Light of Light, that is, Description and Illumination of the Treasure of all Treasures, the Stone of the Wise

Light of the Light,

that is,
a description and illumination
of the
princely and monarchical great
Secret of all Secrets,

of the
Treasure of all Treasures,
of the Stone of the Wise,

which
the Wisdom of God, out of love and grace,
has planted in the kingdom of Nature
for the welfare of the human race;

and how
such a thing is to be obtained,
revealed
by

Johann Ferdinand von Frydau, etc.

Psalm 104:24.
The goodness of the Lord is in all things.

Quedlinburg and Eisleben,
at the Biesterfeld Bookshop.

1763.



Proverbs of Solomon 25:2.

It is God’s glory to conceal a matter;
but it is the king’s glory
to search out a matter.

King Geber, in Summa mag.
and Perf. mag., 30.

Therefore, you sons of wisdom, seek this excellent gift of God, reserved for you alone, with all diligence, etc. But you ignorant ones, you sons of knavery and presumptuous wickedness, flee this art, for it is hostile to you, it is contrary to you, and it will bring you into want and poverty; for this gift of God is hidden from you by divine providence, and by His justice is denied and refused to you.

Translated from the book:
Licht des Lichtes, das ist Beschreibung und Beleuchtung des Schatzes aller Schätze, des Steins der Weisen

Preface.

1 Corinthians 15:13 ff.

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ also has not risen. If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain; and we would be found to be false witnesses of God, who had testified against God.

Honored reader, and lover of alchemical truth.

Fortune has its enviers, and truth its enemies. When Abel’s sacrifice was pleasing to the Lord, and Joseph was especially loved by his father, they were hated and persecuted by their brothers.

And when the prophet Jeremiah declared the truth to King Zedekiah, and the prophet Micah to King Ahab, both of them thereby came into distress. The world absolutely cannot endure that the sun of fortune should shine especially upon anyone, nor that anyone should thoroughly understand the truth; rather, it wants all those persecuted who do not share with it in the fate of decay and in the puppet-work.

Here we set before the honored reader’s eyes a small work, under the title Light of the Light, and in it we treat of the alchemy of the Hermetic science, the great mystery, the treasure of all treasures, called Lapis Philosophorum, which God has planted in Nature for the sake of the being of the world and for the welfare of mankind: what it actually is, and how it is to be obtained.

Although our presentation is not composed with learned or lofty words, nevertheless we have not wished to withhold it from the sons of wisdom, as the investigators of this science. Yet this has by no means been done with the intention that there is any lack of alchemical writings, but so that the talent entrusted to us by God may not be hidden kept in the sweat-cloth or buried in the earth, but rather, as a faithful steward, to put it worthily to profit, and to set it, as it were, as a light upon the candlestick, so that those who have been chosen for it by the Lord may profit from it, and may be placed in a condition to find the lost groat.

And this all the more because, nowadays, so great a multitude of false writings is found in the publicum chymicum the chemical public by means of which the rays of the sun of truth are darkened. See concerning this Herr Hermann Fictuld’s Touchstone of Chemical Writings, 1753, and especially his first supplement, 1760.

Malicious people, pseudo- and arch-chemists, sophists and gold-beetles that is, deceivers and seducers have smeared enough books, under the pretense that they were true adepts and possessors of the art, who had come in a wondrous manner to this great mystery, and precisely for that reason, with honest intentions, out of love and goodwill toward the investigators of this hidden science, as if driven by God Himself to reveal this truth, wrote quite freely and open-heartedly, but not so grudgingly and covertly as the adepts.

Their writings are also with pleasant discourses, with much benevolence, boasting, and grandiloquence, as bait, in order to persuade the world that they wished to be the eye of the blind and the feet of the lame, so that the mystery so long hidden might suddenly be made manifest even supposing that this should vex the gentlemen Adepts, and that the seekers of it would no longer have to consume their life, time, and sustenance over it so fruitlessly, etc.

But by this such worthless rogues, lying and deceitful scoundrels and shameful thieves, seek only to catch the ignorant and innocent, and to deprive them of their possessions and goods. Many thousands of families, alas, have had sad experience of this, having been deceived and ensnared by such cunning, so that thereby they have fallen into poverty, misery, and shame indeed, even lost body and life.

