A brief treatise on
the nature of the elements,
how they produce wind, rain, lightning and thunder,
and to what uses they are put.

By Tornelius Prebellianus, written in the Belgic tongue [i.e., Dutch],
at Leiden, 1608.

Preface.

Friendly reader, if this little book should fall into your hands, believe that I wrote it not from a desire for honor but out of concern for your benefit; for I know vanity and ambition to be harmful, by which we created innocent by God have been made sinners and children of damnation; by which we rashly pass judgment on things unknown, as though we were not all brothers. What then have we of which to boast? Woe to us if we consider ourselves to be something and allow our brother to be in need; let us reflect on the goodness and liberality of God, who surpasses our wishes by his bounty, are we not kings most noble treasure created by God?

The world serves us, and when it is left behind we obtain the joys of heaven, infinitely better. Why then, dear reader, do you not love your brother as God loves you? If I am unlearned, were you not once more unlearned, and am I therefore compelled to be in need? Why, being liberally endowed by God, do you not teach me? Should I therefore hate you? No; and if I hate you, do I not hate myself? For I am such as you are; nor do I have from this any occasion for boasting, but for humility; and if we wish to glory, let us glory in God who loves us all.

Those who seek glory lose God; the humble are exalted. I say this in my humility: my honor was my misery; my misery, the sting of death; death, victory; victory, [belongs to] the soul; my soul, my riches; God, from whom I am. What then shall we render to him? Shall we offer incense and myrrh? Shall we circumcise ourselves? Shall we shave the beard? Shall we preach from a lofty pulpit in white or black garments?

Shall we write huge volumes in praise of God? Are not all these things vanity? My brother, what can we give to God who has all things? With a grateful mind let us learn from the Son of God humility and the intent of the Law: “Love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself” this is the teaching of the Law, the Prophets, and the Apostles, which God and nature teach. Therefore, when I saw pride and the errors of men hindering them from understanding nature, I was moved to love nature as a teacher and to learn the knowledge of God from his wondrous creatures.


The elements, I inquired and they taught me the nature of earth: I saw its spirit, crystalline, like a mist; the soul, sanguine; the body fixed like crystal. I saw the spirit fighting with and overcoming the body and the soul yet these were again joined together. The body served the spirit and the soul, like a fortified citadel; the spirit, like the crystalline heaven, illumined both soul and body; the soul, with its own ruby hue, adorned body and soul.

I beheld death, resurrection, and immortality before my eyes. Grateful to God, I loved nature, and wrote you this book, hoping you would neither despise nor reject it; for I do not confirm my statements by the testimonies of the ancients since I have read no one on this but I give you what I learned from Nature; and I affirm that you will find here many things unknown, which, if you do not rightly understand them, you will not know to what use they are. I keep silence about such matters on account of the ignorant, lest I make myself too manifest; but when my soul has prevailed, my spirit will be made manifest.

This is not new, but existed a thousand years ago. Hence I write of the common elements as they are best known to you, so that you may know the rest: call “earth” that which is not as simple as fire, air, and water, but is an impure sediment in which the four elements are found perfect, by which we accomplish our work; the other three are servants to earth fire works into air, air into water, water into earth as I shall teach. But I shall begin with the Creator, in so far as, God being gracious, we have been able to know it [i.e., Nature].

CHAPTER ONE.

All things have their beginning from God and they end in God; for the end of all things answers to the beginning: things born of earth return to earth, etc. All things in the beginning were perfect with God, and in the end will be perfect with him, when the elements melt and in brightness are united with him. Nothing will perish or be annihilated except sin; for, the temple being completed, God in ineffable wisdom created all things.

And first of all he separated the most subtle creature, namely fire, which flew up to the highest, where it fills infinite space and embraces all the glory of the Lord (for everything light ascends). Then God again [separated] the most subtle and lightest air, next to fire thus the moist and gross remained behind; and God once more separated the most subtle and most moist, namely water, from the earth.

Water covers the earth, fire [covers] the air, air [covers] water. By his infinite power God lifted the earth out of the midst of the waters and placed it in the midst of his creation, that we might the better behold the light of his brightness and love him not as angels do, but on account of the perfection of his creatures.

