ON ALCHEMY — TWO DIALOGUES
Of which the first uncovers—and by sure arguments proves—the genuine meaning of Geber’s books, which the author had purposely concealed and wrapped in figurative speech.
The second brings to light the mysteries of Raymond Lull of Majorca.
To these are prefixed one hundred and twenty-nine propositions, embracing the same subject with concise brevity.
Nuremberg, at Johann Petreius’, in the year 1548.
Translated to English from the book:
De alchemia dialogi II. : quorum prior genuinam librorũ Gebri sententiam, de industria ab authore celatam & figurato sermone inuolutam, retegit & certis argumentis probat : alter Raimundi Lullij Maioricani mysteria in lucem producit : quibus praemittuntur, Propositiones centum uiginti nouem, idem argumentum compendiosa breuitate complectentes
Contents:
1. Printer to the reader
2. An Exposition of the Books of Geber and Raymond 129 propositions
3. First Dialogue, explaining the true and genuine meaning of Geber’s books.
4. LIGNUM VITAE - The Tree of Life – Demogorgon and Raymundus
THE PRINTER TO THE READER
Greeting,
In past years I issued a few little works on Alchemy by Geber and Raymund Lull, which both of them contain something far different in their depths than they show at first glance. Hence it easily happens that not only the untrained, but even those a little more learned, when they try to understand them, grope in the dark and stray from the true aim.
Since I would by no means have this happen—for I wish to be of use, not to do harm—I decided that these Dialogues should be made available to students of that art, so that, trusting to their guidance as to a certain thread, they may boldly enter this labyrinth and return in safety. For the author of them, whoever he was, examined not only those little books with great diligence and industry, but also handled the very matters themselves by experiment.
And even if he has not unearthed all their mysteries (for it would be arrogant to assert that), yet he has contributed very much to the learned for understanding and observing their figurative language, so that some things they too, following his example, will discover. To the unlearned also he will have been of service at least in this—that by showing how, in this art, something far other is signified than the words sound, he may deter them, lest they plunge themselves into ruin by engaging in an art for which they are not fit. Farewell.
An Exposition of the Books of Geber and Raymond, translated from the Tuscan language.
One hundred and twenty-nine propositions, useful for rightly understanding the books of Geber and of Lull, by an unknown author.
1. Geber composed his books ingeniously, in such a manner that they would least be hidden from the prudent, be most profound for men of middling capacity, and would shut the door firmly on both the ignorant and the unskilled—yet all under one and the same doctrine.
2. This operation is brought to its end at a cheap price.
3. The principles of Nature are also the principles of this Magistery.
4. Whoever does not have a natural talent and a soul that subtly examines Nature’s principles and Nature’s foundations—and the metaphysical matters that can follow Nature in the properties of her actions—will not find the root of this most precious science.
5. As for the natural principles of metals, their distinction is threefold: some are most remote; some remote or middle (mineral); others immediate.
6. All metals are generated from Sulphur and Vitriol.
7. Argent vive (quicksilver) and common sulphur are not the first principles of metals.
8. In this art the “first matter” is called that which comes nearest to the metallic nature.
9. Vitriol comes nearest to the metallic nature, because it is sulphureous and contains within itself a mineral power by which it is converted into metal.
10. The mineral power for generating metals is in washed sulphur (sulphur lotum), without which metals can never be generated.
11. Those things which have the nature of salt and alum are only soluble.
12. From dissolved vitriol a double fume is released; and these two fumes are called by the Philosophers Sulphur and Mercury.
13. The kinds of sulphur, in metals, acquire a virtue very near to metallation.
14. From imperfect metals we obtain various vitriols, useful and necessary to us.
15. Prepared species of sulphur are the most suitable things to convert even argent vive (quicksilver) into (Philosophical) Mercury, gold, or silver.
16. When exhaled vapors fall upon a certain red earth, they are converted into common quicksilver.
17. When the double fume, penetrating through rocks, finds sulphur, it dissolves it and mixes firmly with it; and through successive decoction in the ore it is converted into metal.
18. All metals are generated from the same or a similar matter. Their differences arise from the diversity of the mineral place, from various accidents, from the contrariety of washed sulphur, and from different digestions.
19. All accidents supervening upon the radical matter can be removed. In order to make the true Elixir—which is a metal more than perfect—it must be produced from Nature’s own seed.
20. The elements of the Philosopher’s Stone, whose nature is near to converting themselves into metal, possess this aptitude—something that does not at all belong to the elements of other things.
21. Common vitriol is a remote principle with respect to the Art.
22. The principles of the Art are not found in vegetable or animal things, nor in things taken from them, because they are alien to the nature of metals.
23. Sulphur and common argentum vivum (quicksilver) are not principles of Nature; therefore they will not be principles of the Art either.
24. Sulphur alone can generate neither Metal nor Elixir.
25. Whoever knows how to prepare Sulphur so that it can be mixed and united with metals will possess Nature’s greatest secret and has entered upon the short road to perfection.
26. Elixir is made in two ways: (i) by calcination and solution; (ii) without lime and without distillation.
27. Argentum vivum, joined with its own sulphurs, can be coagulated and made fixed.
28. Argentum vivum is not made fixed by herbs alone.
29. Our argentum vivum, or our Mercury, is a salt, having the power of true lime.
30. Mercury (i.e., the argentum vivum of metals) by calcination is converted into salt.
31. In metallic bodies there are two sulphurities.
32. Our Arsenic partakes of sulphur and argentum vivum; hence they call it Hermaphrodite, yet by itself it cannot generate either metal or Elixir.
33. Tutia is a white fume—our Jove—and therefore it imparts to copper a citron (yellow) color.
34. Sulphur and argentum vivum are rendered fixed by conversion into earth, and also without this conversion.
35. Sulphur is calcined and washed with its own salt and vinegar.
36. Our Jupiter and Saturn are salts joined together at once, before distillation.
37. In the preparation of sulphur several pellicles (skins/films) are formed upon it.
38. Under the name “marcasite” Geber speaks of the Philosopher’s Stone.
39. The vessels of putrefaction and of sulphur’s preparation are the same and alike—that is, flat at the bottom.
40. The principles of the Art are found in metals.
41. Elixir and the Philosophers’ Stone are vegetable, animal, and mineral.
42. It is necessary that a metallic medicine be found which can transmute imperfect metals into true gold and silver.
43. Metals can be most perfectly transmuted, one into another.
44. Art for the most part surpasses the operation of Nature.
45. The whole magistery of this Art consists in a single stone.
46. In the generation of metals and of the Elixir, sulphur is like the male seed, but argentum vivum (quicksilver) is like the female menses.
47. The Philosophers’ Stone contains within itself every natural preparation, and everything that is required for perfection.
48. Elixir, potable gold, the quintessence, and the seed are of one and the same matter.
49. (Opinion of some:) that the Elixir should be made from common gold.
50. The Elixir cannot be made from common gold, because its sulphur has already reached its utmost and permanent tincture, and its tincture cannot go beyond what is sufficient for itself. Therefore gold is called complete and determinate, nor (as would be most necessary) can it be duly reduced to the first matter.
51. The radical moisture, equally powerful in the other metals, is incorruptible and incombustible, as in gold.
52. In the Philosophers’ Stone, gold and silver are present in potency and in virtue.
53. By perfect bodies Geber understands the species of prepared sulphur.
54. The gold of the Philosophers and potable gold are the most subtle radical sulphur, which is called the soul.
55. The white fume, carrying a red fume in its belly, is the true quintessence.
56. The quintessence, in act, possesses no elemental quality.
57. The water of life of the Philosophers descends from the Philosophers’ Stone.
58. Sulphur, by the mediation of fire, sweetens bitter water.
59. Our heaven must be adorned with our sun and stars.
60. Our quintessence is called by various names, after pernicious and fierce animals—such as the bear, the lion, and the like.
61. The coagulating and fixing waters are two species of sulphur, designated by the names of Venus and Mars.
62. By vitriomonium in this art, sulphur is often understood.
63. There is a difference between the coagulation of the quintessence and the fixed Elixir; for they produce different effects.
64. In potable medicine an animal part is present.
65. In each metal the several metals of the Philosophers are contained.
66. In this art it is necessary that the hidden be made manifest, and the manifest be concealed.
67. When it is prescribed that bodies must be resolved into water, the species of sulphur are meant.
68. Besides sulphur and argentum vivum, there are no other metals of the Philosophers.
69. Art imitates Nature in many things.
70. Red sulphur, like wine, when by calcination it becomes black, is called “black, blacker than black.”
71. From the black color to whiteness, many and various colors appear in sulphur.
72. The Elixir is first black, secondly whitened, afterward it assumes a citron color, and finally red.
73. The Elixir coagulates in the form of an egg.
74. The blackness lasts forty days.
75. The ancients, under the veil of poetic fables, concealed this art.
76. Under the fable of Hercules and Antaeus, they hid the preparation of sulphur.
77. The ancients said that Jupiter transformed himself into a golden shower, by which fable they concealed the distillation of philosophical gold.
78. By Argus’s eyes, changed into the peacock’s tail, they signified our sulphur, which passes from color to color.
79. Under the fable of Orpheus, they concealed the sweetness of the quintessence and of potable gold.
80. If we believe Empedocles, the ancients concealed the whole practice of this art under the fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion.
81. Under the fable of the Gorgon, who turned into stone all who looked upon her, they hid the fixation of the Elixir.
82. Concealing distillation, they said that Jupiter changed into an eagle and flew up to heaven with Ganymede.
83. Under the fable of Daedalus and Icarus they concealed putrefaction and distillation.
84. They veiled the distillation of the Philosophers’ gold by saying that when the golden bough was cut off, another at once sprang up similar and golden.
85. They hid the same distillation also by saying that Jupiter cut off the genitals of his father Saturn.
86. The mercurial water is Phaethon’s chariot.
87. By armed Minerva they understood that distilled water which contains a portion of the most subtle sulphur, the sulphur that is called iron.
88. By Vulcan, whom Minerva follows, is signified the sulphur that follows this water, and its own salt in putrefaction.
89. By the thick cloud with which Jupiter surrounded Io, is signified the pellicle (film) that appears in the coagulation of the Elixir.
90. The black pellicles that appear in the calcination of sulphur are the black sails with which Theseus returned to Athens.
91. Under the name of the Flood and the generation of animals, they described distillation and the generation of sulphur.
92. By Mars they signified our sulphur; and by Juno, the element of air, and sometimes the element of earth.
93. By Latona, compressed by Jove on the island Delos, they signified our copper, which, when placed in the bottle (boccia), generates Sun and Moon; they hid the preparation of sulphur, saying that Vulcan, because of his deformity, was cast down to the island Lemnos.
94. Atalanta means our water—most swift and light—which with the sulphurs coagulates and is made firm.
95. The boli with which Theseus smeared the Minotaur’s mouth are species of sulphur in the Labyrinth that is, in our vessel, or bottle (boccia)—thickening gluing together the mercurial water.
96. By the Phoenix, which is ever reborn, they understood the multiplication of the Elixir.
97. Under the name and fable of Demogorgon they concealed the matter and the practice of this art.
98. The Chaos of the ancients is our Saturn.
99. The Elixir cannot be made from silver.
100. Let the Elixir be made from imperfect metals.
101. Imperfect metals are the middle minerals.
102. (An opinion of some:) that the Elixir is to be made from common lead.
103. (Another opinion of certain people:) that the Elixir ought to be made from tin.
104. The Elixir can be made neither from tin nor from common lead, since they are unclean at the root.
105. The first order is preparation, the second is fixation, and the third is the multiplication of the Elixir.
106. From the burned dregs/scoriae our Mercury is extracted, with which the multiplication is performed.
107. Copper and common iron are pure and clean in their root.
108. The Elixir ought not to be made from common copper.
109. The ore of our copper is a salt, called Saturn.
110. (Opinion:) that the Elixir cannot be made from common iron.
111. But by the tradition of Geber and of all the Philosophers it is further proved that the Elixir is made from common iron.
112. The vessel for the distillation of Mercury ought to be like a flat plate or of a small concavity.
113. The Elixir is made from common iron because this has more fixed sulphur than the other metals; and because its spirits are more powerful; and because its earthiness is easily separated from it and it is easily reduced to the first matter; and because the Mercury of that same iron, once prepared (since its sulphur better defends it from combustion), and because it is incomplete and a mineral mean in which the extremes are contained in potency; and because its ore is the ore of philosophical gold.
114. The ancient Philosophers, by various riddles and similitudes, signified that the Elixir is composed from iron.
115. The ancients called iron “man,” because it has soul, body, and spirit.
116. Iron is generated in the earth especially by the power of the Pole Star.
117. That stone sold for a cheap price is iron, if you compare it with the other metals.
118. Vegetable iron is so called.
119. The Elixir is made from a most common/cheapest stone.
120. The most common stone of the Philosophers is vegetable, animal, and mineral.
121. Separation of the elements.
122. The scum/slag of iron which the smiths throw away is a most useful Philosophers’ stone.
123. The radical moisture of metals is not burned by fire.
124. From Geber’s writings it is proved that the spirits from the lime of iron must be sublimed.
125. The lime of iron, by the vehemence of fire converted into the nature of glass of a color as it were green, or dark sky-blue, or dark sapphire, is a most powerful Philosophers’ stone.
126. This glass is the radical moisture of iron; and by the judgments of various Philosophers it is proven to be the stone that is not burned by fire.
127. Iron is cleansed from much earthiness when it is reduced to the nature of glass.
128. The ancient Philosophers converted glass into a metallic nature.
129. Glass is a greater useful stone, discovered and famous, etc.
FINIS
First Dialogue, explaining the true and genuine meaning of Geber’s books.
Demogorgon, Geber.
DEMOGORGON. Greetings, most wise descendant of the great Mahomet.
GEBER. I rejoice that you have arrived safely; but what is the cause of so long a journey?
DEMOGORGON. A natural and inborn desire to search out and to know the most profound secrets of nature—secrets which, drawn forth by a divine mind from the most hidden arcana of nature, have indeed been committed to writing by you, learnedly and ingeniously. Yet they have been written with such obscurity of discourse that, even after very heavy labors and a singular assiduity in study, I cannot penetrate to the true sense or gather the drift of your intention. Although I have spent much time, even to the years of manhood, and for the better part of it upon these matters, and in turning over your writings I have passed nearly thirty-five years.
Therefore it had long been fixed with me that I must traverse the whole world, so that at last there might be found for me a wise man who should so possess this divine and most secret part of natural philosophy that he could easily make me a sharer in so deep a line of thought. But on this my pilgrimage I used to hear countless practitioners, who with rash boldness affirmed that they had known exactly your intention and the truest sense of your writings; yet, apart from toil and heavy expense, they had achieved absolutely nothing, laying all the blame upon you. I, however, out of singular love toward you—whom I have always revered and highly esteemed—did not hesitate to defend your reputation and honor against the most shameless detractors’ futile empty taunts and bites.
For I knew that you, above all others who have attempted this most subtle portion of the more secret Philosophy—both among the ancients and the moderns—excel in the judgment of all true lovers of Philosophy. Hence, seized with an extreme desire to see you and to discuss these matters face to face, I bent my journey from Italy hither into Persia—chiefly that I might prevail with you not to refuse to receive me into the fellowship and number of your disciples. So much, indeed, did love of learning and zeal prevail with me that neither the length of the journey nor the many dangers to be undergone seemed able to deter me; rather I thought these things should be bravely despised.
GEBER. Your request is certainly honorable, and your desire is a most certain proof of a noble spirit. Wherefore I shall not refuse to admit you into the number of my disciples and friends. You will also do me no ungrateful service if you will set forth the reasons of those who, with idle slanders, strive to detract from my reputation.
DEMOGORGON. A sharp contest of words often arose between us and those most wicked detractors of your fame and name, who bitterly accused and reviled you, declaring that by your writings they had been mocked and deceived, tripped up and supplanted—because (so they say) you wrote to this effect, in the preface of the book Of the Sum of Perfection: “By God, whoever shall have wrought according to this book will rejoice that he has attained the true end of the art.” Trusting in these words, they were led on above all not to spare either toil, expense, or time—doing all things, as they say, according to the rule of your book—yet they never achieved anything, save the most grievous loss of their goods, and a waste of time and labor. And what they feel more keenly is that they have suffered loss of good name and reputation; that they are a laughing-stock to all; that they are pointed at with the finger, as the proverb has it; that they can no longer, with any safety, live quietly or dare to consort with other men. For this cause they execrate you, they curse, they revile, and they make no end of spreading contumelious reproaches—crying out that you are a cheat, an impostor, a crafty and deceitful man, to whom one thing only has ever lain at heart: to drive as many men as possible mad under the pretext of reason.
GEBER. I ask you—what man so divine and wise has ever lived among mortals that he has not in some measure offended the wicked and ill-disposed?
DEMOGORGON. But what do you say about the many who are most wise and of a life almost blameless, yet fall into the same mistake?
GEBER. In the first book, chapter 7, of our Summa we wrote that this art is kept within the divine power of God, who withholds it or bestows it upon whom He wills—He who is glorious and exalted and filled with all justice and goodness. Moreover, at the end of that book we also declare that we have delivered this art in such a fashion that no one can understand it unless it be given him by God, or by us who hand it down, when we instruct him in it.
DEMOGORGON. What need was there to write or publish things that no one would understand?
GEBER. At the end of the fourth book I openly show that I have delivered this art in clear and plain speech for the prudent and for the sons of this doctrine, so that diligent craftsmen can easily grasp and understand it. But I warned the ignorant to shun it as harmful to them—an enemy and most contrary—since it readily leads to extreme poverty and the utmost misery. Yet if they do not believe a faithful and fatherly admonition, or set it at naught and then unjustly accuse us, all their error must rather be laid to ignorance and presumption. Therefore, if such men have been reduced to want and misery, do not for a moment suppose it has been through our fault. For in the first book, chapter 5, we have shown in express words that, if they know the principles of the art and the things we have delivered both in deed and in understanding, they can attain the perfection of the magistery at a reasonable cost. What else is this but a faithful warning that they should guard their money and not squander it vainly through rash presumption? But in order rightly to understand the things we have delivered, it is necessary to consider the language of this doctrine not by the bare letter, but by a deeper inquiry; to penetrate to the very marrow of the allegorical sense; and to gather with great industry our mind and intention—scattered here and there, and purposely obscured and veiled from the unworthy—so that at length they may at length arrive at a true knowledge of the principles of nature and of the art.
DEMOGORGON. If I rightly understand your writings, the principles of nature are also the principles of this art. For you write in Book IV, chapter 9, that after determining the principles of natural things you will likewise speak about the principles of this art, and, speaking in detail, about the natural principles of metals. In Book I, chapter 12, you say that in the work of nature the natural principles are “foetent spirits” (i.e., emitting vapors) and the “living water,” which you also allow to be called “dry water.” The same words are repeated in the last chapter of the book On the Investigation of the Magistery, where you conclude that our Stone is “foetent spirits” and “living water,” which we might rightly also call “dry water.” Therefore, since the natural principles of metals are likewise the principles of the art, I think no one will doubt that from a right knowledge of the natural principles one may also find the principles of the art. Wherefore I ask that you set forth for me, in fixed order, the natural principles, so that the principles of this magistery may also become manifest to me.
GEBER. And this the order of teaching especially requires. For this reason we wrote in the preface of the first book that those who are ignorant within themselves of the natural principles are very far removed from our art, since they do not possess the true root upon which they can found their intention. And in the same book, chapter 3, we wrote that he who does not have a natural talent and a mind that investigates the natural principles ingeniously and subtly—the foundations of nature and the artifices whereby art can attain nature in the properties of its operations—will not discover the true root of this most precious art and magistery. Therefore it must be carefully considered that the natural principles of metals are of three kinds: some are most remote, others remote and intermediate (the mineral kinds), and a third kind is that of the immediates.
DEMOGORGON. Explain clearly also this threefold difference of the principles, so that I may thoroughly grasp the whole order of nature in the begetting, or generation, of metals, and may understand the nature of artifice, so that I may in some part imitate it.
GEBER. Although the most remote principles and roots of metals (according to the operation of Hermes) are believed to be the four elements, nevertheless, since a thing is named from what predominates in it, there is no doubt that earth, mixed with water, is the true principle and foundation of all minerals. Aristotle affirms the same in Meteorology IV, where he teaches that metals which melt or can be fused by fire have their origin from earth and water—something he also confirms in Meteorology III. In this view Aristotle is followed by Avicenna, Albertus, and St. Thomas in their books on minerals and on meteors.
DEMOGORGON. I very much wish now to understand and know in what way earth mixed with water can be changed or converted into metal.
GEBER. The Sun and all the stars—both fixed and wandering—borrowing their light from the Sun, continually heat the earth above, below, within, and without, by their circular motion, by the reverberation and subtlety of their rays, and by their most powerful force of penetration. Now since every thing that is burned or thoroughly dried out is easily corrupted and changed, and since the corruption of one thing is the generation of another, it is necessary that earth mixed with water, long exposed to such burning and thereby transformed, is at length converted into another earthy nature. Thus we see wood and stones, when strongly burned, turned into ash and lime.
DEMOGORGON. When the earth is thus calcined, into what earthy nature is it changed?
GEBER. It is converted into a kind of earth that contains in itself some substance of salt or alum. For experience teaches us this: we perceive that ashes, lime, sweat, urine, and sea-water dried by the Sun all contain saltness. Therefore we said in the beginning of the Testament that from every burned thing salt can be made.
DEMOGORGON. By what common name is that salt of yours, hidden in this earth thus calcined, called?
GEBER. It is commonly called vitriol.
DEMOGORGON. Oh! then metals are generated from vitriol?
GEBER. Indeed so: from vitriol and sulphur comes the generation of all metals.
DEMOGORGON. How do you prove this, so that I may trust you?
GEBER. It is certain that every thing is resolved into that of which it is composed. Therefore, if you are willing to resolve metals into their former matter, they are without doubt reduced to vitriol—which we also said may be called “dry water.” Hence, in the book On the Investigation (the chapter on vitriol) we expressly affirmed that from different metals different kinds of vitriol can be separated—most useful for us and most necessary in the operation of this art. We confirm the same again in Book 3, chapter 7.
DEMOGORGON. It seems to me (to confess frankly what I feel) that there is no small contradiction in your words.
GEBER. What contradiction do you tell me of?
DEMOGORGON. In many places you have taught, and in your writings you have asserted, that sulphur and quicksilver are the true natural principles of all the metals; but now you ascribe this to vitriol. This makes me more than a little suspicious.
GEBER. That quicksilver and sulphur are not the first principles of the metals we have sufficiently proved in Book 1, chapter 12. If you rightly understand that passage, you will recognize that I clearly stated that these, in their own nature, are by no means the true principles of the metals, but rather something else which follows from the alteration of their substance at the natural root, into an earthy substance.
DEMOGORGON. Your speech here is obscure; I do not understand.
GEBER. You doubtless remember that I have already said that earth mixed with water is the root and foundation of all metals?
DEMOGORGON. I remember.
GEBER. Now this alteration of theirs into an earthy substance does not take place in the very essence or substance of common sulphur or common quicksilver, but in their root—namely, in the earth mixed with water, and—by mineral and celestial heat—boiled and transmuted, as we have shown quite plainly.
DEMOGORGON. Now, if you please, say a little also about the middle minerals and the remote principles.
GEBER. The middle mineral from which all metals and quicksilver, as well as marcasite and antimony, are generated is that very vitriol which, we said, lies hidden in the earth mixed with water—or boiled and calcined. And since metals must be reduced to their first matter, that is, as near as they can return to a metallic nature, they must be reduced to the nature of vitriol and sulphur.
DEMOGORGON. Why are metals generated more readily from this vitriol than from other sulphur or from alum?
GEBER. Because it is more sulphureous and comes nearer to the nature of metal. By the celestial influx its own power is also more apt and prompt to be converted into metal, provided the mineral place concurs and promotes the change, with sulphur and heat sufficient.
DEMOGORGON. What do you mean by a “mineral place”?
GEBER. A rock in which the mineral power of hardening and fusing resides.
DEMOGORGON. What is this mineral power?
GEBER. It is a celestial power, having the ability to beget metals; it is hidden in a certain washed (purified) sulphur, and it is bright like silver.
DEMOGORGON. I know of no sulphur that is both washed and shining.
GEBER. Have you ever noticed that in sands and rocks dug from the earth there are certain glittering little scales intermixed, like to silver?
DEMOGORGON. I have often noticed them, but I thought they were actually silver.
GEBER. You are mistaken. It is sulphur—by nature washed, cooked, and partly fixed—having in itself a metallic nature, brightness, and sheen. Without this, metals can in no way be generated.
Wherever it abounds in plenty, there metals are generated—as Albertus (on Meteors) likewise testifies.
DEMOGORGON. Then is vitriol born among the rocks?
GEBER. Not at all, but in the earth.
DEMOGORGON. How, then, does it enter the rocks, so that the washed sulphur you speak of is found there?
GEBER. In the depths, metal-bearing mountains are not rocky in the same way as on the surface. Therefore, when miners in digging find earth and alum—namely vitriol—they do not go deeper, but leave those diggings or veins of metal; for they know that the metals fail there. Pliny also asserts the same (Book 33). Yet it sometimes happens that not far from such veins or workings that have run out, other ones are found which contain metal.
Now since, from the operations of nature (as we clearly showed in Book 2, chapter 15), we can sufficiently prove that only those things which have the nature of salt and alum, and the like, are soluble, it will be evident that this vitriol of ours too can be dissolved by the power of subterranean heat—once dissolved it gives off a twofold smoke (as I said in Book 1, chapter 12). For heat is a mixing power and very strongly unites, binds, and compresses together the subtle earthy and the moist aqueous, digesting them into one another. But celestial heat, by its nature drawing to itself the moist and subtle aqueous, carries off with it also something of the subtle earth. Aristotle affirms this in Meteorology V in these words, when he says that a moist vapor enclosed and a dry vapor enclosed are together raised aloft. The same happens, as Galen and Avicenna maintain, because the heat that lifts one and the other vapor is always a mixing power and causes the motion of the essence of the one into the essence of the other. These two smokes or vapors are called by the Philosophers sulphur and quicksilver.
When the earthy vapor—subtle, unctuous, and somewhat digested—arises, it is the essential matter of sulphur (although we have called it by the name arsenic). But the moist aqueous vapor—viscous and mixed with subtle earth—is the proximate matter of quicksilver, as Albertus affirms (Book 3 De mineralibus, chapter 4).
DEMOGORGON. So then, in the generation of metals two kinds of sulphur come together—namely, the sulphur that is resolved out of vitriol, and that which you call “washed sulphur,” found in rocks and in the mineral place?
