1666, Dr. Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, doctor to the Prince of Orange, writer of a number of medical and botanical books, a detailed good friend of the thinker Baruch Spinoza and cautious, goal observer educated in scientific strategies, wrote that he was visited by a stranger who was “of medium stature, a considerably lengthy face, with just a few small pockmarks and largely black hair, not curly in any respect, a beardless chin, about forty-four years of age and born in North Holland.”
After small discuss, the stranger all of a sudden requested Dr. Schweitzer if he would acknowledge the “thinker’s stone” if he noticed it. Thereupon he took a small ivory field out of his pocket, by which there have been “three ponderous items or small lumps … every concerning the dimension of a small walnut, clear, of a pale sulfur-skin coloration“.
The stranger defined to Dr. Schweitzer that this was the substance the alchemists had been searching for, and let Dr. Schweitzer maintain a chunk in his hand to look at it and decide its authenticity. Nonetheless, when he requested the stranger to maintain a small a part of it, the stranger refused, took the piece, and put it again in his ivory field, which ultimately ended up deep in his pocket, far-off from Dr. Schweitzer’s attain, who happily managed to scrape off a tiny piece of the valuable substance together with his fingernail.
As quickly because the surprising customer had left and promised to come back again in three weeks to point out him some “unusual hearth expertise”, Dr. Schweitzer ran to his laboratory the place he melted some lead in a crucible and added the tiny piece of stone. He needed to see if the steel would flip into gold and show the stranger’s phrases.
Unusually, this didn’t occur, however one thing else, even stranger and surprising occurred: “Virtually the entire mass of the lead flew away, and the remaining changed into a mere glassy earth”.
As promised, the mysterious stranger returned three weeks later. Dr. Schweitzer was decided to get a bigger piece of this substance he had by no means seen earlier than, however the stranger solely talked concerning the climate and wouldn’t present his little ivory field of stones.
Lastly, Dr. Schweizer managed to steer the stranger and was allowed to take a chunk of the valuable stone: “He gave me a crumb as massive as a rape or turnip seed and stated, take this little packet with the best treasure on the earth, which actually few kings or princes have ever seen or identified“.
When Dr. Schweitzer protested vehemently that this was not sufficient to show 4 grains of lead into gold, the stranger lower the piece in half, threw one half into the hearth, and stated it was nonetheless sufficient for Dr. Schweitzer, who then confessed his theft and described the experiment, whereupon the stranger laughed and defined the suitable methodology. He ought to wrap the piece in yellow wax to guard it from the rising vapors of the lead, after which it will flip into gold.
After saying this, the stranger left with the promise to point out the following day how the transmutation labored, however that day by no means got here, and one night Dr. Schweitzer, after being pleaded with by his spouse, went again to his laboratory and adopted the process defined by the stranger. In lower than 1 / 4 of an hour, all the mass of lead was reworked into the best gold.
The following day Baruch Spinoza, who lived close by, examined the gold and located it to be real, as did the provincial assayer, Mr. Porelius, and Mr. Buectel, the silversmith. Their testimonies have been preserved to today.
The legend of the looks of a mysterious grasp alchemist demonstrating the alchemical course of has appeared typically sufficient in far-flung locations and at numerous instances to make the alchemical group consider that it was not a fraud. Sir Isaac Newton studied alchemy till his dying and was satisfied of the potential of transmutation, as had been Descartes and Leibnitz, to call however just a few.
And so the story goes on. Might the stranger talked about above be Comte Saint Germain, as some researchers declare?
The yr is 1745, the British have simply pushed again the French, however they’re paranoid, believing that the Jacobites are nonetheless collaborating with their French sympathizers, and arrest each Frenchman in London. In November of the identical yr, an arrested Frenchman accused of Jacobite conspiracy calmly claims he was framed and is quickly acquitted of all expenses.
