Roger Bacon

 

But, however, of saltpeter take six parts,

Live of young willow, and five of sulfur,

And so you will make thunder and lightning,

And so you will turn the trick  - (Old Latin)                                  

Roger Bacon

Opus Majus - Sent to the Pope in 1267

Recipe for Gunpowder 

Roger Bacon entered Oxford at the age of 13. They now refer to him there as Doctor Marabillis.After becoming a Franciscan Friar. He became an expert in ancient languages and studied many antediluvian manuscripts which is where he found the descriptions of ancient technology. It was at this time he met Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque. It was then that Roger started sharing some of his secret  Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque. When the Cardinal became Pope Clement, the pope insisted that Roger Write about what he had Roger talking about. Roger produced the works, Opus Majus, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium. In these books he shares acient before the flood technologies, including Optics and gunpowder. 

His discourse describes how to make eye glasses, telescopes and microscopes. Mind you this was 400 years before history tell you optics was discovered. But he never claimed credit for discovering this information. It was translated out of ancient documents he had translated. When Pope Clement died, his protector was gone and so the brotherhood imprisoned him for sharing church secrets.

Over the next 400 years his manuscripts on Alchemy were the most sort after collectors items. Newton is said to have more than one. Kepler who is credited with inventing the telescope in all probability has read Rogers manuscript written 400 years prior to that. 

Roger apparently understood the principal of the alignment of the atomic content to produce a gravity field. In his book Opus Tertium, in which he discusses "the alignment of the poles in  recreating the gravitational pull of the Earth.” If you would like to read the manuscript online it can be found here.

 Secretum Secretorum held a special place in Bacon's world, it takes the form of a pseudoepigraphical letter supposedly from Aristotle to Alexander the Great during his campaigns in Seleucid Persia. The text ranged from ethical questions that faced a ruler to astrology and magical/medical properties of plants, gems, numbers, and a strange account of a unified science, of which only a person with the proper moral and intellectual background could discover.He was also very interested in The Emerald Tablet which was supposed to be written by Hermes Trismegistus. A translation by Isaac Newton is found among his alchemical papers that are currently housed in King's College Library, Cambridge University.

Never drink downstream from the herd.

Will Rogers