take a plant in its vigorous consistence, and after a due maceration, fermentation, and separation, extract the salt of that plant, which, as it were, in a chaos, invisibly reserves the form of the whole, with its vital principle; and, that keeping the salt in a glass hermetically sealed, they can by applying a soft fire to the glass, make the vegetable rise by little and little out of its ashes, to surprize the spectators with a notable illustration of that resurrection, in the faith whereof the Jews returning from the graves of their friends, pluck up the grass from the earth, using those words of the scripture thereupon, 'Your bones shall flourish like an herb:' 'Tis likely that all the observations of such writers as the incomparable Borellus, will find it hard enough to produce our belief, that the essential salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own study, and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure; and, that by the like method from the essential salts of human dust, a philosopher may, without any criminal necromancy, call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has been incinerated. The resurrection of the dead will be as just, as great an article of our creed, although the relations of these learned men should pass for incredible romances: but yet there is an anticipation of that blessed resurrection, carrying in it some resemblance of these curiosities, which is performed, when we do in a book, as in a glass, reserve the history of our departed friends; and by bringing our warm affections unto such an history, we revive, as it were, out of their ashes the true shape of those friends, and bring to a fresh view what was memorable and imitable in them."