For by their manner of writing and their boasting, the investigators of this high science are drawn away from reading the writings of the true sages, because those writings are not filled with so many flatteries and promises of liberality; rather, the truth, like the rays of the sun, only through the cracks of the walls, yet at the same time always lead the reader to the source, where one can draw and drink the water of life pure.

Nor is that enough: they also give alchemy a very bad name, as though everything were untruths, and as though it were guilty of the misfortune of so many respectable families. And precisely for this reason we have chiefly been moved, to the honor of God, to bear witness to the truth, and with this little work to illuminate the truth, so that the lovers and investigators of this mystery may have sufficient instruction for their conduct on their difficult and long-lasting journey.

They may be like those walking to Emmaus, having a travelling companion who opens the Scripture to them; or like Herculean Tarentines, who sailed to the Island Solitas to conquer the silver fleece, which the royal princess Victoria had brought there, in order to give it to those who happily land there.

We also hope and firmly believe that whoever follows this our instruction, and at the same time the saying of our dear Savior lives according to this: Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the rest shall be added unto you; for whatever you shall ask of the Father of Lights, from whom all good and perfect gifts come down, in my name, He will give it to you; unfailingly his wish shall be granted.

In this confidence we commend you to the dear and gracious mercy of Him who works all in all, and gives to each person what is useful, necessary, and blessed for him.

Given the 1st of January, 1760.

The Author.

Introduction
to the little work here proposed.

1 Corinthians 12:4 ff.

There are various kinds of gifts, but there is one Spirit.
There are various kinds of offices, but there is one Lord.
And there are various kinds of powers, but there is one God, who works all in all.

True alchemy, or the Hermetic science, deserves pre-eminence among all arts and sciences, so that one should direct one’s attention to it and hold it in high esteem, because it is a science by means of which not only is a universal medicine prepared, to preserve the health of human bodies and to restore them again from all illnesses, but also the lesser metals are raised into the more perfect ones, in order to prevent lack of sustenance.

The Wisdom of God, out of merciful love toward the human race, has appointed this science for this purpose: to let human beings know how they may procure counsel and help for themselves in cases of need, so that the temporal cares of sustenance may not weary their heart and so that grim death may not snatch them away from this world before their time, to that place where there is no return. And indeed, in the beginning this art was implanted and incorporated into the first human beings like the seed of generation, so that in this way, in all cases, man would have been his own physician and helper in need.

And from this we see and recognize how noble man is in the eyes of God, and how much God is concerned with the welfare and preservation of man not merely of some few people, but generally of the whole human race, without exception of a single person who has his descent from the first man whom God Himself created. Therefore we all stand in God’s dear grace, and are called by Him to this high art and science, so that by means of it we may not only help ourselves, but may also learn to know our wise Creator and ourselves. All true possessors of the art will give sincere testimony to this.

But just as God, out of compassionate love and grace, has so wisely provided for the human race, so also has He ordained and arranged that this great universal medicine should be prepared from one single thing, or subject, among all things in the whole world; and this thing has in and with itself everything that is required for mastery in this high art and science.

Because of its universality and manifold use, this subjectum is held in low esteem, although it is nevertheless the highest, noblest, and most precious thing in the world; and neither the world nor anything else in the world can exist without it, as indeed it is to be had everywhere in the whole world is to be had, and is found in all things. From this we can again recognize the wisdom and goodness of God toward the human race; for with Him there is no respect of persons, nor election by favor, but His love extends over all, without distinction of person, and each one stands with Him in grace.

No one has cause to boast of an elevation or preference, but neither has anyone cause to complain, as though God acted partially, and were more helpful to the rich than to the poor in this matter, because the poor man is not able to procure this Subjectum from afar, nor to bear the expenses. The love of God has wished to withhold this high gift of grace from the poor and needy no more than from the rich; rather, He has enclosed the expenses within what is possible, so that the poor man may be able to meet them after sufficient time.

Yet it must not be concealed that it costs money, and that the expenses exceed the means of a poor man, to work and complete this high science in its lawful appointed time.

Therefore, although God the Lord has called and chosen all men to this high science and art, nevertheless not all become partakers of it. Rather, the greater multitude remains ignorant of it; and one part makes itself unfit through its manner of life, and willfully shuts itself out from it, so that only the very few attain the goal set before them.

