86 • THE WARLOCK’S BOOK

beginnings of the experiments in creating life which are now so absorbing our scientists.

As we have seen, the practitioners of the dark arts have never been afraid of tampering with human life and, indeed, were doubt- less the first to attempt transplant surgery and revival of the dead.

Just as they were interested in creating life, so the warlocks and witches—like the alchemists and mystics of old—searched for the elixir of life—the precious liquid which preserved man’s exist- ence as long as he chose. Some of their grimoires claimed they had found it, and one detailed the actual constituents to restore youth, health, and strength:

A retreat of forty days must be made once in every fifty years, beginning during the full moon of May in the company of one faithful person only. It must also be a fast of forty days, drink- ing May-dew—collected from sprouting corn with a cloth of pure white linen—and eating new and tender herbs. The repast should begin with a large glass of dew and end with a biscuit or crust of bread. There should be slight bleeding on the seventeenth day. Balm of Azoth should then be taken morning and evening, begin- ning with a dose of six drops and increasing by two drops daily till the end of the thirty-second day. At the dawn which follows thereafter renew the slight bleeding; then take to your bed and remain in it till the end of the fortieth day. On the first awakening take the first grain of Universal Medicine. [See next reference.] A swoon of three hours will be followed by convulsions, sweats and much purging, necessitating a change both of bed and linen. At this stage a broth of lean beef may be taken, seasoned with rice, sage, valerian, vervain and balm. On the day following take the second grain of the Universal Medicine. On the next day have a warm bath. On the thirtv-sixth day drink a glass of Egyptian wine, and on the thirty-seventh, take the third and last grain of Uni- versal Medicine. A profound sleep will follow, during which the hair, teeth, nails and skin will be renewed. The prescription for the thirty-eighth day is another warm bath, steeping aromatic herbs in the water, of the same kind as specified for the broth. On the thirty-ninth day drink ten drops of Elixir of Acharat [see later reference] in two spoonsful of red wine. The work will be finished on the fortieth day and the aged man will be renewed in youth.7

THE ANCIENT SECRETS • 87

some success was the eighteenth-century mystic, Count Cagliostro, probably the greatest, if most shadowy, figure in occult history. And it is in his writings of magical operations that we find a formula for the “Universal Medicine” referred to in the above instructions:

It is necessary to first take some mercury and purge it with salt and with ordinary salad vinegar, to sublime it with vitriol and saltpetre, to dissolve it in aqua-fortis, to sublime it again, to cal- cine it and fix it, to put away part of it in salad oil, to distil this liquor for the purpose of separating the spiritual water, air and fire, to fix the mercurial body in this spiritual water or to distil the spirit of liquid mercury found in it, to putrefy all, and then to raise and exalt the spirit with non-odorous white sulphur—that is to say, sal-ammoniac—to dissolve this sal-ammoniac in the spirit of liquid mercury which when distilled becomes the liquor known as the Universal Medicine and can be made into grains by heat if so desired.

The complexities of this preparation are immediately apparent to anyone with even the most basic knowledge of science—but the secret of life is not easily won, and the other elixir, Acharat, is also not without difficulties in its preparation:

It consists of calomel, gentian, cinnamon, aniseed, nard, coral, tartar and mace, and all carefully mixed with red wine over a fire when the moon is high and full.

Armed with this information, no reader should now have any difficulty in preserving himself indefinitely for, as the writer of the Mediaeval grimoire, De Magia Veterum, says, “This is that world- renowned medicine, whereof so many have scribbled, which, not- withstanding, so few have known.”

Another obsession of modern science—and a much more jus- tifiable one, too, in comparison with the search for immortality— has been the quest for a cancer cure. At least one Black Book compiled by a seventeenth-century warlock from the County of •Yorkshire has the answer:

For this certain cure of cancer take a pound of brown honey when the bees be sad from a death in ye house, which you shall take from the hive just turned of midnight at the full of the moon.