A Bulwark of Alchemy - Against certain misochymists shadow-philosophers, phantoms of human nature who dare to profess themselves philosophers while they foolishly mock Chymistry, and yet do not even possess the wits of brute beasts.
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Against certain misochymists shadow-philosophers, phantoms of human nature who dare to profess themselves philosophers while they foolishly mock Chymistry, and yet do not even possess the wits of brute beasts.
Wherein it is most clearly discussed whether the Philosophers’ Stone exists, what it is, and by what method and road the Ancients obtained the Stone; and it is proved, by authority, by reason, and by experience, against those misochymists, so that at length they may come to their senses and know the truth.
“The Spirit breathes where it wills; and where it breathes, it quickens and enlightens all things.” (John 3; 2 Corinthians)
By Peter John Fabre, Doctor of Medicine of Montpellier, and of Castelnaudary, citizen of the Tectosages [i.e., Toulouse].
Toulouse, at Pierre Bosc, 1645.
Translated from the book:
Propugnaculum alchymiae, adversus quosdam misochymicos...: ubi an sit lapis philosophorum, qui sit, et qua methodo et via ipsum lapidem habuerunt antiqui clarissime tractatur...
Contents
1. Whether Alchemy is a True Science
2. What Alchymia claims in the knowledge of all things.
3. How far Alchymy excels all other natural sciences.
4. That the Pure of Nature is the Subject of Alchymy Alone.
5. What the Pure of Nature is, and of what sort, which holds the whole of Nature in check
6. That the Philosophers’ Stone is found in the order of nature and truly exists.
7. That the “pure of nature” in the metallic kind is the Philosophers’ Stone of the ancients.
8. What the “pure of metallic nature” is and of what sort, and by what common name it is marked, and with what garment it is clothed.
9. That by the multitude and variety of names the chymic secret is obscured for fools, but shown to the wise.
10. The Chymic Arcanum, or the Philosophers’ Stone: of what it consists.
11. Which and of what sort is the Philosophers’ Mercury, from which their Stone is composed.
12. Whether the Philosophers’ Mercury and the vulgar [mercury] differ from one another.
13. By what method and way the common Mercury must be prepared so that it may be reckoned the Philosophers.
14. Whether there exists in nature another Mercury besides the vulgar mercury, which is the principle of the Chemical Stone.
15. Whether the prepared vulgar mercury alone suffices to complete the chemical work.
16. What that most pure [part] of mercury is which perfects the metals and the chemical work.
17. What the natural principles are, and by what way they are produced from the elements.
18. On Pure Mercury, in Which Metals Are Found, and White and Red Sulphur, Male and Female Alchemists.
19. Why gold and silver are necessary for the chemical work together with quicksilver itself.
20. Why, for the perfection of the chemical work, nine months or a whole year are necessary.
21. Whether the Philosopher’s Stone can be perfected at all seasons of the year.
22. Whether the philosophers’ gold, which the Stone needs for its perfection and for shortening the work, is the same as common gold.
23. Whether common gold, dead and sterile, can by our art be brought to life and made to serve the chymic art.
24. The spirit of metallic nature where it abounds in its natural subject, and by what art it must be drawn out.
25. By what operations of the art the Philosophers’ Stone is composed.
26. On the Chymical Solution, which is the beginning of the Chymical Work
27. How many things are necessary for completing the chymical solution.
28. On Chemical Coagulation, which completes the whole work.
29. By what ways and reasons the ancient wise men devised their Stone, or whether they had it by divine revelation alone
30. On white Sulphur what it is, where it is, and how it benefits chemists.
31. On red sulphur what it is, where it is, and what it is good for.
32. Whether white sulphur and red sulphur suffice for the perfection of the Philosophers’ Stone.
33. Why the Philosophers’ Stone is not believed by all, nor possessed by all.
34. What those ought to do who aspire to the Philosophers’ Stone.
35. That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made from no animal substance.
36. That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made from none of the vegetables.
37. That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made only from the metallic kind.
38. Conclusion of the whole work against the Misochymists.
39. A Chymical Riddle, whose veil and rind contain the whole chymical work
To the magnanimous, most exalted, and most invincible First Prince,
my lord Jean-Baptiste Gaston de Bourbon, Duke of Orléans,
and Viceroy of Gothic Gaul [i.e., Languedoc].
By your great valor, most unconquered Prince, now that your foes and enemies are completely laid low and defeated, your inborn virtue and strength rise up and indeed shine forth to all those qualities which had been overshadowed by the mud of envy, nay, in a manner even besmirched in the eyes of the credulous. Let these shadows and clouds set against the light of your virtue continue to be scattered; let not the envy of the Zoiluses cause delay who now wish not to seem such as they are for all have been routed; and [may it redound] to the glory and triumph of your light, wish to imitate the paranymphs, since your inborn virtue already holds Fortune conquered and captive, and draws her after it.
And that this may come to pass by a kinder law of the fates, and that your virtue may itself lead the fates nay, drag even the unwilling , I, eager to serve so great a Prince, am compelled to lay open and most freely to offer indeed to pour out before the Highness of my Prince the whole treasure of the ancients, of the Arabs and of the Egyptians, and those hoards which, hidden under the bark of the art of Chymia, are kept shut; in this work the bark being stripped away. For a long and happy life, and riches of treasures without measure, are enclosed in this work things which by just right belong, in dutiful service, to so great a Prince.
These indeed are the greatest gifts, nor can greater be given; yet to the greatest of princes, the greatest are due. They will, however, be greater still though already the greatest if they are received with a grateful mind such as that in which they are offered. For in this alone lies my gift: that what is given freely, from a pure and kindly heart, may be accepted by the most unconquered Prince. May the most exalted Prince flourish forever, and be at one with his own heart.
Petrus Ioannes Faber,
Doctor of Medicine of Montpellier.
A Bulwark of Alchemy
Preface to the Kindly Reader
Alchemists since many petty philosophasters are wont to accuse them of ignorance, nay of sheer stupidity, and since the very name of Alchemy has an ill sound with them I could not keep silence; indeed (to tell the truth) I cannot refrain from resisting so great a slander, but that my whole spirit breaks forth against them and makes an assault, that with my rough style and with a pricking pen I may sting them, nay lance them, forasmuch as they deem themselves alone to be arch-wise men, arch-physicians, and truly learned; whereas in very truth they have not yet so much as saluted the threshold of Wisdom, of Medicine, and of Science.
Such pride, borne aloft by ignorance itself, I could not endure; rather I resolved to scatter these truly Cimmerian darknesses from the minds of these philosophasters with the noonday sun, even to the uttermost north that is, the miso-chymists and to overwhelm them with such shame that they should not even dare to lift their heads among smatterers and mere A-B-C-darians, exalt themselves, when they dare to accuse Alchemy the true pearl and bond of Philosophy of ignorance, nay of sheer stupidity; and when they foolishly and rashly mock, and in no wise believe, the Philosophers’ Stone, or Arabian Elixir, which transmutes imperfect metals into true gold.
It is my wish to make the truth of Alchemy itself, with its excellence and nobility, so clear and manifest that no mortal may fail to be taken nay, carried away with love for it; and that he may ward off the teeth and the blows of the misochymists, who have dared to gnash with their livid and impure teeth at so great a truth, excellence, and nobility.
It had been my desire to make this book a matter of public right in the French tongue, so that all the misochymists dwelling among the French might see how great is the impudence, sloth, and ignorance among those who disparage Chymia. Yet a desire to oblige the chemists and the pupils of this famous science prevailed with me those who dwell in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, England, and the other regions of Europe, who do not understand the French language for they would all have been deprived of the fruit and utility of this work, had it been written in French.
If there are any, however, among the French who are not versed in this Latin tongue, let them have it translated; for the work is short, and not much time need be spent on its interpretation. I could not in so many to exclude the rest of the Europeans from this manifest benefit and offer it to the French alone.
Do not, I pray you (benevolent Readers), think me tainted with the vice of pride and arrogance because I charge others with ignorance, pride, and impudence. This I have done only against the miso-chymists those who, by mocking, despise the chymic art, the firmest and truest pillar of Philosophy; nay, who try to exclude it from the number of the Sciences. These alone I assail, upon these I make my inroad: these proud men, these arrogant, these shameless ones I judge to be fools and dolts who, with no knowledge at all of the chymic art, hold it in contempt; who, being blind, presume to judge of colours.
If aught further in the way of rebuke remained to me, to lacerate and to pluck them up by the roots, I would gladly use it; for one must not spare slanderers, since they will not spare, and it is lawful to repel force by force. And with fools and dullards their folly and stupidity must be shown, that at length they may become wise and prudent. Thus calumnies and injuries are not vices and detractions, but corrections, which savour of a pious and well-wishing mind, so that those who have swerved from the true way of truth and wholly wandered may be brought back to the very path thereof.
Now let us address the work, and by sound reasons, by authorities and by experiences, let us convict those miso-chymists who stray from the way of truth, that at last they may come to their senses and sing their palinode.
Whether Alchemy is a True Science.
Chapter 1
If true philosophy and the knowledge of natural things be true science, we cannot exclude Alchemy from the number of the sciences; for Alchemy is true philosophy and a knowledge of created things. Alchemy and Philosophy are names only distinct; in reality and in truth they by no means differ, unless we choose to limit Alchemy to metals alone which, however, cannot be done. For all other created things, just as metals, are subject to Alchemy, since they can be reduced to their principles and referred to their first principles, so that they may be brought to the quintessence, which is proper to Alchemy alone.
Therefore Alchemy will be true Philosophy, since it is the knowledge of all things through their causes and through the principles of all things things which are proposed to Alchemy alone to be known. Now these causes and principles of things are truly known by Alchemy with its own fire and operations, wherein all things are reduced to the first matter, or to their proper principles from which they had their origin; for those things which are last in dissolution are first in composition, as is known by the authority of Aristotle and of all natural philosophers, and by experience itself. For since we observe that natural compounds are from the elements, when they are resolved into the elements, we may affirm that those elements these last which in are found in dissolution must have been first in their composition.
And when these things are done when the principles of things and the elements are set before the very eyes and to the touch of the hands (this is by Alchemy itself), what science, with better right and title, can claim the name of knowledge than Alchemy herself, who presents to the very senses, to be felt and handled and so most perfectly known, the elements, principles, and causes of all things?
Now the elements and principles of things are delivered to the very senses to be handled by Alchemy herself, when all things are reduced into Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury; which indeed are the principles of all things, since these are found the last in the resolution of things, and therefore must be judged to have been the first in the composition of the same things. Whence he who knows the Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury of any thing whatsoever knows thoroughly the essence of that thing, and its power and property; for he knows that which gives being to the thing, and the fountain of its properties and virtues.
Now Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury are that which gives to all things their true corporeal and formal being: for Salt is the body of all things, Sulphur is the innate heat, and Mercury is the innate moisture of all things; and thus these three constitute in all things the material and the formal. And he who knows the matter and the form of all things, truly and fundamentally knows all things.
Whence Alchemy we cannot deny that it is a true science, since it both knows the principles of all things and sets before its disciples the things that are to be known.
Whoever does not give credence to these arguments is not worthy to be numbered among men, but should be enrolled in the number and species of asses.
Moreover, the most learned Hermes by reason of his doctrine and excellence called Trismegistus attests that it is true, most true. And by experience, and with their very eyes, countless men have seen the truth of Alchymia, as both ancient and recent histories testify. Suidas especially reports that Diocletian, about the year of Christ 294, consigned to the fire all the practitioners of Alchymia among the Egyptians, together with all the volumes of this famous science, because they taught how to make most true, lawful, and most excellent gold and silver, and thereby stoutly resisted the Roman Empire. From these facts no one in his senses can deny that Alchymia is a true science, nor may one foolishly and stubbornly mock and despise plain and pure reasons, authorities, and experiences.
What Alchymia claims in the knowledge of all things.
Chapter 2
By the excellence of its own worth and by the nobility of its end and aim, Alchymia surpasses all the other natural sciences: for it does not intend to know things merely and only to the rind what things are materially and formally; whence the virtues and properties of things spring; and by what power and art they may be directed.
For example: when it seeks the principles and elements of the metals, and sees these to be Mercury, Sulphur, and a certain metallic Salt that is, the forms and species it does not there end and finish its inquiry, but goes further, asking whence that Mercury, that Sulphur, and that Salt have had their origin; and it does not set its search only in the elements of Mercury, Sulphur, and metallic Salt, but by seeking the causes and first principles of those very elements, it comes at length to the Creator of all these principles; where, as to an inexhaustible fountain, and a bound everywhere infinite, and to a beginning without a beginning, it comes to rest.
Meanwhile, while it contemplates those natural causes and the principles of the metals, it sees and has before its eyes what that is in the nature of things which produces the metals and makes them sprout; what constitutes their distinction and variety; what brings about the perfection of gold and of silver; what the imperfection of lead and of the rest; what effects the volatility of Mercury.
With all these things duly known, it is then most easy to argue whether Alchymy can perfect imperfect metals and in a very brief time bring them to the perfection of gold and the whiteness of silver the natural matter being at hand gold and silver, being perfected in the mines and bowels of the earth, and, when guided by the chymic art, brought to a far more perfect grade so that, if that matter which perfects gold and silver in the very mines of the earth perfects only a certain quantity of the matter of gold and silver, the same matter, conducted by the chymic art to a much higher degree of perfection, will perfect a much greater, indeed almost infinite, quantity, according to the grade of its perfection. For what it accomplishes in one degree, in a greater and more excellent degree must be judged to accomplish greater things.
Likewise, by investigating the nature of plants and animals, it sees most perfectly what it is in plants and living beings that makes their life, cherishes and preserves it, and what destroys and diminishes all their vital acts; whence it beholds the causes of life and of death made manifest. And who can with better right and by an easier road search out and discover the remedies of life and death than one who truly knows these things and sees them in Nature herself?
To this alone does Alchemy aim in the knowing of nature’s things; and this alone it deems useful and worthy of inquiry, since it is of such great utility that no one can be without it. All creatures use it alone, though in an invisible manner yet by a palpable way for all foods contain the invisible spirit of light, the nourishment of life, the cause of health, and the perfection of vital acts; which [spirit] perfects the innate heat and the primeval moisture and establishes the radical dry in all things, and shows our three chymic principles to all who have lynx-like eyes. Moreover, all foods still contain an invisible spirit of darkness, which has its rise on the side of matter, which, by the faults and defects of the principles, sets up the tinder of death and begets the origin of all diseases.
But if a man know how to join the spirit of light with the pure and subtle nature and substance of the elements, so that they become one and the same homogeneous, pure, fixed, abiding, and enduring in every fire he will possess an infinite treasure of life, and he will so hold fast the spirit of darkness, imprisoned in the darkness of the gross matter, that there will be no place left for diseases.
This alone is the scope and end of Alchymy; and to this end the scopes and ends of the other sciences easily yield. And inasmuch as this end and aim surpass all others, so far does Alchymy surpass all other sciences, and they concede to it alone the stronger palm as will be made altogether clear in the next chapter.
How far Alchymy excels all other natural sciences.
Chapter 3
As far as universal Nature excels particular natures, so far does Alchymy excel all the sciences of particular things as genus excels species, and as species excels the individual, so far also does Alchymy surpass and outmatch all the other sciences. All natural things that depend upon the elements and the heavens are subject to Alchymy.
There is no creature among animals, none among plants, none among minerals and metals, that does not come under the laws of Alchymy; nor is there any of the elements, nothing of light and of heaven, nothing of darkness, nothing of life and of death, that is not set ablaze by the fires of Alchymy, to the end that the pure may be separated from the impure, and the pure preserved as the joy of Nature, and that wherein alone she finds rest, which she most earnestly seeks and desires while the impure is cast away as something hostile to her, an enemy sworn against Nature.
Thus Alchymy seeks the pure of heaven and of light, and of all the elements of all animals, plants, and minerals; and when it has found it, it rejoices for by this alone, in the things of nature, it performs marvels and wonders which, to the ignorant and the foolish who know not this purity of Nature, appear sheer miracles or magic phantoms, when they are set before their very eyes.
This purity of Nature, the centre of Nature, the true mirror of God, the true and only foundation of all natural operations this Alchymy alone, among the sciences, knows; and this alone it is wont to use. And since that purity of Nature is also Nature’s beauty mobile, useful, and convenient if there is anything of beauty in Nature, of beauty, nobility, and usefulness whatever of these is found arises from that Pure alone.
Hence, by reason of that Pure (which Alchymy alone is wont to employ), Alchymy alone, by just right and desert, far outstrips all the natural sciences; and inasmuch as that Pure surpasses and masters the rest of Nature, so far also does Alchymy by reason of that Pure, which is Alchymy’s sole and only subject, and, as a subject, most noble and excelling all natural things in nobility surpass all the other sciences in its own nobility and excellence. Now that the Pure of Nature is the single and only subject of Alchymy will be shown in the following chapter.
That the Pure of Nature is the Subject of Alchymy Alone.
Chapter 4
Since in the first chapter of this work we affirmed that Alchymy is true Philosophy and the knowledge of universal Nature, it cannot but follow that the Pure of Nature is the sole subject of Alchymy; for the knowledge of Nature itself depends upon Nature’s Pure alone. For the Pure of Nature comprehends and grasps the whole of Nature: in it alone the heavenly and the elemental nature are truly united, and the Pure of Nature is nothing else than that in which heaven and all the elements are truly and really are found united and joined into one; and this is called by certain professors of the occult philosophy the Seed.
In this alone as in Nature’s Pure the celestial and the elemental nature are truly contained; and thus the world is entire and perfect, yet a small indeed a very small world, since it is the least, but the most pure part of any natural composite; and upon the knowledge of this alone the knowledge of the whole of nature depends.
