12-04-2022, 10:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-04-2022, 10:34 AM by Adam McLean.)
I cannot read German, but there are so many texts I would like to read.
Paul Ferguson made the suggestion that I could transcribe and machine-translate old German printed alchemical texts.
This involved finding clean and clear scans of alchemical texts.
I then run these images through a program called Transcribus, which can read the old Fraktur fonts. This program works, but the interface is difficult to understand. It took me many attempts to find out how to work it consistently.
Next, one takes the output, now in Roman characters and puts it through the DeepL translation program. Amazingly, it requires only a little editing. It may be clumsy and not exactly beautiful English, but it does make it possible to get an understanding of the drift of the text.
Here is the opening section of Reusner's Pandora, 1582, which relates to the start of the Buch der heilgen Dreifaltigkeit.
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Those who desire to have a true knowledge of the philosophical art of greater knowledge should diligently peruse this book and read it often, and they will attain a happy desire. If you, the sons and children of the ancient philosophers, hear me crying out with a louder and higher voice than I am ever able to do, then I come to open the most excellent state of human affairs and to reveal to you the most secret treasure of all the secrets of the whole world, not in a transparent or ridiculous or mocking way, but in the most certain and human way, I will make it known to you.
Therefore give you such diligence and earnestness to hear and solve that I will bring you a mastery of doctrine: that is, of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and felt with my own hands that I will prove to you a more true, certain and familiar knowledge: than the workers and extractors who, after much cost and great labour, achieve nothing but that they first come to labour poverty; therefore I will speak to you plainly and openly, so that the experienced and the inexperienced may understand it from this mastery.
Neither will anyone tolerate me or hinder me: for the old philosophers have written about it in such an obscure and confused manner that they are not only not understood but also serve nothing at all for the purpose that from such a cause, those who wanted to experience and inquire into this delicious art were either betrayed and deceived or fell away from their purpose in it and strayed far from it. But I want to present to you (because of all deceit and deception) the truest experience entirely for your eyes, with the addition of the opinions of the philosophers, so that it may serve for the right assumption of all, so that this thing which is handled may be understood more clearly and more clearly.
For this reason, we declare first of all that all those who work outside nature are entrepreneurs and work and act in a common thing. Further, nothing else is born of a man than a man of a beast, and every like brings forth his like; therefore, what has not something peculiar in him may not have something free according to his liking or like.
This is why we say that no one is deprived of his own good: then some who are deceived by the slowness of their mind and come to poverty do not seduce others and bring them to courage and industriousness and drive them. But I have said that no one can be found in this art: then it has made fools of many of them and led them into great foolishness: this invention does not require many things, but only one thing. Nor does it demand great cost: then it is only a stone, a tool, a harness, a regiment, and an order, knowing that it is a true and the truest art.
Also, the philosophers would never have ventured to express so many of the various kinds and orders of colours if they had not seen it, touched it or felt it, so we refute that all those who work outside of nature are themselves deceived and foolish so that they are in nature and in diligent service: Then our stone is of a spiritual and mineral thing, therefore so much as one will in the work of Nature, that you do not set it now to try it: for our art is not accomplished in many of the things of which it is made, nor is its names diversified and blended with what is known and in what manner, yet for this reason, it is only one thing, and one only: for Nature is not amended or improved then in its nature.
Paul Ferguson made the suggestion that I could transcribe and machine-translate old German printed alchemical texts.
This involved finding clean and clear scans of alchemical texts.
I then run these images through a program called Transcribus, which can read the old Fraktur fonts. This program works, but the interface is difficult to understand. It took me many attempts to find out how to work it consistently.
Next, one takes the output, now in Roman characters and puts it through the DeepL translation program. Amazingly, it requires only a little editing. It may be clumsy and not exactly beautiful English, but it does make it possible to get an understanding of the drift of the text.
Here is the opening section of Reusner's Pandora, 1582, which relates to the start of the Buch der heilgen Dreifaltigkeit.
------------------------------------------------------------
PANDORA
The book called
The Most Delicious Gift of God
by Franciscum Epimetheum.
Those who desire to have a true knowledge of the philosophical art of greater knowledge should diligently peruse this book and read it often, and they will attain a happy desire. If you, the sons and children of the ancient philosophers, hear me crying out with a louder and higher voice than I am ever able to do, then I come to open the most excellent state of human affairs and to reveal to you the most secret treasure of all the secrets of the whole world, not in a transparent or ridiculous or mocking way, but in the most certain and human way, I will make it known to you.
Therefore give you such diligence and earnestness to hear and solve that I will bring you a mastery of doctrine: that is, of the things which I have seen with my own eyes and felt with my own hands that I will prove to you a more true, certain and familiar knowledge: than the workers and extractors who, after much cost and great labour, achieve nothing but that they first come to labour poverty; therefore I will speak to you plainly and openly, so that the experienced and the inexperienced may understand it from this mastery.
Neither will anyone tolerate me or hinder me: for the old philosophers have written about it in such an obscure and confused manner that they are not only not understood but also serve nothing at all for the purpose that from such a cause, those who wanted to experience and inquire into this delicious art were either betrayed and deceived or fell away from their purpose in it and strayed far from it. But I want to present to you (because of all deceit and deception) the truest experience entirely for your eyes, with the addition of the opinions of the philosophers, so that it may serve for the right assumption of all, so that this thing which is handled may be understood more clearly and more clearly.
For this reason, we declare first of all that all those who work outside nature are entrepreneurs and work and act in a common thing. Further, nothing else is born of a man than a man of a beast, and every like brings forth his like; therefore, what has not something peculiar in him may not have something free according to his liking or like.
This is why we say that no one is deprived of his own good: then some who are deceived by the slowness of their mind and come to poverty do not seduce others and bring them to courage and industriousness and drive them. But I have said that no one can be found in this art: then it has made fools of many of them and led them into great foolishness: this invention does not require many things, but only one thing. Nor does it demand great cost: then it is only a stone, a tool, a harness, a regiment, and an order, knowing that it is a true and the truest art.
Also, the philosophers would never have ventured to express so many of the various kinds and orders of colours if they had not seen it, touched it or felt it, so we refute that all those who work outside of nature are themselves deceived and foolish so that they are in nature and in diligent service: Then our stone is of a spiritual and mineral thing, therefore so much as one will in the work of Nature, that you do not set it now to try it: for our art is not accomplished in many of the things of which it is made, nor is its names diversified and blended with what is known and in what manner, yet for this reason, it is only one thing, and one only: for Nature is not amended or improved then in its nature.
Adam McLean
