“Let one raise himself by means of self, and not abase self, Self is his own friend, is also his own enemy. To him is his self his own friend, who through self conquers self, Yet if it battle with the external world, then self becomes enemy to self.” In the “Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae” (p. 57) we read: “So it is impossible to rise to the supramundane life, in so far as it does not happen by means of nature. From the steps of nature Jacob’s ladder is reached and the chain to Jupiter’s throne begins on earth.” The idea of self-sacrifice (with dismemberment) appears very prettily in an allegorical vision of the old hermetic philosopher Zosimos, who seems to have copied it, as Reitzenstein notes, from an Egyptian Nekyia. I quote from Hoefer (Hist. Chim., I, pp. 256-259): “I slept and saw a priest standing before an altar shaped like a cup and with several steps by which to climb to it. [First 15, later 7 steps are mentioned.] And I heard a voice crying aloud, ‘I have finished climbing and descending these 15 steps, resplendent with light.’ After listening to the priest officiating at the altar I asked him what this resounding voice was whose sound had struck my ear. The priest answered me, saying: ‘I am he who is (εἰμὶ ὁ ὤν), the priest of the sanctuary, and I am under the weight of the power that overwhelms me. For at the break of day came a deputy who seized me, killed me with a sword, cut me in pieces; and after flaying the skin from my head, he mixed the bones with the flesh and burned me in the fire to teach me that the spirit is born with the body. That is the power that overwhelms me.’ While the priest was saying that, his eyes became as blood, and he vomited all his flesh. I saw him mutilate himself, rend himself with his teeth and fall on the ground. Seized with terror I awoke, and I began to ponder and ask myself if this indeed was the nature and the composition of the water. And I congratulated myself upon having reasoned well [namely in a train of thought preceding the vision]. Soon I slept again and perceived the same altar, and on this altar I saw water boiling with a noise and many men in it. Not finding any one in the neighborhood to explain this phenomenon, I advanced to enjoy the spectacle at the altar. Then I noticed a man with gray hair and thin, who said to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ ‘I am looking,’ I answered with surprise, ‘at the boiling of the water and the men who are boiling there still alive.’ ‘The sight you see,’ replied he, ‘is the beginning, the end and the transmutation (μεταβολή).’ I asked him what the transmutation was. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the place of the operation which is called purification [in the original, topos askeseos], for the people who wish to become virtuous come there and become spirits shunning the body.’ And I asked him, ‘Are you also a spirit [pneuma]?’ ‘I am,’ said he, ‘a spirit and the