Now if the Pure of Nature embraces the whole of nature, and the whole of nature cannot be perceived unless that Pure of Nature be perceived, it follows of necessity that Alchemy has that Pure of Nature for its proper and adequate subject; since Alchemy is held by all to be the acquaintance and knowledge of the whole of nature, and is true universal Philosophy. Therefore, since universal Nature cannot be known without the Pure of Nature also being known because the Pure of Nature comprehends the whole of nature it follows that this Pure of Nature, embracing the whole of nature, is the one, true, and adequate subject of all Alchemy.
For the subject of any science whatsoever is that about which the science is terminated, what it chiefly seeks to know, and in the knowledge and inquiry of which it is wholly occupied, and by the knowledge of which alone it is bounded. But the Pure of Nature is the sole thing that Alchemy seeks to know, and in the knowledge and inquiry of which it is bounded. Therefore we cannot deny that the Pure of Nature is the single and true subject of Alchemy.
This very point Hermes Trismegistus, Geber, and Lullius, and all the other professors and true fathers of Alchemy firmly assert in their works, in these or similar words: “The pure of any mixture being the seed and the element of each nature is the subject of our art and science. Hence, since that Pure is found in all things, it follows that the matter and subject of our art is found in all things, and that nothing can live without it. Therefore, if it be unknown, our science is wholly unknown; but if it be known, whatever we desire from our art we obtain with ease.”
From this it was that very many of the ancient philosophers sought out that Pure of Nature and, by arduous toil, discovered it; and they perceived that in each genus of nature animal, that is, vegetable, and mineral it constitutes the highest degree of perfection.
And they called it not merely “the centre/pith of nature,” but their Stone, their Elixir, the sovereign medicine, of which, in the chapters that follow throughout this whole work, we shall treat at great length; to the end that that gross ignorance, and well-nigh stupidity, may be removed from the minds of certain people who think themselves learned and suppose they grasp philosophy, whereas in very truth as they themselves will at last be forced to confess they do not recognize even the bark and cloak of Philosophy; and how great their folly and silliness are will be made most clear in the following chapters of this work, we shall plainly demonstrate this, so that they no longer laugh at the Professors of Alchymy when they themselves are the ones fit to be laughed at and to be hissed off the stage of wisdom.
What the Pure of Nature is, and of what sort, which holds the whole of Nature in check.
Chapter 5
What and of what sort the Pure of Nature is, in general, the Ancient Sages who knew it obscured under as great a veil as they could, lest it become known to all; that so Nature might remain ever veiled and be covered with dark shadows, nor lie open to everyone. Hence it has come about that many philosophasters, learned only as far as gown and cloak, being ignorant of that Pure of Nature which is the foundation of all operations could not bring themselves to believe its wondrous and astounding effects; and so they mocked and pursued Alchymy with laughter and hissing, together with her Professors who proclaim those marvellous effects.
But that this may be so no more, and that at length the laughter of fools at the wise may cease, it is my desire to set forth this Pure of Nature; so that, once it is known and laid open, the foolish and silly who do not believe these miracles of Nature, though they are set before their very eyes daily may come to their senses. For they seem truly blind and worse than moles, since they do not see what is plain to the sight of all.
Therefore the Pure of Nature, in the inmost recesses of its abides at rest in the innermost of whatever mixture; and it is the spark of created light, and its spirit, imprisoned and shut up in the most pure matter of the elements, so that it may actuate and inform that elemental matter. For that spark of created light, and its spirit, is the truest form of elemental matter, and therefore a true substance, inasmuch as it is form which the ancient philosophers, in order to hide the knowledge of it, called by almost numberless names.
They named it the sulphur of nature, the igneous vigor, the spirit of the world, mind, soul, the earthly daemon or earthly god, power and δύναμις (force), innate heat, primeval moisture, the middle nature, the flower of the soul, innate and radical salt, the golden power of the soul, the vigor of mind in the elements. In the aether they called it Jupiter, in the air Juno, in water Neptune, and in earth Pluto; and by such various names they obscured and concealed this one sole thing, lest it should become known to all.
Yet it is nothing else than that most thin and most subtle part of created nature, which, from pure created light, subsists as it were form (that is, formal substance), and as the most pure substance of the elements, subsists as it were matter; so that by reason of that light it is, as it were, spirit, and by reason of the elemental matter it is, as it were, body. Whence the philosophers say it is a middle thing, which is as it were not yet body but already soul, or as it were not yet soul but already a body, joining the two extremes soul and body in all natural things; so that it is a spiritual body and a bodily spirit, pervading and quickening all things, so that in it alone true contraries are found, as anyone may gather from its definition.
So great is the power and vigor of this spirit that nothing is done in the nature of things save by its virtue and efficacy; and the greater its quality in natural things, the greater is the strength and force within them indeed its strength and power rise to the point of a miracle, since its substance is of so spiritual a potency that the least quantity of it can stir well-nigh the whole world.
Hence from this natural spirit the ancient philosophers wrought marvellous things in animals, in plants, and in metallic bodies; by its aid alone and by their industry they reduced all metals, both perfect and imperfect, to their first seed whence they had their origin; and this matter they brought by their art to such subtlety and power of operation that they effected the metallic transmutation of imperfect metals into the most perfect metals. And thus from this spirit they composed their Stone and the Arabian Elixir of which, when the time comes to treat, we shall truly confound our misochymists and make their ignorance manifest, inasmuch as they laugh at this truth and foolishly refuse to believe it.
That the Philosophers’ Stone is found in the order of nature and truly exists.
Chapter 6
Those who have lynx-like eyes, and are endowed with a sharp wit, from the foregoing chapters set out at sufficient length see the truth of this chapter clearly and most clearly; nevertheless, since our Misochymists (haters of chymistry) must be openly refuted, we must undertake its proof and make it manifest in plain words.
That Pure Nature of which in the preceding chapters we have made known and evident the definition since it is the true and sole cause of perfection in all things, whether living, vegetable, or, to speak plainly, metallic we cannot deny that in metallic things there is the Philosophers’ Stone; for the Philosophers’ Stone is nothing else than the pure of metallic nature, digested and well cooked to the highest degree, in which the perfection of metal is set in the supreme grade.
But that this pure of metallic nature exists in the world of things who is so destitute of sense as not to confess it, when he sees the metals, beholds gold and silver, and handles them with his hands? For nature did not perfect these metals without a perfecting and producing principle, which we also call the metallic seed and the pure of metallic nature; and this is most true, since the pure, that thing of metallic nature is the true metallic seed and the immediate principle from which metals come to be and are produced; for it alone is the foundation and fountain-head of metallic operations, whence it is that metals must be produced from that alone, since from that alone the power of production wells forth, as is sufficiently clear from the definition set down above.
If, therefore, that pure [thing] of metallic nature namely the metallic seed and principle exists in the realm of things, we must also admit that the Philosophers’ Stone exists, since the Philosophers’ Stone is nothing else than that pure [thing] of metallic nature, that is, the seed and metallic principle from which the metals have their origin and source.
That the Philosophers’ Stone is that pure metallic [thing], the seed and principle of metallic nature, no one will deny who knows that the Philosophers’ Stone is that which, when digested and well cooked to the highest degree by the chymical art, possesses the power of transmuting imperfect metals into true gold and silver, and thus running through and curing all metallic imperfections.
But this can be nothing other than the pure of metallic nature, or the metallic principle, according to the judgment of Aristotle himself, who in the fourth book of the Meteorologica asserts that metals cannot be transmuted unless first, he says, they are reduced to the first matter from which they were immediately made that is, unless they are dissolved into the metallic principle; therefore the metallic principle, or the pure of metallic nature, will be that in which alone gold and silver are dissolved, so that from it, according to Aristotle’s sentence, the metals may be transmuted one into another.
Therefore that also will be the Philosophers’ Stone, since the Philosophers’ Stone is nothing else than that which causes the metals to be transmuted among themselves.
It must therefore be admitted, even by the Misochymists, that the Philosophers’ Stone most truly exists in the realm of things; by its presence and nobility, and by the rays of its virtue, it confounds our foolish Misochymists so much so that it is found even in themselves, who are so blind that they neither see nor know that very thing which is in them, and remains in them, and lives in them; and yet they desire to be held as the highest philosophers, while they are plainly ignorant of themselves. But that they may be more and more confounded and may acknowledge the truth itself, we shall show the Philosophers’ Stone yet more clearly and distinctly.
That the “pure of nature” in the metallic kind is the Philosophers’ Stone of the ancients.
Chapter 7
The pure of nature is the foundation, base, and most steadfast pillar of all natural operations; upon it Nature herself founds and fixes whatever she is able to accomplish. In the metallic genus, as experience itself shows us, it perfects certain metals and leads them to gold and silver; yet to go beyond this it does not, it can.
Therefore in the metallic kind there is granted something by whose aid and benefit Nature herself perfects the metals. But that must be the pure of metallic nature, since that is the foundation and basis of all the operations of metallic nature.
For Nature herself cannot beget the metals and perfect them unless she accomplish it by her own actions and faculties; and this very thing must be found in metallic nature itself. What, in metallic nature, can draw forth from itself the actions and powers of metallic nature more than the very pure of metallic nature? For the impure and foul of the same nature since it is devoid of every action cannot from itself elicit those operations of producing and perfecting metals; for it is without action, having the condition of matter, which is always passive and in no way active, since action depends upon form, which is always the purer part of the whole compound, whereas matter is the coarser and more impure.
Therefore the pure of metallic nature is the only thing that acts in metallic nature; therefore that very thing is what produces and perfects the metals; therefore it will also be the Philosophers’ Stone in the metallic genus, since the Philosophers’ Stone, according to the judgment of all chymists, is that which perfects the imperfect metals into true gold and silver.
If therefore, in metallic nature, Nature herself takes up the pure of metallic nature in the bowels of the earth for the perfecting and producing of metals perfected, so likewise Alchemy which has the task of following and imitating nature must take up that pure of metallic nature, and must most carefully digest and cook it, so that at length from it, by its own art and industry, it may bring its Stone to perfection.
This Stone, indeed, can be distinguished neither formally nor materially from the very pure [thing] of metallic nature, that is, from the metallic seed and principle; and since this is the substance which nature takes in order to make silver and gold, and since in that substance alone is found the one thing that can perfect metals, it will be most evident that this pure of metallic nature is the substance from which the Stone of the ancients ought to be made, for in that substance alone is found the power and faculty of perfecting metals, and it is naturally implanted in it.
Whence we may conclude that the pure of metallic nature is the Stone of the ancient Philosophers something all the Fathers of Alchemy confirm by their authority, asserting that their Sulphur, which is the most pure of metallic nature, whether white or red, is the only thing the Philosophers can receive, so that from it gold and silver may be made.
Experience, moreover, confirms this very point: in all plants the flowers are that from which alone as the most pure part of vegetable nature there arise the fruits of plants and their propagation.
Likewise in living creatures there is given a seed, which is the purest part of living things, from which alone living things are begotten and multiply among themselves. Why then should there not also be granted in metallic nature some pure thing just as in the other two kinds of nature from which, and in which, all the productions and multiplications of metallic nature are made?
Whoever cannot give credence and authority to these demonstrations deserves most surely to be relegated to the credulous crowd; for he cannot be joined to the fellowship and counsel of men who are able to grasp clear and unmixed reasons, as well as authorities and experiences.
What the “pure of metallic nature” is and of what sort, and by what common name it is marked, and with what garment it is clothed.
Chapter 8
We defined in the fifth chapter the pure of universal nature, and we asserted it to be a spark of created light, mingled and united with the purest substances of all the elements, by such a union that they constitute one homogeneous thing the spirit of the world and what is commonly called nature by the ancient philosophers, shut up and imprisoned in the vapors and natural exhalations which are lifted upward from the bowels of the earth.
From this definition we can now gather what the pure of metallic nature is; for it also is the same spark of created light, most purely mingled with the substances of the elements and united with them by such a mixture that it constitutes one homogeneous thing becomes determined and defined toward a metallic nature.
It is defined and determined when it comes to metallic substances and to their seeds and metallic principles; only with these is it determined to a metallic nature. But before it comes to the seeds and principles of metals, a stone, an herb, or an animal can be made from it just as well as a metal. When, however, it has been determined by a metallic principle, nothing else can be made from it except a metal. For it is the general and universal spirit of nature, indifferent toward all mixed bodies; it is, as it were, the fodder and nourishment of any particular seed, and only there is it determined to the particular mixed body of which it is the food.
Now this general spirit is from light and the elements, and by these alone it is nourished and cherished. But the particular spirit of any thing is nourished and preserved from this general spirit, and is constituted from it together with the purest matter of each particular composite. Thus the particular spirit of metallic nature is made and composed from the general spirit and the particular metallic nature which imitates the nature of a non-burning sulphur.
This sulphurous, non-burning metallic nature is impregnated by the general spirit, which pervades all the elements for nourishment and preservation of all things. Therefore this sulphureous earth, impregnated with the general spirit, becomes the particular matter and the particular seed and metallic principle, from which the metals have their immediate origin.
If that sulphureous earth be pure and white, then, together with that pure general spirit, silver must straightway be made from it. But if the same earth, being pure, be red indeed becomes red by mere cooking and strong digestion in the hollow caverns of the earth then gold is made from it immediately. Hence those who have lynx-eyes perceive that that sulphur perfectly digested and cooked, that is, that pure sulphureous earth, white or red, which together with the general spirit constitutes the immediate seed and principle of gold and silver, cannot be had except from gold or silver yet along with that same spirit which, by its abundance, dissolves gold and silver into their own principles, namely into that sulphureous earth (white and red) and its spirit.
Now this sulphureous earth has its origin from the pure matter of the elements; and the power and energy of this earth excel the rest of the elements. This earth the general spirit of nature impregnates and cooks by the force of its light and by the virtue of its igneous vigor; and by cooking and digesting it perfects it, separating during the cooking whatever is heterogeneous to its nature which alone is impure and when that impurity has been separated, what remains pure it cooks and digests into a non-burning sulphur, white and red, from which by pure and sole digestion there is made gold or silver. First, the white, non-burning sulphur is produced from that pure white earth in which all the other elements are present, though earth predominates; and by the general spirit which continually and gently cooks and digests that matter there is made a white, non-burning sulphur.
And this matter is determined to metallic matter by the particular influx of the Sun and the Moon; whence also by the Fathers of Alchemy this nature is called Sun or Moon: red sulphur is called Sun, but white sulphur is called Moon. In the beginning, however, of creation, the determinations of things were made by God alone by the mere division and separation of the prime matter of things.
For when God, the creator of all, in the beginning of creation divided that first matter of nature, by that division alone He made the particulars and individuals of the species. Hence these individuals each have a magnetic or attracting power of drawing to themselves that from which they were made, so that they may be preserved and multiplied in their being.
Thus each in turn draws to itself that general spirit of the first matter as nourishment the food of itself in order thereby to be preserved; for the first matter is nothing other than the confused nature of all the elements, informed and actuated by that spirit of created light. And since that spirit of light, in the prime matter of things, is the principle of multiplication and generation, so to all individuals which are separated from the first matter, by the virtue and power of God that power of multiplication and generation is communicated by the virtue of that Spirit which in the first matter is the principle of generation and multiplication. Thus all the individuals of nature are multiplied and brought forth, the general spirit being individuated and determined in their center.
So too the metals, in the bowels of the earth, in their mines and caverns, draw that general spirit to themselves and make it particular to themselves, and they determine it to their own generation and multiplication. And thus this spirit, in their hearts, is their life; if they are deprived of it, they are called the dead corpses of metals. But as long as they are nourished by such a spirit, they are living and endowed with the power of generation and multiplication.
Here it must be observed that by the general spirit the matter of metals is made living and capable of generation and multiplication, and that in metallic matter it is individuated and determined to metals so that those who wish to become students of Alchemy may see how necessary to the practice of Alchemy is the knowledge of the general spirit; for without it nothing can be done in chymistry. Nor can the particular metallic spirit be had without the general. Therefore the general must necessarily be obtained, so that we may be able to have the particular metallic spirit.
With what garment, therefore, it is clothed, and in what body the abundant general spirit is enclosed, we shall now, it must now be shown. The universal Spirit since it is the spirit of created light, imprisoned in the most subtle and most pure substance of all the elements there is no doubt at all that by its innate heat (which constantly accompanies light) it fashions for itself, from the matter of the elements, a certain body whereby it may show itself to the philosophers and make itself visible; for in its tenuity and subtlety it is truly invisible, yet nonetheless it puts on a pure body.
What sort of body this is the philosophers must consider what body, and of what kind, can be produced, which is found everywhere upon the earth and in every place; which is manifestly cold and moist, but secretly hot and dry; which in the hidden part is fiery and airy, but in the manifest is earthy and watery; and it is called by the common and vulgar name mercury, or quicksilver, which imitates the powers of the planet Mercury following goodness with the good, but with the wicked being perverted. In this alone is whatever the Wise seek, and from this alone can be had whatever Alchemy longs for.
It is also named by infinitely many other names, lest the vulgar recognize it and be misled by so many and such various terms pointing to diverse and different things; for the Wise will not cast these pearls before swine, nor give lettuces to asses when thistles suffice them. Hence among the chymists it is called the most sharp vinegar, the milk of the virgin, the metallic salt, the Salt of nature.
The water that does not wet the hands, the sea-water of the metals, the water of life, without which no mortal can live and without which nothing is generated or brought forth in the whole world: by these names and countless others they have mocked our misochymists, have filched from them their own golden bait which they most greedily desire, and have revealed it to the learned and the wise as will be clearer in the next chapter.
That by the multitude and variety of names the chymic secret is obscured for fools, but shown to the wise.
