Eliminating obviously worthless works, the speculations of needy impostors and disreputable publishers, it is from those who have least contributed to the advancement of chemical science that we must seek information concerning the spiritual chemistry--those who have elaborated the theory rather than those who exclusively expound the practice. In all cases, we shall do well to reflect that the object in view was metals, except in such rare instances as are presented by Henry Khunrath and the anonymous author of the treatise concerning Mary of Alexandria, with a few Rosicrucian philosophers. We must read them for what they suggest, and not for what they had in view. The dream of the psycho-chemistry is a grand and sublime scheme of absolute reconstruction by means of the Paracelsian _Orizon Æternitatis_, or supercelestial virtue of things, the divinisation, or deification, in the narrower sense, of man the triune by an influx from above. It supposes that the transmutation or transfiguration of man can be accomplished while he is on this earth and in this body, which then would be magically draped _in splendoribus sanctorum_. The Morning Star is the inheritance of every man, and the woman of the future will be clothed with the sun, and Luna shall be set beneath her feet. The blue mantle typifies the mystical sea, her heritage of illimitable vastness. These marvels may be really accomplished by the cleansing of the two-fold human tabernacle, the holy house of life, and by the progressive evolution into outward and visible manifestation of the infinite potencies within it. In the facts and possibilities of mesmerism and in the phenomena of ecstatic clairvoyance, in ancient magic and modern spiritualism, in the doctrines and experiences of religious regeneration, we must seek the _raison d’être_ of the sublime dream of psycho-chemistry--that, namely, there is a change, a transmutation, or a new birth, possible to embodied man which shall manifestly develop the esotoric potencies of his spiritual being, so that the flesh itself shall be purged, clarified, glorified, and clothed upon by the essential light of the divine pneuma. Those of my readers who are interested in this absorbing subject I must refer to a work entitled, “AZOTH, OR THE STAR IN THE EAST,” which, I trust, will be ready for publication early in 1889, and which will treat of the First Matter of the _Magnum Opus_, of the evolution of Aphrodite Urania, of the supernatural generation of the Son of the Sun, and of the alchemical transfiguration of humanity. FOOTNOTES: [A] There is no need to suppose a metonymy. The conscience is a guide which education easily perverts. Therefore, supposing it to be really the _instrument_ of the alchemists, it may eminently stand in need of purification, and, except in the most general matters, is at best an uncertain guide. [B] “L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes,” p. 93. ON THE PHYSICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE MAGNUM OPUS.