GEBER. In Book I, chapter 12, at the end, we said that the natural principles of the metals are three: sulphur, arsenic, and quicksilver. Of these two kinds of sulphur Avicenna speaks in his book On Minerals under the name “ink,” saying that inks are composed of salt, sulphur, and stone, etc. And just as common cloth is dyed by common vitriol, so, by a certain likeness, these two species of sulphur are the light and tincture of the metals. Wherefore you will not err if you call them vitriols, or inks. For this reason it was that we said above that from imperfect metals different species of vitriol can be extracted—most useful and indeed necessary for us in the operation.
The sulphur that is generated in the rock is a compound of sulphur and stone; but that which is resolved from vitriol is composed of salt and sulphur, and in it lie hidden the mineral powers of certain fusible bodies which are generated from such sulphur. The sulphur produced in the rock is not dissolved, because it does not have the nature of salt; but the saltness that is enclosed deep within the salt itself dissolves together with the sulphur, and afterwards is coagulated by decoction. These, then, are the species of metallic sulphur: they have already received the mineral power of generating metals, in certain metallic bodies—especially in one in which are contained both an iron-like power and a copper-like power, although at times they also acquire the nature of gold and silver, and are sometimes called gold or silver.
That which is born in the rock finds in its own metal an iron-like power; before it is washed it is red, or saffron-colored, possessing the property of iron, and it is called iron. But that which is enclosed in vitriol (or rather in salt) is green before preparation, like common vitriol; and in the metal it has acquired a copper-like power and the property of copper, wherefore it is called copper, and Venus, and verdigris (the “green of copper”). These two kinds of sulphur can by art be extracted from metals. But when that sulphur which is called iron is, in preparations, as silver be whitened and stripped of every burnt greasiness; for this reason Avicenna judged it most suitable for being converted into common quicksilver. But when the green sulphur, by preparation, is made pure and clear with a touch of redness, and in it there is a fiery power that does not scorch, he considered it most fit for the Chymists in making gold, and it is called gold.
DEMOGORGON. I’m eager to hear by what means this twofold vapor can penetrate rocks and stones.
GEBER. These two vaporous exhalations, when drawn by celestial heat, if they find an open earthly place from which a dark fume exhales, are caught up into the air and there are transformed into comets or falling stars, and into rings appearing around the Sun and Moon, or into the rainbow, or into winds, thunder, lightning, clouds, mists, hail, snow, hoar-frost, rust, and such things as appear in the air, as Aristotle teaches in the Meteorology, and as all the other Philosophers affirm. But if the place is narrow and so confined that neither to the natural heat nor to the double fume is any outlet open, then these two vaporous exhalations—this double smoke—begin to thicken and multiply, and in the very mineral place they are dispersed, seeking exit everywhere through little cracks, as Albertus teaches in the book Mines. These vapors, when shut in among the rocks, are called the middle minerals or the first matter of metals, as St. Thomas states at the end of Book III of the Meteorology.
DEMOGORGON. It remains now that you should also reveal to me your view concerning the immediate principles—how, when these two vapors penetrate the rocks, they are converted into metal.
GEBER. When these vapors, penetrating the rock, do not find the washed sulphur, the rock is stained with various colors and no metal is generated there. But if this smoke, or vapor, falls into some part of the rock and, because of narrowness, cannot descend further into another place, it settles there and makes a pool of water which never dries up. If, however, this vapor or smoke falls into red earth, it is there converted into common quicksilver. And thus, in penetrating the rocks, if they find the washed sulphur, it dissolves, as it were, the very fixed thing itself dissolves it, and mingles itself with it. Therefore I said in Book I, chapter 12, that the water which flows through the passages of the earth finds a dissoluble substance of the earthy matter—namely the washed sulphur, which is the fatness of the earth—and it dissolves this and unites itself to it uniformly, so that from both there is made one natural substance. This mixture, by a succession of decoction in the mine, is thickened and hardened, and becomes metal. And if it sometimes happens that I censure the opinions of others, I rebuke them by the bare letter; for we have often put first what ought to have been set afterward.
DEMOGORGON. If all metals are generated from sulphur and vitriol, and by long decoction are transmuted into another substance of sulphur and quicksilver, whence comes their so great diversity?
GEBER. From the diversity of the mineral place and of the accidents that supervene upon the first mineral matter; and further from the diversity of the washed sulphur and of the heat which in various ways digests the metallic matter.
DEMOGORGON. Can these supervening accidents be removed?
GEBER. All the accidents that come upon the first metallic matter can be separated by art, as I plainly showed in the preface of the book On the Investigation—in the chapter On preparing the most sharp vinegar—and at the end of that book. I say, moreover, that the undigested parts also can be digested.
DEMOGORGON. So much for the explanation of the natural principles is enough for me. Now we must speak of the principles of the art—how the principles of nature are also the principles of the art, and in what way art may imitate nature.
GEBER. In Book I, chapter 5, I said that the craftsman ought to know the principles of this art and the chief roots which are part of the substance of the work. For he who does not know the principles will not attain the end. Know, therefore, that the transmutations and generations which nature makes by the mediation of some seed, these same can be made by art, with some seed intervening. This St. Thomas also affirms in Book III of the Meteorology, when he says that the alchemists by the said natural principles, that is, by sulphur and quicksilver—one can effect the true generation of metals. Since, therefore, nature has its own proper natural seed (as has been stated), then in the generation of metals the thing that approaches nature fitly and closely, so as to be converted into the nature of metal, must be prepared for the Elixir—which is a metal and surpasses all others in perfection—by means of some proper natural seed acting mediately; without such a seed, only God, the creator of nature, can generate anything—as, for example, to make bread out of a stone, or a woman out of a man’s rib.
DEMOGORGON. It is the opinion of all the Philosophers that the four elements are the principles of all mixed things; and to this opinion you also seem to lean in Book I, chapter 6, when you say that the diversity of the preparation of metals is the cause of the diversity of the species. Therefore, in every thing that has elements, are there both the principles of art and the principles of nature, and can they be taken from any elemented thing?
GEBER. If you take me rightly, I say that the elements of the Philosopher’s Stone are not the most remote elements, nor are they the same as the elements of other things. For these elements of the Philosopher’s Stone have been altered and transmuted from their first nature, and have received a nature and property nearer (to metal), so that they can now be transmuted into metal—which in no wise agrees with the elements of other things.
DEMOGORGON. Then I will take common vitriol, which is the natural seed of metals, and by distillation I will extract that twofold smoke, which by temperate fire I will convert into the substance of sulphur and quicksilver; and in this way I shall imitate nature.
GEBER. This vitriol is indeed a principle, but remote from art. I wrote, however, in Book I, chapter 8, that we cannot imitate nature in her principles; and in Book III, chapter 2, at the end, I showed that nature in sulphur, arsenic, and mercury is in the least degree imitable—that is, that we cannot flee or even counterfeit the things that are generated by nature, nor can they by that method be brought to perfection. For since these smokes are most subtle by nature, by temperate heat they are led to perfection in a thousand years; but we, wishing by vehement heat to shorten so long a time, resolve all things into smoke.
DEMOGORGON. You leave me doubtful—indeed quite uncertain.
GEBER. Why so?
DEMOGORGON. A little earlier you warned me that, for composing the Elixir, we should take the seed of nature. But now you deny that vitriol is to be taken—although it is the seed of nature. Therefore, if perhaps there is some other seed, or if some kind of vitriol is nearer to the art, by which in our workmanship we can imitate nature in the composition, show us that for the Elixir.
GEBER. Without doubt it is something else.
DEMOGORGON. Where shall I find this?
GEBER. Where nature has placed it.
DEMOGORGON. That I knew. But where has nature placed it? Shall I perhaps find it in vegetables?
GEBER. In Book I, chapter 11, I said that among the various opinions of those who suppose there is an art, some have affirmed that this art is found and possible in all vegetable things; but for them it is by no means so. Wherefore they will sooner faint from toil than ever bring the work to possibility.
DEMOGORGON. Then shall it be found among animals?
GEBER. Arnold, in the book On the Perfect Magistery, distinguishing between vegetable and animal things, says: since these things are entirely and wholly remote from the nature of metals, it is impossible that metals should be generated from them. The Philosophers, however, when proposing this art in some vegetable or animal thing, or in things taken from them, have spoken by way of likenesses. For since these are not the principles of nature, by no means can they be principles of the art. This mistake has deceived many. For since the Elixir is of a metallic nature, without doubt it must proceed from the seed of a metal. Besides, since it is most necessary that it should be united to metals, it must needs be like to metals in substance, since only things like to themselves are firmly united and are strongly joined.
DEMOGORGON. Then I will take sulphur and quicksilver, generated by nature?
GEBER. I warned above that these are not the principles of nature; therefore neither will they be the principles of the art; and—what is more—by art these they will by no means be able to make them fixed so that they may be united into one substance of gold or silver—since for this there is required above all a sure and infallible measure, a right proportion of thickening, and an exquisite balance of heat—all of which are unknown to us, as we plainly showed in Book I, chapter 8.
DEMOGORGON. Then I will take sulphur alone, since in Book I, chapter 13, you say openly that he who knows how in the preparation to mix this with bodies and make it friendly to them, holds the greatest secret of nature and has already made some entry upon perfection, though there are many ways which yet all lead to the same intention. In the same place you attest before God that by this all things are illuminated—that it is body, and light, and tincture. Moreover, in the same book On the Roots, speaking of that red water, you cry out that it lights lamps and illumines houses (that is, metallic bodies) and bestows very great riches.
GEBER. Although our sulphur is the principal seed and the beginning of the metals and of the Elixir, nevertheless—just as a father, by means of his own seed, does not beget children in himself but in another, namely in the menstrual blood—so too our sulphur begets neither metal nor Elixir in itself, but in its own quicksilver, or in another metal. You will note, therefore, that the Elixir can be made in two ways: namely, with distillation, by solution and coagulation of the matter; and without distillation, solution, and coagulation—Saint Thomas affirming the same at the end of Book III of the Meteorology. As to the second way, it seems to pertain thus: I say that the craftsman who knows how so to prepare sulphur that it can penetrate bodies and join itself to them, already holds the greatest secret of nature and has entered upon the way of perfection. Moreover, in a certain chapter on exact practice I said that this work, abbreviated, is finished in twenty days; and that in this operation two stones are necessary (that is, two metals): one from which the sulphur is to be extracted—as it were fixed and altered—to which the said prepared sulphur is mixed by fusion. And when I say that this work is finished in a space of twenty days, it is to be understood after the preparation of the sulphur, which is prolonged to three months.
The work must be begun. Therefore, in the chapter already named on exact practice, we placed the whole efficacy of this work in the purging of the Stone from its greasiness and foulness. And the sign by which you may detect the sulphur as now almost prepared we pointed out in the place cited, saying: “When you see the oil of iron upon water shining with such brilliance that it dazzles the eyes, then gather it.” For what is collected thus accomplishes the whole work and coagulates by itself.
I remember this sulphur under the name Mars in the book of the Testament, where I say: If you know how to bring this to the whiteness and softness of silver, it will be made firm and fixed in every trial and assay; and when Mars is melted easily and without the help of any other thing, you have what you desire. Ceasing to speak of Mars, I said in the first book, last chapter: When it is melted without a medicine that can mature its nature (that is, when by itself it is melted without quicksilver), it is joined to the Sun and the Moon and is not easily, nor without industry, separated from them. Yet if by the vehemence of fire it is perchance separated, this shows that in its last fixation it is not yet fixed. But if it is joined to them for the space of twenty days, it is made fixed with them, and thereafter by no art can it be separated, unless the very nature of its fixation be changed—an imperfect fixation which it has acquired by calcination and preparation. The nature of this fixation is changed by solution in mercurial water, when the Elixir is completed in nine months. But when it is joined to them unmodified (that is, when it is joined to the Sun or Moon at the beginning), being neither boiled down nor transmuted in its nature, it neither changes color nor tinges the metal to which it is joined, but only increases it in quantity.
Moreover, in Book III, chapter 1, I said that the cause of the perfection of bodies, or of quicksilver, is the substance of sulphur and arsenic; for by reason of their earthiness and good substance they are not hindered from entering into bodies, which are perfected by good fusion; and by reason of their subtlety the impression they make is not easily removed by volatilization. Therefore a middling substance of these is not the cause of the perfection of bodies (or of quicksilver), unless they are made more fixed. For however strong the impression upon the bodies themselves, it is not easily be removed, yet unless it be fixed with the ultimate fixation, it will not remain firmly established forever. Concerning this sulphur and arsenic I spoke under the names Mars and Venus in Book III, chapter 8, saying that their fixation is a substance near to true firmness of fixation, yet not firm nor perpetual. About the preparation of this sulphur we shall treat more fully elsewhere.
DEMOGORGON. If I remember rightly, in Book I, chapter 10, you condemned the operations of those who tried to fix the spirits in bodies.
GEBER. I said that this had been attempted by some without a preparation of the spirits, and that at length they despaired in the work. I gave the same warning at the beginning of the chapter just mentioned.
DEMOGORGON. I understand that I am not sufficiently capable to grasp these things. Therefore I will set aside sulphur and take quicksilver, as the substance of all the metals, from which all metals proceed by the mediation of the power of sulphur. For since it has its own sulphur in itself, with which it is coagulated, it suffices for the composition of the Elixir—Hermes saying that all things sought by the wise are found in Mercury, namely body, soul, spirit, and tincture. We likewise affirmed the same in Book IV, chapter 10, saying that the medicine which coagulates quicksilver is in the very Mercury. Therefore Mercury alone suffices for composing the Elixir, as we said—since in nature there is nothing so fitting to Mercury as the things contained in Mercury itself. You also write in Book II, chapter 16, that quicksilver contains its portions of sulphur in itself, naturally conjoined and united. Moreover, you call him the best and most perfect craftsman who knows how to make the Elixir from quicksilver alone, since herein nature surpasses art.
GEBER. In Book I, chapter 16, we wrote that Mercury was joined by some with tempered fire; when they thought it was already coagulated, they found it raw and running as before; and being astonished for this reason, they declared the art to be vain and by no means true.
DEMOGORGON. I desire to hear the cause of their error.
GEBER. Because quicksilver, being that twofold smoke, or a vapor exhaled, which by nature can neither be coagulated nor made fixed, could never possibly be coagulated or fixed if it did not have that washed, non-scorching sulphur—that is, the very medicine proper to Mercury by which it is coagulated and made fixed. Much less could it be made fixed by itself, without that sulphur, or without a similar sulphur and medicine. The same is Albert’s judgment in Meteors IV, tractate 3, chapter 2, where he says that in the works of Alchemy quicksilver is dried by much adustion and by mixture with sulphur—but it does not entirely change color, which must be understood with respect to the operation of the Elixir.
DEMOGORGON. What, then, are we to think of those who claim they have made Mercury fixed with herbs?
GEBER. I will answer them briefly. In Book II, chapter 17, I said—namely, that a medicine by which Mercury can be coagulated and fixed in the crucible must be taken from things that agree with it. These are all bodies, that is, sulphur and arsenic. These bodies are called the Philosophers’ spirits. And a little below I said that whatever be taken as the medicine for Mercury must be of a most subtle and most pure substance, such that Mercury easily adheres to it, and is easily liquefied by it, just as fixed water conquers water in the contest with fire. This medicine will coagulate Mercury itself and convert it into a solar or lunar nature.
From what has been said above it is therefore clear that our Mercury is not common quicksilver, but rather a salt—like common lime, because common quicksilver, or the quicksilver of metals by calcination and reduction, is converted into salt, as is plainly shown throughout the book of the Testament. This common thing (I mean salt) possesses the properties of our Mercury, properties which many attribute to common Mercury or to common quicksilver—namely, that it has much viscous moisture, very great dryness, and earthiness that stinks; that it is dry water, and many other things which we shall discuss more fully in their proper place.
Concerning this our Mercury I wrote also in Book II, chapter 16, saying that it has its own portions of sulphur naturally mixed with it—more or less—which can be removed from it by art. Moreover, I said in Book III, chapter 7, that there are sulphureous qualities in metallic bodies, one of which is enclosed in the depth of Mercury from the very beginning of its commixture; another, however, is accidental or supervening. It has, in fact, a good quantity of this supervenient or accidental sulphureity, and this is as it were fixed, and—though with diligent labor—not easily removed from it. But that sulphureity which is shut up in its very depth is small in quantity, and cannot be removed unless first the first substance of quicksilver be corrupted by distillation. By means of these two sulphureities quicksilver is coagulated and made fixed, and is now prepared. Therefore we say that the Elixir can be made from quicksilver alone, that is, mixed with its own sulphurs. These things are also to be understood about the multiplication of the Elixir, which is done with quicksilver alone.
DEMOGORGON. If the Elixir can be made from quicksilver alone, because it has its own sulphur within itself, then by the same reasoning I will prepare it from arsenic alone, which is composed of sulphur and quicksilver—as Albert says in De mineralibus IV, 1: we must observe a certain hot-dry conjoined with cold-moist in the same complexion, which is called Hermaphrodite, as may be seen in plants which are in every part impregnated. Now he speaks of our sulphur, which has by nature a kind of hermaphroditic quality, and is composed from two names, signifying the son of Mercury together with Venus. For this sulphur of arsenic, so called, is a compound of Mercury and the sulphur of Venus, also called copper. Therefore it will be able from itself to generate the Elixir.
GEBER. Speaking generally about hermaphrodites, I say that they themselves cannot beget by themselves without seed or without external matter. There are some also who say that in the beginning God created Adam both male and female; but since he could not beget in himself, God separated the woman from him, and afterward by conjunction he begot. Plato tells a similar tale of the Androgyne, who depended on the Moon, having a part of the Sun and of earth—that is, he depended on our salt, called Saturn; and on the Moon, which before distillation shared in common with the Sun and earth. The same happens with our arsenic; for however much it partakes of the nature of sulphur and mercury, nevertheless, since it is subtle and delicate and very weak, it does not suffice for the generation of metals or of the Elixir without the help of another sulphur and mercury; in this it differs and is distinct from them. Therefore we wrote in Book I, chapter 7, and in chapter 14, that arsenic is a most subtle matter, like an oil (of which I spoke in Book II, chapter 12), and a feeble body (mentioned in chapter 11 of the same book).
In the second respect—namely on account of its descent and kinship with sulphur—it is the very subtlest and most fixed part of sulphur. In this regard it differs from sulphur, and especially is it unlike it in that arsenic takes tincture more easily into white than into red. And I wished in that place to show that it is composed of sulphur and mercury.
Although it easily tinges toward whiteness, nevertheless those faculties are useless unless they are firm. Likewise we spoke of arsenic under the name of Venus at the beginning of Book II, calling it a mean between the Sun and the Moon: I understand between sulphur and mercury, because it shares in the one and in the other. Raymund (in the book entitled Apertorius), speaking of arsenic, uses these words: “It has a soul that participates with nature, with body and with spirit—that is, with sulphur and with quicksilver—by which participation it has obtained the power of binding these together.”
But sulphur tinges easily into redness, and with difficulty into whiteness. Concerning this sulphur under the name Mars we likewise spoke in Book I, chapter 10, calling it itself; it easily tinges to redness, but to a good whiteness with difficulty—so that we might show plainly that the red tincture which appears in sulphur during putrefaction is not useful, but rather harmful. Yet that whiteness lies hidden within the redness, as I said in the Testament, and that to this whiteness one arrives by long sublimation and solution; for this reason I called the tincture difficult. Morienus says: “Our Latona, however red it may be, is useless unless whiteness follows upon the redness”—that is, unless the redness be converted into whiteness.
We also wrote in the aforesaid chapter on arsenic that two kinds of arsenic and two sulphurs exist, namely citrine and red. Therefore, when arsenic is distilled by fire by expression together with mercurial water, it becomes red, etc... yet white; and when these two are joined together, they produce the citrine color.
All this is confirmed by the elder Philosopher, when he says that the ancient philosophers called the soul and the spirit that arise from this mixture red arsenic and citrine—by “red” understanding the soul that tinges. Likewise they called this water—that is, red sulphur—and the spirit of arsenic “citrine,” because the spirit whitens the soul and then dyes it with its own color. And they called this soul copper (aes), and this is the heavy smoke. And we ourselves said in Book I, chapter 21, that Venus is tinged citrine by tutty—that is, by that white smoke. In like manner, sulphur is both red and citrine: it is red after the putrefaction of the matter, but when it is joined under white Mercury it becomes citrine; for the citrine color is a fixed proportion of red and white.
Therefore tutty, which is the white smoke of our white Mercury, by its citrine color overcomes and modifies the red—namely our copper—as we showed quite plainly in Book III, chapter 3. And in chapter 4 of the same book I said that what is sublimed from metallic bodies by a strong fire, so that the most subtle part of them may rise, is white smoke together with sulphur (called gold), and that arsenic itself is of a most citrine color; and when arsenic is made fixed together with sulphur (that is, by a gentle fire in the final decoction). But the best sublimation of all is from the calcined matter of the metal itself, as we shall point out.
Although both sulphur and arsenic are a perfecting medicine of our Mercury, nevertheless the Elixir cannot be made without it—that is, without mixture with bodies. But when the sulphur, after washing, becomes scaly and is reduced into a body, and at last is brittle, then it is prepared.
DEMOGORGON. When sulphur, arsenic, and mercury are made fixed, they do not melt, nor can they penetrate bodies, because they have already become earthy. But if they are not made fixed, the spirits separate them by the fire; therefore the Elixir cannot be made from these.
GEBER. This is one of the arguments of certain people who have little practice in this art. I mentioned such men in Book I, chapter 10, rebuking them, since they have but small knowledge of this matter nor can they in any way bring this operation to completion. Yet, by clinging stubbornly to your arguments, you fall into a faulty consequence, with bad results—because of insufficiency.
DEMOGORGON. I don’t follow that piece of logic.
GEBER. A fault of consequence is committed when we argue affirmatively from the higher to the lower. It is not a sound conclusion to say: “it is fixed, therefore it is earthy.” That manner of arguing is faulty through insufficiency. For we can make spirits fixed in such a way that they are by no means converted into an earthy nature, and yet they melt and are able to penetrate bodies. As for sulphur, this is clear from Book I, chapters 10 and 13; likewise from Book II, chapters 12 and 18; and, when treating of mercury, from Book III, chapters 1 and 6. In Book III, chapter 6, I also said that mercury can be made fixed in such a way that it is by no means converted into earthiness—although by another kind of transmutation it can be set in earthiness, namely by a hurried and brief fixation, which is done by precipitation: then it is fixed by distillation and changed into earth, the burnt dross remaining at the bottom of the vessel or alembic. And this is a hasty transmutation of the first mercurial form, which can be finished in the space of six hours.
But when earthiness is removed by washing, it is joined and united with the other prepared spirits. And in its own vessel, over a gentle fire, its vapors can be shown off repeatedly, step by step, or gradually. This long and slow confirmation and fixation neither loses metallic fusibility nor is it converted into earth.
In Book II, chapter 6, we said that this mercury possesses two humidities: one that can be removed from it by the violence of fire—that is, by distillation, by the expression of fire—and the portion that remains in the bottom of the vessel does not melt, for it is now fixed and earthy. But when the earthiness has been removed by washing, the other humidity, remaining in it, is removed by its own gentle fire, namely a slow fire, such as is appropriate to the final fixation of spirits.
As for the preparation and fixation of other things belonging to the nature of earth, metallic bodies are fashioned by calcination, as we have plainly shown in Book I, chapter 18, where we say: by calcination imperfect bodies are fixed without mixing in any other thing whatsoever—reduced, that is, to a lime, by their own adustive (burning) sulphur alone. For everything that has in itself a burning sulphureity is seared and calcined by fire, as we have shown quite plainly in Book II, chapter 13, and in Book III, chapter 6.
Therefore, when your metal has endured so long in the fire that it cannot be brought back into its body as it was before, nor is it diminished, nor does it change one color into another, know that it is now fixed—that is, converted into a definite earthy nature which easily withstands fire, not with a metallic fusibility, but only with a glass-like (vitrifying) one. And then all the spirits existing in that lime are fixed; and unless they are separated and made volatile and afterward fixed again, they cannot be prepared. For this reason you must consider how they are marked by conversion into an earthy nature, and from that it will be clear how they can be prepared.
But since by this fixation not all are made fixed at once, nor in the same way, we must therefore discuss these matters separately. So much for mercury; now we shall speak about arsenic and sulphur.
We said before that the mercury of the metals, by calcination, is converted into salt. And since this salt has much earthiness, from this it has acquired a definite fixation. We say the same of arsenic, namely that it is the most substantial sulphur, naturally shut up very deep in that earth. Therefore, in a certain fixation, they are so firmly compacted that they cannot be separated from that earth except by distillation with a strong expression of fire. Thus, in Book II, chapter 7—when mention was made of this mercury converted into salt—I said: When you see it very white, and freed from every outward sulphureity and redness, repeat the sublimation without the dregs—that is, distil it without cutting up the dregs, since it already contains sufficient dregs, indeed superfluous ones. This is easily recognized from the difficulty of the distillation, as I warned in Book II, chapter 9. For unless its fixed part be broken up and distilled—namely, that arsenic just mentioned, which clings firmly to the dregs—that is, to the earthiness, it cannot otherwise be separated.
We have, moreover, made frequent mention of this earthiness in many places calling it ‘salt’ in those places, as you can easily gather from our writings.
DEMOGORGON. Show me now by what method sulphur is made fixed.
GEBER. Sulphur is not made fixed unless it is first reduced to a lime; yet when it is mixed with salt it is more easily calcined and becomes perfect, as I showed in Book I, chapter 13. And Albert (Book III, De mineralibus, chap. 2) confirms it. For he says that in the works of Alchemy—in which nature is most closely imitated by art—among all the arts the Elixir cannot be brought to a citrine color in any other way except by sulphur. But sulphur itself is so full of greasiness and so prone to burning that it blackens and scorches all metals. At length, however, a method of washing has been found, by which its burning impurities are removed: it is decocted for a long time with sharp waters until it leaves behind all its adust impurities and remains only a subtle unctuous substance, able to endure the fire. These sharp waters are made by solution with salt and distilled with vinegar. For these waters cleanse our sulphur and then remove themselves from it.
Furthermore, in the preface to Book I I said that the bodies which cleanse without cohesion have the nature of salts—alum, nitre, and borax—by which names I wished to designate salt itself; and I wished the term “salt” to be understood as it is in the bodies—namely sulphur—since several species of sulphur are separated from bodies. We also said in Book III, chapter 11, that salts, alums, and glass (that is, the aforesaid arsenic) act or dissolve far otherwise than the bodies themselves (namely the species of sulphur) when they are separated from bodies—when only the body, that is the purified sulphur, has been separated.
DEMOGORGON. As it seems to me, in the place above you have described the preparation of Jupiter (tin) and Saturn (lead).
GEBER. I recognize your straightforwardness, from which you easily suppose this; for you noticed a little earlier that I said Jupiter and Saturn are one body—that is, one calcined salt—in the likeness of true lime. For what follows there is no need to throw in salt-water, nor alum-water, nor our glass (i.e., arsenic), since all these are naturally joined together.