Chapter 9
Since the chymic arcanum consists in one single thing, if that one and only thing is marked by many and manifold names, who will call it one and think it one? For various names are indeed assigned to things in order to demonstrate the variety and distinctness of their substance; but the chymic matter is one only, single and homogeneous in substance, and yet it is marked with almost innumerable diverse and distinct names who, then, will proclaim it one, alone, and homogeneous? Those various names suggest and point to various substances and to various properties of substances. And yet the chymic philosophers wish to demonstrate one and the same homogeneous substance just as an actor upon the comic stage now plays now a king, now a soldier, now a slave, now a woman, now a lover one and the same actor represents them, only the costumes being changed. Yet the person is one and the same.
So our chymic thing takes on various names and puts them on as a comic actor puts on various garments to represent distinct characters. Likewise our chymic “person” puts on various garments, that is, names, so that in the chymic theatre it may play various and distinct parts. This tells the prudent that its power and property are infinite diverse, distinct, and even contrary in the very same thing. And such diverse, distinct, and mutually contrary properties cannot be better shown than by different names that signify contrary substances.
For example, if our chymic thing has the powers and properties of gold and silver, of lead, tin, iron, copper, and mercury, by what better sign can one indicate that those powers and properties belong to it than by the very names “gold, silver, lead, tin, iron, copper, and mercury,” which by themselves declare those powers?
Since, then, our chymic thing possesses the powers and properties of the whole of nature and embraces and comprehends universal nature as has been most fully shown above who is he that can rightly blame us if we mark our chymic thing with all the names of things?
Fools indeed, who with no skill or sharpness of human wit cannot grasp this, nor can the small shell of their brain contain how there can be one single, palpable thing, apprehensible by our senses, which possesses the powers of all things and comprehends the whole created nature entirely. Yet the ancients wished to indicate and affirm this to the prudent and the wise by the name spirit calling it the spirit of the soul, of the mind, and the “earthly god,” and by the surname of power and dýnamis those men who penetrate not only the husks of things but their inmost parts, understanding from the very names of things the things themselves which those names intimate and reveal.
But our foolish misochymists are confounded by so many names; and when they see the names themselves indicate altogether contrary substances, they at once conclude that the matter is in every respect removed from metallic and mineral substance, and that nothing of metallic virtue can be drawn from it for the service of metallic transmutation. Immediately they cry out and trumpet against the chymists, proclaiming them dullards and most egregious fools for believing such ridiculous things.
Hence has arisen among them the saying that the Philosophers’ Stone is found only in the head of the chymists meaning that it is merely the product of their own folly. But boundless histories and innumerable reasons, countless arguments, and the authority of the most weighty authors men who in former ages adorned their times not only with holiness but with the highest moral probity have refuted them; they themselves have been shown by plain and pure, downright folly and the grossest ignorance.
Saints such as Thomas, Saint Albert, the Blessed Lullius, Morienus the Roman, Hermes Trismegistus, and countless others cover them with shame by their very authority; so that we may most easily conclude against them that the chymic secret, by the multitude and variety of names, has been obscured for fools and the witless, but shown most clearly to the wise.
The Chymic Arcanum, or the Philosophers’ Stone: of what it consists.
Chapter 10
All the Philosophers have asserted that the Philosophers’ Stone consists of a single physical substance, which they called by the name Mercury not, however, the vulgar and common mercury or quicksilver sold in the market, but that very Mercury described above, from which alone all the metals are immediately produced in the bowels of the earth, and from which the vulgar Mercury itself is brought forth. Therefore it is Mercury from which alone the metals are made; and if one examines the Philosophers’ Stone physically, one will find not a single simple substance, but one composed of the four elements and of the three principles of things.
Hence the Fathers of Alchemy are accustomed to say that their Stone is composed of the four Elements and the three principles; and, in order that the foolish mock them and shut them out from their art, they are wont to say: Our Stone and Arcanum is composed of one thing, of two things; hence it is said to be of three, of four and so, by their mutually contrary sayings and riddles, they make sport of the foolish. Yet they address the Wise, and to them they show the marvelous composition of the Stone. For truly, first and immediately, the thing which makes up the Philosophers’ Stone is in very deed one; yet it is divided into male and female, whence they affirm it to be constituted of two things. For in that one thing namely the Philosophers’ Mercury there are agent and patient, which may bear the account of male and female; and although this one thing be divided into male and female, into agent and patient, into matter and form, it in no wise loses its unity.
So also when it is divided into three principles to wit, into Mercury, Salt, and Sulphur by no means does this division destroy the unity of the composition, but rather points out to the wise the things whereby this unity consists. Much less does the composition of the four elements destroy or dissolve this unity of the simple substance; for all mixed things of nature, though simple and homogeneous, are, according to common and vulgar learning, constituted of four elements, and nevertheless are one simple and homogeneous compound, because perfect mixture, together with generation and production, out of those four elements makes and establishes one.
The ancient Philosophers, professors of Alchemy, set forth this wondrous mixture of nature and the union arising from that mixture by a marvellous riddle, affirming that all natural things and especially their Stone and Arcanum are 1, 2, 3, 4; which, when joined together and arithmetically connected, make the tenth number, which is composed by these arithmetical figures and thus written on paper, 10 that is, unity painted together with a circle. By this riddle alone the whole chymic secret is declared.
These numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 display the whole mystical and true composition of the Philosophers’ Stone, as has already been explained. But when they show these numbers joined and indicate that they make the tenth number, by this sign they show to the wise that this single, simple, homogeneous matter must be cooked by simple coction and circulation which they signify and demonstrate by unity and a single circle. And thus by these numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 take the matter which is called one, twofold, threefold, fourfold they intimate, in various ways, that it must be brought back to unity by circulation alone, according to its simple rule.
Others, speaking more obscurely so as to point out this marvellous composition and cooking, say: “Make from the one a binary, from the binary a triangle, from the triangle a quadrangle, and from the quadrangle a circle, and you will have the whole magistery.”
Thus by their riddles they mock our fools and shut them out from their secrets, while to the wise and thus, by their manner of speaking with their reasonings and formulas they entice the students of Alchemy to search out their secrets.
Which and of what sort is the Philosophers’ Mercury, from which their Stone is composed.
Chapter 11
Most diligently did very many of the Philosophers sweat to search out the nature and the quality of the Philosophers’ Mercury; for since the whole chymic arcanum consists in this one thing alone, the ancient chymic Philosophers, moved with the greatest jealousy toward their posterity, concealed this Mercury with all the strength of their minds, lest many men who live after the manner of brute beasts should, as unworthy, become partakers of so great a natural treasure.
For this knowledge is the true gift of God alone. “God,” says Morienus the Roman Hermit, “bestows this divine science upon His faithful ones and servants, to whom, by His marvellous power, He has willed to impart it from the primal nature of things.” Therefore in this science alone it is not possible to know anything in it except through God’s own showing; nor can the alchemists obtain anything in it unless God has foreseen that they should obtain it; nor can they retain anything in Alchemy unless, by power from the most high God, it be freely bestowed by divine favor.
Relying on so great the authority of the supreme Author, I have dared to write of this Arcanum, nor do I fear that these secrets being the highest will become vulgar and be laid open to all, except to those alone for whom God has already ordained that these things be made manifest; for others, by some hidden decree of fate, we see to be excluded. Therefore we shall, with such industry as we can, set forth the Philosophers’ Mercury, that it may be known only to God’s faithful servants.
The Philosophers’ Mercury is the radical metallic moisture, from which immediately all metals are naturally produced in the mines of the earth. Yet that moisture is not watery nor of the sort that wets the hands; rather, it is a moisture concreted with an equal dryness, so that the dry tempers the moist, and it does not cling to what touches it, but runs over a plane surface without adhering so that it is bounded by its own boundary and not by another’s, as water is. Therefore it is in no wise water, although it is called “water.”
Hence, whoever knows how to convert this non-wetting mercury into a hand-wetting water has not erred; for then it is for a time more penetrative and fitter for dissolving metals. For the body of our Mercury is dry and in no way wets the hands; but it must be converted into a metallic water, that it may act more powerfully upon the perfect metals and reduce them to the first matter of metals, which is a certain non-burning sulphureous earth, joined with its own metallic moisture: for Nature in this chief arcanum we must imitate Nature, which receives only a mineral water and cooks and digests it into a non-burning sulphureous earth, which it immediately converts into a metal pure or impure according to the purity of that same non-burning sulphureous earth.
And this non-burning sulphureous earth is the legitimate Philosophers’ Mercury, which does not wet the hands. This earth is found in all metals; but it must be drawn forth together with its own moisture, from which it first had its origin. Thus from that earth and its proper moisture you have the radical metallic moisture, from which the metals are, and in which alone they are gently and naturally dissolved just as salt itself is dissolved in common water. From this we judge that all metals have taken their origin from that water, which Nature brings forth dry and arid, and which we, by our art, convert from that dryness into moisture. Hence the Philosophers cry aloud that metals must be reduced into Mercury by Mercury, that is, into water by water, if we wish to reach their work and arcanum.
Whence it is gathered most clearly that this Mercury is not the vulgar mercury, although it be found among the vulgar, as Geber asserts: “Our Mercury,” says he, “is not the common mercury, but the most thin and most subtle part of it, brought by our art to such tenuity and subtlety.” Therefore by no means ought we to doubt that the Philosophers’ Mercury, from which the Stone and their arcanum must be Mercury, that is, quicksilver, or metallic water, or the radical metallic moisture all of which are the same and coincide with our quicksilver. Whether, however, it is the common quicksilver which is daily sold by merchants, we must now investigate; this will be done in the following chapter.
Whether the Philosophers’ Mercury and the vulgar [mercury] differ from one another.
Chapter 12
The mercury of the vulgar and that of the Philosophers since both have the nature and essence of mercury have troubled very many alchemists, so that the difference between them might be understood. But this difference cannot be grasped by those who have not been initiated into the art of Alchemy, who have not read through the writings of the chymists, nor long labored in working them out.
Alchemy has a threefold, indeed manifold, mercury, although it has but one alone. Besides that mercury of the vulgar which may also be called its own, since it chiefly uses it as its most faithful and dearest servant it also has a mercury drawn and prepared from this common and vulgar one; it has a mercury drawn from metallic bodies; it has a mercury cooked and most perfectly digested into white sulphur and red, which is the next matter and the immediate substance from which the Stone ought to be made, and from which immediately all the metals in the bowels of the earth are produced. It (Alchemy) also has a mercurial water, which is likewise called mercury, by which especially the metals are reduced to their first matter. All these kinds of mercury belong to Alchemy.
Which of them is the Philosophers’ Mercury those can well judge who have lynx-like eyes and are not of a dull disposition. For since the Philosophers’ Stone must be composed from the purest metallic mercury, one must inquire which mercury among those named is the purest, that he may choose it for the Philosophers’ Mercury and distinguish it from the vulgar mercury, which teems with many impurities and must be stripped of them by the chymic art, so that Alchemy may bring it to the purity it desires, and only then may it be called and deemed the Philosophers’ Mercury.
For vulgar mercury, swollen with its dregs and abounding in excessive coldness and moisture, is useless for our philosophy; nor does Nature herself employ it immediately for making her metals. Indeed there is, by Nature herself, another mercury distinct from vulgar mercury as heaven is from earth; for the vulgar mercury is a metallic body, whereas the other mercury is pure spirit, from which, as from a seed, the metals are made and the vulgar mercury itself as well so that within the vulgar mercury there lies hidden, that Spirit present in very great abundance and easy to extract, provided you have the universal spirit by which all things are made and preserved.
By the help of this, from vulgar mercury you can draw the mercury we need in Alchemy for bringing metals to perfection mercury that is in the form of a “fat water.” And it is so fatty that the fatness seems to appear in pure distilled water. By the quantity and abundance of the universal spirit this mineral fatness is volatilized and, through its plenty, made to distill, and is changed into a true water that wets the hands, very sharp (vinegary), heavy, and unctuous. And if this water holds in itself a plentiful portion of metal dissolved, it is converted into the Sulphur of Nature, or foliated earth which earth, by simple, slow, and continuous coction, is changed into the Philosophers’ Stone.
Thus from the vulgar mercury, by our art, we can obtain whatever Alchemy desires for perfecting the Stone; whence nearly all chymists cry: “In mercury is everything the wise seek,” whether by “mercury” they mean the vulgar mercury or the general spirit of the world and of nature for in either case we have what Alchemy requires.
From this we may easily conclude that there is a very great difference between the vulgar mercury and the Philosophers’ mercury; and that the vulgar mercury can be of no use unless it be first prepared by the Philosophers’ mercury and converted into a fat, viscous, and heavy water, or into the Sulphur of Nature what the chymists call the foliated earth.
By what method and way the common Mercury must be prepared so that it may be reckoned the Philosophers’.
Chapter 13
This preparation is exceedingly difficult, and it is found nowhere among the chemists except in mystical and riddling fashion. Geber foremost and most subtle of the alchemists seems to teach this preparation most clearly; yet it is wholly mystical and enigmatic when he declares that, with the perfect metals (with which it agrees best), the mercury itself after being excellently washed with salt and vinegar and strained through linen and leather is to be amalgamated with gold or with silver, that is, most perfectly united and mingled, so that there results one soft mass like butter. This entire mass must then be put into powdered glass and ashes and, with a strong saline fire, distilled, in order that the quicksilver may be separated by distillation from the perfect metals. In this way the whole impurity and grossness of the quicksilver is separated from it, and the impurity remains at the bottom of the vessel together with the perfect metals; from these the impurity of the mercury must be removed by fire alone by melting and letting the metals run.
This has to be done seven times and repeated, even eleven times, so that the mercury may be more thoroughly purified and its most clear and “heavenly” substance be obtained. The same is shown very cleverly and adroitly by Sendivogius, the author of the New Light, in his new treatise.
Moreover, he says, there is one metal that has the power to consume the others; for it is, as it were, their water and almost their mother. Only one thing resists it namely the radical moisture of the Sun and Moon and by that it is made better. But to speak plainly: it is called Steel (Chalybs). If gold couples with it eleven times, it emits its seed and is weakened almost to the point of death; the Steel conceives and begets a son brighter than the father. Thus far Sendivogius; by these words he makes quite clear to the prudent and wise in this science the preparation of vulgar mercury by coition with gold eleven times, so that the mercury may be impregnated with a seminal golden virtue, lay down its dregs, and acquire a hotter and more sublime grade whence it may beget and produce a son brighter than the father, which is gold and our seed, swelling and abounding in golden tincture; and so the son is brighter than the father gold.
There is also another way of preparing mercury, which Geber likewise teaches in his books Summa Perfectionis, where he asserts that mercury must be purified of all its superfluities (with which it teems) by means of things with which it least agrees and has no affinity or congruence such as salt and glass. Therefore pure salt and pure glass are to be mixed with the mercury as things uncongenial to it; then the mercury must be sublimed and raised by a strong fire, so that in the glass and salt it may deposit its dregs, inborn and connatural to it, and this must be repeated many times, until the mercury comes to the highest brightness and appears most white, like milk.
This Sendivogius also shows very cleverly in his Dialogue on Sulphur: there he imagines that he found a spring where Salt and Sulphur, running to and fro, were speaking with great contention, and at last from words they came to blows; where Salt dealt Sulphur a great and deadly wound, from which, in place of blood, there arose a very white water like milk. This water in the end became a very great river, from which alone Diana and Apollo made their own proper bath; and in it they died, but from that death at length they rose again and obtained immortal life.
By this fable the most acute Sendivogius indicates the preparation of our mercury, which must be done with salt. For we must not stop here after we have prepared the vulgar mercury with salt and brought it to the highest purity; the vulgar mercury is not yet prepared for our art, but must be dissolved with the Philosophers’ mercury, that is, with their viscous, unctuous, and heavy water, and reduced to the first matter. Then it is sufficiently prepared for our art; from this alone can the Philosophers’ Stone be made yet it will be made more quickly if gold be joined with it and together they be reduced to the first matter; for the coagulum in that way is faster, and is brought to its final fixation.
The other preparations of mercury cited above from the authorities are only preliminaries which ought to precede this our last preparation; they are the roads that lead to it.
But for vulgar mercury to be of use to our art, it must first be prepared so that it becomes pure, clean, and bright-white. Next, together with our prima materia, it must be reduced to the first matter from which it itself, along with the other metals, originally sprang; and thus there will be made a water most clear and most white, like milk, in which alone the Sun and Moon must bathe, die, and at length rise again as immortal bodies that is, endowed with such virtue that they impart and communicate life, or perfection, to dead and imperfect metals.
Therefore, with all this stated, we conclude with Suchtenius that, once we know the preparation of vulgar mercury, we need not seek some other Philosophers’ Mercury, nor any other metallic and mercurial aqua vitae, nor any other water of the chemical Stone. For the preparation of vulgar mercury contains all these things in itself provided that, together with the Philosophers’ Mercury and their Water, it be converted into the Mercury and Water of the Philosophers. And thus we must gather that there is indeed another mercury besides the vulgar one the beginning and the end of our art a matter to be examined more keenly in the next chapter.
Whether there exists in nature another Mercury besides the vulgar mercury, which is the principle of the Chemical Stone.
Chapter 14
All the Philosophers, to a man, affirm that in a certain body there lies hidden a certain mercury; to extract it is not the most difficult part of their work and arcanum, and it is the truest and safest principle. Hence they most truly cry out that our mercury is not the vulgar mercury, nor can it in any way be brought forth by our chymic art unless it be reduced and converted into itself by the Philosophers’ own mercury; for the Philosophers’ mercury reduces all metals and likewise reduces the vulgar mercury itself into the Philosophers’ mercury. Therefore the quicksilver of the Philosophers and the quicksilver of the vulgar differ as heaven from earth.
For our quicksilver dissolves most perfectly gold and silver, and even the vulgar quicksilver itself, so that once they have been dissolved they are never again brought back to their former nature; and it adheres to the dissolved metals in such a way that it is never separated from them this is truly to “adhere,” when it never abandons the metals to which it is joined. But vulgar mercury in no way dissolves metals, neither gold nor silver, because it does not convert them into its own matter, as befits a dissolving nature; for a true dissolvent, in order to dissolve perfectly, must convert and change into its own nature and essence everything that is dissolved in it.
