THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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corrupt world’. And the science of its wise men, divided into three stages, is not static and self­enclosed, as in Campanella, but the final lesson in the top class is called:
‘Prophecy of the final status’, ‘prophetic theology’. With this the arc towards the ‘general reformation’ is described once again, towards Rosicrucianism, which
combined superstition with light, ‘pansophy’ with the Day of Judgement in such a strange way. And in the end the most important disciple of Andreae: Comenius, the
founder of visual instruction, but also of an ‘Ecclesia philadelphica’, also summarized the intention of Rosicrucian alchemy. Exactly like Andreae, Comenius also speaks
ironically and not just enthusiastically about it, but even the irony shares the superstition­faith which it mocks. In ‘The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the
Heart’, 1631, the following is related of the Rosicrucians ‘to the sound of trumpets’: ‘Making gold is the least among a hundred other things they can do; for since the
whole of nature is an open book to them, they are capable of giving a particular form to every single thing at will and of knowing everything that happens within the
whole circumference of the old world and in the new world, especially as they can speak to one another at a distance of a thousand miles. Then they possess the
philosopher's stone, with the aid of which they cure all diseases and confer long life … and after they have kept themselves hidden for so many centuries and have
worked quietly at the perfection of philosophy, they are willing, especially now everything is in order and in their opinion a powerful upheaval is in store for the world,
not to remain hidden away any longer but to come out into the open, and are ready to communicate their most precious secrets to anyone who is worthy of them’. The
‘precious secrets’ are here always the same as the secret ways to turn the topsy­turvy world the right way up, so that the gold emerges from it. That very gold which
for the very symbolic economic­technological enthusiasts of that time, apart from what it actually is, was also the solar symbol for what had blossomed out, was
rounded, and luminous.
Alchemy again: mutatio specierum (transmutation of inorganic species) and its incubator
The pupil first had to purify himself before he began this sort of thing outside. However sober and businesslike the impulse to make gold, the fields of gold had to be
tilled with reverence. Otherwise, it was said (and