In particularly dangerous places, he is said to have exchanged clothes with his coachman, making the servant take his place in the carriage while he mounted the box.
About the middle of the seventeenth century alchemy took such firm root in the religious field that it became the basis of the sect known as the Rosicrucians.

The name was derived from the teaching of a German philosopher, Rosenkreutz, who, having been healed of a dangerous illness by an Arabian supposed to possess the philosopher's stone, returned home and gathered about him a chosen band of friends, to whom he imparted the secret.

This sect came rapidly into prominence, and for a short time at least created a sensation in Europe, and at the time were credited with having "refined and spiritualized" alchemy.

But by the end of the seventeenth century their number had dwindled to a mere handful, and henceforth they exerted little influence.
Another and earlier religious sect was the Aureacrucians, founded by Jacob Bohme, a shoemaker, born in Prussia in 1575.

According to his teachings the philosopher's stone could be discovered by a diligent search of the Old and the New Testaments, and more particularly the Apocalypse, which contained all the secrets of alchemy.