But the vulgar quicksilver, although it swallows up the metals gold and silver, nevertheless does not dissolve them, because they are not converted into the nature and essence of the dissolvent; they remain whole, merely swallowed in its belly as experience itself shows, for by an easy process with fire the vulgar quicksilver is separated from the metals it has swallowed, and the metals themselves remain intact, though tainted with the corruptible black sulphur of mercury, with which the vulgar mercury itself is replete.
The Philosophers’ mercury, however their true and lawful servant when it is joined with gold and silver truly dissolves them and converts them into its own nature, so that they can never again be brought back into gold and silver, since they have been changed into the nature of living silver (quicksilver). Moreover, while it is dissolving the metals it bathes them with so moderate a warmth that we can hold in our very hand the vessel in which they are dissolved; and it clarifies them with its pure, bright sulphur, white or red, with which it is charged. Thus we deem the Philosophers’ mercury to be warm and moist, but the vulgar to be cold and moist.
The Philosophers’ mercury, by due coction and digestion, is converted into fixed sulphur, white or red, of very easy fusion. The vulgar mercury, however, by its coction and digestion, [is changed] into a yellow powder or it is turned yellow or red, and into a combustible and corruptible sulphur, incapable of fusion and of no use at all for metallic transmutation. By contrast, the Philosophers’ mercury is changed into an incombustible and incorruptible sulphur, the sole and single foundation of metallic transmutation.
What, then, will be the body in which Nature has most abundantly hidden this very Philosophers’ mercury? if you have wit, this has already been shown you more than enough and will yet be shown again. If there is some body which strictly is neither mineral, nor vegetable, nor animal, and yet in it Nature has most purely and copiously joined together metallic sulphur, mercury, and salt; a body which is always open to your eyes, which you have daily at your very hands, and without which you cannot live if you know this natural body, you possess the most perfect knowledge of the thing from whose womb you can draw forth the true and pure Philosophers’ mercury, the beginning of our work; and it can be brought out by two ways.
The first and easier is with the strongest fire and utmost violence.
The second, more difficult, is done by digestion and putrefaction in horse-dung; and thus, by long digestion, the body is opened and is dissolved into the true oil of the Philosophers and into their mercury.
There are many chymists who say that this body, the body in which their Mercury is contained some call Saturn, because it has the qualities and conditions of Saturn; others call it Sun, others Moon, others Mercury, because it bears the conditions of the Sun, the Moon, and Mercury. Others mark it with still other names, since it suits almost all things and inwardly contains their nature and essence. The Sun brings it forth and the Moon likewise whence the Sun is called its father and the Moon its mother: the Sun, chiefly by his heat and the rays of his light, draws it out from the water; and the Moon, by her moisture, preserves and cherishes it, and breathes it into all the elements.
Therefore it is found in abundance in fire, air, water, and earth as their proper soul and spirit without which soul and spirit the elements themselves are barren and stripped of vegetative power. Yet it is not itself a vegetable, though it is the foundation and the one true principle of vegetative virtue. In like manner it is no animal and no mineral, and yet it is the true source and spring of animal and mineral power.
By this description alone you can gain true knowledge of the Philosophers’ Mercury; by its help and application you will obtain the highest foundation of the chemical art. But if it is unknown and absent from your work, gold, silver, and vulgar quicksilver will profit you nothing; for in alchemy these avail nothing unless, on Aristotle’s authority, they are reduced to the first matter cannot be reduced except by the Philosophers’ Mercury, which alone is the true first matter of the metals.
With these points made, we may conclude that there does exist in nature, besides our vulgar mercury, a certain other mercury, created by nature itself, which is the principle and foundation of the physical Stone; it has the nature of all metals and yet is no metal; it imitates the essence of vulgar mercury and yet is not the vulgar mercury itself, nor is it drawn from it. Nevertheless, vulgar mercury together with gold and silver suffices along with that very Philosophers’ Mercury for the completion of the Philosophers’ Stone. This we shall discuss very clearly in the next chapter, where we have set forth the greatest secrets of the art, and will show still more plainly the nature and essence of our mercury for the benefit of the sons of the Art; but we exclude the misochymists, since they are incapable of these secrets and unworthy because of their unbelief.
Whether the prepared vulgar mercury alone suffices to complete the chemical work.
Chapter 15
Geber, most learned of the Philosophers and foremost of the chymists, in the first part of the book Summa Perfectionis (the second), boldly asserts to us that mercury, in the innermost that its substance is so perfect that it surpasses and excels all metals in purity and brightness.
For thus he speaks: “Since quicksilver, because of no expulsions, allows itself to be divided into parts of its composition since either with its whole substance it falls away from the fire, or with its whole substance it stands, remaining in the fire there is in it, of necessity, the cause of perfection. Blessed therefore be God, most glorious on high, who created it and gave to it a substance and properties of substance which it has not been granted to any other things in nature to possess, so that in it this perfection might be found by some art, which we discover in it as a nearby potency.
For it is that which overcomes fire and is not overcome by fire, but in it rests amicably, rejoicing in it.” Thus far our Geber than whom nothing clearer can be said so that from this we may gather that prepared mercury alone suffices to complete the chemical art.
Why should it not suffice, since metallic perfection lies hidden in it alone? For Nature which we must always imitate in the chemical art habitually takes up this purity and perfection which mercury contains for the perfecting of gold; it admits nothing else, nor can anything else suffice except the purest substance of mercury, which has connatural and inborn within it the substance of fixed, non-burning sulphur; and these are one and the same in one and the same substance, a homogeneous substance the most subtle substance of quicksilver, brought to fixation and the purity of the same together with the most subtle fixed matter of a non-burning sulfur: this is the whole essential matter of gold; and gold is nothing other than pure, bright mercury led by digestion to the highest fixation. If, then, the material and formal principles of mercury are found in gold, gold fashioned by nature must be made from like principles and immediate elements; and in the chymic art we must judge that the same principles can be taken as well from mercury as from gold.
That the same principles are found in gold and in mercury is proved by experience: for gold alone among the metals attracts mercury more strongly, and mercury [attracts] gold more than all the rest. Hence it is shown most clearly that gold is of the same nature as mercury, and mercury as gold; for if they were not of the same nature and stock, they would not so love and draw one another since love arises from a sympathy of substance, just as hatred and discord spring from antipathy and dissimilar substance.
Therefore the purest substance of mercury is the only thing by which gold is perfected. Accordingly, if gold reduced to the first matter suffices for completing the golden tincture, then mercury likewise suffices, since gold and mercury are found to be one and the same in nature and essence. With these things thus demonstrated, we may cheerfully conclude we can make vulgar mercury, when it has been rightly prepared, suffice us in every respect for completing and perfecting the chemical work.
I say rightly prepared; for unless it is rightly prepared, it is altogether useless. It is prepared rightly and most excellently if it is brought over into white or red sulphur. It is brought into such natural sulphur by dissolving the mercury itself with our Pontic water, viscous and acetous, which is drawn from the first matter of things. Consider, then, what this first matter of things is; for if this be known, the whole of Alchemy will be known to you. And the first matter will become known to you if you recognize the ultimate matter of things; for what is last in the dissolution of things must be first in the composition of those same things.
What that most pure [part] of mercury is which perfects the metals and the chemical work.
Chapter 16
That most pure [part] of mercury which perfects the metals and the chemical work is nothing other than the purest water and the purest and most subtle earth, a non-burning sulphurous [earth], which are found in the composition of mercury. In that purest water and subtlest earth inseparably joined with one another in the body of mercury there is also found that spark of created light which animates and actuates the whole body of mercury as its truest form; this is what by its life-giving, non-burning heat it tightens and coagulates the mercury, and at last fixes it into the most perfect silver and gold. This is what is called in mercury the perfect, non-burning sulphur, wholly life-giving the true fire of the metallic nature by which the metals are cooked and digested to metallic perfection.
This spark of created light all the Philosophers have been most eager to conceal, that they might hide the efficient cause of the metals and the true and single foundation of the chemical art. Some chymists, however, are accustomed to say that this spark of created light must be stolen from the rays of the sun, and they have taught us to imitate Prometheus, who snatched that spark of light from the chariot of the Sun and its wheels and gave it to mortal men.
But Prometheus signifies nothing else to us than vulgar gold the true Prometheus which stole for itself the spark of created light, that is, the fire of nature, from the chariot of the Sun or from its wheels (that is, from its influences and rays). And because of this heavenly theft Prometheus was bound to a rock, and an eagle was set upon him to devour his heart forever with its beak. In like manner gold must be bound to the Stone, that is, to the first matter of things (which first matter indeed bears the name of our Stone), so that its mercury or moisture which also bears the name eagle may continually consume the inner heart of gold, that is, its essence by its heat it devours it and converts it to its own nature; and thus our work is perfected which is veiled beneath the rind of the Prometheus fable.
The only most-pure part of mercury is that which is confined in its center, in the capsule of its heart; this alone is of the nature and essence of gold, since gold itself is made from it. The same thing can likewise be drawn by our art both from vulgar mercury and from common gold, so that the two may be mingled together; and, together with our water, they must be reduced to our first matter. Thus those three become one useful thing for us, and are easily brought to unity by our coction and digestion just as in the bowels of the earth they come to be and are compounded from one and the same substance.
Now this most pure thing of gold and mercury, which by our chymic art is extracted from both (the labor of the prima materia, which by our art we also prepare into a pure and heavenly water), is nothing else than a most pure, non-burning sulphureous earth and a most bright, limpid water found in that composition. In the earth itself is fire, and in the water is air; hence in their composition are found the natures of the four elements, which are animated and actuated by that spark of created light that mingles the elements and, by mingling and uniting them, makes out of all of them one. But first, by the benefit and aid of that created light, the elements act among themselves so as immediately to produce the principles of things; and from what is thus produced there are made in a division of things, in the following method and way.
First, then, fire, the most active of all the elements (to speak as a chymical philosopher may), acts upon air and strives to coagulate it, by the power of the other, lesser elements that are found in the air. For all the elements are “elemented” (i.e., already compounded); otherwise they could not act, since in themselves they would possess only a simple and equal potentiality.
Therefore fire acts on air, consumes its moisture, and makes that which is earthy appear substance and thickness out of the other elements whence it is coagulated into sulphur: into sulphur, I say, a natural principle in which the four elements, by the virtue of fiery and celestial light, are coagulated and mingled. In this principle fire and air prevail, yet the fire does not burn; rather, it vivifies and preserves.
Next, air acts upon water and coagulates it by drying up and consuming its moisture; hence its coldness is increased, and along with its innate coldness dryness is introduced; and thus salt is produced, a natural principle, as it were, which gives body to all things and makes them visible by reason of the body it produces.
Then water acts upon earth and produces mercury: dissolving it and, so to speak, equalizing the remaining elements that are in the earth making them equal in weight and operation so that none of them prevails in the composition and mixture of mercury. But the earth, since it does not have another element upon which it may act; therefore it brings forth no other principle, but remains without production and only receives into itself whatever is produced in it by the other elements. What is produced in it it nourishes and cherishes, as a true nurse.
And thus the principles of things are brought forth from the elements. That these may be understood more clearly and grasped more perfectly by all students of Chemistry so that they may have a known and manifest notion of the principles, a matter altogether necessary for them in the next chapter we shall show most plainly the composition of the natural principles, that is, their production from the elements. And thus we shall see what the most pure part of Mercury is that perfects the metals and the chemical work.
What the natural principles are, and by what way they are produced from the elements.
Chapter 17
We have said much about the natural principles of all things in general in our Panchymicum. But let no one suppose that the natural principles of things are certain separate, distinct, and of themselves visible entities. Rather they are one thing, homogeneous and like to itself on every side, altogether invisible and hidden in the center of things and in their most secret chambers; and, so far as it can be considered and perceived, it is warm and fiery something heavenly and ethereal is called Sulphur not burning, but giving life and preserving.
When the same thing is considered and perceived as something moist and airy, it is called Mercury; when it is considered as something dry and earthy, it is called Salt. Yet these three are not separate, different things; rather, they constitute one, homogeneous thing in which are found the innate heat of all things (called Sulphur), the primordial moisture (called Mercury), and the natural dryness (called Salt), which gives body and makes the thing appear.
To constitute this one-and-three homogeneous thing the four elements come together, as was shown above: fire descends into air and establishes sulphur; this product of fire and air sinks into water and makes salt; and this product of fire, air, and water falls into earth and establishes mercury and all these come to rest in the earth. Hence the earth is the matrix and nurse of that substance called the spirit of the world and of nature, which embraces within itself the three principles of things just described. From the earth’s matrix, by its natural heat, it is carried upward on every side and sublimed through the pores of the earth, so as to bring forth and preserve all the things that are found in the earth’s bosom.
Thus, too, metals are produced in the bowels of the earth: first the elements unite among themselves, and by their mingling produce those three principles of things, which constitute one spirit the innate heat of the world, the primeval moisture, and the natural dryness, or the body that contains and holds them together this spirit, in metallic matters, is called Mercury, or quicksilver. By its own internal heat and by the external heat of the place in which it is enclosed, it is little by little cooked and more and more digested, until at last it passes over into a metallic substance, either pure or impure: pure, if the quicksilver is enclosed in the purest places; but it becomes an impure and foul metallic substance if the quicksilver is foul and impure and is confined in the places where it is digested.
Thus quicksilver, the spirit of the metallic nature, contains within itself the three principles of things, produced from the elements, as its efficient and material cause. For Nature, immediately from those principles, brings forth quicksilver, sustaining the innate heat (that is, sulphur) in its primeval moisture, and so unites and couples it with the radical mineral dryness that they are joined in equality, so that none of them prevails over the other: the moist does not overpower the dry or moisten it, nor does the dry overpower the moist or dry it out. And thus it is in perpetual motion, because its heat favors its dry part as much as its moist.
In this way the four elements, distinct, separate, and different among themselves, constitute those three principles of things, which are one homogeneous thing, in which alone the elements come to rest and are united real and physical, without any mutual contrariety; for before they are joined together in that One and become one, they lay aside all their contrariety by the power of the created Light, which makes peace among enemies favoring all and hostile to none since it was made by God from the purest of all the elements. What is pure, united and bound together in the created Light cannot be contrary to itself, since contrariety and repugnance depend on impurity.
Hence the union of fire with water, and of air with earth, is easy through that intervening Light; for when it mingles with the contrary elements, it removes from them whatever is contrary and impure. For example, when it is mingled with water to bring it into fellowship with fire, it first takes away the water’s coldness and introduces its own life-giving heat, and thus from water it makes air, purifying and subtilizing it. Then from that air, by its life-giving, non-burning heat, it removes all moisture, and so from water it makes pure fire.
And to make water out of fire: when it is mingled with fire, by its innate, life-giving moisture it removes the fire’s dryness, and so the fire becomes air; then by its life-giving moisture now abounding it draws to itself the fire’s connatural coldness and utterly extinguishes the heat, so that it no longer appears; and thus from fire it makes water. For if from fire heat and dryness are taken away, and in place of those qualities their contraries are introduced opposite qualities, namely coldness and moisture; then, for that time, fire becomes water.
These contrary qualities are introduced by that created Light with ease in the interchange of the elements, since the created Light contains within itself all the qualities and the purest substances of the elements, mingled and united in it by a true and physical union. And when they are united and mixed in the Light, they lay aside all contrariety; thus in the Light the qualities of the elements are not contrary.
And because in the Light they are not contrary but at peace, when the Light mixes the elements in the production of natural things, by its pacifying power it also reconciles the other contrary qualities of the elements that are found mingled in the generation of things. In this way it makes from all the elements one homogeneous thing, in no way contrary or unlike to itself, although composed from contrary and dissimilar elements; and in that one alone the elements come to rest, and none prevails over the others.
This One Thing is what Nature uses to bring forth all things; this one is called the pure thing of nature and the spirit of the world, and in minerals it is quicksilver which is absolutely necessary for us for bringing our work to perfection, as will be made very clear in the chapters that follow.
Chapter 18: On Pure Mercury, in Which Metals Are Found, and White and Red Sulphur, Male and Female Alchemists
In the Mercury of the Philosophers, concerning what the wise ask: nothing of Alchemy can be extracted except from it alone. It is concluded: Sulphur is contained, both white and red, and male and female, and all four elements are in it, and all the metallic nature, and whatever must be distilled, can only be extracted from it. In its innermost entrails, it is imprisoned solely by the process of distillation: these things are made clear. First, white sulphur is found, then red sulphur, the male is that, but the female is the first part of sulphur.
The red sulphur is male, and the white part of sulphur is female, as the Philosophers call it. Red sulphur indicates the man, white sulphur indicates the woman, and from this alchemy and marriage comes the true Chymical work. From this source comes our fiery metallic son, who produces the great work.
However, nothing can be achieved without purification, which is obtained by distillation and refinement. The purity of the gold and mercury forms the foundation, so that we may be able to correct that rawness; for gold is the ripest of all metals, and from its ripeness we correct that metallic crudity of mercury. Thus the red or white sulphur that lies deep within it comes forth more easily into the light just as Geber himself affirms in these words (Book XII, On the Investigation of Perfection).
Our Stone is nothing else than a stinking spirit and living water (which we also call “dry water”), purified and made one by a natural proportion. To these a third must be added in order to shorten the work: namely a perfect, attenuated body, which we also maintain to be gold; for among metals nothing is more perfect than gold, whence it is rightly called the Perfect Body.
The stinking spirit is the sulphur that lies hidden in mercury; because of its rawness and indigestion it stinks and smells foul. But when it has been well cooked and by our decoction brought to maturity, it smells well and gives off a very sweet fragrance, so that by its pleasant odor it fills its vessels; and when these are opened, the scent is dispersed through a great expanse of air.