Thus God divided his creatures into four parts: fire, air, water, and earth. Each has its own powers according to its subtlety, in which fire excels and can communicate to others a brightness like its own; it gives life to all things, and without it all things are dead, as we see daily and especially in winter.

Fire first illumines the air and produces a brightness like its own; it drives away darkness and brings to light the things lying hidden in the dark it makes [the air] manifest: it purges it of every vaporous moisture and earthly smoke, of all grossness, and renders it penetrable. In sum, fire makes all things like itself, so that there is no difference between the two, just as our hearth-fire, fed with wood, violently draws in the air, which it purges, clarifies, and assimilates to itself; indeed it is so bent on clarifying the air that, if it is hindered from drawing in air, it vanishes and returns whence it came something to be noted.

For first it teaches us that God’s creatures work as long as they find matter to work on, and the more they find, the more they clarify unless they are impeded. Striving in our vocation, let us grant to God our Creator, or to his gifts in us, room to work without hindrance, so that, going from light to light, we may be glorified by the splendor of his brightness.

CHAPTER 2.

As fire works upon air, so also upon water and earth, as we see in wood, which like the air is clarified: coals, black outside the fire, shine in the fire, by which they are clarified and thus pass into their first Being; the ashes too can be clarified, glass being made from them, and at length they can become invisible.

Someone may ask how water and fire are made from the same thing, since every material thing communicates with matter which here would not be the case and therefore water cannot be clarified by fire. I reply: two contraries cannot be joined without a middle. For as soon as God separated what is most subtle, most bright, most dry, he immediately there was produced its contrary the most gross, the most obscure, the coldest and most moist: namely, the grossness of earth and the moisture of water. The moisture of water was tempered by the dryness of air and earth; the grossness and dryness of the earth by the subtlety of the air and the moisture of water.

Thus it is clear that no conjunction is made without a middle; therefore water cannot be united to fire without the subtlety of the middle air and the dryness of earth this mixture being like aqua vitae or oil. O depth of wisdom! how inscrutable and praiseworthy are your works. Who would not believe you? who observes the light of nature? who looks upon creation without astonishment?

How can you behold God’s marvels without wonder? Why, though seeing, are you blind and do not attend to the works of God? Do you not praise God when you behold the First Being and the creature of creatures in which fire, air, water, and earth appear in the very form in which they were created by God? Mark the separation of the elements: the spirit of fire, flying aloft, draws with it the air, the water, and the earth, which, condensed by the cold of the air, return to their likes whence they came.

The moisture of oil (which is water), changed into a mist, falls drop by drop; water, raised like vapor, falls back as water as it is; the air is conceived from itself. Who can give the cause of this and praise God? Therefore fire is the life of all things: it illumines and changes everything water, earth, and air into what they were in the beginning with God, yet not immediately; hence the thickness of water must be rarefied by the subtlety of air, and moisture tempered by the dryness of earth then the matter is ready to be clarified and quickened of fire, about which many things could be said, which I omit so that I may come more quickly to my purpose.

Chapter 3.

Let us consider the power of air with respect to the other elements; for just as the elements are dead without fire, so fire is dead without the elements hence the wisdom of God, who creates nothing in vain, is evident. For as fire is life and lives in the air, so air [lives] in fire, water in earth, earth in water, water in air, etc. Fire purges air, air purges water, water purges earth, and each, through the brightness of fire, renders the rest like itself.

In summer the sun’s heat invisibly lifts water up; the air is clarified so that there is no difference between the two. And this is plain, because water exposed to the sun is lifted up and remains subtle until it is condensed by the cold. For just as fire rarefies all things, so cold the contrary of fire condenses them and forces the water, depriving it of its fiery heat and the subtlety of air; and then the water falls drop by drop. Those drops receive nourishment, that is, the nature of the element, from the earth and penetrate, carrying the seed down to the roots; and by the sun’s heat they are drawn into the higher parts of the plant, where they leave behind the spirit or elements of earth.

And that earth, by the heat of the sun, becomes the plant’s nature and life, is changed according to the plant’s form and power; and thus by continual attraction of water the plants are nourished whereby we behold the wise order of the Creator. But with excessive cold water is frozen into the form of earth since the cold, being an effect of earth, has thickened the water and made it like to its own hardness and density.