But since God has furnished the Subjectum, from which this high Arcanum is made, with very glorious blessing, and has laid great treasures within it treasures which are to be obtained by means of this high science and art, as by a key to the treasure-chest of Nature it is evident that thereby much good may be established thereby to the honor of God, but also much evil, to the offense of God.

Now since very many people, who through their perverse life and conduct have removed themselves from God, and consequently have made themselves unworthy and incapable of this art, know well that their works do not merit this grace, they wish to climb into the sheepfold not through the door, but somewhere else. Therefore they shall not come in either; for Christ says that He is the true door, and that whoever does not seek to enter through Him, the heavenly Father will not open to him.

But when their own conscience convinces them of their incapacity, and they recognize of themselves that God cannot give them this His gift, then they fall into the utmost extremes, and make this high science and art into a natural handicraft, which is to be learned by means of experiments.

They say, namely: the assertion of the sages, that this science is a gift of God, is only a hocus-pocus, in order to cast a blue mist before people’s eyes. But this is called the wisdom of this world, which God intends to make into foolishness.

Therefore the possessors of this high art must keep themselves very secret, and must conceal their high science most deeply, so that such worldly people may not become partakers of it. They have also, to the honor of God, sworn themselves to make known or reveal this high science to no one except those who have been chosen and called to it by God Himself, because they lead a pure manner of life pleasing to God.

But this wise care awakened in worldly men and children of the world, as ignorant and inexperienced persons, an even greater desire for this to become partakers of this hidden science. But because they knew neither its beginning nor its end, they made trials in all things, until their strength was consumed. And since they could find nothing, and could not compel Nature to give what they sought, they alleged: This art is unnatural and impossible, and therefore false.

And although it had been proved by tests that silver or gold could be made from lesser metals, they said that this had happened only through and with the help of the Devil. So cruelly have they blasphemed against this holy gift of God, as though it were to blame for their misfortune.

And precisely this conduct has moved us, according to the light and talent which God has given us by grace, to show and establish the contrary: partly for the honor of God and of His infinite wisdom and power, which made everything that has been made in heaven and on earth, and without which nothing has been made; partly for the honor of this high science itself, as a precious truth whose possibility God demonstrates through Nature every day in all things; and partly for the salvation and comfort of the zealous investigators of this precious truth, who seek to grasp it with so much anxious study and meditation.

But to the untimely judges of alchemy, who with that Jewish crowd of priests, worldly-wise men, and the mob, out of political lack of understanding and unreason, cry: Crucify, crucify, release Barabbas to us that is: “We will not believe that the art is true unless you give us proofs” the answer is what Christ there said to the Jews, when they asked:

“What sign do you give us, that we may believe?”

You yourself, Christ, said: “This adulterous generation seeks a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”

They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.

A multitude of the most honorable and respectable men have often performed transmutations before honorable, wise, and prudent men, and have visibly proved the truth.

Yet here too one may say: if someone rose from the dead and preached the Gospel, they would not believe. Their concern is by no means with the proofs, but with the art itself, to steal it by cunning.

But what harm does it do the light, if it has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it? Will the light therefore not be light, and will truth not remain truth? Shall the testimony of so many honest and honorable men not be more fully valid than that of a handful of unspiritual clergymen?

But hear what those same men say.

Johann de Rupescissa says:

O blessed science, which is sought by the wise, and which ought to be sought before all other sciences of the world, since he who has it is blessed above others. For he has a blessed hour of birth; he is healthy above all other men; and he has an incomparable treasure, a treasure whose riches are infinite, whose power extends beyond the power of the kings and princes of this world.

Who, then, would not take pains to love and seek such things? Since it is a gift of God, since these are goods of righteousness, happiness, and blessing, which are given by God to human beings and of which King David says: You shall nourish yourself from the labor of your hands, etc., in Psalm 128.

Johann Damascenus expresses himself thus:

My son, our art is high and a very deeply hidden mystery, known to few and concealed from many. Therefore keep it secret, and preserve it as a great treasure in your heart. Let it be dearer to you than many of the most precious stones. Consider it diligently in your heart, follow the law of your father, and search after the mystery of this hidden art, because it is a sacrament of the Lord.

But beware, lest the wrath of God come upon you and say: “What is mine, you shall not give to another”; for it shall not be given to him for whom it has not been intended by God. God gives it to whom He wills, and to whom He has resolved from eternity to give it.