Moreover, In the Preface of the Book of Investigation I said that the things which help and promote preparation are salt itself, and alum, and ink (vitriol), and glass (arsenic), and very sharp vinegar and fire. Further, as I taught in the same book, in the chapter On the Preparation of Jupiter and in the following chapters, fire stirs and consumes the fugitive and inflammable substance—that is, by washing many times with common salt (I call it “common” because it is common to all metals) and with very sharp, purified vinegar. Likewise, in Book II, chapter 13, we wrote to this effect concerning the preparation and calcination of this sulphur: namely, light the fire in a furnace under the calcination vessel with such force that the body itself—that is, the sulphur—melts, in order that it may be calcined.
As soon as the body itself—melted in vinegar and salt, with the heat of the fire—forms a black skin upon itself, that skin (which is sulphur already reduced to a lime) must be removed from the surface and pushed down to the bottom of the vessel with an iron or stone spatula. You will note that this black skin of calcined sulphur is openly called iron, since that sulphur is called iron when it has now been changed into an earthy substance; it does not melt, nor is it further sprinkled with vinegar, but remains fixed at the bottom of the vessel. Yet its preparation is not finished, since not yet has all the greasiness and earthiness been completely removed from it. This skin is also called a stone spade, since it is generated from the Philosophers’ Stone.
The removal and sinking of these skins is continued until the whole body of the sulphur is reduced to powder. I say this because each day one skin is formed. Now these skins are the very oil of sulphur. But if Saturn (that is, white salt, separated from the sulphur) has been prepared, it requires a greater vehemence of fire—that is, it must be distilled through ashes, with the press of fire—whereas the sulphur is prepared in a bath.
Concerning this spade—whether iron or stone—which above we called the black skin, and likewise concerning the aforesaid fixation, I have treated at length in Book II, chapter 8, and in the Book of Investigation, in the chapter On the Preparation of Jupiter. And in Book III, chapter 14, we called this iron spade an iron little rod.
We have set down this whole operation and a brief practice of it in Book I, chapter 8, describing the sublimation of our lime under the name “Marcasite.” I set down two modes of that sublimation: the first without ignition—that is, first in dung (gentle heat), then in a bath; the second with ignition—that is, with the salt itself to be distilled in vessels.
The reason for this twofold sublimation is the twofold substance of the thing itself. For the first substance is the pure substance of sulphur in its root; the other substance is useful as mortified quicksilver, namely the aforesaid salt. The first substance is useful as arsenic (i.e., orpiment/realgar) made dead, that is, moderately prepared; for common quicksilver is not useful, because—as Albert testifies in his book On Minerals—when it is not mortified by other things, it does not mix well. Let us therefore take this latter way, in which common quicksilver must be taken twice, which requires much labor and industry for its mortification.
The whole method of marcasite sublimation consists in this: that the finely ground matter be placed in an aludel with distilled vinegar, and that the sulphur be sublimed from it without ignition, in dung only; and, after putrefaction, in a bath the sulphur is always to be removed, which often rises in the form of a black skin. But when the sulphur and the vinegar have been removed from the salt, and it (the salt) has been set upon a tile smeared with lute, the fire is to be increased to the point that the aludel gets ignition. The first sublimation of marcasite ought to be carried out in a vessel for subliming sulphur, until the sulphur, separated from the salt, is (worked) in a bath. The same routine will apply for the putrefaction of the lime and its calcinations, and for the washings of the sulphur.
I have also described the shape of this vessel in Book II, chapter 10, in these words: In the bottom of the vessel (the aludel) let there not be a great quantity of the body to be sublimed; for a multitude of lime reduced to powder weighs down and impedes the sublimation of sulphur. Likewise let this vessel have a flat bottom with a small concavity, so that the marcasite body may be spread evenly and finely over the bottom of the vessel; thus the matter of sulphur and salt may be sublimed from the vinegar equally and copiously from every side, and may freely rise upward—after the removal of the sulphur which is called Mars the salt must be distilled in an igniting vessel until all its sulphur is drawn out, which is called arsenic. Moreover, you will observe that when all the sulphur which we said is named by the title Mars has been sublimed through many skins, then there appears its true color, that is, very white. But after the vinegar is separated off, the unctuosity that was separated from the sulphur is burned away like sulphur. That, however, which is sublimed after the washings does not take fire (as we said in Book II, chapter 2), nor does it show any property of sulphur, but rather of quicksilver, that is, of mortified mercury. Wherefore, in Book III, chapter 2 near the end, and in chapter 18 when speaking of the washing of mercury, I wished the washing of this sulphur to be understood.
The preparation of this sulphur the ancients veiled under the fable of Hercules and Antaeus. For, as Macrobius relates, the ancients signified the Sun by Hercules, that is, our arsenic; but by Antaeus, the son of the earth, they understood our sulphur, which is the fatness of the earth. These two are feigned to wrestle when, being mixed in a vessel, they boil together in vinegar; for after putrefaction they are joined together. And since the sulphur itself (called by the name Mars) is prepared with salt, as I said above, therefore arsenic also can be prepared, because it is mixed deep within with salt. For we showed in Book III, chapter 16, that Mars—that is, sulphur—is prepared through the sublimation of arsenic. But when the arsenic mixed with salt is the stronger, then the sulphur (signified by the name of Antaeus) it reduces to a lime and turns into a mature earth—that is, Antaeus is thrown down to the ground. And when by this method the sulphur becomes more perfect, more fixed, and more shining, they feigned that the prostrate Antaeus, with his strength recovered and increased, always rose up stronger.
Hercules, however—that is, our salt—when distilled with mercurial water (which is signified by the lunar and elemental art), dissolves, attracts, and holds suspended the said prepared sulphur, and imparts to it a black color in that very water and decoction—which may also be understood in the forepart of the work; and this will be clear from what follows, when we speak about the elevation (sublimation) of bodies.
Concerning this preparation of sulphur, Albertus also speaks in De mineralibus Book III, chapters 1–2, and in the second treatise, chapter 5. Moreover, it is written in the book On Vapors that arsenic (i.e., orpiment/realgar) has two kinds of unctuosity, just as sulphur does. One of these two unctuosities is removed from it by washing in urine, in lye, in vinegar, and in goat’s milk. For these washings are sharp, and they take away the unctuosity from it. (By these “sharp washings,” understand vinegar with salt.)
Avicenna, in a letter to Hasen the King, writes that with great diligence he strove to take away entirely from sulphur and arsenic that which blackens silver. And since sulphur is better than all the other minerals, at last he found a way to do this—namely, that it should be decocted with a gentle fire, in such a manner that its fiery power should not be scorched within it, but rather drawn out; and that nothing should be taken away from the fiery power and from the substance of sulphur by the fire, but that only the unctuosity should be consumed. Sulphur is superior to the other metallic spirits in that it is more fixed and provides the tincture of redness. By “silver, which is boiled with the unctuosity of sulphur,” is to be understood the whiteness that lies hidden beneath the redness of sulphur.
Rasis, in the book On the Divinity, when mentioning this preparation, orders that one should skim off the oil which floats to the top as long as any blackness still appears; and when a rounded little cloud rises, it is to be left until that sublimation becomes firm; then one little cloud after another is to be taken and plunged into boiling water, until all the little clouds have been consumed—for know that these are the oil of sulphur.
But the true sense of this passage is that we should understand the following: as soon as the skins/films that rise on the vinegar have formed and set, then they must be gently moved, or by whatever other means the films must be driven down to the bottom; and this must be done with each film that rises, until it is clear that the vessel itself has been cleansed and purged.
DEMOGORGON. Let us set these matters aside for a little while; for you have not yet plainly shown me whence and from what matter I should take these spirits, so that I may reach the natural principles nearest to our art.
GEBER. Your thoughts will not be vain if you judge that these natural principles—digested, coagulated, and as it were fixed—are nearest to our art, and that, when the living Mercury is converted into the substance of sulphur and quicksilver in the best manner, nothing can be taken more suitable than metals themselves.
DEMOGORGON. I was going to say the same; one thing, however, still keeps me in suspense.
GEBER. If you’d open your mind to me, I could easily remove every suspicion.
DEMOGORGON. I’ve heard of a vegetable Elixir, an animal one, and a mineral one. How then is it made from metals, whose substance is dead and cannot generate its like?
GEBER. It is called vegetable because it multiplies in power and in quantity. It is called animal because, when cast upon metals, it makes them like itself. It is called mineral because it is made from minerals without metals, and yet is said to generate gold and silver, since the singular properties of metals are in it. Nevertheless our Elixir and Stone, though metallic, can also be called vegetable, because they are generated from salt, which we called vitriol. “Vegetable” is said of whatever is produced by the virtue of heat and takes up nourishment—either from all things, or from that which makes a green sprout, as an herb or plant.
It is called animal because in its composition a soul intervenes, that is, the tincture which is called arsenic and copper (aes), about which in the book entitled Turba Philosophorum—a book we found to resemble our own—men say that it has soul, body, and spirit, and that the red tincture is called soul. The substance is sulphureous and as it were fixed, which is the body; but the spirit is by nature volatile before it is bound and fixed.
It is called mineral because it is metallic, since they have in themselves that sulphur in which the metallic virtue consists. Aristotle, in his letter to King Alexander, bids us take the vegetable, the animal, and the mineral in the same way. We, however, as artists in Alchemy, take our medicines more or less from metals, make them less perfect—by which they have known how to transmute and dye certain metals into the color of gold and silver. But since in every genus in which these degrees of perfection are found, one must arrive at a single thing which holds the highest and most perfect degree of perfection in that genus (as Aristotle affirms, Metaphysics X), so too in this art it will be necessary that we find one most perfect metallic medicine which can transmute imperfect metals into true gold and silver—for things which in their substance have an affinity can, through mutual corruption, be changed one into another, as we see in the mixture of the elements.
Now since all metals (as we showed above) are generated from one and the same substance, and there is no difference among them except accidents and a greater or lesser digestion, therefore by removing the accidents and by sufficiently digesting the undigested parts, one can be transmuted into another—namely into that which among the rest is most perfect. And here art outstrips the operation of nature: for art can purify metals inwardly, which nature cannot attain. The same is the opinion of St. Thomas; for at the beginning of the fourth book of the Meteorology he says that metals can be transmuted one into another, since they are natural things and their matter is the same. For this reason Hermes posited a circulation among metals. I too have warned in many places that this medicine must be made from metals, and all the Philosophers affirm this.
DEMOGORGON. By reasons and arguments so clear I am brought to believe at last that the Elixir must be made from metals. But should it be made from all of them together, or from one alone?
GEBER. In Book I, chapter 5, I said that our art is not brought to its perfection by the abundance or multitude of things, since the Stone is one and only one, and the matter is one, in which the whole magistery consists; nothing at all is added to it or taken away from it in any part, except the superfluities which are separated in the preparation. Haly the Philosopher speaks to the same effect, saying that the whole art is contained in one Stone, to which nothing is to be added or mixed either in whole or in part; here the work belongs to the Philosophers and the wise, and fire exhales from it until the work is finished. Morienus also bears witness, saying in all this that what the Philosophers seek is one single thing, having father and mother, created and nourished by them, and it itself is called father and mother.
DEMOGORGON. I could never guess what that is.
GEBER. I said earlier that in the generation of metals sulphur plays the part of the male seed, but Mercury the part of the female seed. Furthermore, the Elder Philosopher left it written that the thing which the Philosophers seek is one thing—the same which is called by the name “of all red things,” and of all bodies and species which are handled by the hands of men. Elsewhere he says the same thing: that the Philosophers’ Stone is one, in which every natural preparation is contained, and everything required for it—body, Sun, water, spirit, soul, and tincture. Arnold also says, in a letter to the King of Naples, that the Philosophers’ Stone is one thing of one nature, and that in it is contained everything that is necessary, and in it also is that by which it is made better. Constrained by these most weighty statements of the Philosophers, you will no doubt believe that the Elixir must be made from one sole radical thing, that is, from one metal only, because it is reduced into the form of a stone. Moreover, from this Stone come gems and medicines, by which the first fathers produced the long life—this is the quintessence, and the drinkable gold. For all these things are the same matter, as has been handed down especially by Raymund in the book On the Secrets of Nature and On the Philosophical Heaven.
DEMOGORGON. In the preface of the Book of Investigation you said that the Elixir can be made from many bodies, or from many juices.
GEBER. In that same place I at once answered that objection with these words: From whatever thing the Elixir is made—white or red—yet in itself it is nothing other than sulphur and mercury, with which, unless they are joined together, nothing else can help or stand by itself. Since therefore one is firmly united to the other, it will be clear that the Elixir either in whole or in part; here the work belongs to the Philosophers and the wise, and fire exhales from it until the work is finished. Morienus likewise bears witness, saying that in all this the thing sought by the Philosophers is one single thing, having a father and a mother, created and nourished by them, and it is itself called father and mother.
DEMOGORGON. I could never divine what that is.
GEBER. I said before that in the generation of metals sulphur plays the part of the male seed, while Mercury plays the part of the female seed. Moreover, the Elder Philosopher left it written that the thing which the Philosophers seek is one thing—the same thing which is called by the name of all red things, and of all bodies and kinds which are handled by human hands. Elsewhere he says the same: that the Philosophers’ Stone is one, in which every natural preparation is contained, and everything needful for it—body, sun, water, spirit, soul, and tincture. Arnold also says, in a letter to the King of Naples, that the Philosophers’ Stone is one thing of one nature, and that in it is contained all that is necessary, and also that by which it is made better. Constrained by these most weighty testimonies of the Philosophers, you will doubtless believe that the Elixir must be made from one sole radical thing, that is, from one metal only, because it is reduced into the form of a stone. And from this Stone there come gems and medicines, by which the first fathers produced long life—this is the quintessence and the drinkable gold. For all these things are the same matter, as has been handed down especially by Raymund in the book On the Secrets of Nature and On the Philosophical Heaven.
DEMOGORGON. In the preface of the Book of Investigation you say that the Elixir can be made from many bodies or from many juices.
GEBER. In that same place I immediately answered the objection with these words: From whatever thing the Elixir is made, whether white or red, nevertheless in itself it is nothing other than sulphur and mercury; and unless these two are joined together, nothing else can avail or stand by itself. Since therefore one is firmly united to the other, it will be clear that the Elixir.
Nor should you think it was said without reason that gold is to be preferred to the other metals. For it is more likely that the Elixir should be made from gold than from any other metal; since, when this is done, the other metals ought to be transmuted into gold, and things that have some kinship or affinity with one another are more easily transmuted among themselves—as Aristotle also seems to affirm. He says in Metaphysics VII that “everything that is generated is generated from something similar.” You too affirm in Book I, chapter 17, that the tincture of gold is a redness, and that gold can transform and dye bodies; on this account several Philosophers call the ferment of gold ‘redness.’
But that bodies be made perfect, and be reduced to subtlety and spirituality, cannot be, as you yourself have affirmed in the Book of Investigation around that place.
GEBER. Your observation is sharp and ingenious, Philosophaster; but you have not considered nature carefully enough. For (as I taught in Book III, chapter 4) since gold is generated from the most subtle and very clear mercurial substance, having but little sulphur and pure redness, while it is fixed and clear and by its very nature tinges itself—therefore sulphur can scarcely preserve this quality unless it reaches the last form and a permanent tincture, that is, the Elixir. Hence neither by nature nor by art is gold to be changed or bettered in any proper way without mixing in another tincture.
And if perhaps by some preparation of gold its color be increased, this is that very tincture which lies hidden within gold, brought forth by treatment. But if this were separated from its own mercury, you would only dye mercury with it, and nothing more—just as Agrippa affirms the same reason: because gold has no other tincture than that which belongs to its own mercury; for it is the work of that mercury—as Arnold teaches in the Rosary—and therefore it would be futile to seek this single tincture in gold; since its quantity is small and its usefulness slight. For this reason Albert, in the third book of De mineralibus, chapter 7, says: “The alchemical operation does not change gold.”
This, then, is the doctrine of the ancient Philosophers and of some of the older alchemists: namely, that gold by itself is only the perfected form of metals, while the other metals are all incomplete; yet they are on the way and approach the species of gold so that, like a thing incomplete which is on the way, they might come to perfection.
For this reason they said that the imperfect can be helped by art until at last it arrives at perfection—just as seed is aided by the cultivation of the soil—whereas gold, being determinate and complete, is less convertible and is not turned into another metal. For, as Aristotle and his commentator affirm in Metaphysics VII, nothing is moved toward a form or perfection unless it first has some imperfect share of that perfection from which it is moved. We know that semen (seed) would not acquire the form of a human being unless it first contained in itself a human power; for if it already had this fully, the principle of motion would no longer be motion but rather rest. Therefore, says Aristotle, when the species exists in matter, motion ceases. Motion, then, takes place from the privation of the species which is in the matter.
Since by nature things are thus constituted, the imperfect, inasmuch as it is imperfect, naturally desires to be made perfect. Therefore privation itself leaves behind a natural desire that it be brought to perfection. But this desire is the principle of transmutation, as Roger Bacon also taught. Therefore, since gold is perfect in the metallic species, it has neither this privation nor this desire toward the metallic form and species.
DEMOGORGON. I grant that common gold is perfect in its own kind; but as compared with the Elixir, it will be imperfect, since art here outstrips nature’s work.
GEBER. I say that gold is a metal more perfect than the Elixir, inasmuch as it firmly retains the metallic substance; yet it is nevertheless not the medicine of metals, because it is brittle and composed only of spirits, and its tincture does not exceed the common metallic tincture.
DEMOGORGON. Since for composing the Elixir a single metal is required, tell me which it is—and most of all, which spirits of gold I should take, those that are clean, pure, and fixed, while the spirits of the other metals are unclean and volatile.
GEBER. And this too is a most certain indication—namely, those spirits of gold are not the ones I have written about in all my books on Alchemy. For we have said that mercury, sulphur, and arsenic, before preparation, are impure spirits, combustible and volatile; and we have furthermore taught how they can be purged of earthiness, wateryness, sulphureity, greasy unctuousness, and burning adustness—qualities which you do not find in gold.
Albert also writes (De mineralibus III, 6) that metal cannot be generated from metal—that is, the species remains in its first metallic substance. Why, then, does he in the chapter just cited say that the process should proceed in this way, namely: by corrupting and removing something in its own species, with the help of those things which belong to metallic nature, they induce the species of another metal? For this reason, among all alchemical operations, that one is both better and principal which proceeds by the same principles by which nature itself proceeds—just as happens in the preparation of sulphur, by decoction, sublimation, and purging of quicksilver.
But those men who whiten metals that are white, or stain the citrine ones with a citrine color, while the first species of the metal remains, are without doubt impostors and deceivers; they cannot make true gold or silver. Moreover Aristotle says that a true transmutation of metals cannot take place unless they are first reduced to their first matter, that is, to the nature of salt or vitriol—which cannot at all be done without calcination, as we have very clearly taught in the Book of the Testament.
But since silver cannot be duly calcined (as we said in Book III, chapter 9)—because true calcination is done without the mixture of any other thing, save with its own proper and inborn combustible sulphur (as we said in Book I, chapter 13, and Book III, chapter 6)—and since this true combustible sulphur is not present in gold (as we have sufficiently shown in Book IV, chapter 15), therefore gold cannot be duly calcined. We described the reason in Book III, chapter 6, saying that the thing in which the three causes of corruption (recounted in the passage cited above) concur is most corruptible; but where all of them least concur, the speed of corruption is diminished by so much as those causes are diminished. Now in gold none of these causes is present; therefore it is proper that is not corrupted. Therefore we said in Book III, chapter 4, that gold has a fixed substance and is without burning sulphureity—as we readily recognize in every operation on it in the fire, for it is neither diminished nor set aflame. For this reason anyone tries in vain to calcine gold without adding some external thing; thus we said in Book I, chapter 17, that to calcine and dissolve gold is useless.
DEMOGORGON. Arnold, in the Book of the Perfect Magistery, says that reducing metals to their first matter is easy; therefore transmutation will also be easy.
GEBER. Arnold is not speaking of common gold; for this is destroyed only with great difficulty on account of its strong composition—as we showed in Book I, chapter 8, and Book II, chapter 7—when we explained from which metals our Mercury ought to be extracted, and although in that place we did not expressly exclude gold, we did grant that the sublimation of Mercury is more convenient from those metals with which it least agrees. And it is quite certain that Mercury agrees less with all metals than with gold, as we showed in Book III, chapters 2 and 4; therefore Mercury is extracted far more conveniently from the other metals than from gold. How, then, could the Elixir be made from gold, when—by the consent of all the Philosophers—it is made from the most suitable matter? Morienus the Philosopher makes this quite plain in these words, when he says that the things necessary for this work are not to be measured by price, especially in the operation on gold.
DEMOGORGON. What do you answer to my inquiry?
GEBER. I say that the radical moisture of the other metals is equally powerful, incorruptible, and incombustible as that of gold. Albert affirms this for us in De mineralibus III, chapter 2, when he says, “We have seen all the metals retain their radical moisture even in the fiercest fire.” We likewise confirmed the same near the end of Book I. Our physicians do not mix gold in their medicines without good reason; for since even the most violent fire cannot corrupt it, much less would it be digested in the stomach. But the ancient Philosophers and the poets who exalt and glorify gold were not speaking of our common gold, but of the philosophers’ gold. For common gold, as is fitting, can in no way be distilled or dissolved. Therefore it can not be duly transmuted into salt, as we have shown above.
Moreover, when you say that by sure arguments it can be proved that the Elixir ought to be made from common gold, I answer your position thus. In the short work, in which neither a dissolution nor a coagulation of gold is required, it is to be feared that gold be preferred to the other metals; but in the greater work, since the metals must be reduced to their first matter, in which there is no difference, as we have shown above, gold should not be preferred to the other metals. Nor do we grant that all metals are equally suitable for this, so as to be fit for composing the Elixir; for one single metal has, in the very ore, acquired a peculiar quality by which it is more apt in its own substance, so that it comes nearer to our art than all the other metals.
As for your other argument, I think Aristotle was speaking of the proper and univocal generation of animals; but in the generation that comes through the corruption of the begetter, it is enough that the begetter be generally like in power and capability, as we said above concerning human seed.
Hence we conclude that our Stone, from which the Elixir ought to be made—drinkable gold, the quintessence—is gold and silver in power and virtue nearby (i.e., proximate). Arnold also affirms this in a letter to the King of Naples, for he says that in that composition, or in our Stone, the Sun and the Moon are present in power and virtue; for unless it contained these in itself, gold or silver could not be made from it. Yet these Sun and Moon are in no way to be compared with common gold and silver, since they surpass them by a great interval in virtue.
For the Sun and Moon contained in this composition are alive—that is, vegetable—whereas the common ones are dead and their powers extinguished. Those, however, are finite for that purpose; and for this reason the ancient Philosophers named our Stone “Sun and Moon,” since these are contained in the Stone potentially, not visibly; and the Philosophers saying that gold is the tincture of red and by “the redness and the ferment of redness of the philosophers’ gold” these things must be understood: namely, that sulphur, by its own heat, fervor, cooking, digesting, and tinging, works upon its own mercury—just as our Elixir tinges and transforms our mercury in multiplication—and in very truth it is a ferment.
Moreover I have said that perfect bodies can be made better and rendered more perfect; and this must not be understood of common gold and silver, but of the Elixir itself, which can be improved and made subtler by multiplication, by joining only its own mercury to itself. By “perfect bodies” we mean prepared kinds of sulphur, which perhaps have received the name of gold from redness and the name of silver from whiteness. These are to be prepared with their own salt and vinegar, and then subtilized and dissolved with sal ammoniac—that is, with the water of their own salt. We said in Book II, chapter 15, that the reason for discovering this water was the need for a subtle and sharp water for those subtle spirits which, in our first preparation, neither entered fusion nor profited us much; yet these are fixed spirits and by their nature are pure. Arsenic is of the nature of sulphur, as we said in Book I, chapter 14, and Book II, chapter 12. The cause for finding pure water was the washing away of the foulness of the spirit and the medicines—that is, of prepared sulphur.
DEMOGORGON. You will do me a very great kindness if you explain to me what the philosophers’ gold is, and what is potable gold.
GEBER. Our sulphur is most subtle, pure, and radical—the good which elsewhere we have named; and you will find it so written among the species in Alchemy. Our sulphur is the philosophers’ gold and it is pure. Moreover Rasis, in the book The Light of Lights, says that the oil that takes on a red color is sulphur and copper and the Sun, and it is compared to gold. The Elder Philosopher, of the same opinion, says that the gold within our Stone is the philosophers’ gold, and that it is dyed with the soul present in it, since the spirits ascend. Elsewhere he says that the divine spiritual water, in which the soul is contained, is called gold. In another place he says that Hermes called the white water “gold,” because it has a soul that tinges, born from that white water. And elsewhere he says that the ancients called water “soul,” which Hermes had called gold, when he said that one should sow gold into leaf-like earth.
DEMOGORGON. What did Hermes mean by this “leafy earth”?
GEBER. The Philosophers’ quicksilver, duly prepared, to which this gold must be joined—this we understand by the leafy earth; or, rather, we understand it to be the sulphur which, being sublimed, becomes gold and silver in leaves of different colors. Therefore we said that sulphur makes a tincture with its like. Of this soul which is called gold Hermes speaks, when he says that it carries the wind in its belly.
DEMOGORGON. I do not understand what this belly and this wind are.
GEBER. Albert in De mineralibus I, 3 explains and shows this—that Hermes meant that the wind carries the soul in its belly, when our material is put into a vessel and is distilled from the alembic as a watery liquor, or rather an oil, containing the powers of all the elements. By wind is meant the white smoke, which carries within itself the red smoke that is called the soul and gold—also called copper, Venus, coin, arsenic, glass, vitriol, fire, oil, sulphur, green water, green lion, verdigris, wine, human blood, the blood of the demon, orpiment, the permanent water, and by many other names. Therefore the Elder Philosopher said that this divine water is called by the name of all moist things—as vinegar, wine, milk, fat, blood, and seed; likewise it is named by the name of all tinctures and flowers. And by this soul of the Stone they mean that which they exalted—that is, which they sublimed in this water. Hence elsewhere the aforesaid Philosopher says that the discourse of all the Philosophers agrees upon this single tincture, which they drew out from its own soul, and which they called the soul and the begotten and the king; and this begotten thing is fatness—for which reason they called it both soul and gold, since it has a red soul hidden in whiteness, that is, in the spiritual white water which they extracted from their Stone. In the book of the Philosophers called the Turba it is written: “Our coin” call our coin “red gold.”
The Philosopher of the Mirror says that it must be cooked so long until its moisture is raised up into the alembic—which moisture is like a sweat of gold. And in the philosophers’ firmament these words are read: “The fire must indeed be increased to four degrees for the space of one hour, and there will come forth a water of golden color.” This water is the golden rain into which Jupiter was turned, and it must be kept apart by itself, for potable gold is contained in it.