In the same way the air condenses fire when the cold of the air is greater than the heat of the fire whereupon this [fire] is changed into air, that [air] into water, and this [water] into earth, which is a marvel and confirms our doctrine about the primal division. For just as God separated the elements from his first Creature, so the elements, in turn, are brought back by our fire (as it were, the shadow of the First Being) into their first Creature something easily seen in a burning lamp and in all combustibles.

When the lamp is lit, the oil is illuminated by the elements so that there is no difference between it and the flame: the oil is the flame and conversely, because the oil, passing through the flame, is immediately, by the cold contrary to fire, led back into its own element, as I said. Hence anyone who carefully observes the flame notes not only the reduction and clarification of the elements into their first being, but also a separation from the first into the elements something to be noted and to be further set forth by us in due time.

Chapter 4.

With the foregoing considered and understood, we shall grasp perfectly the cause of winds, thunder, and lightning. For when the rays of the life-giving Sun, the air offering no hindrance, penetrate cold water, they clarify and warm it; and the air is condensed, loosened, and altered into the nature of fire, while the water is changed into the nature of air.

Hence follows a continuous motion spreading itself over the whole earth so as to moisten it; but the fine water, by an innate tendency to reflection, or compressed by warm air, is condensed, diminished, and changed back into the nature of water, and falls drop by drop; whence there comes a stillness of winds unless the ongoing uplift still prevails because the air is cold and coagulated, condensed. For just as heat rarefies air and water, so cold condenses them, and thus [heat] draws together all the winds that were scattered by warmth, just as we see when we suspend a retort over a vessel full of water, a gentle fire being lit beneath the belly of the retort (see the figure, p. 69).

For as soon as the air in the empty retort is heated, winds burst out of it and bubbles float up in the water and this continues as long as the air grows hotter and hotter. But when the fire is removed, the air in the retort is condensed by the cold and is turned into water, which previously had been rarefied and loosened by the heat. Indeed, if you could without danger of breaking the retort make it exceedingly hot, then with the fire removed it would be filled entirely with water something a stone retort provides for; yet in a glass one that change is better seen. And the denser and thicker water is than air, the more it is rarefied by heat just as we see in an apple, from which “winds” (gases) burst while it is being cooked, though no great diminution of moisture is perceived.

So too, if we lute well an iron kettle, leaving a small hole in the lid, and when it has boiled while empty drop a single drop into the hole, the water immediately rarefies and bursts out through it like a violent wind.

Chapter 5.

But toward evening, or when the sun sets, the lifting up of the water diminishes; for the most part we see calm, although water is always exhaled unless it is frozen by immense cold. Thus we see, if we fill a broad dish with water and set it in a cold room, that after a few days we find the water diminished, because the air of the room is warmer than the water. But if in the evening we do not have calm, it shows that we are far from the place where air and water are dissolved; the wind follows that dissolution.

As with an echo we see something at a distance and long afterward receive its sound. Therefore, although the violent motion ceases at sunset, nevertheless we do not perceive this for a long time after because of the subsequent movement of the air; hence we find one wind milder than another according to the nature of places.

But if we are near that place, in the evening we have calm; and in certain months we see more rains namely in March, April, May, September, October, and November the reason being the same. For these months are midway between heat and cold, so that the drifting clouds, as the heat fails, cannot be dissolved and rarefied a second time, while the air is suited to convert them into rain.

Thus in the North, where the cold is extreme, it rarely rains: for the clouds, before they reach the coldest air, condense and fall as snow unless the attraction be great and long-lasting and the southern winds overcome the cold; otherwise the clouds are held by the cold, are quickly driven through those regions by the winds, and are changed into snow. With these points considered, you will understand my examples about winds better than I can write them; therefore I have set down only the foundations and what is necessary for further understanding.

Chapter 6.

Someone may ask why in summer we often feel wind from the clouds and not from the place where the dissolution and attraction of the water are something which seems to conflict with the foregoing. I answer that the very examples adduced above confirm it. For after the sun has raised the subtle part of the water up into the cold air, the water is condensed by the cold and driven downward like a thick cloud, down to the point of reflection toward the earth where the air is notably warmer; there the cloud again is rarefied, spreads out, and sets the air in motion.