When you have obtained this, you will surpass kingdoms and their power, and you will sit gloriously and mightily upon the throne of the glory of silver and gold. Thus this art surpasses all arts and sciences of the world. It frees the body from poverty and the soul from all godlessness, and it opens the excellent door of blessedness.

Therefore, my son, strive diligently to reach the highest summit of our art.

Morienus considers it to be such an art that, above others, ought especially to be sought and learned, because through it one may arrive at and come to a far more wondrous art.

Heinrich Khunrath of Leipzig asserts concerning it:

Our Stone is a mirror of divine mysteries and an exceedingly rich treasure of all natural hidden things, above which God the Lord, besides His Word sent into human flesh, has allowed nothing more useful nor higher to come to man.

Georg von Welling finally gives this judgment:

A true philosopher and lover of wisdom is such a man as seeks with his whole heart to live unto God, as the primal source of all life and of all beings. He seeks rightly to know God, to love Him, to honor Him, and to adhere to Him wholly and unwaveringly; to live and serve Him alone in holiness and righteousness all the days of his life.

This may be enough here at the beginning to show what godly men have written about this high science, and how highly and holily they have regarded it, namely that the possessors of it are blessed above all other men. Therefore they have most earnestly admonished all men to seek and obtain this noble jewel; but at the same time they have also strictly commanded that it be kept secret, and that this high science be revealed to no one without sufficient conviction that they are persons chosen for it by God, lest one anticipate God, and lest God’s wrath and judgments fall upon them.

For it is not a science which it is fitting for everyone to know, but only for those to whom it has been given by God, as shall be shown more fully in what follows.

To attain this our purpose, we will make the following division, and then treat what is necessary in each division, namely:

1. On the nature and multiplicity of alchemy.
2. What alchemy is.
3. On the cause why so few attain true alchemy.
4. On the highness and excellence of this science and art.
5. On the practice of this high mystery.

First Section.
On the nature and multiplicity of alchemy.

That alchemy, or the art of fire, otherwise called the art of separation, is the noblest, most glorious, most perfect, and most profitable science among all sciences and arts, without a single exception, no one will deny or call into doubt on the ground of truth.

But to discover it from writings and experiments without anyone’s guidance is also the most difficult, most laborious, and most dangerous art, as all those have experienced who have devoted themselves to it and pursued it.

For the sake of the ignorant, the uncomprehending, and the blasphemers, however, we must decide what kind of art and science is to be understood under this name alchemy. For it is a name of wide scope, which is taken and used in different senses.

In general, it is an art and science concerning how, in a proper manner, the bodies and products of the kingdom of Nature are to be separated out of their unity into multiplicity that is, into their component parts; how the component parts are to be recognized; how they are to be purified and reunited, so that from them a new body may be made.

By the ancients it is this science has been called the art of dissolution, as Rhazes says: Dissolution is the key of the matter and the beginning of completion.

This science pyrotechnics, the art of fire, or the art of dissolution is divided into various classes: first, into the docimastic, and second, into the pharmaceutical.

The docimastic is metallurgy, or the art of mining: how mineral bodies are to be assayed, and separated by melting.

The pharmaceutical, however, is further divided into chemistry and alchemy. By chemistry, or spagyric art, is understood all chemical working, distilling, calcining, dissolving, subliming, extracting, and coagulating among apothecaries and physicians, by which they may prepare their medicines and other necessities, and all things belonging to their science.

Alchemy is further divided into the true and the false.

By the true otherwise called the art of transformation, or the Hermetic science it is taught how all natural bodies and products, but especially the Subjectum, the matter of the Stone of the Wise, as the one thing in the world which is called gold, may be dissolved and transformed into a healing medicine. By means of this medicine all diseases and human infirmities may be healed, and the lesser metals improved and transformed into gold and silver.

Ezra calls this art the fountain of wisdom, the veins of understanding, and the river of the sciences. Baruch says that it is the secret wisdom. In Job it is called the hidden wisdom, the wisdom that was known among the forefathers. And King David calls it the Wisdom, which is in the hidden place, the marrow of all mysteries, etc.

The false kind, otherwise called sophistry or deceitful gold-making, is further to be distinguished into the innocent and the deliberate.