The living (or dry) water is the dry moisture of quicksilver that is, mercury called “dry moisture” because, though it is moist, it does not wet, and it is a pure metallic water. In this water alone, with its sulphur lying hidden therein, we possess everything that is useful for bringing the chemical work to completion.
And although Geber above names three and counts them as three namely the foul spirit, the living water, and the attenuated perfect body these three, though three in number, are really only two: gold and quicksilver. And these two, moreover, are one; for gold is nothing else than quicksilver that is pure and unalloyed. Thus, although Geber says “three,” he in fact says only “one.” With this made clear we may conclude that the Philosophers’ quicksilver contains both white sulfur and red male and female and that in mercury alone is confined everything that can be desired for perfecting and completing alchemy.
Why gold and silver are necessary for the chemical work together with quicksilver itself.
Chapter 19
Since in gold and in silver there resides the tincture of gold and of silver alone so all the philosophers hold, and indeed natural reason itself it is altogether necessary to join gold and silver to mercury. For because the richest tincture, white and red, is not present in common quicksilver, a tincture must be bestowed upon it. But in gold and silver there are abundant coloring rays, most fixed and permanent; therefore, because alchemy requires that fixed and permanent tincture for perfecting imperfect metals, therefore alchemy needs gold and silver; it takes them and joins them to mercury.
In this way the mercury is dyed with the fixed and permanent tincture of gold and of silver, and by its fineness and its subtle, penetrating substance it communicates its substance to imperfect metals.
For the tincture of gold and of silver, because of the firmness and hardness of gold and silver, cannot penetrate the pores of imperfect bodies; accordingly such a golden or silvery tincture cannot be imparted to them. Hence absolutely necessary is the subtle and penetrating substance of our mercury, so that the solidity, hardness, and grossness of gold and silver may be attenuated by the subtle and penetrating essence of mercury. Thus, when the two are joined, they become one thing very subtle and penetrating which at once enters the pores of imperfect metallic bodies and imparts to them the perfection it possesses from cooking and chemical preparation.
For mercury by itself, since it has the greatest subtlety and the power of penetration, draws to itself the tincture of gold and silver, unites it with itself, and makes it subtle and penetrating; and so the chemical work is completed more quickly with gold, silver, and our mercury than with simple mercury alone, to which a golden or silvery tincture must always be given; otherwise the work would lead to despair because of its length, if one relied on mere, simple mercury we shall make use of the general one, namely.
Thus, in order to shorten our work, we join gold or silver to our mercury, and so we dye the mercury with gold or with silver, and we bring the work to an end in a very short time. For since gold is the most perfect and most mature of the metals, by its own perfection and maturity it perfects and cooks away the imperfection and rawness of the mercury. Hence the mercury, thus perfected and made ripe, perfects and ripens the other imperfect metals which need perfection and a golden maturity something that is very easily communicated and imparted to imperfect metals through the agency of subtle and penetrating mercury. For when metallic perfection is thin, subtle, penetrating, and also permanent and fixed, it is most easily communicated, because penetration and entry are easy.
From this we gather why gold and silver are altogether necessary so that, together with quicksilver, they be joined for the perfecting and completing of the chemical work. Without these most perfect metallic bodies our chemical work could not be completed in so brief a time as it is namely, within a year or nine months. Why, however, nine months or a whole year are spent in completing the chemical work, we must now discuss.
Why, for the perfection of the chemical work, nine months or a whole year are necessary.
Chapter 20
Every natural thing has its own fixed time for its perfection, in which its perfection is completed and brought to an end. For we see by experience that all animals are perfected and finished at a particular and definite time: a human being is brought to term in nine months in the mother’s womb; horses in eleven or twelve months; asses in thirteen; oxen in nine; dogs in nine weeks; pigs are usually completed in four months.
Trees likewise, in order to bear and perfect their fruits, have different and varying times: the cherry finishes its fruits within three months, counting from its blossom; the vine spends five months to bring its fruits to completion and perfection. The pear and the apple have the same time-span as the vine: they blossom in April and May, and their fruits ripen in September or October. The pine, however, is the slowest of trees to perfect its fruits; for after it has flowered, two years pass before its fruit ripens and is completed.
Thus animals and all plants have their own proper time in which they bring their fruits to completion; so too must minerals have their own its own fixed and definite time for the ripening of its fruits.
Thus, before mercury is perfected into gold, it spends the space of a thousand years; and to be well-cooked into the best and most perfect silver, it consumes five hundred years, according to the chemists. To be digested into lead, tin, iron, or copper, a hundred years are spent; to pass into common, ordinary quicksilver, ten years are required. In this way all metals consume much time to reach their perfection. They owe this to the coldness and moisture of their seed, that is, of the metallic principle, and to the scantiness of natural heat, which cannot overcome and subdue that excessive moisture and coldness. But when the moisture and coldness of the metallic seed have been overcome and conquered by natural heat, the metals are thoroughly cooked and made mature.
Hence the alchemists cry: “Make the hidden manifest, and the manifest hidden, and you will have the complete secret of Alchemy.” That is: bring it about by cooking that you conquer and overcome the manifest cold and moisture of mercury, or of the metallic seed, and so conceal them; and thus you will make manifest the hidden heat and dryness of that same mercury, its coldness and moisture being concealed. But this cannot be done unless much time is spent, if one is working only with the raw metallic principle, for its excessive native coldness and moisture greatly hinder the outbreak and manifestation of its hidden heat and dryness those alone complete the perfection and ripening of the work.
Since, then, alchemists see very clearly that that cold and moisture are present in great abundance in the beginning and in the metallic seed, while its heat and dryness are minimal and concealed, they help it both by adding external heat and by adding internal heat as well, which they take from a pure and perfect metallic body, in which that heat and dryness are manifest. In this way they shorten the time of maturation and digestion by adding a perfect and mature body.
Moreover, to each of the twelve portions of the metallic seed namely, of our metallic water they add one portion of perfected gold, so that within a year those twelve crude portions, not yet perfectly digested, may be thoroughly cooked and digested by the very ripe portion of gold. Thus within a year the Chemical Arcanum is accomplished. For just as within the course of a year the heavenly Sun completes and finishes the whole circuit of the Zodiac, traversing its several houses and imparting to the several stars and thence to the earth the perfection of its created light, so too our earthly Sun, our gold, which truly imitates the celestial Sun as a son his father, completes the Zodiac of our mercury within [the Sun] runs through the year, illuminates all its houses, and imparts to them the light of its perfection, so that from there the perfection of its light may be distributed to the lands of the metals.
Thus, with very great mystery, to the twelve parts of our mercury they add only one part, so that that single part may stand to those twelve parts as the Sun does to his celestial zodiac and to the heaven. For our mercury is our ‘heaven,’ in which our Sun completes his course, shares his light, and pours it into our metallic earths. But if nine parts or ten parts of our mercury are added to our gold our Sun so that there the Sun may complete his circuit, the circuit will indeed be shorter, yet not more perfect.
The reason is plain: our gold would be less attenuated, the attenuating cause having been reduced; and if the attenuation is diminished, the perfection of our work must also be diminished, since the whole perfection consists in attenuation. For the subtler the work is, the more penetrating it is; and the more it penetrates, the larger portions of imperfect bodies it perfects.
From this we see very clearly why, for the perfection of the chemical work, nine months or even twelve are altogether necessary: within the span of those months the crudity of our mercury is overcome and mastered, and its moisture and coldness, in which alone that crudity resides, are subdued; for it cannot be confined within a shorter term, in a shorter time and be thoroughly digested; otherwise its perfection will be greatly diminished, since its fineness and subtlety are much lessened when the quality of the mercury is diminished. For it is mercury alone that attenuates and sublimates the tincture of gold: first it turns it into water, then into air, and lastly into fire. Therefore nothing can attenuate more than that which converts into the most subtle elements even the very grossness and earthiness of gold.
Whether the Philosopher’s Stone can be perfected at all seasons of the year.
Chapter 21
Since many of the philosophers have written that the Philosopher’s Stone cannot be perfected unless the Sun is in Aries, and that only at that time should its cooking and digestion be begun, we are given the occasion to inquire whether the cooking and digestion of the Philosopher’s Stone may be begun at all times of the year. To make this plain and very clear to everyone, we must first explain what the ancient philosophers meant when they asserted that the Philosopher’s Stone can be perfected only when the Sun is in Aries that is, that its cooking and digestion must then be begun so that it may be perfected.
By this they wished to intimate that the cooking and digestion of our Stone ought to be carried out with the gentlest heat, such as is the heat of the Sun in Aries; for that heat is very light and so mild, the heat must be gentle, so that it does not scorch the ‘flowers of nature’ as they arise, and so that the mercury of nature does not boil up too violently and its abundant moisture be burned off moisture which, at the beginning of its cooking, must be digested very slowly lest it fly off and evaporate into smoke through a boiling heat, and thus the work of nature perish. Therefore our chemical Work must be begun with a slow and tepid heat, and that heat ought to be equal to the heat of the Sun when it is in Aries. Thus the chemical philosophers say their Work should be begun when the sun is in Aries by which they mean a slow heat equal to the sun’s heat as it passes through Aries, not that only at that time can the Philosopher’s Stone be perfected, but that with such a heat it ought to be begun.
For our work may be begun at any season winter, summer, or autumn and, by God’s grace, continued, provided it is started with a slow, spring-like warmth, so that the ‘flowers’ of our mercury (which are tender at the beginning) are not burned, nor, through the vehemence of a fierce heat, vanish and escape from the vessel, and so the work perish either because the matter evaporates from the vessel, or is destroyed and spoiled by excessive heat.
This, the philosopher-alchemists loudly warn, is what must especially be avoided: that at the beginning of our Work the heat not be great and violent, but only so slow and moderate that it seems vernal. And since such a slow and moderate heat can be had at all times, therefore we may conclude that the Philosopher’s Stone can be perfected in every season of the year, since it is perfected by a gentle heat at least at the beginning of its growth and such a heat can be applied at any time. Therefore no special season need be waited for, provided the matter at hand is suitable and fit for accomplishing the work.
Whether the philosophers’ gold, which the Stone needs for its perfection and for shortening the work, is the same as common gold.
Chapter 22.
The philosophers’ gold differs greatly from common gold. The philosophers’ gold is living gold, full of the growth of natural fire, swollen with vital power and efficacy. But common, vulgar gold is altogether dead gold, for it has been wholly deprived of the philosophers’ gold; when it was melted out of the mines and from its mineral mass, at that moment it lost that spirit of life and growth. Therefore that mineral spirit which perfects the metals and causes them to increase is the true gold of the philosophers. How far this spirit differs from common gold is obvious to all: it is the spiritual part of gold, whereas common gold is the gross body and solid of that spiritual substance which is, as it were, its form, and truly is its form.
And as far as form is distant from matter, so far also the philosophers’ gold differs from common gold. Therefore when the philosophers say that the Stone needs the philosophers’ gold for its perfection and for shortening the work, they do not mean that common, vulgar gold is necessary for the philosophers’ operation. Rather, they mean that golden spirit which, by its presence, quickens and ennobles the whole body of gold with vegetative and vital power.
From where this golden spirit is to be drawn we can gather thus: we also have another mineral spirit entirely like it, by whose aid we can attract this golden spirit out of those ores and mine-masses in which gold is plentiful, though not yet fully perfected only begun by nature. For in those places that golden spirit is abundant and swelling, and from that source alone it must be drawn; and thus our own spirit, barren through its excessive coldness, becomes wholly fertile. This is the female; that, however, is the male. But our female cannot be made fruitful except by conjunction with that male spirit namely, by union which is wholly fiery and airy; whereas the other is watery and earthy, yet in its center and secretly it is fiery and airy. Another, on the contrary, is in its hidden center watery and earthy, but outwardly is fiery and airy.
Thus these two spirits are altogether contrary in qualities; yet by cooking and digestion they finally become alike and lay aside all their contrariety and enmity, and they become of the same quality and property. Now it is that fiery and airy spirit which is the Philosophers’ gold and Nature’s sulphur that alone we need for the perfecting and the shortening of our Stone. For we cannot reduce common, vulgar gold to its first matter without that spirit; and therefore we cannot complete the work, since the perfection of the work consists in that reduction to the first matter of metals, without which, according to Aristotle himself, metals cannot be transmuted into one another.
And thus we most clearly conclude that the Philosophers’ gold, which we require for the perfection of our work and our secret, is not common gold, but something else, separate and altogether distinct. Yet it must be considered whether common gold, as it is and as we find it in our hands, can be made to serve our work whether, though dead, it can be brought to life, and being thus vivified can serve our arcanum, and thus become the Philosophers’ gold. This will be made very clear in the following chapter.
Whether common gold, dead and sterile, can by our art be brought to life and made to serve the chymic art.
CHAPTER 23.
To bring the dead to life, and to make the barren fertile and fruitful this is nature’s supreme work, reserved to the Creator alone, since life depends on Him alone, it cannot be brought back into act unless the Creator so wills just as, for example, when a living man has died, he cannot be restored to life except by the Divine power alone.
But when life arises from the elements and from created light, then in due time nature by itself can restore life by its own motions just as it restores life to butterflies, flies, and snakes that have died, and to almost all plants which, having died through the cessation of cold, receive new life in spring when the sun returns.
If this is wont to happen with some animals and plants, why should it not also happen with metals, which are bodies thicker and more solid? Gold above all: though by melting and smelting in a strong fire it loses its mineral spirit the source and cause of its life why should it not be able to recover that same spirit, and so regain its life and be made living again from being dead? This work truly lies within the power of nature and of art.
Thus common and vulgar gold, which is commonly called “dead,” will become living once it has recovered its vital spirit; and common gold will thus become the Philosophers’ gold living and altogether fertile out of what was barren and dead, and so it will truly serve our art. For as it is in the hands of merchants it cannot serve the art, since in that state it is altogether sterile and unfruitful, indeed: once it has been prepared and animated by its own life-giving mineral spirit, it is then of the highest usefulness the true and only foundation of our art and the true abridgment of our work.
In this alone our art finds rest and rejoices; without it almost all Alchemy would be vain, because of the length of time that would otherwise be required to bring it to perfection.
The same things can be said and affirmed about common, ordinary silver: by itself it is sterile and barren, and useless to our art unless it is made fruitful by our mineral spirit. But after it has been animated by its own mineral spirit, then it truly lives and is full of fecundity and of germination. Hence we may conclude that common, ordinary gold and silver, although in themselves dead and infertile, can be made fertile and thoroughly vivified so that they become truly living, fruitful, and most useful to our art provided they are impregnated with the mineral and metallic spirit which is the foundation, base, and pillar of the whole chymic art, since it is the perfection of all metallic nature.
Now this mineral spirit, which all Alchemy needs, is plentiful and abounding wherever nature’s fire and light are in their vigor. Concerning it many things must be said in the next chapter, that it may be made known to the students of Alchemy.
Chapter 24
The spirit of metallic nature where it abounds in its natural subject, and by what art it must be drawn out.
The spirit of metallic nature, from which alone metals are made, nourished, and preserved, does not in any way differ from the world’s general spirit, from which all things are made, nourished, and preserved. But this general spirit composed, as we said above, of created light and the most pure substance of all the elements becomes particular and is individuated in the very metals, and so it is the spirit of metallic nature.
Since it composes the metals and nourishes, cherishes, and preserves them, it must be found within them. Therefore, if you wish to possess it, you must draw it out from a metallic substance. In which metal it is found most abundantly, you must discern by your own intelligence; for all the Philosophers carefully conceal this one metal.
But look closely and weigh with all your powers where created light the principle of motion in all things is most abundant together with the purest and most subtle substance of the elements, and where these are crude and not cooked, but lightly coagulated and united into a metal: that is the single and only metal in which that mineral spirit is plentiful and swelling, and from which, with little effort, you may extract that spirit for the needs of the art, a thing most necessary by which you bring all metals back to their first matter absolutely necessary to you for completing the Work and the Chymic Secret.
But from that one metal you cannot draw out the spirit itself unless you have knowledge of the universal Spirit and in general an understanding of it. For just as that universal Spirit is the nourishment and the one and only food of all metals, so too there is one single way unique and alone of extracting and eliciting the metallic spirit we require: spirit draws spirit, and they unite with each other. Thus, if the universal Spirit is water, by means of that very water the metallic spirit is easily drawn off and joined to the same water, and it becomes a water which you have only to purify from all its filth and finally cook down into a most fixed substance, exceedingly subtle, penetrating and tincturing since it partakes of the nature of the spirit of metallic nature, which alone is subtle, penetrating, and tincturing.
The method of drawing forth and bringing out this spirit of metallic nature is as follows: take the greatest possible quantity of the matter in which the universal Spirit resides in abundance, and mix that very matter of the universal Spirit with the metallic earth of silver or of gold, or with the ore and mine of quicksilver itself.
Blend them in equal weight, place them in glass retorts luted shut (or better, in earthen retorts), and with a very strong fire drive these mineral spirits into a glass vessel to be received in a glass receiver at the bottom, in which there ought to be a little common water so that it may take those spirits into its bosom; for otherwise, by reason of their dryness and fiery quality, they fly off and are lost. But by the moisture of the common water they are preserved, and by this easy method they are turned into water into that very common water. Then this water must be rectified by repeated distillations, so that it becomes bright and clear.
Next, with this water, i.e. the universal spirit, you must dissolve that metal in which the metallic spirit is more abundant than in the other metals. After you have this metal in solution, you purify the solution by sublimation and distillation; and with this clean, shining metallic water, gold or silver is dissolved so gently that it seems to dissolve as salt does in warm water. At that point you have nothing further to do, except to persist with simple cooking alone; the following chapters will show you an easy way to understand this.
By what operations of the art the Philosophers’ Stone is composed.
CHAPTER 25.
By cooking alone the Philosophers’ Stone can be brought to perfection, by imitating Nature. For Nature, while she perfects the metals, employs only digestion and cooking of the metallic matter. She has no alembics for distillation, no vessels for calcination or solution, nor the other similar instruments that men use our chymists use for carrying out their operations.