Likewise the dense, cold air that lies above the earth’s “reflection” is broken by the descent of a thick cloud which elsewhere is dissolved by heat whereby the wind increases and expands on every side. Hence clouds are often driven in a contrary course; for the dense cold air flies above the warm air until, in cold regions, it is received under the shadow of a cold cloud, and, being rarefied by warmth, is lifted above the earth’s reflection. Thus, by divine ordering, the winds come and go and cool the earth; and so we perceive a wind from the place of the black and thick clouds. When in summer we see a cloud rise in the quarter of the east wind, we feel the east wind (Eurus); if in that of Aquilo, then Aquilo; and so with other quarters from which the cloud rises.

Hence the reason why sometimes the winds are so strong; why in Holland and the neighboring regions an east or east-southeast wind brings the heaviest rains; why a west-north wind is so changeable now calm with rain, now a strong wind; likewise why in hot maritime regions the wind is from the sea in the morning and throughout the day, but in the evening or after midnight it blows from the land. These causes can be established by natural reasons; but whoever understands what has been set out above understands it well enough better than I can write so, leaving wind aside, let us speak of thunder.

Chapter 7.

When it thunders and lightnings, the air is hot, subtle, and dry, and the water lifted by the sun is changed into an airy form and moves above the earth’s reflection; by cold it is condensed and [changed] into water, it is let down like a cloud and is driven by the warm air into subtle, dry, and warm air, which very quickly penetrates and rarefies the thick and dense clouds, and then again it is changed into the nature of air so that its form in a moment becomes a hundred times more subtle and it brings forth a most violent motion, which by roaring and thundering sets the air ablaze, until all things are equal in thickness; then indeed it grows quiet.

Thus when saltpeter is broken up by fire and changed into the nature of air; and when we spread a wet cloth upon red-hot iron or upon molten lead, by solution and rarefaction through heat it crackles like thunder; and in pyrite the sudden bursting of the stone is the cause of the burning brightness. But when the clouds that remain, loosened by the thunder, have been thickened, cooled, and gathered again, they come into warm air which, rising on high, penetrates them, rarefies them, and changes them into the nature of air; and therefore we hear different sounds, or continuous claps, in all places that have been rarefied by the sun’s heat and then tempered and cooled.

Chapter 8.

We discover how God, through nature, teaches us to love and marvel at his wisdom, goodness, and omnipotence. Behold the goodness and wondrous order in all creatures: note how marvelously (as appears from the causes stated) thick water is invisibly drawn by the sun and is rarefied into the form of air, and produces the power of the wind’s motions, and how it moves thus and most subtly over regions where, for lack of water, there is no evaporation; and meanwhile, by the heat of the sun, it is lifted into the regions of the air, cold above the earth’s “reflection”; and there it is again condensed and coagulated like a mist.

Hence the evening calm arises, and the air appears more cloudy; whereupon the clouds grow thick, are resolved into drops of water, and irrigate the thirsty ground drops which, being dissolved through it and enriched, penetrate the plants; and by the sun’s heat both the earth and the moisture are together drawn outward into the plant’s exterior part. And because water is more volatile than the earth’s nourishment, the water is dried off in the air and the nourishment remains, which through the plant’s life is changed into its nature.

Thus earthly things are nourished and preserve their substance; therefore by putrefaction they return again into earth a thing all see, but scarcely one in a thousand understands. If many alchemists grasped this, they would not labor so miserably in recognizing their matter. But when these clouds, lifted up, are carried into warm places, they produce thunder and lightning (by sudden rarefaction) and winds; whereas if the air is naturally warm and a little warmer than the cloud, it produces only winds and showers.

Chapter 9.

In my opinion enough has been said about the office of fire, air, water, and earth whence one can understand nature’s power: what each element is and what its function is: fire, namely, is subtle air; air, subtle water; water, subtle earth; and earth, gross fire as is clear enough from what has been said. For earth, by the force of fire or by nature’s purification when loosened, is changed into water salty and the potency of earth as we find in calcination. Salt, dissolved by fire, is changed into water, which is distillation of aqua fortis shows us this.