The innocent kind is that which is practiced by lovers of riches, who, by means of their laboring, chemical working, and experimenting, seek the science and manual operations by which to make silver and gold; but by that very means they turn all things into nothing.

The author of the Philosophical Father-Heart says of this:

God made everything out of nothing; thus the common sophists make nothing out of everything. By this they consume their time, their sustenance, their health, and their credit in a truly senseless way; they ruin themselves, and quite innocently give true alchemy a bad name, as though the art were untrue and were to blame for their misfortune.

But it is not so. Rather, the light of their reason has not been able to penetrate the thick mists of their darkened understanding, so that they might have grasped the art. If they would strive to wipe the mist from their eyes, they would clearly see that they had walked on wrong paths and had dealt with remote things, etc.

The deliberate kind, on the other hand, is that which is practiced by the so-called gold-beetles, gold-makers, alchemists, arch-chemists, deceivers, rogues, and many other such masterless rabble, when under all sorts of pretexts they wander about the world and creep through the land like caterpillars, seeking to lie to innocent people, deceive them, and deprive them of what is theirs by their thievish tricks and false gold-making rogue-pranks; or else write books about it, as though they were masters of the art.

This, then, is the essential distinction of alchemy. From this one sees that, although commonly everything is designated by the single name of chemistry or alchemy, nevertheless a great distinction must be made; for they stand as far apart from one another as heaven, and are neither to be compared with each other nor have any fellowship together. Therefore one must know how to express and define oneself better in this matter, unless one wishes to betray one’s lack of understanding. But enough of this.

Second Section.
On true alchemy, what it is.

True alchemy is, as stated above, the art, by natural method and science, of reducing all bodies of the kingdom of Nature from their unity into multiplicity that is, into their component parts of purifying them and reuniting them again, so that a healing medicine may result from them, etc.

According to this definition, however, this art is a very great mystery, a secret and hidden science, the greatest mystery of all Nature and of the whole world. It is, as all the sages testify, a holy science sanctified by God, which He has planted in Nature for the common welfare of the human race, and has revealed to mankind as a special goodness and benefit.

Morienus says: You should know that this art is nothing other than the mystery of all mysteries of the high and the great God, for He Himself has commended this art to His prophets and sages, whose souls are now in Paradise. But no one is able to attain this great mystery without the provident grace of God, either mediately or immediately.

King Alphidius gives this saying: You should know, my son, that God has revealed this treasure of wisdom only to the understanding children of Adam.

Khalid: It is a gift of God.

Alanus: Son, set your heart more upon God than upon this art, for it is a gift of God, and He imparts it to whom He wills.

Robertus, King of Naples, writes to Alphonsus, King of Aragon: Know that this art is nothing other than a mystery of the eternal God, which He Himself has revealed to mankind, and reserved for those who love Him; for no human being could have discovered it, unless God had revealed it. Therefore it is a gift of God.

Hermes: This science I have solely and alone from God.

Daultanus: It is the greatest mystery of all the mysteries of Nature, the most precious treasure of all the treasures of the world, which God gives to whom He wills.

Aristotle: It is a treasure of wisdom and such a mystery that human hearts can scarcely bear it.

Likewise speak Avicenna, Anaxagoras, La Croix, Gloria Mundi, etc.

Flamel, in the Original: This treasure of the philosophers teaches us the holiness of Him to whom all things belong.

Likewise Hollandus, page 493: Therefore he should ask God to deem him worthy, and to open the same to him.

Jo. Tczern: It is a gift of God.

The Epistle of the Knightly War: It is a sanctified mystery and divine philosophy.

Gloria Mundi: This science falls to no one’s share unless it is given to him by God, or shown to him by a master.

Hortulanus, Blood of Nature, Count de Marsciano, Cualdino, etc.: No one should undertake to search into and understand the mystery of Nature without a master experienced in the art, since this is a deeply hidden mystery of the philosophers.

Hermes says that this gift of God should be hidden from all the unworthy.

Hippocrates says that one should not reveal the art to everyone, so that it may not fall to the wicked, as the Epistle concerning the Knightly War warns; all the more since it is a sanctuary, and, as Basil Valentine maintains, it belongs more to the angels than to men to know it. Therefore Plato also held that God had impressed His seal upon it and kept His holy hand over it.

