The Stone of the Philosophers

The anonymous treatise The Stone of the Philosophers, most likely dating from the 17th century, was included by Arthur Edward Waite - a British poet, writer, Freemason, esotericist and one of the greatest scholars of the Western Mystery Tradition - in his Collectanea Chemica, a collection of some curious Alchemical treatises which was published in London in 1893. According to the preface, Waite found these treatises in a manuscript belonging to a collector of occult books, Frederick Hockley: «The Hermetic tracts comprised in this volume are printed from a quarto manuscript (itself a transcript from an older but now untraceable work) belonging to the celebrated collection of the late Mr. Frederick Hockley, who was well known among modern students of the secret sciences, not only for the resources of his Hermetic library, but for his practical acquaintance with many branches of esoteric lore, and for his real or reputed connection with the numerous but unavowed associations which now, as at anterior periods, are supposed to dispense initiation into occult knowledge».