Horace Walpole, an English author and Member of Parliament, wrote a letter about this incident to Sir Horace Mann on 9 December 1745, by which he famous: “The opposite day a wierd man named Depend Saint-Germain was arrested. He has been right here two years and won’t say who he’s or whence he comes, however declares that he’s not of his actual identify. He sings and performs the violin superbly, is loopy, and isn’t very wise.”
One other acquaintance of Depend Saint-Germain, Depend Warnstedt, known as Saint-Germain “probably the most consummate charlatan, idiot, babbler and swindler”. His final patron, alternatively, stated that Saint-Germain was “maybe one of many best sages who ever lived“.
He wore solely glittering diamonds on his fingers, on his shoe buckles, and on his snuff field, and he had a behavior of utilizing diamonds as a substitute of money. Casanova wrote: “As a substitute of consuming, he talked from the start to the top of the meal, and I adopted his instance in a single respect: I didn’t eat however listened to him with the best consideration. It’s secure to say that he was incomparable as a conversationalist.” Colin Wilson, the writer of The Occult, was of the opinion that Saint-Germain should have been a vegetarian.
Counts Zabor and Lobkowitz launched Saint Germain to the French Marshal de Belle Isle, who was sick on the time and claimed that Saint Germain had miraculously cured him. The marshal was so smitten by this unusual man that he introduced Saint-Germain to Paris and arrange flats and a laboratory for him there. And right here the rumors start.
A Countess de B. wrote in her memoirs, Chroniques de l’oeil de boeuf, that she had met the Depend at a soiree given by the outdated Countess of Georgy, whose late husband had been ambassador to Venice within the 1670s, and that the outdated Countess remembered Saint-Germain from that point. So she requested the Depend if his father had been there then. He replied, no, however he had been there.
However the man the Countess of Georgy had identified had been at the very least 45 then, at the very least 50 years earlier than, and the person now standing earlier than her couldn’t be older than 45. The Depend smiled and stated that he was very outdated. Then he advised some particulars that satisfied the outdated girl that it was actually him she had met in Venice.
Quickly the Depend had Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, on his facet, and it might be that he was a French spy in England when he was arrested there, for he later dealt with some delicate enterprise for the bona fide King of France. In 1760 Louis despatched Saint-Germain as his private consultant to the Hague to rearrange a mortgage with Austria to finance the Seven Years’ Warfare in opposition to England.
Throughout his keep in Holland, a dispute arose between the Depend and his good friend Casanova, who was additionally a diplomat in The Hague. Casanova tried to discredit Saint-Germain in public, however with out success.
He wrote: ‘This extraordinary man, supposed by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks, stated in a easy and positive means that he was 300 years outdated, that he knew the key of common medication, that he managed nature, that he may soften diamonds and that he was capable of type the best water from ten or twelve small diamonds … All this, he stated, was however a trifle to him. Regardless of his boastfulness, his blatant lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I can’t say that I discovered him offensive. Though I knew what he was, and regardless of my very own emotions, I assumed he was a tremendous man …“
One other enemy of Saint-Germain was the Duc de Choiseul, King Louis’ international minister, who discovered that Saint-Germain was exploring the probabilities of a peace treaty between England and France and satisfied the king that this was a nasty betrayal, so the Depend needed to flee to England after which again to Holland.
In Holland, the Depend lived beneath the identify Depend Surmont and labored to boost cash to arrange laboratories the place he made dyes and performed his alchemical experiments. To all appearances, he was profitable, for he disappeared from Holland with 100,000 guilders!
Later he seems beneath the identify of Marquis de Montferrat in Belgium, the place he additionally collects funds for the institution of a laboratory, and after a while mysteriously disappears once more. When Turkey declared battle on Russia in 1768, his data of French politics made him a helpful diplomat on the courtroom of Catherine the Nice.
He grew to become an advisor to Depend Alexei Orlov, the commander-in-chief of Russia’s imperial forces, who made him a high-ranking officer within the Russian military, and Saint-Germain adopted an English alias: “Normal Welldone.”