When, in Book I, chapter 17, I said that whatever dries radically and tinges metal with a citrine color can make gold, I meant that the distilled root of the metal is the philosophers’ gold. Avicenna, in the book On Minerals, says that sal ammoniac is to be sublimed, and that the water that is common with salt is hot, very subtle, and has much moisture. And when we spoke of our Saturn (lead), we said in Book III, chapter 9 that we observed nothing from it to be resolved into smoke, so far as could be noticed, because its color is citrine; and in the place just cited we also said that when its smoke necessarily rises it rises together with sulphur that is not burning, whose property it is to retain citrinitas. Further, in chapter 8, while speaking of our Jupiter (tin), we said that we had carefully observed the smoke rising from it under a strong expression of fire, and had observed that this smoke approaches whiteness and citrinitas, which is proper to calcined sulphur; and we judged with greatest certainty and infallible conjecture that this smoke keeps much of the nature of fixed sulphur.
DEMOGORGON. You make me doubtful and uncertain: what you said above about Saturn, you now attribute to Jupiter. Are Saturn and Jupiter then one and the same?
GEBER. These two are salts extracted from our metal. Rasis confirms this in these words: “When you take the bodies of lead and tin, from their mixtures you can extract an oil (that is, sulphur) and a mercury joined to it by nature.” Philosophers, speaking by likenesses of things, bid us take and unite this matter; such likenesses are not to be taken crudely, but they show that in our Stone there is something that has the likeness of that thing. Concerning the oil spoken of above, earlier I mentioned this in Book II, chapter 12, saying that the reason for investigating it was that we might obtain its proper color.
Albert, Meteorology IV, tractate 3, chapter 18, when speaking of the aforesaid smoke or vapors, says that by their mixed nature the dry contains the moist, so that without the dry the moist cannot exhale into vapor; but the moist, he adds, gives a certain subtility to the dry and can fly off together with it. And we ourselves said in Book I, chapter 10, that the bodies themselves—that is, the kinds of sulphur—flee from the fire together with the spirits, namely the mercurial ones, that is to say unless the spirits are fixed; yet they are inseparably mingled in the depths of the bodies, for the volatile part lies above the fixed part.
Further Arnold says in the Rosary that whoever does not know how to turn gold into silver will never be able to turn silver into gold—and conversely.
DEMOGORGON. I very much wish to know how silver can be converted into gold; that gold be converted into silver I desire but little.
GEBER. The Elder Philosopher writes that when the ancients said “gold is whitened,” they did not mean common gold. But when the philosophers’ gold, which is red, is whitened, it is said to be converted into silver, and it is called silver. The same must be understood of sulphur: when it is turned into whiteness, and afterward by long decoction becomes reddened, it is said that silver has been converted into gold. Moreover, in the book of the Turba of the Philosophers it is written that no tincture can be made except from our aforesaid copper (aes); and unless this be converted into whiteness until a tincture is produced, you will accomplish nothing.
DEMOGORGON. I confess I owe you not a little, and am most obliged and bound to you for so great a benefit—that you have made me a sharer in so great a secret. For until now I was with many others in the error of believing that the Elixir and potable gold ought to be made from common gold.
GEBER. Just as children are delighted by things fair to the sight, so you too are taken with outwardly beautiful things. Our quintessence, however, is from a Stone ugly and misshapen at first glance, but inwardly, hidden, most beautiful.
DEMOGORGON. Since, in your exceptional kindness, you have not hesitated to explain to me what potable gold and the philosophers’ gold are, I beg you also to show me briefly what the quintessence is. If I judge rightly, it is better to live sound in health for a long time than to abound in riches.
GEBER. You speak truly. According to Marsilius Ficinus in On the Threefold Life, the quintessence is the spirit of the soul of the world, diffused through bodily things and the elements.
DEMOGORGON. That explanation is somewhat obscure.
GEBER. I have often told you that in a single distillation two smokes are distilled from our matter—the red and the white; both are called quintessence. But the red smoke, over and above the names already given, is also called the soul of wine, as John of Rupescissa reports; and we too call the quintessence the soul of wine, and likewise our gold and the philosophers’ gold. Now the white smoke, which carries the red wine in its belly during distillation, is properly and truly called the quintessence about which the philosophers speak. Arnold says that, when the elements are separated, there remains a certain fifth essence, which is called the spirit of the Stone.
This quintessence is neither an element nor an elemental quality in itself by its act and power; for by its act it is neither hot nor dry so as to inflame, nor does it cool and heal cold diseases by being cold or moist like air—which is easily corrupted in time of pestilence and generates frogs and the like, which are born from the corruption of air. The quintessence prepared from metals can be preserved for ten thousand years without corruption if carefully kept in a glass vessel, not breathing out nor evaporating. Therefore Hermes, Plato, Socrates, and many philosophers who knew it ascribed to it perpetuity; and those who used it are said not to die, though they too, as God calls them, are mortal like the rest.
DEMOGORGON. Then this is truly medicine for life?
GEBER. It would be vain to work at what is impossible—to make a man pass beyond the natural term of life. Here the term can indeed be, yet may be extended to the five-hundredth year, as it was appointed for the first fathers of old; and just as a man, burdened by many illnesses, cannot reach the term of life that has been set, and can shorten the span of life, so by removing these hindrances he can prolong life so that at last he attains the term fixed by his own nature. Among all the remedies by which we lengthen life, this prepared quintessence excels the rest, as has been clearly enough shown in our Dialogue entitled The Tree of Life, for it gives life to a man.
Rasis, in the book The Light of Lights, says that the water descending from the higher part is called by the Philosophers “the water of life” and “heaven,” for the quintessence is simple and incorruptible and separated from elemental matter. It is not cold or moist as elemental water is; indeed it burns before it coagulates, and therefore the Philosophers call it burning water. Nor is it cold or dry like earth, as we plainly find; for it heats greatly and cures melancholic infirmities, which are cold and dry; and it has the appearance of most limpid and most subtle water. It is called by various names by the Philosophers, taken from some property or likeness.
Some also call it mercurial water, because it is distilled from Mercury; others call it solvent mercury, for it dissolves bodies, that is, the species of its own sulphur. Hence I said in Book I, chapter 17, that gold—that is, the sulphur mentioned above—is easily broken, that is, dissolved, by its own mercury and by its odor, that is, its vapor; and lead, that is, our Saturn; and the Eagle, because it can fly above all spirits. It is also called air because of its subtlety, and sal ammoniac because it is salt distilled; and, for the sake of resemblance and kinship, the ancient Philosophers signified this same thing by the names of more harmful and fierce animals—serpent, dragon, lion, bear, basilisk, and the like—because its nature is horrible and poisonous before it has been duly digested. For the same reason it is also called fetid water, for before coagulation it is bitter and stinking.
DEMOGORGON. I suspect you mean to hint that its horribleness and stench are removed by fire along with bitterness. But I don’t see how that could be, since it is a salty water: for we see—and experience itself teaches us—that by heat all things are turned into salt when it can corrupt them, as we said above. If therefore sweet things, corrupted by heat, are changed into bitter salt, then surely this quintessence of ours, distilled from the salt of metals and thus boiled down and calcined, will take on a far greater bitterness.
GEBER. If this composition received nothing besides the salt distilled and prepared, I would approve your opinion. But it does receive sulphur as well—which removes this nature (of bitterness) and makes it sweet.
DEMOGORGON. Since now this bitterness is taken away by sulphur and it becomes sweet, how can that be, seeing that sulphur itself is bitter, as Rasis testifies when he says that the sulphur called by the name Mars is manifestly bitter and sharp outwardly?
GEBER. I grant that before preparation and decoction sulphur is choleric, bitter, and sharp, as Rasis says. But in the decoction its hidden part is revealed: sulphur is sweet deep within and concealed, and by decoction it draws the converted salt back to its own sweetness and transforms it into water. The other sulphur, which is called gold and is likewise admitted into this composition of the medicine, is sanguine, sweet, and fragrant, as Rasis says. These change the bitterness of this water into sweetness, just as the bitter water of the river Marrac becomes sweet by the power of certain wood. Alphidius writes these words: “Before you undertake this work, I will prescribe to you a good composition of the Elixir. First it must be moist; and when it is decocted it should coagulate and thicken like snow or hail and like salt with a sweet taste, with a black belly and a white color.”
DEMOGORGON. What is meant by “black belly”?
GEBER. Alphidius’ meaning is this: however white our medicine may be at the beginning of the decoction, nevertheless it has a hidden blackness arising from a certain unctuous and adust moisture; and this blackness shows itself especially at the moment of coagulation of the matter; only this moisture must be boiled down until it is consumed and becomes white.
When this has been done, the operation is complete. And just as the heavens not only give to these lower bodies the agreement of forms through their influence, but are also strengthened by the power of the Sun and the stars, so too must this our heaven be adorned by our Sun, splendid and incorruptible—that is, by our aforesaid gold—for it is generated on earth but receives from the Sun its nature, color, power, property, and incorruptible substance. Therefore our quintessence, adorned in this wondrous way with the heaven and the Sun, will pour into us the power of heaven and the Sun, restoring the natural moisture for the preservation of life and the renewal of youth. Of the Sun Isidore speaks in Book 16, saying that chalcantum—that is, the flower of verdigris in the medicine of salts—becomes by the very hot Sun so astringent and strong that it gains such toughness that not even the teeth of a bear or a lion can bite or chew it.
DEMOGORGON. This seems to me almost impossible.
GEBER. By chalcantum and the flower of copper Isidore means what we call atramentum (copperas); and by vitriol joined with our hidden salt before distillation and made fit for calcination together with the salt; but when it is united with our quintessence—which is called by the names Bear and Lion—only its taming and thickening is to be understood, so that it may take away sharpness and cannot bite, for this is truly sulphur. In the same way the influx of the heavenly stars is increased for it; and likewise our heaven must be joined not only with the Sun but with the other stars and planets, so that its influx and power may be increased, and so that it may coagulate more easily and be led more quickly to perfection.
DEMOGORGON. Which are the stars and planets that must be joined to our quintessence, or applied to our heaven?
GEBER. All the metals prepared by the philosophers are signified by the names of the planets; and these too are received into the composition of the Elixir, because this composition is said to be one common thing and sufficient. Yet some are more suitable for coagulation for thickening and coagulating in this art there are chiefly two kinds of sulphur, Venus and Mars. And this is also Albert’s opinion in De mineralibus I, tract 1, chapter 9, where he writes that the alchemists, with singular zeal and diligence, make waters that have the quality and power of various elements in virtue and in act, and with these they accomplish and coagulate whatever they wish to transmute.
In the book On Vapors it is written that meat is boiled very quickly if glass be added to the ashes of hay and ferns; for since glass is dry, much moisture can be drawn out of the meat at the first boil, so that it is very quickly cooked down. But when this glass is the common sort made from the ashes of hay and ferns, it is much drier than other glass; therefore with this glass the cooking is finished much more quickly, since that common glass has something of moisture from which it received its origin more than lead does, whose salt was the first in the composition.
DEMOGORGON. Although I have as yet made no experiment of this, I readily believe that meat is cooked faster with the addition of glass.
GEBER. This has made many ignorant of the cause, and the unskilled in natural matters have accused Pliny and Albert of falsehood, because the Philosophers spoke in likenesses and allegories, while those men, interpreting their words as bare, literal statements, were deceived and misled.
DEMOGORGON. What did they wish to signify by these things?
GEBER. By the name “glass” in this art they often signify sulphur; for just as common glass receives all colors, so our sulphur, in its preparation, shows all colors. For this reason it is called by the name “Argus,” whose many eyes are said to have been set in the tail of the peacock. By “meat to be cooked” is meant our Mercury, which must be coagulated and fixed in mercurial water by means of sulphur.
And since there are two species of sulphur, one under the name of Mars, hot and dry; the other under the name of Venus, likewise hot and dry, yet—as Rasis says—sharing somewhat in the moistness of Mercury, because it receives moisture from salt and is therefore called Saturnine, from which it also gets the name of Venus, being distilled from it.
Therefore is coagulated and sweetened by the Mercury itself and by mercurial water, if we add the sulphur from the ashes of hay and fern, which we call Mars on account of the kinship of the name. Next you should note the difference between the coagulation of the quintessence and the fixation of the Elixir, since they must produce different effects. For the Elixir ought to transmute imperfect metals into true gold and true silver; therefore it must be fixed and converted into a more-than-perfect substance of gold and of silver. In this case mercurial water will not remain, since it hinders fixation, although the red quintessence—called the permanent water—still remains in it.
But since the mercurial quintessence is to be taken by mouth like a medicine that penetrates all the members and preserves from corruption, it ought not to be so fixed that it is turned into a golden or silvery substance. It is enough that it be only so far cooked and digested that it coagulates and consumes that vaporous, fetid, sharp moisture and becomes sweet; thus, when taken by mouth, it will at once penetrate the whole body, as the most subtle of all things and consonant with the human body, and by its mighty and divine power it will induce such incorruptibility wherever it penetrates that those who take only three little drops, either by themselves or mixed with some suitable thing, will certainly live for a long span of time, like the first fathers of old who partook of the Tree of Life. All these matters the ancient sages hid under the poets’ fables, and most of all under those of Orpheus.
DEMOGORGON. You will do me a great kindness if you will explain to me the intention of the ancients in this matter.
GEBER. In this medicine there is a vegetable part—that is, the salt signified by trees and plants. Next, there is also a certain animal part, as soul and gold, signified by animals; by men; by Phoebus; and by the Golden Fleece. The mineral part, however, is that fixed sulphur which we call by the name Mars, and this is signified by stones and rocks, mountains, bones, and other hard things. The mercurial water and vapors are signified by little birds, winds, rivers streams, serpents, bulls, and dragons, who guarded the vessel of gold dedicated to Mars.
Therefore we said in Book I, chapter 15, that no philosophers’ metal can be submerged in Mercury by distillation—that is, in mercurial water—our Sun excepted; and this is to be understood of Mars, because it must be joined with the sulphur of Mars and is called by that name; but by Orpheus our medicine is signified, for this alone can confirm and bring together all the things mentioned above into sweetness.
DEMOGORGON. I admit that I am not sufficiently capable of grasping this doctrine of yours and your exposition, unless you first tell me plainly what the philosophers’ metals are.
GEBER. The Philosophers hid this science under the names of all the things in the world, but especially under the names of metals.
DEMOGORGON. How can this art be hidden under the names of metals, when the art itself is about metals?
GEBER. It is certainly not easy to discern, since when the ancients speak of common metals—or when the Philosophers speak of philosophers’ metals—at first glance their words seem to us to be about common metals; and sometimes their discourse begins with common metals, but soon they leave the discourse of common metals and turn to philosophers’ metals. Whoever has any knowledge of this art or experience of it, at the very hearing of some name at once understands what in this art it may signify. Let the name Iron or Mars be an example. If the Philosopher says that this is manifestly hot and dry, easily receives the tincture of redness, the skilled practitioner of this art will at once recognize that he said this of sulphur, since the quality manifestly does not suit common iron. Rasis says in the book On Divinity that we must note that things are joined together by the most subtle art of nature in such a way that all things are in potency in all things, even if they are not at all comprehended by the senses; which is better perceived in things that are equal in kind than in others. From this it is evident that the inner parts of gold are silvery, and the inner parts of silver are golden for something of the Moon is found in the Sun, and something of the Sun in the Moon; and in copper there are gold and silver in potency, though not visibly—while in these (i.e., in gold and silver) you may in turn find iron, lead, and tin, and in those likewise you may find gold and silver.
Albert writes the same (De mineralibus III, 8), saying that Hermes, Gilgil, and Empedocles, distinguished philosophers and alchemists—together with many other alchemists—affirm that in every metal there are several kinds and natures of metals: some hidden, some manifest; some internal, some external; some lying deep, others appearing on the surface. Thus those who disputed about the latency of forms said that everything exists in everything, as pleased Anaxagoras; and so they said that lead inwardly is gold, but outwardly is lead, and that gold outwardly—on the surface—is gold, but inwardly and in its depth is lead; and in the same way copper within itself contains silver, and every metal bears within itself each of the metals singly.
They add moreover that things are not named from the outer or inner metals (and the other designations) according to the total of their parts, but according to the property and nature of what predominates, since the predominant part holds the portion enclosed within itself over that which it dominates. In this way these men seem wholly to affirm Anaxagoras’ doctrine, who asserted that each metal is present within every other metal, and that the name is taken from what predominates.
DEMOGORGON. These things seem to me impossible, and, if I see rightly, this opinion is rejected by Albert.
GEBER. You are falling into an error like that of certain philosophers who said that there is no other substance in the world than what is seen. But if you had examined carefully—had at some time corrupted and transmuted metals, and considered their inward qualities and the diversity of substance and of the color that appears—these things would not seem impossible to you. And if it seems to you that Albert rejected this opinion, I say he rejected only the bare letter; the discovery of the ancients and the allegorical sense, by no means.
DEMOGORGON. Therefore explain to me clearly and openly the intention of the ancients, and this allegorical sense.
GEBER. By calcination, putrefaction, and washing we reduce our metal to a white salt like common lime, and in many places we have called this “lime.” And since it has the property of common lead, they will find for it the name of lead. Therefore Rasis, in the passage already cited, said that lead in its manifest part—that is, on the surface—is cold and dry (that is, lead and silver), black, soft, earthy, melancholic, harsh, ill-smelling, feminine in act; and that lead is in potency silver. But in its depth it is hot and moist—that is, gold, aerial, sanguine, saffron-colored, sweet, fragrant, masculine. On one side it is cold and moist—that is, tin and quick-silver (mercury), watery, phlegmatic, white, tasteless, slack, feminine; on the other side it is hot and dry—that is, iron and copper, fiery, choleric, red, bitter, sharp, masculine. You now understand something marvelous: in one common metal and in one philosophers’ metal you comprehend all the philosophers’ metals; and so it must be understood of the rest.
DEMOGORGON. These things seem to me very difficult and obscure.
GEBER. In the preface of Book II I said that the consideration of the matters by which one comes to the completion of this operation must be taken up from a careful investigation of the principles of bodies according to what in them is deep, hidden, and manifest. Observe, then, according to Rasis in the book On Divinity, that in every body there are three dimensions: height, depth, and breadth. Height is what is manifest; depth is what is hidden; breadth holds the middle between manifest and hidden—that is, it is partly manifest and partly hidden—as, for example, the true salt which we call lead, and quick-silver, or mercury not yet prepared, and the dry, passible water of which I spoke more at length in the chapter On Descent—that is, on distillation. Since in its manifest part it is white, therefore it is said to be cold, for whiteness is a sign of coldness or rather it is said to be cold because it shares in the moisture of water, of which we spoke in Book II, chapters 2 and 7. But since it has a great deal of earthiness inwardly—as we said many times in speaking of mercury and of lead—therefore it is said to be of a dry nature, for the cause of which we taught in Book I, chapter 15: namely, that it does not easily allow mercury to adhere inwardly to its own sulphur, nor Mars either; although it has a viscosity that is moist by reason of its density, that is, because of its earthiness, by which its viscosity is tempered, it does not allow adhesion. On account of this earthiness it is said by nature to be melancholic, livid, and black.
Notice, moreover, that just as the aforesaid Saturn (lead) is white in its manifest part, in the same way it has its inward earthinesses before distillation—white salts, as we showed in the place just cited. Therefore we said in Book II, chapter 2, speaking of this mercury, that by a slight art we saw issue from it a black and fetid earth by washing. Of this earthiness we also spoke above in Book II, in the third cause of descent, that is, of distillation. Now since this Saturn has the nature of salt—cold and indigest—therefore it is sharp; because of whiteness it is called albid, and because of smoky vapor and adustion it is called fetid.
But since what is manifest is contrary to what is hidden, therefore lead in its depth—which is set forth by distillation under the strong pressure of fire—is found to be oily, hot and moist—that is, gold, because red sulphur is hot and sanguine. That Mercury is taken into the composition of this gold, is because before distillation it was one material or substance with mercury, whence it is said to be moist. It is called citrine because its composition is russet and white; it is named aerial, since its spirit is subtle and made sublime. It is called sanguine when it is ruddy. It is said to be fragrant because of its redness, warmth, and good substance after digestion. It is called masculine, since it is hot and, generally in the generation of metals, like the paternal seed.
Concerning these hidden secrets of Saturn, in the Book of the Three Words it is written that the manifest must be hidden and the hidden made manifest; and this hidden thing is said to be of the nature of the Sun and of fire, and to be the most precious oil of all occult things, and the living tincture and the permanent water.
Here, however, Saturn is still, on one side—that is, in breadth—partly manifest and partly hidden, of a cold and moist nature—that is to say, Jupiter (tin) and prepared Mercury; and this happens after the washing of the adusted dregs. Therefore I said in Book I, chapter 19 that lead has very much of an earthy substance, for which reason it is to be washed and converted into tin. Morienus says that the unclean body among the philosophers he calls lead, but the clean he calls tin; it is called phlegmatic because of its viscous moisture. It is called tasteless and slack on account of the separation of much sharp water in the distillation. It is called feminine because it is cold and moist, both in the generation of metals and because the Elixir is like the monthly flow of a woman; on another side it shares both the manifest and the hidden. Saturn is hot and dry, that is, iron and copper—although (as Rasis reports) the dryness of Venus surpasses and exceeds the dryness of Mars, because it partakes of quicksilver (Mercury), which tempers its dryness.
It must, however, be noted—as I warned in Book I, chapter 12, and Book III, chapter 7—that in metallic bodies there are two kinds of sulphur necessary to our art: in the manifest they depend on redness, but in the hidden they are white, black, and russet; one of these is intrinsic to Saturn itself. For this reason it is dissolved like the other things mentioned above and is called by the name of Venus. All the things just mentioned are together before distillation, and all have the nature of salt; we said in Book I, chapter 15 that Jupiter, Saturn, Luna, and Venus are dissolved by that Mercury which we designate by the name Saturn—that is, by its own power—since all of them together have the nature of salt; and only those things are dissolved which have the nature of salt, or of alum and of gall, as we have often warned.
DEMOGORGON. You have often spoken of dissolution; therefore I beg you to explain to me the meaning of this little verse: “Dissolve bodies into water, I say this to all of you who seek to make gold and silver.”
GEBER. In Book II, chapter 17 I said that all our bodies are sulfurous—that is, sulphur and arsenic. Now arsenic, which is called by the name of Venus, is dissolved by distillation (as we said above). But sulphur, called by the name of Mars, is not dissolved by distillation, since it does not contain in itself salty parts (as we said in Book I, chapter 3); rather, it is made subtle and is dissolved with its own mercurial water, which, in the chapter On Dissolutions, we joined to the other sharp waters.
Of these two sulphureous waters take whichever you wish—namely the one that is called Venus and gold; give this to your enemy to drink, that is, let it come into contact with that sulphur which is called iron. For we said in the place just cited that sulphur makes a tincture with its like or peer, that is, with arsenic.
By the Ancient Lion or Dragon is understood mercury converted into salt; and they call it “ancient” because it is incorruptible. From this interpretation you will also understand the remaining verses, namely: he who cannot dissolve should make our arsenic and our mercury subtle, and let him not touch the sulphur with a sulphureous body, nor our quicksilver; for the fixed sulphur which is called by the name of Mars will not be able to hold the volatile quicksilver unless they have been very well mixed and from the two a single substance has been made—which can be done with the mercurial water that we call the living water. This holds the middle in the mingling of tinctures, that is, between sulphur and the aforesaid prepared salt, which is called the salt of dissolutions.
Rasis makes mention in his writings of these sulphurs, and says that the water of copper, when dissolved to red, is better and stronger than the water of iron—that is, when iron has been sublimed it is turned to redness, and when vinegar is added it acquires a ruddy color like blood. Since therefore the sulphur called by the name of Mars is as it were external in the Saturn above mentioned, for that reason in preparation it is more easily separated from it by decomposition. For this cause we said in Book IV, chapter 14 that those metals which have a small quantity of mercury are more easily separated by the composition of salt; and in the same place we spoke of this sulphur of Mars is called by that name; I said that Mars (iron) has no fusible part, that is, it does not dissolve. Therefore it cannot be mingled with this salt, because by privation much of the mercurial moisture is lacking in it. For this reason, in Book IV, chapter 10 of the same work we said that bodies cannot be separated by those two tests—that is, in the calcination of sulphurs with vinegar and salt, and in the distillation by salt and separation—except through the diversity of the composition of their substances: from that diversity is born diversity of fusion, that is, of solubility, of thinness and rarity, which are the chief causes of the separation of our metals.
Speaking of Mars alone, I say that it is fiery—that is, red sulphur, hot and dry, and easy to burn before preparation, because of much unctuosity, and choleric by nature on account of excessive heat, bitter and sharp, since it is choleric (for choler because of indigestion makes food bitter and sharp). It is called masculine because very hot, and the principal seed of metals and Elixir, since in one common metal are comprehended all the metals of the philosophers. And there, gold and silver are present in near potency, since in it their seed is, by nature for the most part, digested and fixed; nevertheless there is nothing there besides sulphur and quicksilver. If you wish to be assured of this, consider diligently what we wrote in Book II, chapters 7 and 16, and Book III, chapter 4, toward the end.
DEMOGORGON. Unless I see the practice of this operation, I do not feel sufficiently capable to understand these things, although I think I perceive that art truly imitates nature in many ways.
GEBER. Nature by decoction burns the earth and water together when they are mingled, and produces vitriol; but art, by burning its metals, reduces them to a lime in which vitriol is hidden. And in truth, art, by putrefaction and separation, extracts vitriol and sulphur. Nature, by dissolution, resolves its vitriol and exhales a double smoke, making smoke like what is in the vitriol itself. Nature, by sublimation, leads this double smoke into mineral places and joins it to sulphur and art likewise joins its own double smoke to fixed sulphur.
But since white soot would greatly impede us in the fixation, we remove it; and in its place we take viscous, coagulated mercury, which we have extracted from the adust dregs. For this reason we said in Book II, chapter 6, that what separates itself from the body in the aludel—rising upward like dust, that is, into water dissolved from what remains at the bottom of the prepared vessel—this nature does; and art does the like when it washes that fixed sulphur. In lotion this sulphur, reddish in color, becomes russet; before calcination it is black because of its oily quality, and Raymond calls it “blacker than black” on account of the nature of vitriol. Therefore we said in Book IV, chapter 20 that Mars produces, in every kind of combustion, a red and dusky color, unless the metal has been very much calcined—for by calcination the adustible sulphurs are consumed, as we showed in Book III, chapter 7.
For this cause all the Philosophers have chiefly thought that these substances ought at first to be black—perhaps because, owing to the abundance of sulphurs, the lime is not yet nourished; but as this blackness is gradually removed right up to whiteness, all its other colors appear—for whiteness and blackness are the outer and plainly contrary colors, and all the others are truly intermediate. Therefore always in this preparation, as degrees and steps of blackness are withdrawn, the color shows itself less black, until at length it reaches the ultimate and perfect color of whiteness.
