In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom

they sometimes performed; how, in mid-winter, they caused beautiful flowers to grow out of the floor of a room, or produced a shower of roses in places where no roses were to be found; how some of them were seen simultaneously in two different places speaking and acting in each; how they sometimes were attended and served by "supernatural" beings appearing in human forms; how they were sometimes able to read the future, or see what was going on at a place hundreds of miles away from them; how they could speak languages which they had never studied; knew the contents of books which they had never read; could swallow poison without being harmed; make themselves invisible and visible at will, etc., etc. But the most interesting parts of our research, and at the same time the most pertinent to our object in view, will be historical accounts referring to their ability to make pure gold in an artificial manner—or, to speak more correctly, to transmute other metals into gold, and make gold grow. We shall therefore give a few abbreviated accounts of such authenticated facts:—

1. The following account is taken from the acta of the judicial faculty of Leipzig, whose legal decision was given in August, 1715. (Responsio Juridica Facultis Juridicæ Lipsiensis.) A few years ago a man arrived late in the evening at the residence of the Countess of Erbach, the castle of Tankerstein, and asked to be permitted to enter it, and to hide there a few days, as he had accidentally killed a deer belonging to the Palatine of Palatia, who was, therefore, pursuing him to take his life, and he asked to be protected. The Countess at first refused; but when she saw the man she was so much impressed with his noble appearance that she consented, and the stranger was given a room, where he stayed for a few days. After that he asked for an interview with the Countess, and when admitted to her presence, he expressed his thanks for the protection given to him, and offered that, as a token of his gratitude, he would transmute her silver ware into gold. The Countess at first could not believe that such a thing was possible, but she at last consented to have an experiment made with a silver tankard, which the stranger melted and transmuted into gold. She thereupon sent this gold to the city and had it tested by a goldsmith, who found it to be gold of the purest kind. She then permitted the stranger to melt and transmute all her silver spoons, plates, dishes, etc., into gold, which he did, and finally he took his leave and went away, having received a comparatively small sum of money as a gift from the Countess. Soon after this event, the husband of the Countess, who seems to have been a spendthrift, and who had been away from home for several years, serving as an officer in some foreign country, returned, because he had heard that his wife had become suddenly rich. He claimed half of the gold for himself, but the Countess refused to acknowledge his claims. The case came, therefore, before the Court, and the husband supported his claims by the fact that he was the lord of the territory (Dominus territorii).

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