Paracelsus: He strikes the unworthy with blindness, like those at Sodom, and hardens their hearts as Pharaoh’s, so that with seeing eyes they do not see, and with hearing ears they do not hear.

Plato, and with him many of the ancient Fathers, command that one should not write the mystery without concealment, because one can never know into what circumstances such writings may fall. But so that your enemy may not gain a victory over you, nor your conscience be troubled, write all your mystery in veiled words.

For this very reason the sages bind their pupils with an oath not to make the mystery common, nor to reveal it to anyone without the same oath. Ripley therefore requests in his epistle to King Edward IV that His Majesty promise him fidelity and secrecy by a holy oath, so that his presumption may not awaken God’s wrath against him, because he has unworthily disclosed this mystery.

Isaac Hollandus, p. 65, says: This mystery can be understood by no one except those who are entrusted with, and sworn by, the hand of the philosophers.

Rupescissa: The philosophers to whom this great mystery has been entrusted have bound themselves under the most dreadful obligations, that they will reveal this divine work to no human being.

Laurentius Ventura, p. 33: This holy and golden art is hidden from the godless.

Basil Valentine, in the Triumph: No godless person will find the true medicine, much less taste it.

Geber the King says in the Summa mag.: You sons of wisdom, seek with all diligence this excellent gift of God reserved for you alone. But you ignorant ones, you sons of knavery and presumptuous wickedness, flee this art, for it is contrary to you and will bring you into want and poverty; for this gift of God is hidden from you by divine providence, and by His righteous judgment is denied and refused to you.

Hermes, Lullius, Hollandus, and the Great Rosary maintain: Whoever reveals the high science to a godless and wicked person, or writes of it openly, shall immediately die of a stroke and sudden death, because he is a breaker of the sacred seals.

Eletus, Aristotle, Arnoldus, Vaterherz, Wasserstein, and many others teach that if someone were so presumptuous as to reveal this high art to the unworthy, he would lose blessedness.

Pythagoras: God wished to hide this mystery from the unworthy people, so that the world may not be thrown into disorder.

Jo. Tezen: Such a person will die an evil death and come to a miserable end.

Rosinus agrees with this: If the malicious possessed this Stone, they would heap sin upon sin to their all the heavier judgment, as there are many examples of this. One should especially look in Basil Valentine, Jungl. Alchymie, etc., where it will be found that God the Lord has punished both the one who revealed the art to the unworthy, and also the one who used it unworthily.

To this tends the admonition of Isaac Hollandus:

I adjure you by the Son of the living God, that you do not bring out this Secretum, except only to your own sons, insofar as you see that they have the love of God, so that your soul and mine may not be condemned because of the great oath that might come from it.

Gloria Mundi:

I hereby kindly beg, by the suffering and death of Christ, that this my testament not be allowed to come into the hands of ignorant and godless people, but that it be carefully hidden, so that the strict judgment of God may not overtake us in wrath and bring us to eternal damnation from which may God most graciously preserve us.

Likewise:

You shall hide this my Paradise-tablet from all unworthy and godless people, and not allow it to come before them, under pain of eternal punishment and the damnation of your souls.

For it is indeed very easy to understand that a thing upon which the honor of God and the welfare of man depend, both in this life and in the next, can neither be proper nor permitted otherwise than that it must be kept most strictly secret. For if the art were to be learned, what misfortune and curse would come upon such a wicked person come, etc., as the righteousness of God indeed requires which the sighs and tears of the oppressed stir up and move to vengeance so that He must break forth with His judgments and punishments upon such a one, etc.

Therefore, if such a high science is a gift of God, which He gives and takes away from whom He wills; which no unworthy person will obtain; which is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to learn from books; and which is forbidden, under curse and death, to reveal to anyone without a call from God how then could such gold-beetles, thieves, and rogues possess this high science?

And who is so unreasonable as to believe that God would let His sanctified gift come to such people, so that they might offend Him by it? O great weakness! O lack of understanding!

Nor should anyone allow himself to be forced by tyrants or other malicious people, either through terrors or through torture, to reveal the mystery; rather, he should prefer to die, since otherwise he would bring the curse upon himself and would be eternally unhappy.

But just as the high possessors of the art are forbidden to disclose the great mystery to the unworthy, so, on the contrary, they are commanded to reveal it to the worthy. It would be foolish if one wished to keep the talent received in a sweat-cloth or bury it in the earth; rather, one must seek to trade with the talent together with others.