DEMOGORGON. I had thought this diversity of colors appeared after the coagulation of the Elixir; for you said in Book II, chapter 16 that sulphur in union with quicksilver has the property of producing a red color, tending toward citrine according to the quantity of the mixture; and that the more remote sulphur has the property of passing into whiteness by fire. From this I supposed the cause of the diversity of colors to be in the Elixir itself after its coagulation into stone. I do not understand this way of speaking; for since sulphur and quicksilver, if you were to put sulphur and quicksilver together so that they coagulated at the same time, I thought there would then be no need to remove or separate anything further. How, then, can sulphur be the cause of the variety of colors after the Elixir has coagulated?
GEBER. As Albert teaches in De mineralibus, sulphur has two burnable greases (unctuosities): one greater and, as it were, external; the other lesser and internal. The first is red and is removed by washing; the internal one, however, is consumed after the coagulation of the Elixir. For the work first turns black, and then little by little that blackness is diminished, and the oily moisture which caused the blackness is consumed. In this way we say that the sulphur is removed, since it passes into perfect whiteness, and afterwards into a citrine color, and finally into a red color. Thus sulphur is twice black, twice white, and twice red.
DEMOGORGON. After the preparation of the sulphur and the mercury, how long does the coagulation take?
GEBER. Then, together, put them into a vessel with a long neck and a round belly, and set it in ashes heated by a lamp-flame with a wick of fivefold or sixfold thickness; it will coagulate within twenty days, or sooner. In the Speculum Alchemiae it is written that the material must be governed with a gentle fire until the greater part is converted into black earth, which happens within twenty days.
DEMOGORGON. During that time, what signs appear?
GEBER. In the place already mentioned it is written: when the material feels the fire, it suddenly dissolves into water; then the spirits rise and ascend through the long neck of the vessel, and above the water there suddenly gathers an oil like a black mist. Therefore John of Rupescissa says: after the lime there rises a certain black pellicle like oil; then, after a few days, the material will coagulate under the water in the middle of the vessel, in the very spot where the flame of the fire touches the vessel; and the coagulated matter will gradually settle and increase, until, like a globe of earth in the midst of water at the first creation of the world, this dry mass stands forth—as islands surrounded by the sea. Then water and sulphur together, coagulated in black color, are compressed, into a form that holds its own sharp point.
DEMOGORGON. How long does this blackness last before it begins to turn white?
GEBER. It is written in the Rosary that it lasts forty continuous days; and that a second water likewise remains covered with blackness. But that blackness does not last beyond forty days, if the work has been governed rightly and in due manner. These things the ancients hid beneath the veil of poets’ fables.
DEMOGORGON. It is truly astonishing that the ancient Philosophers concealed this art with such obscure and chimerical inventions—things which our grammarians explain and twist into a moral sense.
GEBER. Whoever has had no knowledge of this science will not grasp the plan or intention of the ancient Philosophers. He will imagine only a crowd of gods and goddesses, and will not understand what they wished to signify by their generations, adulteries, loves, and various transformations. For it would be foolish to think these fictions were devised to hide moral teaching, which they set forth so vigorously, both publicly and privately, in words and deeds, in every kind of virtue.
DEMOGORGON. If you would make me a sharer in so great a secret, besides the other benefits you have conferred on me, by this single favor you would bind me to you most closely.
GEBER. Lest you think I hold this opinion alone, read Albert (De mineralibus I.4), who says that Empedocles, long before Hermes, affirmed that stones are produced by burning heat. The origin of this assertion about the body is taken from the ancient fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion, in which they tell that stones are called the bones of the great mother; and according to Empedocles, bones are in part composed of Vulcan.
DEMOGORGON. It seems to me that these words were not said by Albert in that sense.
GEBER. Stones generated by burning heat are the colors of our metals produced by the vehemence of fire; and because of their hardness they are called bones, and are in part composed of Vulcan—that is, of sulphur, which is called by the name of fire—which in them fire predominates, that is, sulphur. Now the “stones of the great mother” are said to be earth, because their generation is from a metal that contains in itself a large portion of earth; for their whole substance is fixed and earthy. The poets tell the tale of Pyrrha and Deucalion, that in the time of the flood they alone were saved in the little boat they boarded; by the flood they meant our white waters in flight. But by Pyrrha and Deucalion together they signified that subtle sulphur which a little earlier we said is called the Hermaphrodite. These two are saved by boarding the little boat—that is, in that black pellicle which rises above the water and floats upon it like oil. By the stones which Pyrrha threw and which were changed into women they meant quicksilver, namely that which, when the distillation is finished, remains fixed and earthy in the bottle; but by the stones thrown by Deucalion which were changed into men, they meant that sulphur which we said above is called by the name of Mars.
Again we read in Albert (De mineralibus I, cap. 8, tract. 2) that the fable of the Gorgon, which the poets invented—namely, that she turned everything she looked upon into stone—should be explained in this way: by the Gorgon we are to understand the power and efficacy of the mineral, and by the Gorgon’s gaze, the disposition of the humors of the body toward a stone-making virtue.
DEMOGORGON. This explanation is far more obscure than the text itself.
GEBER. These minerals are sulphureous, and their power is strong—a metallic virtue that hardens and fixes. The “aspect” of the vapors of metallic bodies toward this mineral virtue occurs when the fumes have already risen into the long neck of the vessel (the cucurbit) and turn back upon themselves and return to this mineral power, which hardens and converts those vapors into the most noble stone of the philosophers. Lot’s wife, fleeing the fire and, against God’s command, looking back, was turned into a pillar of salt; the poets feigned that Jupiter, seized with love for Ganymede, changed into an eagle and carried him to heaven. What we have so often said about that twofold smoke is contained in this fable.
For by Jupiter is meant that salt mentioned above, which through distillation is changed into an eagle—that is, into mercurial water, which in this art we are accustomed to call the eagle, because it flies above all the other spirits. In the book On Alums and Salts we read of ink; this is the sulphur that must be ruled by the eagle, as the philosopher Geber affirms—by which place sal ammoniac is to be understood. As for Ganymede, a youth of great beauty, we understand thereby sulphur, which elsewhere we said is called gold. But Jupiter is seized with love for this, because by nature the two join together and are united into one substance; for in distillation the eagle together with him flies up to heaven—that is, into the head or little cap of the cucurbit, which is the vessel bent toward the sky. Virgil also writes (Aeneid VI) of Daedalus, how he gave wings to his son and enclosed him in the labyrinth so that by them they might fly out of the labyrinth. Icarus, however, flying too high, fell headlong into the sea, because the wax of his wings melted by the heat of the sun, since the wings were compacted of it and fitted to him.
DEMOGORGON. I eagerly await an explanation of this fable.
GEBER. The name Daedalus is Greek, and in Latin means “various”; and it designates for us sulphur, which we said is called by the name of Mars, because it changes in a very various way, turning from color to color and from one nature to another; that sulphur of another sulphur, very subtle and fusible, which we said is called by the name of Icarus, the son of Daedalus, is understood to be the arsenical part, more subtle and fusible than that of Mars. By the labyrinth the poets understand the retort or cucurbit, or rather the philosophers’ glass, in which the sulphurs are said to be enclosed. The wings by which they strive to fly away and are borne upward are those things of which I made mention above (Book II, ch. 10), saying: “The bodies which need the administration of subliming or exalting things are Venus and Mars; on account of their slow fusion, this is dissolution.” Venus indeed needs Tutty (zinc oxide); Mars needs arsenic, for by these they are easily lifted up and borne aloft, since between them there is a great agreement.
DEMOGORGON. I’m convinced this is one of those passages that only you understand.
GEBER. By tutty is meant the mercurial water, which by distillation is squeezed out of the aforesaid salt extracted from the stone of Venus—the thing we signify by the name Icarus. This Icarus flies together with that water like a bird—that is, it rises up into the head of the vessel, for the salt is dissolved by the heat. But Icarus, through the beak of the alembic-head, falls down into the receiver, into the bitter water, and there is suffocated, for by cooking it turns black. The wings with which Mars flies off from that stone denote arsenic, as we said quite plainly in Book III, chapter 16. For the moisture and sharpness of the vinegar, with the heat acting upon a calcined and subtilized body, dissolve and draw out the hidden substance of the salt in that heat, and along with it draw the subtle thing we call the sulphur of Venus, which lies shut up deep within that salt.
Because the sulphur binds things together, in this putrefaction it attracts the arsenic and lifts it upward, and so makes Mars sublimate. The wax with which the wings were fitted and fastened is that viscous, whitened salt mentioned above—white like wax—which a little earlier we called Tyrrhenia under the name of Jupiter. I set these things out already above, Book III, chapter 7, near the end, when speaking of the raisings of bodies with their spirits.
Virgil also mentions the golden bough; by “tree” he wished to signify the vegetable salt, from which, by pressing with fire, is distilled that sulphur which we call gold. For since all that sulphur cannot be expressed at one time in a single effort, but only little by little, drop by drop, the poets invented that when one branch is cut off, another at once springs up—that is, by the strong expression of fire. But the Senior Philosopher shows the matter more clearly, saying that this soul cannot be drawn from the stone all at once, but many times and gradually. For this reason the ancients called it Jove and the souls, flower and flowers, tincture and tinctures, blood and bloods, fat and fats—because of its slow emergence, step by step. They also feigned that Jove, in anger, cut off his father Saturn’s genitals with a very sharp sickle; and that these fell into the sea, and from the mixture of their blood with the foam of the sea Venus was begotten. By Saturn we understand the salt mentioned above, which is called the father of Jupiter—that is, the preparation of that salt from which Jupiter is generated. When that salt is set upon the fire in a vessel or cucurbit, Jupiter is said to be angry and altered by the fire, and to dissolve in a subtle, piercing water: by this is signified the sharp sickle with which Jupiter, in anger, cut off his father’s genitals—that is, separated and drew to himself the male parts, namely the inward sulphur that is in the salt itself. And these together fall into the receiver, which is signified by their falling into the sea, that is, into the water of the salt; and from this salt and sulphur Venus is produced, as we said above.
This water is the course of Phaëthon, which the poets call the Eridanus, because our Sun is carried upon it, and the fetid spirits—which we call birds—travel on it as well. They also invented that a certain Minerva, daughter of Jupiter, sprang forth armed from his head, Jupiter bearing his head from his bosom and Minerva leaping out from his brain. I judge this fiction must be understood thus: Jupiter altered by the fire turns his head—that is, that salt which we name after Saturn—in which there is contained a subtle, white, soft, moist salt like brain; from this, by distillation, Minerva is born armed, that is, that water furnished (armed) with the most subtle portion of sulphur, which we call by the name of Mars.
They furthermore say that Vulcan, seized with love for Minerva, at last, by persistence, snatched her garment and poured his seed upon the earth, whence a little boy was immediately born—thus Minerva escaped Vulcan’s force. By Vulcan we understand the sulphur which we call fire, and it is greatly enamored of iron; therefore by Minerva we signify the mercurial water. For both are together in one and the same metal; and for this reason in calcination they are separated, as also in putrefaction. But since their natures are diverse and very easily separate from one another, the poets feigned that Minerva fled Vulcan’s embrace, because this sulphur does not retain its seed the way another, more subtle sulphur does. Therefore it is said that he grasped even her garment, because it is united with him, and together with its own salt it is joined as it were from without; and thus, without remaining joined, it lets go its seed—that is, it scatters that subtle part of the sulphur into the earth of the salt itself. But by distillation there is born that sulphur which is signified by the name of Ganymede as we said above—just as in the cases of Apollo and Phoebus—namely, that the powers of Vulcan (fire) act by the removal or separation of that which had been a hindrance to fixation.
The ancients also invented that Io was loved by Jupiter, and that as she fled from Jupiter she was encompassed with a thick and murky little cloud so that she might be stopped in her course. By Io they mean the mercurial water spoken of above, loved by Jupiter because it is of the same substance with him; and when they are joined and shut up in the cucurbit, the water, by the fire, rises by distillation through the long neck of the vessel, and then falls back to the bottom, where it is surrounded by Jupiter; and the black pellicle mentioned above coagulates and is made firm—that is, Io is brought to a halt in her course.
Those black films are the sails with which Theseus returned by ship to Athens; on seeing them, Theseus’ father, persuaded that his son had perished, threw himself headlong into the sea and there was suffocated. By Theseus they wish to signify that subtle sulphur which is contained in that film, or rather in that oil; by the name Theseus this is signified. But Aegeus, Theseus’ father—that is, the gross sulphur of Mars—plunges into the sea, that is, into the water of the salt, where he is dissolved and dies, that is, is suffocated, for on settling he turns black.
Among other ancient poetic fictions they handed down that after the flood and the drying of the earth when the waters receded, various kinds of living creatures were produced from the earth; among these, they say, a certain serpent was produced, which was slain by Apollo (Phoebus) with an arrow. They interpret this fable thus: by distillation (which we also call sublimation) there first comes, with a gentle fire, a flood, that is, moisture appears. When this is removed and the fire strengthened, the earth—that is, our matter, which has much earthiness in it—brings forth “animals,” that is, the subtle sulphur that we call “animal.” But among the other “animals” it also brings forth that serpent which they call Python, that is, the stinking water; Phoebus kills it, that is, our salt coagulates it and blackens it, to become a medicine for the human body.
They also feign that Mars is the son of Jupiter and Juno; yet some say that Mars was produced by Juno alone, without a father. By Juno they sometimes understand the element of air; but when they say that Mars is Juno’s son without a father by nature, by Juno they understand the element of earth. And they assert that Jupiter, after putrefaction, joins himself with Mars. Because by washing Mars is separated from his very womb, on that account he is called his son. And a son must at least in some part resemble his mother; this sulphur, which under the name of Mars we understand, bears no likeness to Jupiter—for it is hot and dry, fixed, hard, without viscosity and dissolubility, and as it were deprived of quicksilver.
Jupiter, however, is cold and moist, white, soft, viscous, easily melted and dissolved, as if he were mortified quicksilver. For this reason they feigned Mars to be the son of Juno, that is, of the element Earth, for he is the fatness of the earth.
DEMOGORGON. Then show me, please, in what way, under the name Juno, they understand the element of earth.
GEBER. They imagined Juno to be the daughter of Saturn, and Ops (Rhea) both sister and wife of Jupiter, and that in the same birth she came forth to the light before Jupiter; that she is queen of gods and goddesses, the patroness of riches, and presides over childbirth and marriage. The mercurial water signified by Juno is said to be the daughter of Saturn, for it is distilled from him and from his earth, which is signified by Ops. This water bestows riches, that is, our gold; and in that distillation Juno is generated, that is, that mercurial water signified by the element of air and by Jupiter—namely the salt that remains at the bottom of the vessel (the cucurbit) among the dregs.
When Venus is distilled (that is, when her own distillation takes place), the ancients said that Juno was born in the same delivery before Jupiter. I wished to mean the same thing in Book I, chapter 11, when discussing the preparation of Jupiter, saying that Saturn is prepared in the same way (mocking those who are not sons of this art): sometimes there is only this, that the terrestrial part, which cannot break bodies—that is, does not dissolve sulphurous bodies—must be joined with mercurial water, and that before Jupiter returns into a body from his lime, that is, from white salt as a true lime.
Furthermore, they say that Juno presides over childbirth, because by distilling she brings Phoebus (the Sun) to the light—for which reason she is also called Lucina—and she is said to preside over marriage as well, because there is a certain intermediary in the union of sulphureous tinctures, that is, of Venus and Mars. She is signified by a most subtle net wrought of steel.
Morienus used to say that the soul—that is, Venus—does not join with the body, that is, with the sulphur signified by the name of Mars, unless by the mediation of the spirit, that is, by this spiritual water. She is also called the wife of Jupiter because these two together begot our gold; or because joined together and united even before the distillation, and they assign to her (i.e., to this water) rule over all the gods and goddesses of the pagans, by which we mean our metals. For she governs these things: by her they are born and dissolved, made subtle and separated, joined, slain, revived, and made fruitful. Therefore they also feigned her to be the goddess of riches.
DEMOGORGON. Do not wonder that up to now I have not interrupted such a long discourse; for to tell the truth, I have taken great delight in this interpretation of matters so obscure and downright chymical, or rather of monstrous fables and figures; and (to say what I feel) I am fully persuaded that you twist such tales wholly to suit your own mind—even if the ancients never had the intention toward which you strive to turn them.
GEBER. If you had ever been present at the practice of this art, and had put the thing to the test and were at all skilled in it, you would indeed know and perceive this truth. For unless you deny the opinion of the ancients which I set forth to you—namely, that every metal is contained in every metal—and unless you thoroughly grasp the explanation of this saying which I have delivered to you, you will never deny that this is truly the intention of the ancient poets in their fables and fictions. By every means they worked to darken and hide this science beneath their inventions and poetic tales, so as to conceal nature’s secrets from the ignorant and unworthy—a point many wise men expert in these matters have not hesitated to affirm along with me. Thus, in their writings they feigned that Leto (Latona), for a certain reason, forced Juno to come down from heaven, and that she (Leto) was found on the island of Delos, where she bore Phoebus and Diana. By Leto they understand that sulphur which above we said is signified under the name of Venus; and since it is impure and compounded with another thing—with Jupiter and Juno, that is, with that airy water—it descends from heaven, that is, from the head of the alembic, and finds Leto in the vessel (the cucurbit), where she bears the Elixir, white and red. They also pretended that Vulcan was the son of Jupiter and Juno, whom just as we said above about Mars; but because he was misshapen and ugly of face, he was suddenly cast down to the island of Lemnos and there nourished and brought up by smiths.
By Vulcan they understood the sulphur that we have often said is signified by the names of Mars and of fire—that sulphur which, after putrefaction, is joined and united to Jupiter and Juno, yet by a difference of nature, by its thinness of spirit and rarity, is separated from them. For (as we said in Book 3, chap. 4) quicksilver receives no other sulphur except the one that is of its own nature, that is, arsenic, which shares in the nature of salt. Therefore they say Vulcan is the son of those two, because he is separated from their womb; and since he is ugly and deformed, on account of his unctuous, burning nature, he is thrown onto the island of Lemnos—that is, into the vessel or cucurbit into which the “arrows” fall, that is, those sulphurs that are generated from hot and dry vapors. There he is fed and brought up by smiths, that is, by the masters perfectly skilled in this art, who imitate nature.
They also feigned Atalanta, the swiftest runner among mortals, yet overcome and beaten by three golden apples. By Atalanta they signify our most swift and very light water; by the three apples they signify three boluses, by which Theseus smeared the mouth of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth—for by the Minotaur placed in the Labyrinth is meant our Quintessence, which in the vessel, or cucurbit, is made viscid and coagulated together with the aforesaid sulphurs.
DEMOGORGON. I give you many thanks that you wished to make me partaker of so great a secret, and—without any envy—lay open and explain to me, by your singular kindness, the things which the ancients concealed with the utmost pains. From this I hope at last to discover the true sense of the poets’ fables and inventions. Since, then, I am satisfied on this head, let us leave inquiries of this kind, so that our discourse, which began earlier, may return to the point from where we left off, speaking about the metals—namely, from which metal the matters just mentioned ought to be produced. Since they must be made from one metal alone, and not from common gold, I am convinced that they ought to be made from silver—and this not without reason.
For you have taught that the gold to be taken is that which lies hidden in the depths of metals. But since the Moon (Luna) is gold in its depth, as you have plainly shown in the Testament, we must without any doubt choose silver. You also wrote in Book 1, chapter 18, that the Moon is the tincture of whiteness; and many philosophers call the Moon the ferment of whiteness, and physicians use silver in their medicinal mixtures. Albertus too, at the end of the third book On Minerals, says that we know for certain that things which share a likeness in matter, in powers, and in natural faculties are more easily converted into one another; and a little lower down he adds: Let it not escape us that, among all things which have circular generations among themselves, the passage is easier for those which have agreement in more respects. For this reason also gold is made more easily from silver than from any other metal, for in it nothing needs to be changed except color and weight, and these are easy: for a substance that is more compact adheres more firmly, and—with a definite diminution of the watery portion and an increase of good citrine sulphur—the color changes accordingly. And the same method holds in other cases as well.
GEBER. I tell you for certain: if we had to prepare the whole substance of gold or of silver for ourselves, and not reduce it to its first matter, this way would far excel the others, but in this manner it would be of little use. It is true, however, that by the short road mentioned above, gold can be made from silver more easily than from any other metal—because, when the aqueous moisture has been consumed, the substance reduced by calcination becomes more fixed. Hence I said in Book 2, chapter 18, that the weight increases, and that by the smallest openings our good, prepared sulphur is admitted—manifestly white, but hiddenly citrine and red; and after being cooked together for many days, it finally changes in color, for the color of the tincture that lies hidden in the sulphur is brought to light by the power of heat.
And this is the method common to every metal. Now, speaking of the preparation of the Elixir by the longer way of nine months—that is, by reducing the metals to their first matter—it cannot be that gold or silver are better than the other metals; for in them there no longer remains the first substance nor the primary qualities, except for the intrinsic ones which are common to all. It is true (as we have already said) that one among the other metals has in its ore acquired a certain substance and property by which, when it is prepared, it becomes more apt and nearer to our art than gold and silver—as you will shortly understand.
In reply to the arguments you brought forward, I also say that the philosophers often understand by “the Moon” not only Jupiter (tin), Venus (copper), and Mercury (quicksilver), but that under the name Moon one must also understand the “salt of Saturn” (lead)—the very thing which in its depth is the philosophers’ gold, as we said above. We may also understand by “the Moon” the prepared sulphur white like the Moon; and this, in its depth, is gold and silver, and it is the tincture and ferment of whiteness and of redness upon its own mercury: this silver hardens and fixes our Jupiter, converts it to a metallic nature, and mingles it with our Sun, as we clearly showed in Book 1, chapter 18. Likewise, we may understand by “the Moon” the white Elixir; for this is the tincture of whiteness, the ferment of whiteness in multiplication; in secret it is gold, and very easily is converted into gold, because by retaining or strengthening the fire the matter is more firmly fixed, its weight increases, and the reddish sulphureous tincture that lies hidden in the depth is brought to light. If, however, you wish to make a medicine from the Moon for the human body, it is made in the same way as we said above concerning gold.
DEMOGORGON. If the aforesaid things must be made entirely from metals, yet cannot be made from perfect metals, it is necessary to make them from imperfect metals, but first prepared.
GEBER. According to the opinion and arguments of Roger Bacon, which we cited above when speaking about common gold, it is beyond doubt that this science deals with bodies to make imperfect things perfect so far as is fitting—just as I showed in the Preface of the Book of Investigation. And Callisthenes, a most eminent man in this science, says that alchemy is the science that bestows on the lower metals the excellence and nobility of the higher; and Blessed Thomas, at the beginning of the fourth book of the Meteora, says: the chief aim of the alchemists is to transmute metals (that is, the imperfect ones) truly and not merely by trickery.
DEMOGORGON. I think that by digestion the Elixir makes imperfect metals into perfect ones.
GEBER. This I say: if, without the corruption of extraneous things, a prepared and perfect Elixir can be made—and this I have shown clearly enough in the Proem of the Book of Investigation, and in the chapter On the Preparation of the Sharpest Vinegar, and again in Book 1, chapter 8—namely, that in purification the imperfect metals, by ingenuity and industry through art, are reduced in a short time to a pure and more noble substance, something nature herself cannot do. And in the Book of the Testament I said that every metal (understand: an imperfect one) can by calcination be converted not only into a salt, but even into true Sun and true Moon; nor can you object here that I meant perfect metals—for those are themselves the true Sun and true Moon—and this is not by projection, but by calcination. Moreover, we said in the Book of Investigation, in the chapter On Vitriol, that from imperfect bodies various vitriols are extracted, which are necessary and useful to us; we said also that in this art not only alums but also sulphurs of various kinds are called vitriols. In Book 4, chapter 9, speaking of the tincting medicine that turns the Moon into gold, we said that this is made after a known and certain treatment of an imperfect body. And if you have carefully read my works and writings, you will have noticed that in the book On Roots I set forth this opinion: namely, when we see imperfect bodies—prepared by our experience and industry and cleansed of every superfluous corruption—gain a greater brightness and splendor than bodies perfect by nature, we finally, from that consideration, have arrived to the end of this work and science.
In the Mirror of Alchemy it is written that, if we find a material in which there is quicksilver that is pure, clear, white or red, congealed into a mass yet not brought all the way to completion, then by our industry and natural ingenuity we can arrive at its inmost and perfect cleansing and at complete purity, so that after the completion of the work it is a thousand times stronger and more perfect than other bodies cooked by simple natural heat; now (though not pleasing to the tasters) this is that above which the whole intention of the philosophers is founded.
Moreover, Albertus says in On Minerals book 5, chapter 1, that it is proper to all metals to appear incomplete in species and therefore in each to be convertible; but the thing properly called “the mean” has an inferior nature which keeps its formed, distinct extremes; for this reason the extremes are brought back from the means by skill and by nature, when one extreme is placed above the other. We must, however, observe most carefully this middle nature for the transmutation of metals, because much of their science lies in it, by which they strive to convert one thing into another.
DEMOGORGON. I cannot grasp here what Albert means by these “means,” the “extremes,” and the power of the extremes.
GEBER. By “mineral means” Albert here understands the imperfect metals, since they are already on the way to perfection—not that from them by nature another, perfect metal can be brought forth, but that from them by art the most perfect extremes can be extracted, that is, the White Elixir and the Red; and because the power of these extremes is contained in the sulphurs and in the very quicksilver of imperfect metals, then these are the extremes, namely the White Elixir and the Red. For this reason we said in book 1, chapter 16, that imperfect metals, without admixture of any foreign thing, can be made perfect by reaching the extremes.
DEMOGORGON. If I remember rightly, you said in that same place that what is perfect is made perfect by this very magistery, and that the perfect also leads the imperfect to perfection; and you attest that these are altered together and become perfect.
GEBER. In that passage, by “perfect” I do not mean common gold or common silver, but the prepared sulphurs mentioned above, partly fixed; and by “imperfect” I mean the prepared salt of quicksilver spoken of above—signified by the name Jupiter. From these two, one is brought to perfection by the other: for sulphur fixes and colors mercury, whereas mercury makes sulphur subtler and fusible, envelopes it with moisture, and preserves it from burning. In this way each is altered by the other; and you can find this answer in Book 1, chapter 1, mid-chapter.
DEMOGORGON. In my view, in that place you rejected this method.
GEBER. I did indeed reject it there, but only as a bare, literal reading; for I was not speaking of compound bodies, but of the metals of the philosophers. To sum up briefly: Elixir, the quintessence, and potable gold ought to be made from the common imperfect metals, since by art they can be assisted and led to perfection, and can most easily be reduced to their first matter, because within themselves they contain the cause of their corruption (the causes we listed in Book 3, chapter 6). Likewise, the adventitious accidents of the first matter are easily removed from them, and their undigested parts can be digested.
DEMOGORGON. You said the aforesaid things must be made from a single metal alone. How, then, are they contained in every imperfect metal?