Next, water, loosened by the force of fire, is changed into air; air is changed into fire, as I said. Thus thick and dark earth is changed into most subtle, most pellucid, brightest, and most penetrating fire, which penetrates and clarifies all things and by that same power of penetrating and clarifying makes them clear.

Chapter 10.

We must therefore understand that things made from the elements are clarified in this same way whether minerals, animals, or plants. For if we wish to clarify any of them, it cannot be done otherwise than by the methods mentioned above: earth must be clarified by fire and first changed into water, which is like salt; this is then clarified and distilled into a water clear like a body of air, pellucid like air, and shining like fire.

This suffices us, nor is any further clarification required, because we cannot preserve invisible spirits unless they are bodies; otherwise we should lose them. But when the substance has been clarified into the form of water, by distillation it is changed into the form of air, and by thickening through cold back again into water, so that it is a visible body.

But if we clarify it into the form of fire and it is condensed by cold into the form of air, how should we use that? For what is ultimate among visibles is of no profit to us; therefore we clarify it into air, which by cold is condensed into water, and no higher. For all things that are reduced to their highest perfection do not have generation or multiplication. But when by distillation we have clarified [a thing] into a clear, pellucid water or into whatever can be called by the same name, we see in our work: the “seed” which putrefies in it is clarified into the same brightness.

Thus by the force of fire we make earth from water, proceeding with nature, and we make the earth ashen, white, and pellucid like air yet still in a visible form then from an airy kind into a fiery one, bright, pure, and spotless, even a redness that in perfection surpasses all creatures. But if we wish to clarify that clear, spotless fire further, we must reduce it back into its prior essence through water (as I said); generation follows, and thus through a seed made perfect and purified (with cold and with heat the fire being without, the moisture within) generation takes place in moist water whose dryness is within, etc.; and so nature is again exalted and bettered, as I said, so that by this reiteration our matter becomes so sharp, penetrating, and subtle that it exceeds belief so that in a short time it penetrates all vessels and destroys them.

Chapter 11.

Someone will now ask how things can thus be improved: do we not see that all seeds produce things homogeneous with themselves, sometimes better, sometimes worse? How then can we, by fire, clarify things more than God by his sun? I answer: our clarifying is done in another way; for we take bodies which God, through nature, has clarified, and we clarify them anew by fire and water to the clearness of crystal, and we cleanse them from all the impurities which nature has left in them; we reduce them into the form of water, in which the nature of earth lies hidden within into which (as I said) we sow our bodies, we cleanse with pure water, and we make one thing’s brightness like another’s something that is not so in nature and therefore all things remain in the species in which they were created by God.

For the seed cast into the earth is not clarified by the earth; rather the earth is clarified by the fire and the life of the seed, because the earth is more impure than the seed; therefore the seed always remains in one essence and dyes the impure earth into its own form.

These things I have written about nature, my brother what I have learned by practice and because nothing drew me to God more than the knowledge of nature, I have been compelled to write about the elements, which are the dwelling-place of nature, without which we do not know nature. In them we live, by them we are sustained; if they are unknown, neither do we understand ourselves nor nature.

By learning, therefore, one learns the elements; one learns to recognize God, himself, and nature without which we cannot rightly love the omnipotence of God. Who bears witness about God beyond nature, if not we humans? For we were created in the image of God, that by these heavenly gifts we might learn to recognize the things which, in accordance with our creation, we have received from our Creator; that we might have such knowledge of them as is necessary to us in this life for the knowledge of God and of ourselves and for the investigation of nature.

Let us therefore avoid quarrels, and what we do not grasp, let us neither praise nor carp at; thus our soul will find rest and will taste the wisdom of God. For how could we recognize what we neither see, smell, nor touch? Or how love what we do not recognize? Is it not therefore necessary to inquire into the nature of the elements so that we may learn nature?

And let us love God to whom be praise, honor, and glory. Be content with these things; search out nature; you will bear witness to these matters, and you will learn to understand those that follow namely, the greatest wonder that we see among the elements in nature to the praise and glory of our Savior.

Amen.

THE END.