Nature takes only the metallic matter and perfects it by digestion alone, separating the pure from the impure and cooking only the pure. Yet in that natural separation and digestion by which Nature perfects the metals there are many and various “operations,” which the chymists have distinguished so they might be better and more surely understood and so that one may grasp what Nature does within. For that natural digestion can be divided and set out as solution and putrefaction, sublimation, distillation, coagulation, and fixation. Although these operations seem diverse and manifold, nevertheless they are all encompassed by cooking alone. For indeed, while Nature cooks and digests the metallic matter, she simultaneously dissolves, putrefies, sublimates, distills, coagulates, and fixes that very same matter.
And to speak truly the genuine and best alchemists, who imitate Nature, once they have their own proper matter purified, use nothing but the cooking and digestion of that pure matter, moving or changing their vessel in no way. But before they have that pure matter, they employ many and various operations and many and various vessels, so that they may have their metallic matter thoroughly pure such as by sublimation, distillation, solution, putrefaction, calcination, and the like, with many and various proper vessels suited to performing those diverse operations.
Yet we reduce all those and others like them to two: solution and coagulation. Of these two operations alone we shall speak in particular, so that a complete and thorough method for perfecting the Philosopher’s Stone may be fully known to all students of the art of chymistry. For whoever knows a perfect solution and a most perfect coagulation knows the whole art and understands how to gather its fruits.
On the Chymical Solution, which is the beginning of the Chymical Work
Chapter 26
Solution is the most difficult of all chymical operations, and the first and principal of them; for by this operation the metals are reduced to their first matter. Without such a reduction the metals cannot be transmuted one into another this is the settled judgment and agreed opinion of all chymists.
By this reduction to the first matter chymists mean a reduction to the metals’ own immediate principles out of which they were made. This reduction is exceedingly necessary to the art, because by it the metallic principles and seeds grow fresh again and are separated from all their dregs, by which they were infected and contaminated in their first composition, so that they become much purer and brighter.
And thus, when they are once more composed anew and united pure and most spotless they have a new efficacy, much nobler than the former. For in this second composition and union the dregs have been removed; and because of those dregs the operation was formerly slow and very sluggish. But in the second union, since all those impurities are separated and all the parts of that composition are exceedingly pure, the action of the compound is altogether strong and very noble, surpassing the former in power.
Therefore by the chymical solution the metals are resolved into their own principles, from which they first sprang. And this solution is supremely necessary; for without it the Philosopher’s Stone could by no means be made, since the metallic principles cannot be obtained without it; nor can they be purified again so as to become purer and thereby acquire a stronger and more noble operation.
Hence this our solution is most necessary for bringing our Chymical Work and Arcanum to perfection. From this we may define Solution as the reduction of metallic bodies to their first and immediate principles and elements, out of which they were made by Nature herself by whose aid and benefit the parts of the metallic substance, without alteration or corruption of their substance, are separated from one another and purified to the utmost, so that from them a new so that a stronger and nobler activity of the metals may arise.
Now, for bringing this reduction to completion, there is need of putrefaction and of a particular digestion in a gentle heat of a bath or of horse-dung for moist heat more easily separates and loosens the compounded parts; and that action of moist heat, in dissolving the subject, is called putrefaction, although in general it is included under digestion and cooking.
Since this solution, or reduction into principles, is altogether necessary for accomplishing our Arcanum, we must now consider by what reducer and solvent it ought to be effected. For metals cannot by themselves be reduced to their principles merely by the operation of externally applied fire and remain reduced in that state; rather, they need a solvent and a reducer. This reducer and solvent must be of the same metallic substance, lest it alter the metals to be reduced and corrupt them in themselves.
What, then, will that reducer and solvent be, which brings the metals back to their formal and material principles? If the Reader has been imbued with the foregoing doctrine and has a chymic turn of mind, he will surely not doubt that it must be the Philosophers’ quicksilver, so often named above. By that alone can all metals be reduced to their own principle that is, into quicksilver. Hence all the chymists say: “make mercury by means of mercury,” and you will have our true chymical solution, the beginning of our Art and of the Physical Work.
Before you can bring that Solution to full completion, you must know how many things are necessary for completing a true Chymical solution; for unless you proceed rightly in this Chymical Solution, you will undoubtedly go astray and reap no fruits in Chymia.
How many things are necessary for completing the chymical solution.
Chapter 27
All chymists judge that only two things are needed for an absolute and complete chymical solution: namely the solvent (solvens) and the thing to be dissolved (solvendum).
Although they are two, yet they must be in a certain way one by a unity of substance and of the same root. Otherwise there would be no true solution, which must be effected with preservation of the species.
Hence, if the solvent and the thing to be dissolved were not of the same substance and of the same root, the solvent could not dissolve the thing to be dissolved and convert it into its own substance except with an alteration and corruption of its [own] substance; and thus the thing to be dissolved would not be dissolved with preservation of its species. Rather, either the solvent would be converted into the thing to be dissolved, or the thing to be dissolved into the solvent. And if they were of diverse substances, this chymical solution would not take place with preservation of the species, but with destruction.
Therefore it is necessary that the solvent and the thing to be dissolved be of the same kind; for these alone are needed for the perfection of the chymical solution. The chymical Solution is indeed the greatest secret; for if this be performed duly and according to the rules and laws of the Chymical Art, it brings the whole arcanum to perfection and completion.
For when the Solution has been properly made, what remains is women’s work namely only slow cooking and digestion in the doing of which there is no need of ingenuity, great industry, or learning. But for carrying out the Solution there is need of the highest learning and the greatest skill: since the metallic nature must be most thoroughly understood, and one must know by what way and by what means metals are perfected.
Moreover, one must know what in metallic nature is perfect and imperfect, pure and impure, and whence these differ and in what way they differ; otherwise we cannot choose the things necessary for completing our Solution, unless we rightly discern metallic substances pure and impure, perfect and imperfect so that we may reject the latter and accept the former.
As regards our Solution, we must choose pure and most perfect metallic substances, and we must join them with the most subtle and most tenuous substances of the same root and substance, so that from their conjunction, with a gentle external fire applied, our Solution may be effected. It must also be understood that the metallic spirits are to be purified and greatly rarefied, so that they may have the character of the metallic quintessence; and with these thus, when those spirits have been purified and thinned, they are made ever subtler; and the solid, perfect metallic bodies are purified as well, so that their perfected tincture may dye the metallic spirits and so our true Solution comes about, which otherwise cannot be made.
From this you may easily gather how difficult our Solution is; and to hint at that difficulty, countless allegories have been brought forward and devised: hence the rapacious flying Eagles, the cruel Lions that boldly deliver all things to death, the ravening Wolves, the Stymphalian birds, sea-monsters, Geryons, Typhons, serpents, and innumerable other beasts invented by the chymists so that they might hide this Solution of ours from the foolish “mysochemists,” yet reveal it to the pupils of the science by means of those allegories.
Therefore, for understanding and accomplishing our chymical Solution, there is need of a subtle wit and the greatest learning, so as to grasp all those varied and diverse allegories which all signify one and the same thing and to lay hold of their meaning. When these are well understood, one can gather by what method and path our Solution can be made; and once it is duly made, the whole arcanum thereafter is carried out with ease, and thus we come to chymical coagulation and fixation, which alone completes the entire work as will be gathered in the chapters that follow.
On Chemical Coagulation, which completes the whole work.
Chapter 28
With the Chemical Solution explained, we must now set out what Chemical Coagulation is the end and goal of solution. For the things that by solution have been reduced to their first principles and made crude are by coagulation brought back to perfect maturity, and the many are reduced to a single unity. Hence coagulation can be defined as the compacting of what was dissolved, the ripening of the crude, and the reunion of the separated elements; and in this union the whole Arcanum is completed.
For when the chymical principles and elements, having first been separated from their original composition, are then brought again by our coagulation into a second union, they become immortal and possess most potent operations and virtues so that even other dead bodies can be raised to a new life and activity. This seems unbelievable to our “mysochemists,” and when the Sages of our art affirm it, they deem it sheer folly, measuring the philosophers’ wisdom by their own foolishness. But if any light and wisdom dwelt in them, they would see that all things, in their center, are filled with created light which truly is nothing other than life; and since it is true life, as life it truly cannot die therefore it is immortal; and since that inner life is truly immortal, if it can be freed from all its dregs and from its darkness the shadows of death then its operations will in truth be immortal, that is, full of life.
Hence, if there is anything in the world of things that has been deprived of that inner and celestial life, its lack can be repaired and restored; it will be brought back to a new life and rise from death. Just as fire or a certain light, when on the point of being extinguished for lack of wood or oil, immediately regains strength and is rekindled when wood or oil is applied, and so seems to live or shine again so too the life of natural bodies, when it fails in the course of nature because the nourishment of life is lacking, is at once restored by applying a most powerful and most like nourishment; and it recovers its former powers indeed greater and stronger powers if the nourishment be such as to increase life itself and make it stronger.
This, our very chymical arcana can most readily achieve. For by our Solution all the offscourings of life, and the shades and darkness of death, are separated and dispersed, and driven far from the vital substance. And thus by our Coagulation, when all these things have been made pure, they are joined together again and become one much stronger and more powerful than before. In this way it (the medicine) has the power and faculty of repairing the ebbing, aging life of other bodies, life that is close to extinction, and of restoring it so that a new life and a stronger to possess, as it were, a new life and greater strength.
Thus by our chemical coagulation the Work and the Chemical Arcanum are brought to completion; in this operation the whole of alchemy comes to its end and rests. Consider then, friendly reader, how necessary this our coagulation is for accomplishing alchemy for without it there is no usefulness in alchemy at all. For the chemical elements and principles, when dissolved and separated each by itself, unless they are coagulated and firmly fixed, display no fixed and lasting powers or properties and are therefore of no use.
Wherefore we must diligently study and first understand by what way and method chemical coagulation is effected; it is accomplished solely by a moderate fire. For the dissolved and separated elements, thoroughly purified, must be enclosed in their proper vessel and gently cooked until, by a continual and slow coction, they are fixed and reduced to one substance fixed and permanent, subtle and penetrating, and fusible like wax. By this way and method alone did the ancient philosophers make their Stone, or Arabian Elixir, which transmutes all metals into true and legitimate gold and turns all bodies stained with the blemish of old age into new bodies full of life by the simple solution of the metallic elements and their coagulation. Hence the Ancients said, “Dissolve and coagulate, and again dissolve and coagulate,” and thus the arcanum will be multiplied and the whole Work, or Magistery of Alchemy, will be perfected.
Chapter 29
By what ways and reasons the ancient wise men devised their Stone, or whether they had it by divine revelation alone
It is most certain that this secret of nature the most secret of all arcana was revealed to mortals rather by God Himself than invented by human minds. And if a general and universal knowledge of created nature was given and granted to our first parent Adam, we must by no means doubt that this secret of nature also was granted to him together with that general and universal knowledge. From that knowledge Adam himself, by the power of his intellect, could gather this most hidden arcanum and then pass it on and communicate it to his sons.
For he saw that ‘light’ is rooted and fixed in gold and in silver; and straightway he could devise by what way and method he might draw from gold and silver that perfect light the spark of life and the principle of nature’s motion so that it would be thinner and far more subtle, and would not cling with so firm a bond to a solid subject but rather to one much more subtle and tenuous; and thus its communication would be easy. And if he perceived the light in the Sun and Moon and the heavenly stars, and, by a doctrine divinely infused, knew perfectly that it is the principle and foundation of life and of generation in all things.
Thus the Sun and the Moon, by their light, bring forth and preserve all things. He could therefore easily conceive that the light of the heavenly Sun, communicated to gold and poured into it by celestial influences, has the same power and property as the Sun’s own light. Hence, if the light of the heavenly Sun is the principle and foundation of life and of generation, so too the light of the earthly sun that is, of gold will be the principle and foundation of life, generation, and preservation.
Considering this within the very essence of gold, he straightway, by the impulse of his mind and with shrewd effort, devised how this solar light might be possessed, and he strove to make it so fine and tenuous that, by its thinness and subtlety, it could be communicated to all things with ease.
And for a way to attenuate and a better method to subtilize it, he could think of nothing better than to mingle the gold itself with its own principle and element, so that gold would thus be dissolved by its own principle and element, from which it had been made in the beginning.
In this way the light of gold or the vital principle of silver was held diluted in its own principle; and since that principle is exceedingly thin and subtle, it rendered that golden light very subtle and fine, bringing it to the highest degree of tenuity through the subtlety and fineness of the golden and metallic principle. For the gross and solid body of gold or of silver cannot be attenuated by any better way than by mixing it with a substance of the same kind, made very subtle and thin.
Therefore, when Adam saw that gold, by the aid of the metallic principle, had been exceedingly subtilized so that together with that metallic principle it rose by sublimation and, by simple coction alone, was converted into a most powerful and efficacious nature and fixed there he took that gold again, thus attenuated, subtilized, dissolved, and made fixed, and once more, with its own principle greatly purified, he dissolved and cooked it, repeating the same process many times until it passed into a fixed and permanent substance.
He went on until he had brought the gold to the highest fineness and fixity. With this he then made use, and by it he tempered and escaped the hardships of his life. For our poor Adam, the first parent cast out of Paradise, wretched and naked, thrown into all the calamities of human life could not have preserved himself so long from death itself without that divine medicine, which I think was granted to him by God, so that he might guard himself from the miseries and troubles of his life and thus be able to propagate and multiply the human race; otherwise, had Adam and his wife Eve not lived so long, mankind would not have grown to such a multitude. And so this medicine was afterwards communicated and handed down by Adam himself and his sons to our ancient sages, who turned the use of that medicine to the healing of imperfect metals, and thus made the gold from all imperfect metals.
Our ancient forefathers also used that same medicine so that they might bring back their animals drooping and, as it were, already dead to youthful vigor and their first strength: they gave the beasts a little of that medicine, diluted it with common water, and offered it as a drink; and they observed those failing creatures, on the very brink of death, begin to thrive and flourish. From the same medicine, diluted with water, the ancients gave a watering to the roots of barren trees far along in age; and with such a draught those trees were so strengthened that they were seen to put out leaves, to grow lustily, to blossom, and thereafter to bear fruit.
Thus they saw that that light implanted and rooted in gold, proceeding from its celestial influence, worked wonders in every kind of mixed nature and renewed the whole nature of all compounded things, so that all alike regained a blooming youth most strong and hardy.
Accordingly our Adam did not reason amiss, nor did our ancient fathers, in judging that the light fixed and rooted in gold is of the highest power and efficacy provided it be brought down to the utmost degree of fineness and subtleness.
From this we can gather by what road and method Adam himself, and our ancient fathers after him, possessed the Philosophers’ Stone or Secret of Life hidden in the very center of nature: for gold, brought to the supreme degree of tenuity by the chemical art, by means of solution and of repeated coagulations is nothing other than that famous Stone of the ancients.
Into this matter our ‘mysochemists’ have intruded men who have never been able to grasp or understand it; and what they themselves cannot apprehend, they declare to be vain and fictitious, a thing devised by idle people. As if the ancient Sages men of such insistence, upright morals, learning, endless allegories and riddles wished to assure us (and testified, with God himself as witness) that they had possessed, held, seen, and made some work that was false, empty, and chimerical! Nor is it possible that one and the same, entirely similar account could have been written by the many authors who flourished in different times and ages.
It is therefore wiser and truer to believe that our mysochemists are empty, foolish dullards, and that the ancient philosophers were altogether truthful and faithful. To them alone we owe the greatest thanks, for they wrote for us about their Stone and left monuments full of doctrine and truth. And so that these may appear truer to us, we shall still inquire into the parts of our Stone, and thus make the truth itself manifest.
On white Sulphur what it is, where it is, and how it benefits chemists.
Chapter 30.
Every white sulphur that lies hidden in all things is the fire of nature, or an inner light, which constitutes the innate heat enclosed in all things; it ripens all things and causes them to exist as living. In metals it does the same as in other things: it establishes their perfection, and it itself ripens and colors them. It is twofold volatile and fixed.
The volatile appears in the form of a foliated earth, very white and shining, like the finest silver. The fixed is a very white and shining earth, and with a gentle fire it flows like wax; it perfects all imperfect metals into silver and fixes crude common mercury into the best silver. It is commonly called the chemists’ Moon, because it is wont to imitate the virtues and properties of the Moon. It is an undigested Sun, not yet perfectly mature; but when it becomes fully mature it is a perfect Sun, and then its whiteness is changed into a perfect and saturated redness.
This sulphur, as I have said, is found everywhere, and most of all it is present in all metallic bodies; and from these it is usually drawn forth by means of our prepared Pontic water, especially from common, ordinary Luna (silver), if it be dissolved by our Pontic water, and by continual and gentle digestion; and at length, by repeated dissolutions and coagulations, it is converted into a white sulphur, shining and splendid, of the highest penetrative power and most potent for transmutation.
From it is prepared the truest oil of talc, which most perfectly tinges Venus (copper) into the truest Luna (silver), and makes women most beautiful: for it greatly thins and subtilizes the impure and melancholic blood that is gross and earthy, and it purges away all earthly excrements by casting forth the dross of the vital sulphur. Then, through all the pores and the other several emunctories appointed to the body, it frees itself from its impurities. The blood, therefore, being thus purified, subtilized, and attenuated, the skin becomes delicate, and there arises from thence a lively and blooming colour; whence faces shine and blossom, and become very fair with a natural and true, not a painted, beauty.
So also in impure metals as in lead, iron, tin, copper, and mercury the same is wont to be done: by the projection of this white, non-burning sulphur, all the impurities of these metals are driven out; and what is crude and undigested in those imperfect metallic bodies it perfectly digests and cooks, and brings them to their due maturity; whence they are changed into the truest Luna (silver).