GEBER. We must admit that the aforesaid things are contained in all metals, both perfect and imperfect. But we must investigate and know exactly the nature of all common metals, and carefully examine their properties—which of them are easier or harder to prepare, which are nearer or farther from our art, and finally which are pure in their root and which are encumbered with accidents—as I made quite clear at the end of Book 1.
DEMOGORGON. Then lead must certainly be taken—because elsewhere you said that all the philosophers’ [principles] are contained in it; and in Book 1, chapter 9, you said that lead, even if it can hardly approach it at all, nevertheless nothing prevents our art from easily making silver out of it. And again, in the Book of Investigations, speaking about the water of lead, you said that this is a water made from quicksilver and sulphur in due proportion, and that it is used in the composition of the red elixir. Hermes, moreover, says that in Saturn the natures are joined with their completion—that is, earth, water, air, and fire are contained in it—and that here lies the key and opening of this science. Rāzīs also says that in lead the Sun and Moon are contained in potency, not visibly; that their tincture is not separated from it; and that Saturn itself is the white and the red elixir, and a water that can hold and preserve mercury. Pythagoras says that every secret is in lead. Hermes further, speaking about Saturn, says that you are quite right—and for many reasons people have been moved—to seek to extract quicksilver from lead.
GEBER. I have warned you often already, and I have said beforehand, that when the Philosophers speak so openly, they always speak in equivocations, likenesses, and allegories. Hence I said in Book 1, chap. 19 that when some confidently assert that lead in its own nature comes very near to gold, the philosophers praising “lead” are speaking of the philosophers’ lead, in which all the things mentioned above are contained together.
DEMOGORGON. Then I shall now say this: since Elixir is not in lead, it must at last be drawn from tin—for the reason that you said in Book 4, chap. 18 that, by testing this mastery, you consider Jupiter to come nearest to the highest perfection in the work of the greater order. And in Book 1, chap. 22, you said that Jupiter, more than the other bodies, is transformed into a more splendid, very shining, more perfect solar and lunar body; and again in Book 3, chap. 9, you said it is sufficiently clear that Jupiter comes closer to perfection, because it partakes more of perfection. Likewise in Book 1, chap. 20, you said that Jupiter is more perfect than many of the other imperfect bodies, because of its affinity with the Sun and Moon.
Rasis also affirms this, saying that tin is the whitening tincture of bronze/copper, and that from it is made a sharp water capable of holding and restraining mercury; and you yourself, in the Book of Investigation, bid us honor the water of Jove (i.e., of tin) for this very reason, because it is the very thing everyone seeks for achieving whiteness.
GEBER: You’re quite clever at plucking from my writings only those bits that seem to back your view and putting them forward; but my writings demand much closer diligence in reading and a studious effort to understand them.
DEMOGORGON: The matter itself will readily show with what zeal, care, and persistence I’ve pored over your works; for if you consider how precisely I remember not only your very arguments but even your individual words, you’ll see I’ve hardly been a drowsy reader. Tell me, then, why it is that I’m disappointed of what, with so much effort, I hoped to attain.
GEBER: Because you paid too little attention to what I said (Book 3, ch. 12): that lead and tin, in their common state, are impure at their very root, and from the first moment of their generation contain an unclean substance—both of sulphur and of quicksilver. Since the pure and the impure are there made one substance and one essence, it is not possible by any “first-order” medicinal preparation—that is, by any simple treatment—to remove this earthiness from such impure and foul quicksilver within them. Hence long ago I quite despaired, once I understood that this body could not be prepared so as finally to attain the full brightness of its lustre.
Yet, reflecting further, I recognized that these bodies are pure in the depth of their own nature; therefore I said (Book 2, ch. 7): if you sublime—i.e., draw off—the quicksilver from common lead or tin, after sublimation they will appear black. And again (Book 4, ch. 8) I said that in the softer metals no skill or art can, by this method, remove that swift fusibility nor the impurity that lies in the root of their principle. We may also add what we noted (Book 2, ch. 2): namely, that when our sulphur and our arsenic are by nature intimately mixed with dregs, it follows that, when they are sublimed, they rise and are carried upward together with the impure substance. And because neither lead nor tin has a fixed substance—i.e., a hard, earthy one that remains under fierce fire—but rather flees it, the spirits drawn from them by sublimation cannot rise without such impurities.
They lack an earthy part fixed and permanent in a strong fire that could hold back those foul portions so they would not go up with the spirits during sublimation. Therefore I said at the end of Book 1 that the metals which at their very root share in greater foulness and muddiness require more labor and attain lesser perfection—namely, common lead and common tin.
DEMOGORGON: Yet you said (if I’m not mistaken) in Book 3, ch. 8, that the corruptions found in tin at the root are merely accidental. If they were not joined to it in the first composition, they surely can be removed and separated from it. You also said (ch. 10) that Jupiter is clean but Saturn unclean; and in the Investigation you write that all supervening accidents can easily be removed and the bodies themselves prepared soundly and well.
GEBER: If you had rightly understood the long discussion above, you would not raise these objections. When I said that tin is indeed pure, and that it bears the whitening tincture of brass (that is, copper), and that it stands next after gold and silver and comes fairly near to perfection in the higher order—namely, in multiplication—my intention was to speak of the metals I had just mentioned. And when I said that Saturn is unclean, that is truly said of our Saturn; but its uncleanness is not joined to it at the root and so can readily be removed from it. And when I said that the perfect metals are clean at their root and that all accidental impurities are easily removed from them, do not think I was speaking of common lead and common tin, but of other metals.
DEMOGORGON: I ask, before you go further, please say plainly what I should think about the numbering of the ‘orders’. Up to now I assumed the first and second orders were merely tricks and imperfect medicines.
GEBER. Perhaps you suspect I have been handing down sophistries and imperfect remedies? By now you ought to know well that our ‘arsenic’ and the other matters we use are not the common things known to everyone. Besides, in Book 1, ch. 5, I urged practitioners of this art to shun sophistical works.
What I do say is that the medicines of the first order are imperfect—because sulfur is the medicine for quicksilver (mercury)—which we have called Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon; and quicksilver is the medicine for sulfur—which we have called the Sun, Venus, and Mars. These, in the first order (that is, in the first preparation, by which they are cleansed of supervening accidents) and in the second order (that is, in the second preparation, namely boiling and fixation, by which they are cleansed of their intrinsic burnable unctuosity) are imperfect until they are fully purified and sealed.
Just as a man by himself cannot live on perpetually, but needs to be joined to a woman so that through that union the human race may grow and multiply, so too with our Elixir: because repeated projections must be done many times, it would quickly be consumed and come to an end, and great labor and much time would be required if we had to begin its preparation again and again from the first starting-point. Therefore it was necessary to shorten the preparation and fixation, by mixing some portion of fixed Elixir with the “woman,” that is, with our living agent—what we call Jupiter—which is neither fixed nor earthy, as sulfur is. Since these have a certain kinship in their natures, they combine more easily, and in a short time they multiply in power and in quantity.
For this reason I said above that Jupiter has a great affinity with the Sun and Moon, and that it comes very near to perfection, indeed is nearly perfect, and that it is transformed into the brighter and more perfect lunar and solar bodies. I also said in the preface in Book 2, I also considered what ultimately causes the perfection of the Elixir in its multiplication: namely, the cooking of the pure substance of philosophical quicksilver.
The Elixir is likewise a medicine whose origin is the pure substance of the philosophers’ mercury; but what has already been made into a medicine has ceased to be quicksilver—it has left its own nature, because it has been transformed and fixed. Yet it is not produced entirely from quicksilver; partly it is from sulfur—although that sulfur too is in part from quicksilver which, once transformed, abandons its former nature, that is, once some portion of it has already become the Philosophers’ Stone.
In the book On Vapors we read that alchemists use “borax” in multiplying their metal—by borax we should understand a prepared salt, which we have said is signified under the names Mercury and Jupiter. And if you still doubt whether my true meaning and opinion about the first, second, and third [stages] are these, then read the recapitulation of the summary and carefully consider what we there said about the first-grade sublimation, by which our Stone is cleansed and purified from corrupting impurity and is made pure and volatile. Afterwards it is fixed—and this is called the second grade of preparation. The third grade in the administration of the Stone is to make the fixed thing volatile, and this is multiplication. Behold, then: the first grade is preparation, the second is fixation, the third is multiplication.
And just as our Elixir, whether for gold or for silver, in a few days fixes and transmutes our mercury, so also our washed sulfur, being fixed in part and having a metallic nature and luster, in a short time fixes our mercury, i.e., quicksilver. But the volatile, without something fixed, cannot be fixed in metal. The aforesaid quicksilver and Jupiter are extracted from the burnt dregs of salt by washing.
Rasis, in his Book of the Light of Lights, says that when the dregs are whitened we call them magnesia, and also tin and the foam of Jupiter. Moreover, the Philosopher Mireris (i.e., “of the Mines”) says the ashes must be collected—those about which the philosophers spoke—adding: do not neglect the ashes lying in the lower part of the vessel, for in them there it is the diadem of the heart.
He likewise says that what you seek is in the dregs. Thus Hermes, speaking about the distillation of Saturn, says: Take it and exalt it in the vessel until it is entirely consumed into vapor and nothing further rises; keep the sublimed water for the proper time. Afterwards take the residues that remain at the bottom of the gourd or vessel and guard them carefully, for these are the “crown of the heart.”
It is written in the book Turba Philosophorum: I command you to burn the body and turn it into ashes; for this burned body is the Phoenix, which burns in the fire and by being consumed is renewed; for by burning this body it is drawn from the ash, so that, joined with a portion of the Elixir, it is always multiplied and increased. Hermes also says: When you see the body turned into ashes, you have governed it perfectly. Rasis, in the Book of the Light of Lights, says that it cannot be burned, for after the extraction of the oil, the “earth” remains. We ourselves have affirmed the same when, in the Book of Investigation, we spoke about the preparation of the art of “blackening.”
And in Book 2, Chapter 2, we said that the dregs can be separated from the salts by dissolving the salts, a thing that agrees with nothing else. I confirmed the same again in the explanation of the three causes of descent in the book already cited, Chapter 11.
To explain the second cause, you must know that by “weak bodies” I meant the water and the oil which, during distillation, are preserved from combustion and afterwards descend into the receiving vessel, and after reduction are restored into a body from their lime, that is, from their salts. For in distilling we cannot draw off all the parts at once or at the same moment: the portion that is first carried up into the head of the vessel does not wait for the portion that follows; but if the head receives a stronger fire, the greater part is lost. Therefore it was necessary, by skill and care, to lead down through the beak of the head and remove what has already risen, and gradually place it in the receiver, where it will find the cooling of the heat.
We also said above (ch. 6 of the aforesaid book) that the head of the aludel should often be adjusted, lest through excessive multiplication the matters fall back to the bottom; and in the Book of Investigation, ch. 6, On the Preparation of Jupiter, I said that a pure and clean body descends (see pp. 9, 22), remaining with the glass and the salts or alums—the whole earthy substance. This statement can be taken in a two-fold sense, just as our bodies are two-fold, namely, sulfur and arsenic. For if by “the body itself” we wish to understand sulfur, I say that in the washing and in the first preparation its little skin rises up, and after this the truly pure and clean part is taken away from its fatty combustibility; the rest must be poured off until it liquefies, as we said in the Book of Practice. But if by “the salt” (or rather the alum) I denote what we call under the name Saturn, this is what is hidden in salt along with sulfur and glass—that is, with what is hidden in salt; and when the salts and alums are with it, the entire earthy substance of the salt will remain at the bottom of the vessels; and if that prepared salt is called Jupiter, then so be it.
Returning now to our discourse on imperfect metals, I say—on the basis of the arguments set out above—that Venus and Mars are common, although they have great earthiness and accidental sulphureity which is easily removed; nevertheless their roots are clean, and their sulfur and quicksilver are pure and clean in themselves and can be distilled or sublimed, because they have fixed parts and natural bonds united to them, as we said in Book 2, chap. 2. For this reason I also said in Book 4, chap. 3, that the whitening of the substance of Venus and Mars is pure, and likewise the reddening of the Moon.
DEMOGORGON: These statements do not seem clear to me in this form.
GEBER: They can be understood in two ways. In one way, if we understand these things as belonging to common metals, then by “whitening” I mean the quick-silver that has a white medicine, that is, its sulfur; but by “reddening” we should understand the sulfur of Venus and Mars, because the tincture itself—that is, the redness—belongs to the quick-silver, which we call the Moon, and these things are pure in its root. But if, on the other hand, by Venus and Mars we understand the aforesaid sulfurs extracted from them, I say that after putrefaction they become clean because of the removal of the fatty combustibility; and although they are reddish, they do not yet acquire together with a first-order medicine of redness—that is, by the first preparation, when a glimmer of brilliance appears—these [substances] are still unclean and very unfit to receive the glow of redness. But because by washing this first burnt redness is removed, and beneath this impure redness a pure whiteness lies hidden, their whitening is pure; and when they have been changed from this first nature and fixed by long decoction, then the reddening of the Moon is pure—this is the White Elixir, or its own quicksilver.
DEMOGORGON: I grant that these two metals are clean in their root. But how is this work to be done from a single metal alone—as has often been said? Surely it must be done from bronze, that is, copper; for this has more of the substance of quicksilver and less earthiness and combustible sulphureity. You yourself also affirm the same in book 1, chapter 2, where you say that Venus, in the depth of its substance, displays the color and essence of gold; it is malleable and, like silver and gold, it fuses in the fire. Therefore this secret must be taken from it, since it is, as it were, a mean between Sun and Moon, and it is easily converted from one tincture into another and is of good convertibility with little labor. Hence, it should be preferred to all other imperfect bodies in the lesser and middle work, but less so in the greater. And in the same book, chapter 17, you further say that from nature’s operation you have learned that copper can be changed into gold—since in copper mines we see a running water that carries with it tiny scales of most subtle copper; these are washed and cleansed by the continual flow of the water, but when the water ceases, you have seen those little scales, dried with the copper and cooked by the Sun’s heat for three years, become such that true gold is found among them. Since we can imitate nature, we too will bring about the same alteration.
GEBER: Here indeed is a difficulty—one into which even those who thought themselves very wise in these arts have stumbled badly and taken no small offense. Have you forgotten that I said that our subtle sulfur is taken from its own copper? It shows openly a reddish color, though in secret it is either black or white, and afterwards again red; it is malleable and fusible—that is, it melts and dissolves in the fire like gold and silver—just as those things which are from sulfur and mercury, of which they are composed. So take this as one of the three secrets—or rather, take the secret itself: namely the hidden golden and silvery color. For it is an easy, external tincture—neither useful nor lasting. And since it lies midway between the Sun and the Moon (that is, between sulphur and quicksilver), it is easily turned from one tincture into the other; that is, it readily takes on a citron-yellow hue. But this easy tincture is not of use.
Take this, however, before all imperfect bodies—prefer it to the sulphur that goes under the name of Mars (iron), because it is called “gold”—for the lesser and the middle work: that is, in the preparation that is easily prepared; and in the middle work you will understand fixation. Since it is more subtle and more pure, it is changed more easily and more perfectly and is better fixed. But in the greater work—that is, in multiplication—do not take this alone; here Jupiter (tin) must be brought in.
As for the other opinion—that bronze or copper can be changed into gold—you judge poorly if you persuade yourself this can happen purely by nature. For when the impure is mixed, even a little, with the pure, although the impurity is accidental, the superfluities cannot be washed away by a washing unless that washing removes the pure together with the impure.
Therefore I say that the ore of our copper is that aforesaid salt, signified by the name Saturn (lead). From it, by distillation, there is drawn off a water that carries with it our most subtle “copper,” indicated for the bottle together with the other spirits, through the continual course of vapors and the moisture of quicksilver itself, which rises for forty days (like the waters of the Flood) and descends through the neck of the vessel (the bottle). In this way it is washed and cleansed of its blackness. When the moisture has ceased and it has now become white, the Elixir—set in the bottle upon the ashes of its own sand and buried in the little furnace—by a tempered fire, in the space of three months becomes the Red or Golden Elixir.
To conclude, I say: if the whole substance were prepared for us, gold would hold first place, silver the next, and in the third place bronze/copper. But since we seek only the radical spirits and the sulphur, all these are contained in a single “virtuous” iron and are nearer to our art, and can be purified much more easily than all the rest—without doubt that is what we must choose, and prefer above all the rest.
DEMOGORGON: It would never have occurred to me; I was quite convinced of the opposite—since the Philosophers say this is farthest from truth and from our art, being more foul and base than all the other metals, having more sulfurousness and earthiness, and less quicksilver than the rest. Besides, you yourself said (Book 3, ch. 9) that imperfect bodies which contain a greater quantity of quicksilver are nearer to perfection and approach it more closely; you repeated the same (ch. 7). And speaking specifically of Mars (iron) you said in Book 1, last chapter, that in transformation or transference it is harder to manage and needs longer preparation and labor, because it does not melt readily. Likewise in the Testament you said Mars requires a very long labor on account of its dryness.
GEBER: When I spoke clearly and openly about Mars, I meant the aforesaid sulfur which we are accustomed to call by the name of Mars. Since it contains little quicksilver, is more earthy, and without fluxion—that is, without easy dissolution, lacking the nature of a salt—therefore before preparation it is more imperfect than the other metals, and its preparation is very long because of its great greasiness/unctuosity, its earthiness, and its stubborn dissolution.
DEMOGORGON: In many places in your writings you warned us not to take that ‘stone’ which you explained in many chapters. So if you now say this stone is common Mars—or rather its calx—and by ‘Mars’ you understand its sulfur, and you order that it be taken: if I take common Mars I will err; and if I take its sulfur I will likewise err, if this secret lies hidden in common Mars. Tell me, then, I beg—will you describe the practice of this art?
GEBER: Most certainly.
DEMOGORGON: Then it is necessary to speak about the preparation of common iron, if the secret lies in it.
GEBER: I do speak about it, but covertly—namely in the General Chapters—when I discuss the preparation of all the metals, marcasite, salt, sulphur, arsenic, quicksilver, and the like.
DEMOGORGON: In what way did you reveal this secret, so that one could grasp it?
GEBER: In many places I said the greater secret must be sought in Mars; I did this on purpose, so that no ill-willed critic could reproach me or accuse me of insufficiency. And it is true that I delivered it under a certain manner of speaking: so that those who do not understand would take my words otherwise than I felt them, clinging too hard to the letter. But the wise and prudent—who know our way of speaking—easily catch this, since we speak in our customary fashion. Even the poet Virgil used it, when he said that golden gold cannot be beaten from iron unless one shows how (i.e., hints must be given).
DEMOGORGON: Come then—show me how you wish to make this secret plain to me; for this is the conclusion of everything you have so long been relating.
GEBER: I said in Book 1, chapter 15, that quicksilver easily adheres to each of the metals; but to Mars (iron) in no way—except by art. From these words draw out the chief secret: namely, it lies in Mars. Further, I said in Book 3, chapter 9, that Jupiter (tin) comes nearer to perfection, Saturn (lead) less, and Venus (copper) still less; but Mars least of all—yet in it all perfection is placed, and on it the Elixir itself depends (if in some of our copies the text here is corrupt, read it so). Likewise, in Book 1, chapter 17, I said that Mars is last; and this is Nature’s greatest secret.
Again I said in Book 3, chapter 9, that the cause hindering any fusion is fixed sulphur. From these words you can most surely discover the greatest secret—if in this place you understand by that fixed sulphur the common iron; for the greater part of it is sulphur that is fixed and earthy (as we said in Book 3, chapter 6), and its denomination is from what predominates. And in Book 4, chapter 14, when discoursing on Mars, I said that by means of it the craftsman’s industry is most surely extended to the true rectification of the body’s substance. Now this is through common iron—or, if you prefer, by understanding under Mars its sulphur; the truth is the same either way, and from here you may proceed it is taken by the short way; yet it is drawn from common iron by a certain coagulating process.
Thus, speaking in Book 3, chap. 6, “On the Essence of Mars,” I cried out, giving great thanks to God most good and great, that He created this thing and gave to its substance the properties of substance—such that no natural thing could possess them—so that within it a perfection could be found by art: for in this we find (a power) very near to our intention, because in its calx it overcomes fire and is not overcome by it, but wondrously comes to rest in it, renewing itself from it.
DEMOGORGON: What, then, is that perfection and that power which is nearer and greater in it than in the other metals?
GEBER: In it is contained the aforesaid fixed sulphur; moreover, men say that iron is strengthened in fire—since in fire it always becomes fairer, brighter, and better. Arnold, too, says in the Rosary that those bodies are more perfect which contain more of mercury within them, while those that contain less are also of lesser perfection. Let therefore the glorious God—most good and most blessed, the author of all things—be praised, who created in the vilest matter the most precious thing.
DEMOGORGON: I still do not understand how from so base a metal the most precious Elixir can be made; for it seems more likely that from something precious one would procure what is still more precious.
GEBER: However common iron may be, and baser in itself than all the other metals, nevertheless, when what is alien to it has been separated off, it becomes far more precious than the rest; for it has a power very near to that which is required for the Elixir. Hence the philosopher Rugidinus says that one must know that every metal secretly contains Sun and Mercury; and we ourselves have extracted quicksilver from iron, and from that very (quicksilver), after it had been made, Alchemy was effected; and by its color we accomplished a good work at the completion of the fire. Therefore the Philosopher says also this: we call the greater “stone” Mercury; and this is that very thing which is drawn out from that stone which we have pointed out. Let us then explain what that stone is and the method of extracting it from the quicksilver that is in it. It is found everywhere, obvious to all, and every man uses it; and it bears the very name of Mars. Take it, then, and grind it most finely, grind it very finely and wash it. Raymond says that without iron men could not sustain their life.
And the Senior Philosopher, speaking about iron, says: ‘I, iron, hard, strong, compact, hammered—through me every good thing exists; and light itself and the secret are generated through me.’
Moreover Avicenna and Rasis say that the body of iron is stronger than the other bodies, and that the Stone is from it; and the wise chose this.
DEMOGORGON: Let us end this opinion for a moment, and if you have any firm reasons, bring them forward; for I am more easily drawn over to your view by definite reasons than by long circumlocutions.
GEBER: Know that I have by no means spoken without definite reasons; for in the Testament I said that since Mars has a fixed substance it is better than the rest; and although under the name of Mars sulphur can also be understood, yet with respect to the other intrinsic metals these words can likewise be taken to mean that common iron is better than the other metals because of its fixed substance—that is, because it has more fixed sulphur than the other metals.
DEMOGORGON: I thought the sulphur of gold was more fixed.
GEBER: You speak truly; but it is established at a higher price, and labor upon it is not useful, nor can it be improved, since it has already reached the highest perfection. The sulphur of iron, however, is already on the way to ultimate perfection and to tincture; and it can be helped by our art, so that at length it may come to perfect redness; and its supply comes easily to us, without great expense. By ‘fixed substance’ I still understand an earthy one, as we said in Book 3, chap. 6. If earthy fixed sulphur be mixed with earthy quicksilver, from that mixture the best common iron is made.
DEMOGORGON: This goes beyond the grasp of my wit, nor am I easily led to believe or be persuaded that this very earthy thing surpasses the others by far; for long ago I had settled with myself—and I am still of that opinion—that our medicine ought to be made from purer matter and separated from all earthiness.
GEBER: I do not say that the earthiness of iron is a good thing in this work; rather, I say that the spirits inborn in it and nourished within the earthiness of iron are better and more powerful than the spirits nourished in the scant earth and the other elements of the other metals. And this is proved by Raymond in the book On the Secrets of Nature, when, discussing iron under the name of the terrestrial element, he says that the earth, by the power of the rays, has three principal parts—namely the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral—and that it brings forth things so formidable that they cannot be described; which least of all happens in the other elements. Moreover, the more a thing descends to the terrestrial element, by so much the more does the heavenly power grow in it. Therefore water and spirit immersed in the terrestrial element, by likeness in the natural matter, imitate and draw out the properties and power from the matter of the place.
And since iron shares more in earth than the other metals, the water and spirit belonging to it will be more efficacious than the spirits of the other metals; just as a grain of wheat, falling into the earth, bears no fruit unless it die, so likewise the spirit and living seed of gold, falling into the earth of iron, produces no fruit unless it die through putrefaction and decoction. Another reason can also be given why iron is better and more excellent in this work, even though it has much earthiness: namely, because this [earthiness] is better and more easily separated from iron than from the other metals, since in them it is not so strongly mingled and has no affinity with the radical part. And Albertus confirms this in Meteorology IV, tractate 4, saying that iron contains very much earth, and is remarkable for its earthiness; and although nothing is so easily damaged by fire as water, yet in iron it regularly happens that the earthy part is burned by the fire much more quickly than the watery substance itself. The reason for this is that the earthy matter mixed into the composition of iron is muddy, not well purified nor well mingled. A most certain proof of this is that iron is easily covered with rust, and when it is burnt in the fire many little flakes of burnt earthiness fall from it.
For its earthiness is porous, and fire can burn it on every side—as we too have often confirmed (Book 3, ch. 6). We also indicated this reason in Book 4, ch. 14, in the section on the kinds of calcination, under the name “ash-making,” in these words: those imperfect bodies which have more earthiness can endure less and last less in this trial of calcining and separating off the earth, because they are calcined more quickly and their earthiness is easily removed. But the metals that have less earthiness, being much better mixed and purified, endure better in the fire and in the test of separating their earth.
This is further confirmed by what we said in Book 2, ch. 7, when speaking about the sublimation of mercury: there we said that the method (or art) of separating the superfluous earthy part from mercury itself is to mix it with things with which it has no affinity, and repeatedly to sublimate it over its own dregs. By these words we meant to indicate the mercury of iron, because a white salt is naturally joined to it, having a certain likeness to the whiteness of gypsum, eggshell lime, white marble, and the like; and since this earthy part is not well mingled and has no affinity or agreement with that mercury, it is therefore easily separated even by calcination and by washing with sulfur—of which we said that the sublimation must often be repeated.
Accordingly I concluded that the sublimation of mercury is better when it is performed with metals with which it by no means agrees, than with those with which it does agree. And we certainly know that of all metals it agrees least with Mars (iron) and with iron’s earthiness, more than with any other metal; therefore it is better to extract mercury from iron than from the rest. For this reason it follows that the spirits sublimed from iron are cleaner of their earthiness than if they had been sublimed from any other metal; and this is confirmed by what we said in Book 2, ch. 2—namely, that the dregs of iron are scoriae, that is, earth, which cannot rise in sublimation and which keep to themselves the impurities and filth of the spirits at the bottom of the vessel (or “boccia”), and do not rise up along with the spirits. In that same place above we spoke further about this “earth of mercury.”