What else would one answer, if one were asked by that householder in the Gospel: “Why did you not put my money into the bank, so that when I came I might have demanded it back with interest?”

“Take this useless servant,” it would also be said here: “Bind him hand and foot,” etc.

What use is a treasure buried in a field, a precious pearl in the sea, a light under a bushel, or knowledge in the possession of an envious and stingy man?

Our Savior says: “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see note well your good works, and praise the Father in heaven.”

Rollen, Kratzer, and Famellus say: If you perceive the worthiness of the investigators of this high science, then you should not withhold the great mystery from them, but reveal it. For precisely for this reason the sages committed to writings the deeply hidden great mystery of this science, the sanctified sanctuary, the gift which God had given them, says King Geber and Bonus of Ferrara.

The proper thing is that the first men who received the mystery from God should leave it again in writings to those who come after; for they were moved to this by the fear of God and by prayer to Him.

And because this secrecy is not to be revealed to everyone, but to the worthy sages loved by God, they also wrote for them alone. We do not hide our writings from them, but only from the malicious, the wicked, and the godless.

As Christ says: “It is not fitting to take the children’s bread and throw it before the dogs,” nor to cast pearls before swine. “A man can receive nothing unless it is given to him.” John 3:27.

But this Bonus continues thus: You unworthy and uncomprehending ones, you malicious and wicked ones! Flee from this science, since it is hostile to you, and casts you into all misery and poverty.

Alexander Magnus, King Hallis, Dyamedes, Lullius, Kunrad of Leipzig, etc.: You should know that I have written this book for no one except the wise alone.

Ezra, Book IV, chapter 14, says that he wrote seventy books for the wise alone, who were worthy to read them.

Rhazes: We have written for ourselves and our sons, and indeed have composed these things in such a way that they can be understood only by the wise and worthy, but cannot be comprehended by the unworthy.

Count Trevisanus, in his Symbolum, writes: The natural masters have written much concerning this art, but all according to the sense of the art, so that they may not be understood by the ignorant. Likewise: Reveal the art to no unworthy person, so that the most noble treasure may not be cast before swine.

Bacon: The sages have written in their instructions in such a way that they cannot be understood by the ignorant.

Ant. de Abbatia: They, the sages, have written their books and discourses with signs and similitudes.

Gloria Mundi: So that they may not fall to the share of the unworthy.

Likewise: The philosophers have rightly named the things of our art, and have also rightly indicated the work; but the ignorant have not understood the writing, and have taken the wrong things.

Likewise: The philosophers write truly and rightly; but who can understand and comprehend, if he has no foundation in the things? Truly, no one; and even if you were Doctor of Doctors and Light of the World, here you would be entirely blind.

Artephius: They are fools who think that we teach the very greatest mystery publicly, which among all the sages is forbidden under curse.

Synesius: The philosophers have written of its virtue and property only by means of parables and figures; and this for the reason that the science may never be understood by the ignorant. Especially because, if this were to happen, everything would fall into confusion.

Rather, it was so that it might be understood only by patient souls, by sharp and subtle minds, who are separated from the mud of the world and cleansed from the impurity of earthly mire which is avarice, by which the ignorant have bound their noses to the earth of this world, which, without this wondrous quintessence, is a house of all poverty.

They did this in the confidence that these divine souls, after they had penetrated to the bottom of the Democritean well that is, into the truth of Nature would without doubt recognize the great confusion and disorder that could arise in all ranks and crafts, if everyone were able to make as much money as he himself desired.

And for this reason they wished to speak through figures, types, and similitudes, so that they would be understood only by the intelligent and holy, as souls enlightened by truth.

Hortulanus expresses himself thus:

O dear reader, if you know the preparation of the Stone of the Wise, then I have here told you the truth; but if you do not know it, then I have told you nothing.

By these words he means to indicate this much: I have written these mysteries mystically, and indeed in such a way that everyone may read them, but not everyone can understand them only those whose life and conduct are pleasing to God.

All this happens, however, so that the wicked and malicious, the perverse people, may have no cause to complain and accuse God of being partial, as though He had given more to one than to another, or loved one more than another.

God has given every human being a light and a will, so that he may learn to know the will according to the light, and to use the light according to the will. Thus He has also caused this high grace and science to be offered to all human beings without exception, without respect of persons, to be set forth as upon a stage, and to be scattered like good seed.