From what has been said we gather what white sulphur is, where in places it is found, and to what use it serves for chemists and for physicians, since it is the true and only medicine for curing the diseases that take their rise from the impurity of the blood.
On red sulphur what it is, where it is, and what it is good for.
Chapter 31.
This red sulphur of the Philosophers is the truest fire of nature, perfected in every respect, most completely digested; and it in no way differs essentially from white sulphur, except by cookery and digestion. For in red sulphur the digestion and cooking are perfect and complete, whereas in white sulphur they are not altogether complete. Therefore red sulphur and white sulphur do not differ essentially but only accidentally.
Accordingly, the matter which contains that fire or light of nature is the purest matter of the elements, very well digested by the fire itself and by natural light; whence it is the most perfect of all things and the most noble matter. And whoever has that fire of nature most perfectly separated and drawn from perfect metallic bodies, possesses an infinite and incomparable treasure.
Such a fire, to be sure, exists in general and is found in all things; yet it is not in all things separated from their elementary dregs and brought forth from perfect metallic elements. Such as this is found nowhere except in the Philosophers’ Stone alone for there it lies hidden most perfectly and complete in every respect; whereas in other things it lies hidden indeed, but wrapped about with endless dregs, though there alone it performs and establishes the life of things. When it fades away, life in all things perishes and is destroyed.
In the Philosophers’ Stone it is most abundant and most pure; hence in that Stone it accomplishes marvels, and possesses the most powerful and astonishing powers and virtues so that to those who do not know how far the pure, most pure, and overflowing fire of nature can act in a thin and subtle subject, the operations of that Stone seem miracles.
Accordingly, this fire is present in all things, and from all of them it can indeed be drawn forth, since it inheres in them all; nevertheless from none of these can it be brought to its ultimate perfection, save only from gold and silver and from mercury alone. From these metallic bodies alone can it be extracted and raised to the highest degree of perfection, so that it transmutes all imperfect metals into true gold. Thus it profits many chemists in all respects, and is of such usefulness that none greater can be.
For the Chemists’ Arcanum cannot be made without it; for it is a non-burning sulphur of the highest redness, which coagulates and fixes mercury into gold; it is the true gold of the Philosophers, with which alone the Physical Marriage is effected with Luna herself of which alone it is said: “the ruddy bridegroom took a fair bride” and unless the Sun and Moon be joined into one, and be made one thing, the Stone can neither be nor be made. Now this Luna, the wife, as it were, of the ruddy bridegroom, is another white sulphur, of which we spoke in the preceding chapter; and of these two alone is formed that final Marriage of the Philosophers for preparing the Stone and bringing it to absolute perfection in all respects as will be made very clear in the next chapter.
Whether white sulphur and red sulphur suffice for the perfection of the Philosophers’ Stone.
Chapter 32.
White sulphur and red sulphur are radically and essentially one and the same, and in no way differ save by cookery and by greater or lesser maturity. For the red sulphur is much more perfect because it is riper, and riper because it has undergone a greater cooking, as was said above.
Therefore, that the white sulphur may more quickly attain the perfection toward which it naturally tends, the Philosophers are wont to join it with red sulphur; and the two being thus united, they are accustomed to cook them, so that there may arise from thence a red sulphur that is fixed, tincting, and exceedingly penetrating, by reason of the subtlety it possesses from the separation of all gross and heterogeneous parts. Hence the Philosophers are wont, from the first composition of the metals, to separate these two sulphurs, that they may have a pure metallic substance seminal and primeval separated from all excrements; which, when separated, they afterwards again they join and cook them, that they may obtain the utmost perfection; and this conjunction they call the Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, in which the Sun and Moon truly come together and pass into one substance fixed and permanent, penetrating and tincting.
First, however, they separate them, that they may be freed from all their excrements, and thus be attenuated and subtilized as much as possible; and at length, being so subtilized and attenuated, by a slow and continual cooking they fix the very sulphurs. These stand in need of a most powerful fixation, that they may gain the last degree of perfection; therefore, after they have been separated and cleared of excrements, they are again united and conjoined, that by that cookery they may come to perfect perfection. For as in the first metallic composition they were joined and mutually fixed, so in the second they must again be united and fixed, that they may have a greater and more effectual operation than in the former union and metallic composition because they are purged from all excrements, which excrements indeed cause slowness of action.
Wherefore the Philosophers are wont to separate these two metallic sulphurs from perfect metals, or from common, vulgar mercury; and the separated they purify, and the purified they join together, that in that new conjunction they may acquire a new and more potent virtue and energy of acting. This separation, purification, and conjunction they repeat many times, and thus they have the Philosophers’ aim complete and absolute.
For in those two sulphurs purified, conjoined, and perfectly united lies the whole metallic perfection, and likewise the whole virtue and energy of Alchemy itself. For the pure nature of metals is perfectly contained in those two sulphurs; indeed that created light which is infused into the metallic kind is abundant and overflowing in these pure sulphurs.
And therefore these sulphurs are most powerful, because they possess the strongest and most potent foundation of the operation of metallic nature; so that whatever the metallic nature, or the metallic seed in the bowels of the earth, can accomplish in perfecting metals over a very long time, this pure and separated seed, which is most plentiful in these sulphurs, can most surely do in the shortest time, in the space of a quarter of an hour, in the perfecting of imperfect metals and in changing them into gold or silver because it has that operation of perfecting metals which exists in the bowels of the metallic earth, and it has it in a power far greater, as it were in numberless ways, than that natural force by which metal is perfected in natural mines.
Therefore there must be no doubt at all concerning that metallic transmutation; and that we may possess it, these two sulphurs alone, aforesaid and joined together, suffice us for obtaining and acquiring that uttermost perfection, since containing, as they do, the whole and absolute seed and principle of the perfecting of metals.
Why the Philosophers’ Stone is not believed by all, nor possessed by all.
Chapter 33.
The Philosophers’ Stone is held by all the Authors who have treated of it to be the highest gift of God upon earth and rightly so. For what, in the order of things, can be found or desired greater than that which makes human life in every respect happy and blessed, frees it from all miseries and calamities both of soul and body, and renders it long and fortunate, abounding in every wealth and adorned and fortified with every gift of the mind? This alone, above the other gifts of God on earth, Solomon most earnestly desired and obtained in which alone are all the treasures of the wisdom of God.
Since, therefore, the Philosophers’ Stone is so great a gift of God, in order that its excellence and pre-eminence may be known, the highest and most necessary wisdom is required wisdom which has been given by God to very few. For not all are wise; indeed, almost all are fools, since the number of fools is infinite; nay, worldly wisdom itself and “science” is sheer folly. Accordingly, since they are of like temper fools, I say they cannot believe that glorious gift of God, because they have not enough light and wisdom to behold it and to search out what is hidden in nature. Therefore, since they do not believe it nature’s secret; they despise it and foolishly laugh at it.
Nor is it either needful or expedient that all should believe in it; for if they truly believed, all would hunt it out with relentless toil. And once it were found, they would need nothing else; for all men weary themselves day and night merely to sustain a wretched life how much more would they strain themselves if by greater labor they could lead a life in every respect absolutely blessed and happy! They would not devote themselves to trade, nor seek gold by sea and land; for by this gift alone they would abound in gold. They would not ply any other sciences to obtain clothing and food, since this single science would more than suffice to procure a plentiful living and raiment.
Lest therefore such things should come to pass and the order of nature and of the world be thrown into confusion: if all men possessed the Philosophers’ Stone, who among them would choose to serve or obey others? All would wish to become kings and lords of things, since they would have the highest and inexhaustible riches, unalterable health, and a course of nature and sequence of events that could not be violated.
It is therefore neither necessary that all should believe in the Philosophers’ Stone, nor needful that all should possess it; rather, that a few should believe, and fewer still should have that supreme gift of God and of nature. For when it is obtained by the grace and mercy of God, nothing greater or more magnificent can be desired on earth.
Therefore all the powers of our mind must be expended, that we may be able to obtain this gift of God. What we must do in order that we may enjoy so great a gift of God, we shall show in the following chapter.
What those ought to do who aspire to the Philosophers’ Stone.
Chapter 34.
They who aim at and desire to attain the highest degree of wisdom, and who aspire to the Philosophers’ Stone, must above all fear God; for the beginning of wisdom and of knowledge is the fear of God. To the supreme height of wisdom and knowledge they cannot be raised unless God lead, lift, and exalt them; for wisdom is from God alone, nor can it by any means be dug out with gold or silver. From God’s own throne it descends into human minds, nor can this wisdom be communicated to the enemies of God, because God withdraws whatever is of Himself from His enemies.
He, therefore, who does not fear God cannot be a friend of God; for that which we love exceedingly we greatly fear. Hence the fear of the Lord is the highest treasure, and nothing better can befall a man than the fear of the Lord. For it is the fountain of life and of riches; indeed, from the fear of God Himself we have both the fountain of life and the spring of riches for the fountain of life and of riches is one and the same fountain, since from the light that created things truly depend on it, and that this created light has its true beginning and origin from the uncreated light.
If, therefore, someone longs to possess the highest treasure of this created light which is the Philosophers’ Stone, as has been shown at length in the preceding chapters he must obtain it from God Himself, who is the uncreated Light; for the treasures of the created light depend upon the uncreated light. They cannot be communicated to men unless they are perfectly understood and known; and since understanding is a kind of light, and all light depends on the uncreated light, the very conception of so great a secret and treasure must also depend on that uncreated Light.
From this we can most easily gather that the fear of the Lord is supremely necessary for receiving that created light and for gathering its fruit. Next, one must apply oneself most earnestly to this art and work at it, so that from study and operations it may be inferred what nature is like and by what method it must be handled. For our work is most difficult; the material, indeed, is very hard to know, since nowhere is it called by its proper name; unless you know how to deal with it, you have nothing. The works of the ancients must therefore always be pored over and read, and their riddles explained and untied, so that from them we may be able to gather the labor of the work and the way of making the Stone.
These things, then, must be done first, so let us gird ourselves for this Colchian journey. Therefore, that the matter of the Stone may be rightly known, the following chapters are altogether necessary for you together with all the preceding ones, which will reveal the knowledge of the matter to you as clearly as possible provided only that your wit be not too dull.
That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made from no animal substance.
Chapter 35.
Many of the ancient chemists have left it in their writings that the Philosophers’ Stone is from a living (animate) thing. Nevertheless this is not to be interpreted and understood according to the bare letter, as though there were some material thing in a brute animal or in a man from which the Stone or the Philosophers’ Tincture could be made.
For there is nothing in an animal that is not alterable by fire and corruptible; but the Stone, or that physical tincture, is wholly incorruptible and unalterable. How, then, could that which is corruptible become utterly incorruptible? Hence whatever is said about urine, about the menses, about seed, about hair, about dung, about bones, about blood, and the rest of the things taken from an animal, is a fiction devised at pleasure, and is spoken mystically and typically.
For when the Philosophers said that their Stone is from a living thing, they understood it to be from pure metallic sulphur, to be sure; for that metallic sulphur since it is compacted from created light and is the truest metallic form they called the soul. For all souls and the forms of created things (the human soul alone excepted) come from that created light, which light they called in all things sulphur and the living fire of nature, since the actions of life depend upon it.
And although mercury, together with sulphur, concurs in the making of the Stone since mercury and sulphur can never be separated, nor can the one exist without the presence of the other there is no contradiction in the philosophers’ statements when some say the Stone is constituted from sulphur, keeping silence about mercury, and others say it is from mercury, keeping silence about sulphur; for the essence of the one lies hidden under the shadow of the other.
Therefore the philosophers can rightly assert that the Stone must be made from a living thing, provided they understand by this metallic sulphur for that is the metallic form and the metallic soul. Remove that sulphur, and the soul or metallic form perishes and is destroyed; and this indeed in antiquity the philosophers were wont to call “soul,” since they affirmed the whole world and all things to be animated by that created light, that is, the living fire of nature, with which the whole world and all of nature are filled.
But, strictly speaking, in all things that living fire is what exists, acts, and informs all things yet, although in all things there is the soul of a truly living [principle], it does not perform vital operations everywhere, because the nature is not everywhere disposed for carrying out those truly vital acts. In animals, indeed, the nature is disposed for the accomplishment of truly vital actions and there in different degrees of its perfection; for not all animals are equally perfect in performing vital acts, since they do not have the matter equally disposed so as to elicit from itself, by such disposition, the perfect operations of the created light.
In plants, however, the created light has the matter disposed otherwise than in animals, and there it puts forth only vegetative actions according to the disposition of that matter. But in metals and minerals since the disposition of the matter there is different, and even among minerals it has diverse modes of existing it does not there, as in animals and plants, produce true vital actions; rather, actions as it were vital, since it actuates and informs true metals. And this activity, though improperly so called and only in a broad sense, may be termed a vital act, since it depends upon the created light; which light is truly life and brings forth vital acts in all things of nature, provided the matter which that light actuates is fine and subtle.
Thus it is sufficiently clear in what sense the Philosophers’ Stone cannot be made from any animal substance although some of the chemical philosophers have asserted that from an animated. And by this “animated thing” those who have asserted it understand and interpret nothing else than sulphur, and the pure and shining life or metallic form. But this life or metallic form this sulphur is found only in metals. Whence it is to be understood that the Stone can be made from metals alone, since the ancient Philosophers judged it to be made “from a living thing.”
That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made from none of the vegetables.
Chapter 36.
Raymund Lull, the chief and coryphaeus of the alchemists, affirms that the Philosophers’ Stone is vegetable, and that it ought to be made from his Lunaria and from his wine, red or white. What Lull affirms is most true, provided it be rightly interpreted and we understand what his Lunaria and his wine are. For his Lunaria is not the plant called lunaria, but mercury, which, since it follows the virtues and properties of the Moon, is called lunaria.
And his wine is not common, potable wine, but likewise mercury, that is, our pontic water, which imitates the qualities and powers of wine especially its color and even imitates the striæ of wine in distillation (streaking seen in wine, here during distillation). And just as common wine mixed with water makes for man a most pleasing drink, a notable support of human life and the safest nourishment, so too Lullian wine, when with water being mixed with metallic water of gold or of silver, makes a most pleasant drink and most useful, most apt for the sustaining of human life; for it makes true potable gold, perfectly curing all diseases, preserving life and prolonging it. Thus, interpreted in this way, we may affirm that Lullius spoke truly.
But if by his Lunaria he understands a plant, and by his wine the common liquor pressed from clusters of grapes, this opinion is most false: for in the whole class of vegetables there is nothing that can give that golden tincture, physical and real, since whatever belongs to the vegetable kind is alterable by fire and corruptible. But that golden tincture is wholly incorruptible, and most strongly resists the flames of any Vulcan, however fierce, as being utterly of a golden nature, which entirely despises the conditions of things subject to alteration. Nor is there any vegetable that contains anything of metal or gold; therefore it is altogether unfit for composing the Physicists’ tincture.
Although some philosophers cry out that mercury can be coagulated and truly fixed into very true silver by the juices of certain plants, especially of the greater Lunaria, this is mystical and typical, and must be interpreted of our fixed chemical Lunaria, which is the Philosophers’ Mercury, fixed and perfected by chemical art, which is wont to perfect common mercury into true and perfect Luna (silver).
And although many assert that metallic mercury can be extracted from the putrefaction of certain plants. Nevertheless, from this it must not be concluded that our Stone can be made from plants; for in that production of mercury the plants do not remain plants, but are wholly corrupted, and from that corruption the mercury is generated out of which, then, when the due preparation has been made, the Stone can be composed, since it can be made from any metallic or mineral mercury.
So too from an animal, and from man himself, the Stone can be made, because from him, by a particular putrefaction, a mineral and metallic mercury can be produced but not from the animal while remaining an animal, nor in the fashion that our work requires; and that peculiar corruption by which mercury would be made from animal and vegetable is very hard indeed to achieve, since we have everywhere an exceedingly good metallic mercury, naturally produced for this work provided we use it and perfectly and absolutely know and understand its chemical preparation.
From this we may readily conclude that the Stone cannot be made from any of the vegetables, if they persist in a vegetable substance; for this is wholly alterable and corruptible, whereas our Stone must have an incorruptible and inalterable and golden nature, so that it can endure the most violent fires. But such a golden nature can be found in none of the vegetables, since this nature is found only in the metallic kind alone as will be shown most clearly in the following chapter.
That the Philosophers’ Stone can be made only from the metallic kind.
Chapter 37.
Very many chemists have assured us that the Philosophers’ Stone can also be made from no metals at all; but if that be taken literally as the words sound, we might equally conclude that it could in no wise be made since it could be made from no animal, no vegetable, and no mineral or metal; and these classes embrace the whole of nature.
This statement about metals must not, therefore, be understood so baldly and simply, as though we were saying that our Stone cannot be made from any of the metals. We grant this only of metals so long as they remain in their external metallic form; for metals, while persisting in their outward, metallic form, can in no way compose our Stone.
Rather, they must first lay aside that external form, so that only the internal form remains; and thus, by our art, they are reduced to their principles from which nature herself made the metals. Aristotle calls this (Meteorology IV) a reduction to the first nature of the metals.
Then, metals so reduced according to the opinion of Aristotle and of all the chemists can compose and establish our Stone together with those metallic principles, in which the metals are reduced, they can be so subtilized and perfected by that attenuation that they are able to communicate the perfection which they possess to the imperfect metals that stand in need of such perfection; and thus they can compose that Stone, since this Stone alone perfects imperfect metals by imparting to them that metallic perfection which it has from the metallic principles of which it is composed.
This, indeed, seems to be hinted by the Turba Philosophorum in these words: “Unless the bodies be destroyed by nature of their body until they become bodiless bodies, as it were a thin spirit, you cannot draw forth that most subtle and tincting soul which lies hidden in the innermost of the belly. Therefore the spirit must be poured back upon the body so many times until the spirit becomes body and the body spirit.”