DEMOGORGON: Unless I’m mistaken, there’s a contradiction in the book you just cited, in the chapter On the Sublimation of Mercury, where you write in this sense: “When you see quicksilver very white like snow and, as it were, dead, sticking to the sides of the aludel, then repeat the sublimation upon it without the dregs.” You also said in Book 2, ch. 2, when speaking about dregs, from which materials we ought to sublimate those spirits—that we should choose a matter such as agrees with the spirits to be sublimed, and such as is most closely akin to them; and in that same place you bring forward particular reasons at some length. These statements seem to me quite different and very much at odds: for above you said that mercury ought to be sublimed from dregs, namely from things with which it has no natural agreement; yet here you order it to be sublimed without dregs; and again elsewhere you say the spirits must be sublimed from a matter and dregs with which they agree most closely and are most intimately united in their very nature.
GEBER: Some might perhaps say that the first and the second sublimation are not the same— that the first time they should be sublimed with dregs, and later without dregs. But the operation is one and the same: distillation. My intention, therefore, was only to indicate that we ought to distill our mercury without foreign dregs, since it contains within itself dregs enough already—namely the earthy unctuousness mentioned above. So when I say we must choose dregs that suit the spirits well, I only meant to warn that no alien dregs should be taken up; rather, the spirits to be sublimed should be naturally joined with their own dregs, deep within and as much as possible of the same kind as the dregs of Mercury and of Mars (iron).
The vessel for this distillation should have a flat plate (or at least only a slight concavity), as I said in Book 2, ch. 11. This is against the round-bellied bottle or what our brethren call the retort; from such vessels our quicksilver can easily slip down, whereas from a flat surface—just as I said in Book 1, ch. 15—it rises quickly and most readily from the fire to the summit. And iron too has its own advantage over the rest of the metals, namely that its spiritus mercurialis are more (i.e., a prepared salt) will protect the prepared sulphurous spirits from burning better than mercury protects those of the other metals.
In Book 2, ch. 15 I said this is a property of salt: in the fire it is not scorched before fusion, and it preserves the sulphurous spirits that are mixed with it from the scorching of the fire. Therefore the mercurial spirit, after being prepared to the same degree, will preserve more of the bodily/natural character of its own salt and will defend the sulphurous spirits from combustion better than mercurial spirits dissolved in water—because the subtler and more dissolved they are, the more they approach the nature of fire and the more quickly they are burned, as we said in Book 2, ch. 2.
Yet it is certain that, if all the mercurial spirits of the metals could be prepared equally, the spirit of Mars (iron) would preserve a better bodily nature; for it is much less scorched and it protects sulphur better from vitrification, that is, from burning. For—as I said in Book 3, ch. 7—when a subtle thing is reduced, by calcination, to an earthy substance proper to it, it becomes even subtler, and, once thus reduced, it dissolves more quickly. Now since all the metals are by their nature subtler than iron, water prepared in this way makes them still subtler, and in their distillation their substance is almost wholly dissolved; therefore they are also burned more quickly. This must be carefully considered, lest a mistake be made here: it is better, too, to distill it in many vessels, so that it feels the fire less; for a single large distillation requires a strong and great fire in order to press out all the oil.
In Book 4, ch. 15, speaking of sulphur under the name of Mars, I said: when Mars is joined to bodies that are very moist, he “drinks” that moisture because of his excessive dryness and lack of humor; and thus, when united with them, he is not inflamed together with them, nor is he scorched—unless the bodies themselves that are joined to him are of a nature to ignite and burn.
Isidore says that tin shields the other metals from the fire; and although copper and iron are of a very strong nature, nevertheless, without tin they are at length scorched. By “tin” he means, for us, our intrinsic bronze (copper) and iron. And we ourselves said (Book 3, ch. 2) that two perfections must be sought from mercury: one which cannot, two perfections must be sought from mercury: one such that it cannot be burned and so defends against the violence of the fire; the other such that it does not fly off but makes things fixed. And this latter is the “sulphur” we call arsenic.
Vincent the Monk (Book 7, ch. 90) says that the salt which is mixed with the “filings” of the body protects it in the fire and also scorches it. By “filings of the body” we mean the prepared sulphur, like the finest filings of silver.
Albertus, too, gives another reason that suits common iron and its sulphur (which he calls by the name of Mars), in Book 4 of De mineralibus, ch. 1. It must be observed in this way, he says: the smoke of it shows that there is in it an earthy substance—highly combustible and burnable; and its stench shows that it is very undigested and unfinished, corrupted rather by heat as an undigested body than completed by digestion. And this, in its constitution, makes it such that it can be the body or universal matter of all metals. For if it were complete and brought to its fixed constitution, then without doubt it would not be convertible into other things unless that constitution were first removed; but now, because of its constitution, it is convertible into everything, just like the seeds and other principles from which the things of nature are generated. And therefore nature, being shrewd, supplies abundant sulphur wherever the place of the generation of metals is.
Since iron also abounds in sulphur, it too is, for that reason, the proper seat of the philosophers’ metal. On these grounds many have perceived the truth—that iron is nearer to our art than gold—because iron is more “digested” yet unfixed/undetermined, whereas gold, once digested and determined, cannot have that fixed constitution removed except with much hard labor, so that it may be rendered incomplete and undetermined; otherwise it cannot be converted into anything else. And this is the chief reason why no transmutation of metals occurs unless they are reduced to their first matter.
Albertus proves the same point in another way with other arguments (Book 5 of De mineralibus, ch. 1), clearly showing that iron is properly a mineral, since all the properties of the Stone belong to it—namely, that it does not melt by fire—whereas the property of the (vulgar) metals is to be dissolved and melted by what is hot and dry.
For this reason stones are said to belong to the class of the dry and earthy, whereas metals belong to the class of the moist. Now since both of these properties meet in iron, we do not hesitate to assert that iron is truly the mineral mean; for it shares much earthiness and a stony substance that prevents it from melting like the other metals. For its excellence the philosophers even called it a “stone.” Yet since it also melts in a strong fire, as Albertus affirms (Book 4 of the Meteorology, tractate 4, ch. 5), and has the weight and sheen of a metal, it therefore participates in a metallic nature.
DEMOGORGON. In the next chapter Albertus assigns this property to marcasite.
GEBER. Because of the agreement in matter and in name, the philosophers, when speaking about Mars and his calx, used the name “marcasite.” And Isidore says (Book 15) that quicksilver is found especially among metals and has such power that, if you set upon it a stone weighing a hundred pounds, it will at once support that weight; but if you drop in a single scruple of gold, it immediately receives the gold into its bosom.
DEMOGORGON. I do not understand how it is possible for quicksilver to bear so great a weight as that of the stone placed upon it.
GEBER. You will notice from Isidore that he speaks plainly about the quicksilver that is in iron itself; for this bears a great portion of earthiness or “stone.” But if you distill this mercury, then in the distillate its sulphur—which we have said is called “gold”—sinks (as I said in Book 1, ch. 15). The ancients praised iron with many encomiums; but among the other things they ascribe to its praise, the chief is this: iron is the proper ore of quicksilver. The reason is as follows. According to Rasis in the book On Divinity, what is manifest is always contrary to what is hidden. Now what is manifest in iron is that it is hot and dry, and hard; therefore, by Rasis’s rule, its hidden part is cold, moist, and soft—that is, quicksilver. Hence the same Rasis, in the passage already cited, says that the hidden part of iron is quicksilver, and he further says in the Book of the Light of Lights that Mars (iron) outwardly has heat and dryness, but inwardly cold and moisture; and within it, by its own nature, it also contains quicksilver, which—when purified and extracted by proper handling—can finally be converted to the likeness of pure gold.
DEMOGORGON. If I remember correctly, you said earlier that the two sulfurs named for Venus and Mars depend, in their manifest aspect, upon redness; you took this as a sure sign that the redness is outwardly apparent. Therefore Rasis means here the sulfur that we call “Mars,” which after sublimation is whitened like silver. Indeed, you yourself, when speaking of this sulfur and showing its washing, speak of the washing of quicksilver.
GEBER. Your inference is fair; but I also wished by those words to indicate that in common Mars (iron) there is contained the Philosophers’ quicksilver. The reason is that, after putrefaction, the whole substance of common Mars is red like blood, and beneath that redness the very quicksilver lies in the form of a white salt, like a lime (calx). Hermes says the whole secret consists in glass and in salt. Aros the philosopher says: “Take common salt” (I mean the common salt of all the metals—do not understand sea-salt). Yet I know no other salt, nor any other “ink,” except that which is found in the “hair of the Paschal Virgin.”
DEMOGORGON. I do not understand who this “Paschal Virgin” is.
GEBER. The ancients concealed the secrets of nature not only in writings, but also under various pictures, characters, ciphers, monsters, and animals, depicted and transformed in different ways. These were carved on the doors of temples and palaces, and no one understood them except those who had some knowledge of the secret. The “Paschal Virgin” is in fact a natural herb that has the property and likeness of Mars. But the ancients, delighted by likenesses and allegories, called iron the “Paschal Virgin.” They painted it in the form of a woman with hair spread and loose, and on the crown of her head there was set, at the top is the sign of Mercury, in the middle the sign of the Half-Moon, and at the end the sign of the Sun.
At the top is the sign of Mercury, in the middle the sign of the Half-Moon, and at the end the sign of the Sun. By this figure they meant: just as hair is indigestible, even if soft and fine, so the very finest radical parts of iron are incorruptible and incombustible, and within them are contained gold and silver and the Philosophers’ Mercury. Now Mercury is lighter than silver, and silver lighter than gold. Thus the philosopher Rudienus says that the beginning of this work falls at the Sun’s entrance into Aries; likewise Rasis, in his book On Divinity, says: “Take the stone after the Sun has entered Aries.”
DEMOGORGON. I had thought they were speaking of the first degree of fire—which should be gentle, that is, warm and moist—or else of the spring season, since, as Aristotle says in the Secretum to Alexander, spring begins when the Sun enters the sign of Aries.
GEBER. Your reading does not displease me; yet the philosophers’ intention was also to show by these words that the natural starting-point of this work is iron, that is, Mars—for Aries is the house of Mars. When the Sun enters Aries it begins to rise by several degrees; when it goes on into Leo it no longer rises but begins to descend. This signifies that the Sun, which in Mars is imperfect, can by art be led to perfection; but gold cannot rise higher—rather by calcination or solution it descends and becomes imperfect. Rasis also says in the same book On Divinity that this matter ought to be taken from the warmest and best of animals, that is, from a human of choleric complexion.
DEMOGORGON. But you said above that this medicine cannot be made from animals.
GEBER. The man who is warm and of choleric complexion is “iron.” For, as Rasis says, Mars is outwardly hot and dry, fiery and choleric; therefore people born under the planet Mars are warlike and choleric. And iron is called “man” because it has soul, body, and spirit (as we said above); for in its root it is pure—young and strong, because it is hard and of great toughness. It is also said to be “not clean” for the same reason that a man is so called—rather, because it can be divided into the four elements.
This metal is most powerful, however it be generated, through the force and influence of all the stars and planets (as Roger Bacon asserts); yet it is generated especially on earth by the very potent and most efficacious power of the pole star (which the Italians call Tramontana and the Greeks Arctos). A sure indication of this, as Raymond [Lull] and John of Rupescissa report, is the needle of the mariner’s compass, which always looks toward the pole and, as it were, turns itself to its like. And we said above that Vulcan’s net was made of steel, and that the Golden Fleece, the bulls, and the dragons were consecrated to Mars.
DEMOGORGON. I remember that well.
GEBER. By these words I meant to signify that the mercurial water, Mercury, and the philosophers’ gold are all made from iron; and that the stone which is sold cheaply compared with the other metals is an iron stone. For the ancient philosophers gave this stone many names so that the unlearned would not recognize it—otherwise, if they recognized it, it would not be sold so cheaply. And in the book of the philosophers called the Turba it is said: “The stone you seek is sold publicly and at a low price everywhere.” Arnold says that the “vegetable stone” is nourished in the mountains; many wanderers did not recognize it, yet it is sold everywhere and cheaply.
DEMOGORGON. But earlier you said our medicine cannot be made from a vegetable thing.
GEBER. “Vegetable iron” is so called not only because it is compounded from green vitriol and from it makes black ink, but because it is transformed by means of fire and has a power near to being converted into the Elixir.
DEMOGORGON. You said before that nothing need be spent to obtain what is necessary for this art, since it is most useful and costs nothing; all the philosophers say the same. For Alphidius says that this secret is not bought for a price but is found lying in the middle of the road, so that even the poor may have it.
It is written moreover, in the book Lilium Alchimiae it is said that the foundation of this art is one single thing—more tincting, stronger, and more sublime than all other things. Likewise, in the Book of the Turba of the Philosophers we read: “It is nothing other than what the philosophers have pointed out to us—namely, something found everywhere: it meets both rich and poor, the generous and the greedy, those who walk and those who sit; it is thrown into the road and buried in dung-heaps.”
GEBER. I grant that its form can be reduced to the form of the most useful stone from which the Elixir is made. Of this “stone” Aristotle, in his letter to Alexander, speaks and says: “Take the vegetable, animal, and mineral stone—a stone which is not a stone nor has the power of a stone—and if it shall have the water of air and the air of fire and the fire of earth, you will possess the whole art.”
DEMOGORGON. These things seem impossible to me.
GEBER. The philosophers, speaking metaphorically or by likenesses, did not lie; for Aristotle, truly reporting, teaches about the distillation and separation of the elements. When, therefore, in distillation with fire you have separated water—that is, the moist part of air—from this mercurial water, and afterwards by a bain-marie you have separated the air from the fire (that is, from the subtle sulphur above called arsenical), and [then] the fire from the earth of Mercury by strong expression of heat—then you have attained the true art of distilling and of separating the elements, about which separation we spoke in Book 2, chapter 12. And Arnold, speaking of this stone, says: “The stone exists in likeness and in act, not in nature.” And Haly the philosopher says: “They are stones and not stones; they are called stones because of the likeness they have to stones.”
DEMOGORGON. I concede that, when our medicine is finished, it has the form of a most useful stone; but to the unskilled it is nevertheless not a stone. Therefore we should not rightly say that the material from which the Elixir is made is a stone—unless we also say, by the same rule, that everything which is not burned by fire or divided into the four elements is a stone.
GEBER. Certainly I tell you that the matter from which this medicine is made has the likeness of a most useful stone at the beginning of the work, and we ourselves stated plainly in Book 1, chapter 5, that the Stone is one single matter in which the whole magistery consists, and that in its preparation we remove superfluities. Therefore these things cannot be understood of the finished Elixir—since it has no superfluities—nor is it true that everything which can be divided into the four elements or is not burned by fire is a “stone” or has a likeness to a stone. Rather, the philosophers wished to indicate that their matter has the likeness of a useful stone, that it is not consumed by fire, and that it can be divided into the four elements—and that this is the foundation of the whole art.
Haly the Philosopher says that this stone is found at every time, in every place, and near every person; therefore its discovery should be troublesome or difficult for no one. “A useful stone, black, hard, powerful, which can be matched by no price.” Further we read in the Book of the Turba of the Philosophers that this thing is “a stone and not a stone,” found everywhere; a thing both cheap and precious, obscure, hidden, and known to all. The Senior Philosopher says: “Ask King Mohors about the knowledge of the stone, and he will answer: every person knows it, and whoever does not know it recognizes nothing.”
DEMOGORGON. I shall never guess it; so tell me plainly what name people give it.
GEBER. My special affection for you, and the fact that you have long since been received by me into the number of my disciples, compel me out of kindness to reveal the secret. Therefore I say: the filings—namely the calx (oxide) of iron—which is produced in the fire and is thrown by smiths into the middle of the road and found on dung-heaps, is the most useful stone of the philosophers. It has the likeness of a stone, though it is not truly a stone; and this alone has all the properties that the philosophers attribute to their stone.
DEMOGORGON. How can this be—that that most powerful philosophers’ stone is burnt earth in which no active virtue could possibly remain? For since it has remained for so long a time in the fire, it is hardly credible that there could still remain in it any quicksilver or sulphur or other spirits.
GEBER. You have not remembered that I said earlier that, in the fire, everything is burned away except the innate (radical) heat and moisture of the metals, and that it is from these that our medicine is made. Philadelphus the philosopher says that the radical moisture of the metals, because of the homogeneity and strong union of their elements, is neither separated nor consumed by fire; it is fixed by the fire and remains in the fire. And although the calx of iron appears dry, arid, and deprived of moisture, nevertheless—if you make the experiment—you will find the things I have mentioned above.
We spoke about this calx ourselves in Book 2, chapter 7, saying that the sublimation of mercury from calx is better than from any other thing in the whole world, because calx agrees little with it and does not contain a combustible sulphur. For I said above that the sublimation of quicksilver is better when it is taken from those metals with which it has the least affinity—namely, from iron—whence I also said in the Testament that calcination is the shorter road to perfection; therefore I said that quicksilver ought to be taken from calx, that is, from iron, since the earthiness of iron agrees least with it, and it has no combustible sulphur (for that is consumed in calcination).
But fixed sulphur is not at all consumed by fire, as we said in Book 3, chapter 7. If, however, by “calx” you understand “salt,” I say that from this calx we sublime only the weaker bodies (as we said under the second cause of descent), namely water and oil, and afterwards quicksilver, which we call Jupiter; and this calx has no combustible or greasy sulphur, since we have separated it. From the first calx, however, we distill not only the weaker bodies, but also the fixed sulphur that is called by the name of Mars.
Moreover we said in Book 1, chapter 14, that arsenic and sulphur are capable of being fixed, and that the sublimation of each is better when done from the calxes of metals; and in Book 2, chapter 2, I said that experience teaches this is necessary. For those who have made trial of the matter have learned that they labored in vain by subliming things foreign and alien to the nature of arsenic and sulphur, since after their ascent no separation could be found; whereas, when they were sublimed with the calx of some body, then at last they were well sublimed and could be perfectly cleansed with ease, our intention concerns the dregs that are administered to it from the calxes of the metals; and sublimation is easier and quicker because of those very dregs and therefore preferable, since nothing else can take their place as well as they do. Nevertheless, I do not deny that sublimation is impossible without the calxes of bodies and is very difficult and exceedingly slow, leading to delay and even despair. Of these calxes the boasting men of Rupescissa speak, saying that a way is handed down by incantations and reversals to turn gold and silver into earth and calx so that in wartime they could be carried openly in the hand without fear of robbers.
DEMOGORGON: As soon as I have performed anything with leisure, I will try this operation, since it costs so very little.
GEBER: Pay close attention, lest you go wrong.
DEMOGORGON: If any mistake is made, I shall begin the work again from the start.
GEBER: I speak not of “practice” alone but of the material.
DEMOGORGON: You call “calx” of iron anything at all that is white?
GEBER: In this matter an error can easily occur, especially if you pick a calx that is rather unsuitable for the task at hand.
DEMOGORGON: Then show me the better sort.
GEBER: Among the calxes of iron you will find a certain kind that is brittle, and this iron-stuff is still rather unfit for this operation; there is also another kind, likewise brittle enough, which is white in fracture yet is not good either, for it still retains something of an earthy nature and has a share of greasy and combustible sulphureity. But when you see it, under the greatest vehemence of fire, turn into a glassy nature, of a color almost greenish or like a dark sapphire or a heavenly blue—this itself is truly the most excellent of the philosophers’ stones from which generation is made; and the longer it is roasted in the fire, so much the better it becomes.
DEMOGORGON: My greatest thanks to you for such generosity; still, with your leave, let me say what I think. You said in Book 2, chapter 13, “All moisture deprived by drying is not melted except by vitrification; for by the most vehement heat of fire it is changed into a glassy substance: what is called ‘deprived of moisture’ is vitrified,” and thus it will also be deprived of quicksilver and the other “spirits.”
GEBER: According to Albert’s view (On Minerals, book 3, chs. 2 & 5), every metal contains two kinds of “unctuosity.” One is, as it were, external—subtle and combustible; the other is internal, held fast in the root of the metal so that it is not exhausted or scattered by fire. This latter is not burnable or combustible. Now it is certain that this moisture is the iron’s radical moisture; therefore it is incombustible and is not wholly deprived of moisture, for what is deprived is only the external moisture, which is the inflammable part. The same Albert, in the chapter just cited (ch. 4) on glass, says this as well: we must not say that the material that enters the substance of glass is “ashes,” but rather the most pure radical moisture that was held intrinsically in the matter that has been reduced to ash. That moisture cannot be drawn off by the power of ordinary fire; under the strongest fire it flows—this is the moisture that has undergone the utmost drying. This, therefore, is a fusible matter, and it is the first, remote, common matter—namely, the very moisture of this kind.
The same Albert (On Meteors, book 4, tract 2, ch. 9) says that vehement heat gathers together the homogeneous parts and separates the heterogeneous ones, because it dissolves the moist and separates it from earth; but once the moist has been received into the earth it cannot be entirely separated. Hence it begins to distill together with a subtle earthy portion, and under the very strong fire it melts into glass, while the coarser earth—which holds more tenaciously—is burned to cinders. And we ourselves said (book 2, ch. 13) that fire reduces matter to glass in the highest degree; therefore it is clear that glass is a part of iron’s radical moisture along with coarse earthy matters. These had impeded fusion, but in iron they are burned to cinders; the glass becomes fusible because it has returned to its own liquid nature, and the parts that were previously hidden cannot be penetrated and destroyed by the fire.
Vincent the Monk (Natural Things, book 7) writes of a “stone—called ‘stone’ and yet not stone.” It is called a stone because it can be ground, yet not a stone because in the fire it is melted and flows without evaporating—like gold; and no other thing fits this property.
DEMOGORGON: When the philosophers say that the stone itself is not consumed in the fire; without doubt they mean this of the finished medicine.
GEBER: That gloss is dreadful—it corrupts and twists the text. I tell you the authors meant by those words the beginning and foundation of this work; George Bacon the Englishman confirms it with these words: “I say that every quality must be fixed above the fire—namely, that it neither flee from it nor be consumed or spoiled by it, and finally that it not change color in the fire; for these are the things that give the beginning to this operation.” Alphidius also says that fire enters into and penetrates all bodies, spirits, substances, and stones, but that it does not enter this Stone nor can it master it, nor can it spoil the sulfurs in it. Arnold to the King of Naples says: the longer it endures in the fire, the more it increases and grows in goodness and virtue—something that suits no other thing, for all other things are consumed by fire, whereas this Stone alone is improved by fire, growing in goodness, for fire is the Stone’s nourishment. And this is the surest sign by which to recognize the Stone.
Avicenna, in the book On the Soul, says there are some who deny the magistery of alchemy, claiming that nothing can be produced from things that cannot endure fire such as to support it. We reply by the example of nitre: the earthly part is removed by fire, but by strong fire its contact (nature) becomes stronger; for fire does not have power over glass.
DEMOGORGON: Yet nitre (saltpetre) is very combustible.
GEBER: In the passage just cited Avicenna means vitrum (“glass”)—but by a rhetorical figure (changing the first letter) we may understand nitrum (“nitre”). Hence Avicenna says in his letter to the philosopher Arsene: The region of the East, where precious stones are found, is closest to the sun; likewise nitre, the nearer it is touched by the sun, the stronger it becomes. Therefore this Stone too will be better the more it bears the heat of the fire and the other toils of the operation. Albert (book 4, tract 3, ch. 16) says that although certain things are corruptible in fire, nevertheless they are not combustible, because their moisture is not the food of the fire, like stones and iron: certain things do not take fire because their pores are constricted, and therefore they do not burn; but these statements must be understood about the “glass” mentioned above.
We ourselves said, at the end of the preface to the Book of Investigations and again in the preface to Book 2, that “glass” belongs among the things that aid preparation; for iron is readied to be brought back to the nature of glass by removing much earthiness. And in Book 3, ch. 7, we said: if we claim that bodies are cleansed by calcination, we certainly mean the cleansing of iron from the earthy substance that is joined to it in its very root. By this “glass” I meant what I said in Book 1, in the discussion of sulfur; when some people saw that, in a deeper purification, that very thing [i.e., the metal] got rid of volatility and burning, and became fixed and earthy, they concluded that by fire it yields no good fusion except a vitrifying one.
DEMOGORGON: When the philosophers speak of “glass,” perhaps they mean ordinary glass.
GEBER: That sort of glass has neither moisture nor sulfur nor quicksilver in a form suitable for metals. Hence Rasis says the ancients made a metallic glass; and we too said (Book 1, ch. 11) that the philosophers make glass from metallic bodies. Rasis also says in his De divinitate that some have handed down a dyeing-tincture that comes from iron and from nothing else, and that this is the greater, most renowned Stone. He repeats the point in his book On Alums, saying that glass, when melted, liquefies iron and all bodies and makes them flow in the melt. We too said (Book 2, ch. 8) that it is the property of glass to melt all things and draw them over to itself; and in the Testament (the chapter on Mars) I said that lime [flux] melts stones—hence some people, with the help of glass, make gems.
DEMOGORGON: Earlier you said that when glass is added, meat cooks faster; and you added that by the philosophers’ “glass” they mean sulfur itself. How, then, do they understand that same “glass” as this lime?
GEBER: It is true that the philosophers often speak equivocally. But when you want to distinguish and know what thing they are talking about, you must carefully examine the property of the thing; then you will easily notice when they mean sulfur, and when they mean the aforesaid lime, let him understand the aforesaid calx (lime).
Alphidius, speaking about this “glass,” says: “Break the glass and extract the stone; put it into a glass vessel or cucurbit, and draw oil from it, and you will find what the philosophers handed down to us—that in this glass quicksilver is contained, which conquers fire, though the fire itself is not conquered by it,” as we stated plainly in Book 3, ch. 6, near the end.
Isidore speaks almost the same: “Quicksilver,” he says, “is better preserved in little glass vessels than the rest are, since glass is perforated by no pores.” We too said (Book 2, ch. 6) that only glass and things like it, because they have no pores, can hold spirits that would otherwise evaporate and be driven off by fire. By this he wishes to indicate that the spirit of iron, when strongly excited by fire, is changed into a glassy color like sapphire or dark heavenly blue. Therefore (Book 4, ch. 16) I said that in prepared bodies we should especially look for a sky-colored hue as the surest sign of the goodness of quicksilver.
Albertus almost confirms this with his words; for we cannot easily recognize these things when the metal has not yet acquired its proper specific form. Nor can we easily tell whether something is a true stone or still a metal unless it has been brought, by a marked weakening and corruption, to where nothing remains but the form alone and a virtue that scarcely follows the essence.
These things are to be compared with living bodies: if, a short time after death, they look little different from the living, after a long time in the grave their shape alone remains, and then even at once they crumble to ashes; and it becomes clear what a great difference there is between living and dead bodies. The same should be understood of vegetables and minerals; for minerals also, in their own way, die, as animals and other living things do, though it is not recognized as such. It is easy to miss their proper form and nature unless there has been a great change.
For as long as sapphire keeps its color and transparency and the appearance of a sapphire, it is like a living thing and suited to the operation of the sapphire. But if after a long time it changes, grows dim, and is discolored, we know it is no longer sapphire itself, but the likeness of ‘sapphire’—that is to be understood of quick (living) gold and of dead gold, and likewise of silver and the other metals.”
DEMOGORGON: Don’t be annoyed if I ask you to explain in a few words those things that have been handled at such length.