In 1774, he’s seen in Nuremberg asking cash from the Margrave of Brandenburg, Charles Alexander, and posing as Prince Rakoczy of Transylvania. As probability would have it, Depend Orlov was in Nuremberg on a state go to and met the prince cordially, which inspired the Margrave tremendously, however didn’t cease him from making additional inquiries about this unusual man.
And he quickly discovered that the true Prince Rakoczy was useless and that this false prince was the truth is solely Depend Saint-Germain, who denied nothing however disappeared once more the following day. Saint-Germain went to Leipzig and launched himself to Prince Frederick Augustus of Brunswick as a fourth-degree Freemason! However Frederick Augustus occurred to be the Grand Grasp of the Prussian Masonic Lodges, so he challenged Saint-Germain with the key indicators after which despatched him away as an impostor.
In 1779 Saint-Germain is 60 years outdated however continues to say to be a lot older. He stays with Prince Karl of Hesse-Kassel at Eckenforde in Schleswig and allegedly dies there on 27 February 1784. He’s buried on the spot and the Prince has a stone erected with the inscription: He, who known as himself Comte de Saint-Germain and Welldone, about whom there isn’t any additional info, was buried on this church.
After which the Prince burned all of the Depend’s papers “in order that they’d not be misinterpreted”. However there’s proof that the Depend didn’t die. In 1785, a yr after his alleged dying, Saint-Germain is alleged to have appeared in Wilhelmsbad, accompanied by the magician Cagliostro, the hypnotist Anton Mesmer and the “unknown thinker” Louis Claude de St. Martin.
Subsequent, he’s stated to have traveled to Sweden in 1789 to warn King Gustavus III of international hazard. He then visited his girlfriend, the diarist Mademoiselle d’Adhemar, who stated he nonetheless regarded as if he was solely 46 years outdated. Apparently, he advised her that she would see him 5 extra instances, and he or she claimed that this was certainly the case. Allegedly, the final go to occurred the night time earlier than the Duc de Berri was murdered in 1820.
The thriller of Saint-Germain is heightened by the uncertainty about his origins. One supply says that he was born in San Germano in 1710, the son of a tax collector. Eliphas Levi, the Nineteenth-century occultist, stated that Saint-Germain was born in Lentmeritz in Bohemia and was the illegitimate son of a nobleman who was a Rosicrucian
The actual fact is that Saint-Germain had an actual present for languages and spoke fluent French, German, English, Dutch, and Russian. He additionally claimed to be fluent in Chinese language, Hindu, and Persian, however there was nobody to check him in these languages. And Horace Walpole stated he was an exquisite violinist, singer, and painter, though nothing of his alleged artwork has survived.
Supposedly he was capable of paint jewels that glittered in a really lifelike means. There’s additionally a lot proof that Saint-Germain was an knowledgeable jeweler – he claimed to have discovered the artwork from the Shah of Persia. In any case, he’s stated to have repaired a defective diamond for Louis XV, who was very happy with the end result
Saint-Germain additionally had intensive data of chemistry in all its branches on the time, and the quite a few laboratories he arrange with borrowed cash had been all for the manufacturing of brighter and higher pigments and dyes, in addition to alchemical research.
Napoleon III ordered a fee to analyze Saint-Germain’s life and actions, however the outcomes had been destroyed in a hearth on the Lodge de Ville in Paris in 1871 – which many consider was a coincidence.
Within the Twenties, Berthold Volz discovered that the Duc de Choiseul, who was very jealous of the Depend, employed an impostor who pretended to be the Depend and exaggerated to place the Depend in a nasty gentle. And that’s all we all know concerning the mysterious lifetime of Saint-Germaine.
Author and director who thinks completely different and does every part in another way. Artwork fanatic. Wandering and questioning. Till the top of which means.
