The Alchemical Treatise of Edward Kelley

"The descendants continue to regard him as his contemporaries did: as a swindling notary, rightly deprived of his ears; as a pitiful impostor who deceived the infinite gullibility of the learned Doctor Dee and subsequently involved his victim in affairs that forever tainted his great name; finally, as a deceitful transmuter of metals who enjoyed excessive leniency from the emperor." We present to you a book about the famous Edward Kelley. A figure repeatedly condemned, he left a rather noticeable mark in history. For the first time we offer the reader three very curious treatises that constitute the main literary heritage of Edward Kelley, we believe that the editor has no need – for there are no factual reasons – to concoct various justifications in defense of the alchemist who wrote them. For the collector of scientific curiosities and literary 'choses inouies', the interest they induce will not be weakened by the clowning or crimes of their author. For those studying hermetic antiques, it will be obvious, if it isn’t already, that the value of duo tractatus and their supplement lies not in the fact that they are the work of the adept himself, but in that they present a carefully curated digest, a compendium of thoughts from alchemical philosophers. Similarly, interest in Kelley was generated by his possession of two alchemical tinctures rather than his ability to create them. At the same time, Kelley’s adventures and arrests, accompanied by transitions from extreme poverty to sudden wealth, from the status of a condemned and hunted criminal to the title of baron and marshal of Bohemia, and then back to disgrace and imprisonment culminating in violent death, not to mention his visions and transmutations, represent a remarkable narrative and broadly illustrate a life more befitting the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Moreover, here, as in many other cases, it is hardly necessary to inform the student of transcendental history that many crimes attributed to the 'seer' of Doctor Dee and the discoverer of the so-called 'Book of Saint Dunstan' were likely not committed by him. If it is permitted at this moment to set aside merely an antiquarian interest in the legacy of Edward Kelley and to give preferential attention to the perspective from which a hermetic student is inclined to view this legacy, it would be reasonable to assert that the importance of the history of this alchemist is unequivocally tied to his possession of transmuting powders and the manner in which, as they say, he acquired them. The other episodes of his life can be considered with relative brevity.