GEBER: “This is the sum of the whole argument, and what I wished to indicate by that discourse: when iron has been kept in the fire for such a length of time that it endures there, so that it becomes very weak and fragile, and none of the nature of glass remains in it, and its color becomes dark like sapphire—then at last it has been converted into the philosophers’ stone.
The ancients veiled this under a poetic fiction when they fashioned Demogorgon, the two-breasted mother of all the gods of the pagans, wrapped round on every side with darkness, mist, and gloom, dwelling in the deep hollows of the earth; at his birth he was clothed in a certain green mantle of moisture rising from the ground, breathing out an earthy odor—fearful and destructive—not born from anything else, but eternal and the parent of all things.”
DEMOGORGON: Although this seems very obscure to me, I am nevertheless eager to hear the explanation of that fable.
GEBER: The name Demogorgon is Greek; in Latin it is ‘the god of the earth’ and ‘the god of the people,’ that is, a terrible god, and it signifies iron. He is called the great-grandfather or ancestor of all the gods of the pagans, for all of them draw their origin from him (as I have already said). Surrounded by clouds, mists, and gloom, he has a terrestrial substance and dwells in the caverns of the earth, for he is born and nourished beneath the earth; they say he is eternal and not generated by any other, since from him all things are generated that bear his likeness. On account of this they called him the father and parent of all things. Or he is said to be that which existed before the earth and all the elements and the prime element, and after the earth he contains within himself a certain incorruptible essence.
There is also a certain moisture in him—vile and foul—which is rust; and he is clothed with a kind of green mantle, which is vitriol; and from sulphur he breathes out an earthy, horrible, and deadly smell, a stinking thing—that is, something sulfurous—when it is put in the fire, becomes with it a fetid water.
To this (as Boccaccio writes in his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods) the ancients attributed Eternity and Chaos. ‘Eternity’ is the Fifth Essence—that is, the radical moisture or quicksilver— which Pliny also records (Book 33) as ‘an everlasting liquid.’ This prepared quicksilver Claudian calls the Serpent, which in coagulation devours its own tail—that is, the mercurial water of quicksilver, distilled in the form of a lion’s tail and a serpent.
But Chaos is that earthy stuff we above assigned to Saturn: it is a confused matter in which all things are contained without form—namely Sun, Moon, and stars (that is, the planets above mentioned which do not have their own light), and likewise the four elements, and all things vegetable, animal, and mineral. And, as Claudian says, it dwells with Demogorgon in shapes of various elements. We too said above that in iron all the philosophers’ metals are contained together.
Its first son is called Strife (Litigium): this is the very sulfur named after Mars, which in putrefaction comes first and causes tumult in the belly of Chaos itself, in the salt itself, because it is the prima materia of metals, which they call hyle (that is, the ‘wood’), for it is the vegetable part, and from it all the elements are born. But this sulfur seeks to be separated, since its nature is different and it has no falseness; therefore it opens the belly of Chaos—that is, it is dissolved in vinegar. Demogorgon, however, stretching out his hand, seizes Strife, that same sulfur which we have called iron; by ‘the hand of Demogorgon’ is understood another sulfur called arsenical. For, as we said above, Mars is raised up with Arsenic; Vulcan and Mars signify the same thing—just as Vulcan, born suddenly and being ugly and misshapen, was hurled onto the island of Lemnos, so we must say also of Strife, born suddenly and, being misshapen on account of its sulfurousness and greasy combustibility, it was cast into the air—that is, into distilled water—where it washed and dissolved itself and flew upward again, that is, into the water itself, since it could not descend farther, because the arsenic extracted from it—that is, separated from the belly of the salt—is set in a place deeper than all other things; for in the very center of the earth that same salt contains it, under the name Chaos.
DEMOGORGON: This discussion has gone on long enough; so I will not render a judgment. As an explanation, however, this is sufficient for me—until I myself have seen the practice at some point.
End of the exposition of Geber’s alchemy.
LIGNUM VITAE - The Tree of Life – Demogorgon and Raymundus
DEMOGORGON. Greetings, most learned Raymond.
RAYMOND. Good health to you, excellent sir; but I wish to know who you are and for what purpose you have come here.
DEMOGORGON. The distinguished and widespread fame of your wisdom, and your most learned writings, plainly show that you possess great knowledge of all the sciences. And since every man—especially the aged—desires above all to live as long as possible, I too, being weighed down with old age, have journeyed here from Italy to this island of Majorca to appear before you and to receive from you some sure remedy by which I might prolong my life for a time and defend myself from death without any illness.
RAYMOND. Do you not know that God has appointed to each man the limit of his life, which no one can pass?
DEMOGORGON. I do not ask for a remedy against that final term which has been fixed by God for each person, but rather that I might guard myself against the many illnesses by which man’s fragile body is afflicted day by day, and that I might withstand the wasting of the radical moisture and the loss of natural heat. For I am persuaded that the ancient fathers, who extended the span of their life to five hundred years, made use of some medicine by which for so long a time they lived without infirmity.
RAYMOND. The ancient fathers lived long by the will of God, so that through their long lives the human race might the more quickly be multiplied.
DEMOGORGON. Why then did not everyone live for so long a time?
RAYMOND. Those who were nearer to those ancient fathers in descent lived longer, as if they had scarcely advanced from God’s first creation; for they had a good and praiseworthy constitution and were long-lived. But this excellence diminished over the long succession of generations, and the nearer they were to the first creation, the longer they lived.
DEMOGORGON. Then all people ought to have lived for a long time in that age—yet Holy Scripture mentions only a few.
RAYMOND. From the beginning the year was not of such length as among the Egyptians, nor did it consist of twelve months as it does today.
DEMOGORGON. In Holy Scripture there is mention not only of years but also of months; therefore the years were not Egyptian, but fixed after the manner of the Hebrews and as long as they are today, as St. Augustine affirms in the City of God.
RAYMOND. The fruits and all things that spring from the earth were then better and of greater virtue than before the Flood, for sustaining and prolonging life, than they are today.
DEMOGORGON. Therefore everyone ought to have lived a long time—yet we certainly know this did not happen.
RAYMOND. Not all had the same constitution and strength.
DEMOGORGON. Surely it is impossible for anyone to have so good and strong and well-balanced a constitution as to reach nine hundred years of age without the aid of preservative medicine.
RAYMOND. The first fathers had the Tree of Life, by which they kept death at bay for a long time.
DEMOGORGON. When they were suddenly expelled from the earthly Paradise, they were deprived of the Tree of Life.
RAYMOND. I will tell you the cause of their longevity. Adam, created from the earth and endowed with all knowledge, possessed understanding of all natural things, and knew the things by which life could be prolonged and used them himself. Passing these down day by day to his descendants, others afterwards received them by transmission—therefore not everyone was able, they passed it on by hand; therefore not everyone was able to live to so great an age, since the knowledge of this thing had not been handed down to all.
DEMOGORGON. So then I ask you—since you’re versed in every science—to show me this medicine that Adam handed down to his descendants, by which he prolonged his life to nine hundred years.
RAYMOND. Conserving medicines must be very durable and far removed from corruption (as we have plainly written in the Book of the Secrets of Nature). For if they are to preserve the human body from decay, they must themselves be perpetually lasting; otherwise they would run into even greater corruption. Therefore, if we wish to keep youth and prolong it, and to restore in the aged the radical moisture and natural heat, we must choose a substance more incorruptible than all other things under the lunar sphere, and prepare it into a medicine and most pleasant food, so that it can be taken by mouth into the body; and once taken, it will very swiftly penetrate the whole human body and preserve it as if incorruptible.
DEMOGORGON. To be frank, what you have said seems impossible to me. For all bodily things created by God for human use are either the elements themselves or things composed of the elements, and all these are corruptible. Whence, then, shall we get this incorruptible medicine? We also see that everything generated is generated from something like itself (as Aristotle says, Metaphysics VII), and whatever of human flesh has been lost and consumed must be restored from another corruptible thing—namely, from corruptible foods which, by the power of natural heat, are broken down and transformed in the stomach, liver, and the members, by the power of the nutritive faculty, into human flesh. But if this medicine is incorruptible, it can never be transformed into human flesh, just as the matter of the heavens can never be transformed into elemental matter.
RAYMOND. You have argued this fully and brought it forward well; yet do you think that in things composed of the elements nothing is found besides corruptible elements?
DEMOGORGON. Then show me what there is, mixed into things composed of the elements, that is other than the elements themselves.
RAYMOND. This is a certain subtle substance—what is called the radical, intrinsic moisture, the quinta essentia—diffused through the parts of the elements, simple and entirely incorruptible. Nature, shrewd as she is, produced and ordered it so that things might be preserved in their being for a long time, since she desires to conserve individuals for a long period and to bring forth things forever in their own species. For although in the univocal generation of animals every animal produces its like in species, nonetheless in the kind of generation that ceases—namely that which takes place by the putrefaction and corruption of the begetter—the thing generated turns out misshapen with respect to the begetter in species or in kind; as we see with food, by which what has been consumed and lost through the use of intrinsic and extrinsic heat is generated anew and restored. Nor do I say that this medicine is absolutely incorruptible like the heavens; but since it is produced from a matter more incorruptible than all others, and has been made simple by separating the corruptible elements, if it is properly preserved it will last ten thousand years without corruption; and taken by the mouth over a long time it will keep the human body almost incorruptible. For this reason physicians earnestly urge us to nourish ourselves with food that is less corruptible.
DEMOGORGON. Your view sounds to me like the opinion of certain philosophers who claimed that the salamander lives by fire alone, the herring by water alone, the mole by earth, and the chameleon by air—an opinion that is false. For no thing composed of elements can live on a single simple element; rather, as Aristotle says, it is preserved by the things of which it is composed. Therefore a human being will not sustain his life by that radical simple moisture alone, however incorruptible it may be.
RAYMOND. I do not say that a person can live by this medicine alone; but by using it together with other foods he can at length attain the long life of the first fathers, who not only nourished by the food of the earthly Paradise, but also enjoying the other blessings there.
DEMOGORGON. Did the first parents use this medicine?
RAYMOND. They ought especially to have used it, to extend life.
DEMOGORGON. It is indeed remarkable that they had nothing else that defended them better against death.
RAYMOND. Speaking naturally, this medicine was better and more excellent than any other—nothing more sublime exists in the whole world. For, as Aristotle says (Metaphysics X), in every kind there is something that holds first rank in that kind; and since this medicine is produced from a material most incorruptible and of the highest power—such as you will hardly find under the heavens—it will hold the first and highest place among all other medicines in excellence.
DEMOGORGON. Then this medicine is the very “tree of life”?
RAYMOND. I told you earlier that the first fathers were deprived of the tree from the beginning, as we read in Moses.
DEMOGORGON. Perhaps Moses, well trained from youth in the sciences of the Egyptians and acquainted with this divine knowledge (as the monk Vincent records), spoke of these matters obscurely—just as other philosophers have done.
RAYMOND. I wish to take nothing away from his writings; nor should we believe either more or less of him than is proper.
DEMOGORGON. Perhaps it is that herb with which Medea restored Jason to youth, and with which Aesculapius revived those who were almost dead?
RAYMOND. It is indeed that very medicine; but it is by no means to be called a herb. The ancient philosophers hid this knowledge beneath poetic fables and spoke by way of likeness.
DEMOGORGON. What likeness do you mean?
RAYMOND. In its preparation this medicine takes on many forms; it even assumes a green color like a plant. For that reason the ancients called it “vegetable” and “herb.” Hence (as one of Hermes’ disciples says when discussing these matters) the thing is “akin to plants” on account of its greenness.
DEMOGORGON. If it has so many healing virtues, how is it that the medicine cannot simply be a plant?
RAYMOND. This medicine cannot be made from plants, nor from animals, nor from things derived from them.
DEMOGORGON. Why not?
RAYMOND. Since this Medicine must be entirely incorruptible and, in this regard, surpass all things compounded of the elements, it has to be drawn from a material that is farthest removed from every kind of corruption.
DEMOGORGON. Yet in the book you titled On the Secrets of Nature you said it should be extracted from red wine. John of Rupescissa says the same; others claim one must take celandine; others, human blood.
RAYMOND. You’re quite mistaken if you think the philosophers’ writings are to be taken at their bare wording—especially in this art. The clearer and more straightforward their language seems, the more obscurity their writings contain; for they spoke by likenesses and riddles.
DEMOGORGON. In this matter, what likeness do they use?
RAYMOND. The “Senior” philosopher says this medicine is changed and altered from color to color, from taste to taste, and from nature to nature; hence it has many names. And the philosopher Minois says: if one asks why it becomes red before it receives whiteness, the answer is that it twice turns black, twice changes to a lemon-yellow, and twice takes on red. And because, when it has twice received the red so that it is true red, it resembles human blood after putrefaction and in the distillation, therefore the ancients, speaking by similitudes, called it “red wine,” “human blood,” and “dragon’s blood,” and the like.
DEMOGORGON. I had always thought animals, as nobler than inanimate things, possessed greater power, especially in medicine.
RAYMOND. The excellence of animals does not lie in the proportion and mixture of the elements but in the soul. Now since this medicine must be made from bodily, material substance, certain minerals are better suited to accomplish the work: their composition is harder and stronger than that of animals, whose bodily composition is relatively weak, easily corrupted, and of little efficacy. Indeed we see that animals occupied with higher and more sublime concerns are thereby deprived of practical usefulness, because minerals, having no operation of sense and lacking sensitivity, possess a greater bodily power than animals themselves.
DEMOGORGON. If this medicine cannot be made from plants or animals, it must perhaps be made from intermediate minerals—such as salt, alum, ink-stone, marcasite, antimony, sulphur, and common quicksilver?
RAYMOND. Not from these either.
DEMOGORGON. Yet they are very durable.
RAYMOND. They are not, in virtue, more incorruptible than other elemental things.
DEMOGORGON. By what are they corrupted?
RAYMOND. By violent fire.
DEMOGORGON. But fire consumes, snatches away, and devours everything.
RAYMOND. It cannot, however, destroy the radical moisture—either by its own radical heat or by its compound heat—in metals; so Geber states in Book 2, and Albert in Book 3 On Minerals, chapter 2.
DEMOGORGON. For what reason?
RAYMOND. Because of their homogeneity and very great solidity and compactness, owing to an inseparable mixture; and because of their very long, perfectly tempered digestion in the veins of the earth.
DEMOGORGON. Hence, this medicine must be made from the moist and warm radical of metals.
RAYMOND. We see that metals which lay buried for more than a thousand years in the ancient buildings of Rome have been found uncorrupted, suffering no harm; from this you may readily infer how long their radical moisture can last. Therefore purify, distill, and separate it from every corruptible, gross, and elemental part—this is why Geber says so in Book 2, chapter 12. We observe that things distilled become purer and are more easily preserved from putrefaction.
DEMOGORGON. Then you think metals possess such power and virtue above all things of the elements?
RAYMOND. From heaven.
DEMOGORGON. Yet hard things scarcely (indeed, not at all) receive the power of the heavens, because they do not obey the sky; for we see that a seal does not imprint its image on hard stone, but on soft wax.
RAYM: “The rays of the heavenly bodies are united with no element so strongly and powerfully as with earth; for the earth is the proper and firm receptacle of celestial influences, and (as it were) the center of their sphere. For this reason the earth itself brings forth the marvels of plants, animals, and minerals. Hermes says the earth is the parent and bearer of metals, carrying them in its womb like a pregnant woman carries a fetus; but he calls the heavens the father, and says it is through the heavens that the earth is impregnated—on mountains, plains, in water, and everywhere. It may be granted that, by its own hardness, the earth could produce nothing if it did not obey motion; but when it is continually warmed by the heaven and by the power of the sun and the other planets, the earth is constantly cooked, and from this it is subtilized and altered. Then its subtlest parts are lifted aloft by the heat of the sun as vapors; afterwards, celestial powers continually descending from the sky, and almost entering into the very substance of the earth, find there a simple, most subtle, and spiritual matter—incorruptible, bright, and very perceptive, prepared by nature’s sagacity and suited to receive them—and, because of a certain likeness between them, they pour into it their most excellent power, imparting to it a double radical metallic virtue. And since this spiritual matter, having long obeyed the heavens and been spiritualized, has remained for a very long time in the substance of the first principles of metals—uniform and homogeneous—it is at last hardened, even over the course of a thousand years, as Geber says. Therefore the heavens infuse into it wonderful powers greater than in other things; for in these (metals) the heavens labor more than in the rest, and this is why metals, by such power, easily surpass all other elements. Yet if, after a very long time, this double fume and spiritual vapor should so anticipate and forestall metallic hardness, and, penetrating inward, receive the celestial power, nevertheless, once hindered and choked by earthiness and hardness, it cannot outwardly show this power it received from the heavens.
We, however, if you wish to bring it fully to light, it is necessary to remove the earthiness and thickness of the metal and reduce it to its first simplicity. Once sufficiently cooked, it will display such powers that one might almost think it changes the human body and restores it to true, original health. Afterward you yourself can easily judge how great a power this medicine has. If Noah, who possessed it (as Vincent the monk writes, Naturalium V), at the age of five hundred begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
DEMOGORGON. Your discourse has delighted me greatly; but I ask this: can this Medicine be made from gemstones?
RAYMOND. Which two (things) are you asking about?
DEMOGORGON. Because they are incorruptible and possess great force and medicinal virtue—indeed a heavenly one—by which they even surpass metals; for this reason (as Albertus in De mineralibus and Hermes also affirm), the powers of lower things depend on the stars and on celestial images. They also said that this power descends upon natural things with more or less impulse and influx, for it imprints its force more strongly when the matter is more like the heavenly virtue and like the heavenly bodies in light and clarity, but less so when the matters are confused and foul, so that the celestial power is stifled in them. Therefore, things which in substance, light, color, and clarity are more similar to the heavenly bodies than metals are—things that certain philosophers call “elemental stars”—ought to be far superior to metals for preparing this most potent medicine.
RAYMOND. If the whole substance had to be transformed and prepared into the medicine, some gems would indeed be much superior to metals; for the virtue of metals is oppressed and buried in earthiness and in other accidents supervening upon the radical matter in which those heavenly powers reside. But, as we said above, neither metals nor gems receive the celestial virtue when they remain in the form of metal or stone; rather, when they have taken on the form, in the form of vapor until they harden. Now the vapors that are generated from metals have a greater likeness to ‘spirituality’ and a greater obedience to the heavens than the vapors that are generated from gems; therefore it follows that metals possess more celestial powers than do gemstones.
DEMOGORGON. Who guarantees us the truth of this?
RAYMOND. Gems are nearer in substance to the elements; their first matter and their primary, elemental qualities are little altered or changed from their original nature. Besides, Nature fashioned the gems with slight workmanship and hardened them, preserving in them the clarity and transparency they had in their first, smoky matter. And although they have hardness—and a certain power that comes from that hardness—nevertheless they take on but a small share of any celestial virtue. It is not so with metals: before metals receive their metallic form, a very long process is required—transmutation and due tempering of the metals, purification and transmutation of sulphur, quicksilver, salt, and alum, and a long decoction (cooking) of these things.
As for precious stones, although they are very durable, they have not attained this durability from an abundance of viscous radical moisture that would tightly and most closely bind and clamp their parts together; they share in it only in small measure. For that reason they are easily ground to powder. Rather, their hardness is caused chiefly by a freezing cold by which they are, by their nature, hardened with little labor: cold, by freezing, closes the pores and inwardly constricts the natural heat within the substance itself, so that the warmth of the air can neither open it up nor corrupt it. But a vehement heat of fire—which could corrupt certain metals—cannot corrupt the radical moisture of these things, since it is most strongly mixed and united with a subtle, well-digested earthy dryness, that is, with sulphur and quicksilver. By means of these two, this medicine becomes unsurpassed in incorruptibility and in power, exceeding all things.
DEMOGORGON. Marsilio Ficino rejects the opinion of those who claim that the material of gold can enter into the constitution of the human body, or that it can be assimilated to it, or that it can be converted into a suitable substance; for first it must itself be changed and transformed into blood, and then into flesh—something impossible because of its hardness. Since therefore this medicine cannot be made from gold, much less can it be made from the other metals.
RAYMOND. We do grant that metals, while they exist and remain in a metallic substance—even if the water of life be most subtilized—nevertheless acquire no true affinity or kinship with human flesh, unless their hard form is first broken down and they are reduced to their first matter, sufficiently purified and digested. For in that way they gain this affinity and suitability to the human body, such as ordinary foods and preservative medicines possess—though this one far excels them in power.
DEMOGORGON. From your words I now understand that that “radical moisture” and the first matter must be dissolved and distilled.
RAYMOND. You speak truly.
DEMOGORGON. But how can a medicine fit for the human body be made from these metallic waters, seeing that they are most foul and horrible, with such sharp and acrid vapors that philosophers class them among the strongest poisons? The Roman “Dying Man,” speaking of their stench, compares it to the reek of corpses in tombs. And we also see that the waters which run through metallic veins, and warm within them, take on an offensive smell; therefore this medicine would be far more horrible and abominable to human nature if the metallic substance itself were turned into water.
RAYMOND. Just as fruits at the beginning of summer are sour and astringent because they have not yet had sufficient cooking and digestion, and, though they continually draw in moisture, cannot become fully ripe and sweet unless they are cooked and digested by the great heat of the whole summer so as to become sweet and fragrant—so it is with our medicine extracted from the earth of the metals. Before sufficient digestion and decoction it is foul and horrible; and until the vapors that rise from it are tempered by decoction, it cannot be made pleasant, but only after the vapors have been condensed and it has been sufficiently, after repeated decoctions it acquires a wonderful pleasantness and sweetness; moreover, Arnold in the Rosary said: ‘You will sweeten what is bitter, and you will have the whole magistery.’
DEMOGORGON. Is there some sign by which I can know that this medicine is already finished?
RAYMOND. John of Rupescissa handed down—and we also affirm it—that there are two signs or sure indications by which one knows that this medicine is perfected and complete. The first is this: if we set the vessel in which the medicine is enclosed in some corner of the house, then—as if by a miracle and by an almost invisible tether—all who enter that house are drawn and attracted toward it. The second is this: if we set the aforesaid little vessel on the top of a tower, its fragrance will attract and gather to it all the birds that perceive its sweetness of odor. These are most certain signs that the medicine is finished and altogether complete.
DEMOGORGON. What did John of Rupescissa mean by these words?
RAYMOND. By “tower” we understand the furnace set in the corner of a house, into which the vessel containing the matter of our medicine is placed to be decocted; and by “those who enter the house” and “the birds that fly toward it” are signified the spirits and vapors that, by the power of heat, are carried upward and rise high through the long neck of the vessel or cucurbit. When they are “fixed” and no longer ascend, it is a sign that their watery moisture has been consumed, the material has been sweetened, and the medicine is finished. Nor should you doubt this interpretation, for Rasis holds the same view: the ancients are accustomed to speak under various names, likenesses, fictions, fables, and riddles, in order to conceal this divine knowledge so that it not be easily grasped by just anyone—something that Giovanni Pico della Mirandola also affirms in his book On the Dignity of Man, saying that the ancients were wont to describe divine, lofty, and sublime matters under the veil of many enigmas and poetic fables.
DEMOGORGON. But can this Medicine heal all curable diseases?
RAYMOND. We said above that this medicine is set in the highest grade, of the first order. For since remedies have different grades—some reaching farther in healing power, others less—not only in curing but also in preventing many and various ailments and in preserving the human body from corruption: we see that a subtle and “formal” substance, the more it is spiritual and formal and separated from matter and removed from quantity, the more it can exercise its powers and extend its activity to various effects.
Now our medicine, since it is composed of subtler spirits and of a simple matter, as if set apart from all elementary matter, will therefore be able, without hindrance, to exert its strength in every illness that admits of cure. We also know that every agent works according to the nearness and likeness it has to the first active principle; and the first and universal corporeal, simple agents are the heavenly bodies, which, as a universal cause, extend their influence over all lower things.
Since, moreover, by its subtlety, purity, and incorruptibility our medicine has the greatest kinship and likeness to the celestial bodies, the philosophers have called it “heaven” and the fifth essence. Therefore, beyond other lower things belonging to the body, it can act as a universal medicine, curing all curable diseases and infirmities—not only those that belong to the physician’s art, but also those that usually require the work of surgeons.
Physicians also hand down that the remedy Hiera picra has a special power of drawing humors from the head, neck, and chest (and not from the lower members), because that medicine is generated under the power of certain stars that have influence over the head, neck, and chest—namely the constellations Aries, Taurus, and Gemini. They say the same of other medicines that draw humors from the feet, the shins, and the ankles do so because the celestial influence of this medicine has a special power over those lower parts—namely the constellations of Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.
Metals, as receivers of the quintessence, have an essence, a name, a number, a color, a power, and the individual properties of the planets; and all the planets, moreover, have influence and power over the whole human body. Since our medicine is generated from these metals, it will possess the power over the whole human body; and mineral waters likewise have the power of healing many ailments, for the reason that, in passing through metallic veins, they take on a certain metallic virtue, and thus contain within themselves a not-small portion of metal-substance turned into something drinkable.
Since, according to the opinion of the ancient philosophers, each metal—by its likenesses, virtues, names, colors, and properties—is fully treated in Geber’s books, so also this our medicine, although extracted only from one of the metals, nonetheless has the virtue of all the metals and planets, and a power over the whole human body to heal many curable diseases.
John of Rupescissa wished to indicate the same thing very precisely when speaking of radical moisture, and of the quintessence under the name aqua vitae: for he says that good “burning water” contains within itself the virtues of all metals, and that it is called “water of life” because it gives life to human beings.
DEMOGORGON. Although the reasons you have brought are prudent and well argued, I am nevertheless persuaded that one simple medicine cannot possibly cure all diseases—especially for this reason: diseases are contrary to one another (as physicians say), and are cured by contrary medicines; since qualities that are contrary cannot be found together in one subject, it seems impossible to me that a single medicine could cure many illnesses.
Philosophers also teach that from one sole cause only one effect proceeds; therefore one and the same medicine will neither cause nor cure many diseases.
RAYMOND. A single simple thing can produce several opposite effects, according to the different nature and disposition of what receives it. For we see that the sun’s heat works different results—when the light fails it hardens wax, yet it also melts wax—although these effects are contrary, they arise from one and the same operation. Therefore, although our medicine is one single thing and perhaps has only one single operation, nevertheless, if we consider that great likeness it has with all the heavenly bodies, we see it is suited to receive many celestial powers. And since it is extracted from all the elements, we say it has the power and quality of all the elements; hence it is of manifold virtue and can produce various contrary effects.
DEMOGORGON. Show me now the practical procedure of this art.
RAYMOND. Read our exposition on the books of Geber; there you will find both the material and the practice set out clearly and distinctly.
DEMOGORGON. I give you many thanks for so great a favor bestowed on me by your exceptional generosity and kindness. And in the meantime, may you keep well.
The End.