Whoever therefore knows how to make the rising spirit red, when a perfect body is joined to it, and from that body and spirit can most subtly extract, with a gentle fire, its own fine matter hidden in its belly if he be patient in the length of the cookery will without doubt tinct every body.
For in this art we ought to do nothing else than reduce perfect bodies to the first matter, or to the principles of perfect bodies what the Turba calls “making bodies into spirits and spirits into bodies” so that the tenuity and subtle nature of perfected metals may be obtained, which is the first matter; and the metallic principle; for by that reduction we obtain that most subtle metallic [substance], hidden in the inmost belly of the metal, which has the power of tincturing.
This alone we must cook, and by a perpetual, continual decoction fix most perfectly bring it to a constant nature, enduring in the fire, ready-flowing and tincting. This we can indeed accomplish from perfect metals, their principle or mercury operating, and from no other kind of things whatsoever in nature, whatever the Philosophers may say and affirm (and I myself in many places of my works); for if we seem to assert anything contrary to this opinion, it is mystical and allegorical, and ought to be interpreted in accord with this our sentence.
For metals cannot be produced, nor transmuted one into another, save by imitating nature; and nature does not produce metals, nor transmute them mutually, except with a metallic seed and principle. Therefore, if you wish to lead imperfect metals to the perfection of gold and silver, you must imitate nature herself, who, since she is wont and able to do this only from a metallic principle and seed, requires you also thinking and working to the same end to do the same.
Hence it is very easy to conclude that the Philosophers’ Stone is from the metallic kind alone must be made. Hence pure earth itself, and whatever can be drawn from it, is wholly excluded unless it have the nature and essence of a salt and spirit of the same [metallic] kind. Hence dew and common water, and whatever is extracted from them by the chymic art, are likewise rejected, because they have nothing of a metallic essence. Although metals are produced out of earth and water, nevertheless they are not produced immediately from these, unless first, by being joined, mixed, and altered, they become metallic principles; for in these elements alone the metallic principles are found in plenty, and from these alone they ought to be drawn and are drawn and brought back to art.
But these principles, although prepared with the greatest art, will serve thee nothing unless thou hast perfect metals at hand, with which these metallic principles must be conjoined, so that the perfect metals together with those principles may be reduced to principles (as has been repeated above even to satiety). Therefore those who busy themselves with dew, water, and earth must know what is to be sought in them: namely, only the metallic principles can be had from these which, however, are everywhere found abundantly, separated and purified. It is only necessary that they be reduced into spirit or mercury; and with this mercury and spirit the perfect metals must likewise be reduced into spirit. And thus by our art we perfect the Philosophers’ Mercury, from which alone our Stone is made directly by simple decoction of which enough has been said at large in the present little book.
I judge. Now there remains only for us to conclude against our Misochymists.
Conclusion of the whole work against the Misochymists.
Chapter 38, and last.
Our discourse has now been spread out at great length concerning the proof of the Philosophers’ Stone. For we have proved that it exists in the order of things and endures; we have shown what its matter and substance are; by what way and method it can be made by the chemical art we have laid open; what way our ancient Fathers used we have made manifest; of what parts it consists, and the powers, properties, and uses of its parts we have indicated so that all may gather, nay may see plainly, as in a most clear and shining mirror, whether the Philosophers’ Stone be something fictitious and devised at pleasure, or whether it truly and really exists.
For nothing clearer can be had concerning its existence than the things that have been set forth what has been said of its matter and substance, what has been shown of its composition, and what has been demonstrated of its parts, virtue, property, and utility. Concerning a non-existent and fictitious thing, could there be brought forward such reasons, such authorities, and so many notable and approved experiences as have already been adduced? Can there be true knowledge, as there is about the Philosophers, or any dispute about it, is supplied this very little book being witness, and countless other little books besides, which, by authors most worthy of credit and most approved in learning and morals, have been printed and will yet hereafter be printed.
Concerning a thing that does not exist and is fictitious can various authors, writing in different ages, put forward one and the same, entirely similar judgment? For what one now writes and asserts, when the age has passed and the author is dead and his writing and little book have perished along with their author, another author arises, of a different country and region, who writes and asserts the same things. If there were not true knowledge about the Philosophers’ Stone, such things could not happen; for true knowledge is about things that truly exist, that remain and are immutable. It is therefore proper and truly necessary that the Philosophers’ Stone really persist be permanent and unchangeable in the order of things so that knowledge can be given about it and, through various ages, by various and diverse authors, the same and altogether similar things concerning it can be handed down.
Its truth is also most firmly attested by all histories, both recent and ancient; to deny faith to these is the part of a fool rather than of a wise man for it belongs to history to report the truth. It is recorded in Suidas that all the Egyptian philosophers, in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, were especially skilled in the art of making gold and silver, by whose help and aid the Roman Empire most stoutly withstood them. It is also read that Nicolas Flamel of Paris, by his chymical art, had so much gold and silver that he built many churches and hospitals in Paris and elsewhere and endowed them with very great and ample revenues. It is written likewise that Arnold of Villanova, the most renowned physician of Pope John XXII, made at Rome exceedingly fine gold, proved by every test.
It is further reported that Raymond Lull, a Majorcan, a friar of the Order of St. Francis, in the time of Edward III, King of England, and Charles V, King of France, about the year of Christ 1354, made a very great quantity of gold by the chymic art; which he gave to Edward III that he might subdue the rebels against the Christian faith who nevertheless also waged war against John, King of the French (son of Philip VI), defeated him, captured him, and led him captive to England about the year 1356.
All these histories, and many similar ones that are related of Paracelsus and of other authors of the chymic art, bear witness that most excellent gold has been made by the authors and practitioners of that art. And accordingly it is to be believed that the Philosophers’ Stone also has been made, since this Stone alone has the power of transmuting imperfect metals into most true gold.
What now will our Misochymists say whither will they turn? Whom will they proclaim to be fools and simpletons: themselves, or the chymists who have truly guided by Nature’s own wisdom and teaching, they are skilled in this art of making gold, possess it, and teach it.
Surely they ought rather to proclaim themselves imprudent and foolish, nor be ashamed to profess themselves such before all nations since, through their own ignorance and gross nescience, they have lacked so much light that they could neither see nor even touch this secret of Nature which truly exists and endures in the order of things. Let them therefore come to their senses and recant, and not imagine themselves alone to be wise when they venture judgments on matters unknown to them lest, when things clear and manifest are set before them, they confess that they have been fools; for it is not the part of a prudent man to say, “I did not think so.”
We therefore conclude that Alchemy is true; that the Philosophers’ Stone is real; that the gold produced is most true and well-proved, being wrought by the chemical art with the aid of the Philosophers’ Stone; and that all our misochymists act foolishly and rashly in despising the chemical art and the Philosophers’ Stone and in slandering it though they are to be forgiven and spared, since they know not what they do.
A Chymical Riddle, whose veil and rind contain the whole chymical work
When it was my wish to visit the whole globe, and after I had surveyed almost all the regions, provinces, cities, and towns of Europe; had traversed well-nigh all Africa and Asia by no means wearied by the toil of travel, but consoled by the variety, greatness, and rarity of things a curious desire began to burn in my mind to visit the fourth part of the world, the regions and provinces of the New World.
Accordingly, when I committed myself to the Ocean and boarded a ship made ready for this, and for a while sailed with the sails already spread and the winds in our favor, straightway the air was disturbed: on this side Eurus, on that Notus, rush upon us; the waves are lifted to the sky and bent down to the lowest abyss; and as the storm grew, with masts and sails all torn, the ship gaping and now already full of water, tending to the bottom of the Ocean terrified by so great a danger, I called upon the divine power and, after many prayers and vows had wearied it, at length that terrible and dreadful tempest abated.
And with the half-shattered ship I made harbor at the Canary Islands, the Fortunate Isles, where I remained for a long time, until the ship was completely repaired and furnished with everything which the storm had scattered and destroyed. Therefore, the ship having been repaired and furnished with all things necessary for the completion of our voyage, we again put out upon the Ocean; and with sails and winds favoring we finished our passage, and beheld a new land and a new heaven, and came at last to our long-desired America a land all glowing with carbuncles, wholly fiery and aflame; whence by the Spaniards it is called Tierra del Fuego, lying beyond the Magellanic Strait toward the Antarctic pole where all things were as one could wish: there was nothing of cold, nothing of excessive heat; but all was temperate and moderate.
Charmed by the pleasantness of the place, I left the ship and made her fast in a most agreeable and safest harbor; and wishing to survey the very lovely spots of this new land, straightway, a new guest, I was received by a new host and led into a palace, a royal house, conspicuous with many pinnacles and towers rising into the air. Forthwith, from the very entrance, it is clearly seen and manifest that it is the splendid lodging of some king and most exalted person nay, I could call it the magnificent abode of a certain god. For lofty ceilings, cunningly carved of citron-wood and ivory, were visible; golden, silver, and crystal columns rose up; and all the walls were overlaid with gold and silver relief-work a man of wondrous, consummate art had wrought it, yea, almost a demi-god, or rather a god who with the subtlety of great art had fashioned gold and silver, and set precious stones into varied and distinct images.
Enormous porticoes, hollowed out in vaulted form on either side of the inner court, were seen, dappled and painted in blue and gold, variegated with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds; there were depicted the true combat of Phoebus with the serpent Python, and the loves of Phoebus himself spectacles that filled the beholders with stupendous admiration. I already thought myself blessed and a dweller in heaven, since I seemed to tread upon precious stones and upon light itself; so that the whole house, and all its walls made solid with masses of gold and precious stones, flashed with their own brilliance, and the house made a day for itself though the sun refused and was unwilling. Thus the chambers, thus the colonnades, thus the very doors shone, so that the house knew neither any night nor any shadow of darkness.
Everything, then, was to my wish in this divine lodging: one thing alone was lacking there were no rills, nor fountains of sweet water leaping forth to water the most delightful and pleasing gardens of that palace. There was only a single spring set in the very heart of the palace, wrought by Nature herself with wondrous art golden indeed, and more precious than gold itself, since from that fountain there issues something nobler and more excellent than gold; from it a perennial water bursts forth continually, and spouting itself into the air in jets, led through seven pipes, it was discharged.
But what is marvelous beyond all belief, admirable and astounding is that the water of this fountain was not wet but entirely dry; and yet everything that was sprinkled with that water grew green and flourished with a perennial, lively bloom. By a seven-fold channel it watered all the gardens of that palace; and although it was dry and in no way could make things damp, still it irrigated, running over the level surface of the gardens, nor did it adhere to anything except to those things that were of its own nature. Now they are seven in number, and such are the natures and essences of that fountain as govern and rule the whole of nature and this world.
Most wonderful altogether is the virtue of this water, although it is very poisonous and brings death to the very things which it produces; whence from the very spring of the fountain both death and life leap forth. To inflict death is its highest praise and glory, since from that death which it brings there arises perpetual and immortal life a most cruel mother when she herself kills her own children; and a kind mother when by that very death she leads her children to everlasting and immortal life.
Astonished at the marvelous outflow and power of this fountain, I am led not far from there to a pool where the waters of this fountain had gathered in a mass and lay stagnant; and there a strange and prodigious, utterly dreadful sight was seen: a winged dragon of wondrous size I saw rise up from the very middle of this pool a winged dragon of marvelous size and strength.
At the sight of it, so dreadful, I was terrified and tried at once to flee, had I not been restrained by the most soothing words of my host he who had led me into the palace and had ever been my faithful Achates.
“Why do you fear,” he said, “and shudder at the sight of this dragon? Pupil of Apollo, put away all fear from your mind. You will see even more wonderful things here in this pool: from the battle and contest of this dragon with a valiant and mighty knight, panoplied in armor on every side, who is to slay this poisonous and pestiferous dragon in a set duel, so that for this palace and splendid house eternal peace may ensue. Otherwise this whole magnificent palace is destined to destruction and ruin a most grievous misfortune for this whole region and its inhabitants.”
While he was still speaking, lo! a stout warrior, with slow and heavy step, advanced toward the pool; and with sword drawn he hurled himself headlong into the pool and attacked the dragon. Then there arose between them a horrid and terrible struggle; and the pool being of a fiery and airy nature, and violently agitated by the combat began to emit and exhale from itself fiery and airy vapors; now it appeared black, now yellow, now green, now blue, and now dyed with the whole variety of colors and from the dragon’s jaws there belched pure fire and a wholly poisonous flame.
By the deadly venom of that flame our brave and most valiant knight was overcome and, together with all his gilded armor, was devoured and swallowed by the dragon. Yet he was not altogether dead swallowed half-alive so that he tore to pieces all the dragon’s entrails from within, being not yet lifeless; and thus at last the dragon was forced to die, and with his own blood together with the knight’s blood the whole pool was dyed and became blood-red.
Thereupon, through putrefaction and the very gentle heat of the sun, there sprang up snow-white roses of the greatest fragrance, filling the whole hall with their most delightful scent. After the birth of these very white roses there appeared others, very ruddy roses, sweeter-smelling even than the white; and though the sun’s heat was most fierce, they in no wise withered, but ever flourished in their redness.
Then the whole pool dried up together with the bodies of the dragon and the knight and all their blood; and all of these, together with the aforesaid pool, were changed into the deepest red roses. The perfume of these roses was so great, so sweetly life-giving and truly vital, that all the inhabitants of that palace lived truly by that scent alone and led a truly vital and immortal life.
And so, if any one of them fell ill or was indisposed, by taking a single rose and holding it to the nostrils, by that scent alone he was wholly revived/renewed; every illness vanished; and a truly vital life free and delivered from all the inconveniences of human life sprang up on every side. Thus the inhabitants of that dwelling lived unharmed by every misery and calamity, and they led a very long life, altogether blessed and in every respect happy.
Amazed into stupefaction by so great a marvel, I turned to my host; and since, from astonishment and the sight of the miracle, I could not speak, I made signs with my eyes and hands that he would disclose to me the knowledge and understanding of so great a mystery and wonder. He immediately, understanding and catching my signs for he was most prudent and very old, old in years only, not by weakness of body, being of the greatest vigor both in mind and body, and yet he counted more than five thousand years from his birth he therefore, the oldest of all and yet younger than all (since he surpassed everyone in his own strength and virtue), addressed me gently and said as follows:
“You, astonished at the marvels accomplished, are as if enchanted and struck dumb, unable to speak for the vision of things so admirable. Let us sit here upon this crystalline stone that happens to present itself, that you may more calmly hear and grasp what I am about to tell you concerning this palace, the region and province to which you have come by your voyage, the wondrous spring you have seen, and the pool that was changed into white and red roses you see of the Dragon and the Knight whom you beheld fighting one another, and, dying by turns and together, undergoing that wondrous metamorphosis.”
This palace, then, is the house of the Sun, the lodging of Phoebus; whatever riches it contains whatever of gold and silver, whatever of precious stones has its origin from the fountain that amazed you. And so I myself, together with my wife who is my sister (for we were born at one birth of one father only) I, I say, together with my sister, who is held to be my dear spouse built this dwelling and divine home and dedicated it to Phoebus.
Everything that was necessary for the construction of that magnificent work we took from the fountain alone; and what is more wonderful still, this work, once built and finished, is kept in its brightness, purity, and perfection by the mere scent and vapor of this fountain. If the fountain were destroyed, this palace too would be destroyed and utterly perish, and all its wealth would vanish; therefore the fountain is preserved and set in the very center of the court, that from there it may better and more strongly distribute its powers to the whole fabric.
The region and province also to which you have come is the Kingdom of the Wise and of the Philosophers: in it alone they dwell and take their rest, and they despise the other provinces and regions of the earth, since in this one alone they rejoice and possess, according to their wishes, whatever they could desire.
This, then, is the province and the marvels in it (which indeed are without number) all depend on the fountain itself. The pool, the Dragon, the Knight, and the roses both white and red that were born from it, all spring from that fountain and have their preservation from it. And I myself, who am the true craftsman and architect of all things, together with my wife, can do nothing without the fountain itself whose father is the Sun and whose mother is the Moon; and the menstruum and seed from which the Father and Mother brought forth this fountain is a water that holds in its womb earth, air, and fire.
And in it are hidden those things which, when they are made manifest, cause the fountain itself to be wholly dried up. The Dragon dies and the Knight dies, and from the death of them all those white and red roses are produced; thus death is destroyed by death, and everlasting life arises.
The Knight, the Dragon, the fountain, and the whole work are one and the same, having one and the same origin and welling forth from the fountain; but first the fountain rises, the first-born of all, and from it all the rest proceed.
Having said this, the Old Man yet ever young fell silent, then raised me where I sat; and opening the crystalline stone upon which we had been seated (which had been congealed from the fountain), he showed me a mirror in which the whole nature of animals, plants, and minerals was most fully depicted and laid open. There I beheld the properties, powers, and energies of all things in nature with their principles and elements, and what they are and ought to be.
I learned then, kneeling with hands joined, I gave immortal thanks to my Creator, and I congratulated my host for his discourse and favor, by whose grace these things had befallen me from heaven. Straightway I thought of returning to my homeland; and, after saluting my host and giving him due thanks, I boarded my ship, which lay moored in the harbor, and happily and very safely made land in my own country. I told all these wonders to my neighbors; though truly incredible, yet reason itself, authority, and experience prove them to be altogether certain and most true.
FINIS.
To God be praise and eternal glory.
By grace and privilege of the King it is permitted to Pierre Bosc, sworn bookseller of the University, to put to press the book entitled Propugnaculum Alchymiae of Pierre Jean Fabre, Doctor of Medicine of Montpellier, together with other chemical and medical works of the same; and for the time and space of seven consecutive years, without impediment. All printers and booksellers are forbidden to print, or to cause to be printed, the aforesaid book or any part of it, under penalty of confiscation and other fines imposed by the same privilege. Given at Paris, the last day of January 1639, by the King in his Council. Cebaret.
Finished printing 25 January 1645.