If it now happens that the seed falls by the wayside, where it is partly trodden down and partly eaten by the birds; or among thorns, where it must be choked, then truly the seed is innocent of this. Rather, it is much more as the prophet Isaiah 6:9 ff. says, that the Lord had Israel preached to and prophesied to through him: “Hear, and understand not; see, and perceive not. Harden the heart of this people, make their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, so that they may not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their hearts, lest they be converted and healed.”

Therefore John also says in chapter 1 of his Gospel: “The light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it,” because each thing loves its like. If there had been a light in the darkness, then it would have grasped the shining light; for Christ, according to Luke chapter 8, said to His disciples: “To you it is given to know the mystery.”

Bacon gives this judgment: If your soul possessed an honest and faithful disposition, then God would without any doubt have revealed the truth to you; but now you see that God has surely hidden such a work from you.

And Bonus of Ferrara says: They, namely the sages, wrote their books with parabolic forms of speech and words, with ambiguous symbols and figures, with examples and similitudes, and by these means deliberately sought to hide and conceal the high art.

Basil Valentine, p. 700, says: If this art were as common as brewing beer and baking bread, then let each person consider for himself what good one could expect from it, and what shame and vice would rule in the world. Therefore one must sometimes clip the flight-feathers of such a fellow, who is minded only toward pride, splendor, and wantonness, and not put everything most clearly into his mouth. Count Trevisanus, Hollandus, and others speak in the same manner.

In the Knightly War it says: This great knowledge is much more a gracious gift of heaven than a light kindled by the powers of the sharpest reflection and reasoning.

The author of the Father-Heart says: This work is known only to the true children of wisdom, to whom it has been shown. But those who have no knowledge of it cannot understand what our solutio and reductio are, without which our work can never be made. Therefore the mystery is very unknown and hidden to them.

Or, as Hollandus says: Those who are not filii artis sons of the art can never understand the work.

Therefore one sees that all such seekers, who have been called neither mediately nor immediately that is, those who have been instructed neither by God nor by a possessor of the art, and who nevertheless undertake chemical work, do not arrive at any desired end, but have gone to ruin and must go to ruin; inasmuch as they have lacked enlightenment from God and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, without which they are not able to look into the mysteries.

Nysement, p. 203, says:

Such special favor is permitted only to the filii artis the sons of the art who, under the fatherly blessing, have been able to obtain entrance. Blessed is the man whom You deem worthy, and whose wish and petition You hear, to bless his soul with the perfect knowledge of the most hidden things, to which man could never attain nor comprehend by himself.

Thus all those who have not been crowned with the fatherly blessing never understand the writings of the sages, and can attain to no true foundation of the truth either by laboring or by experimenting. Rather, they fall into the most contrary follies and errors, into sophistry and smear-work, into patchwork and claptrap, in which they consume their time, money, sustenance, honor, and health, and thereby do not obtain even the smallest advantage toward the true final goal.

On the other hand, those who have thus been called by the provident and caring grace of God, so that they have been instructed in the mysteries of the sages, and have learned the principles of the true hidden wisdom of the patriarchs of which Job speaks in chapter 11, and David in Psalm 51 understand the writings of the sages, since these were composed by them in such a way, and with cabalistic and with theosophical expressions, as a manner of speaking which is known and common among them alone, so that they can be understood by no one else.

And this chiefly and all the more because the Holy Spirit must give the key of disclosure, as the Apostle James says: If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask it of God, who gives to all simply and reproaches no one.

The Apostle says: If anyone lacks wisdom not: “If anyone believes that he is wise” let him ask it of God, and He will give it to him simply. This is the one wisdom which is not shared in common with any other, and therefore is called the Wisdom of God, the divine philosophy.

Of this God says in Exodus, book 2, chapter 28: “See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and note well have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom and understanding and knowledge, to devise all kinds of work and artistic things, and to work in gold, silver, and bronze,” etc.

And Solomon, the wisest king in Israel, says: God has given me wisdom to speak wisely, and according to such a gift of wisdom to think rightly, etc.

Not the wisdom of this world, which one learns by means of good education, from professors, or from books which also is a useful and most necessary knowledge in human society, provided it is not joined with political and self-seeking aims.

For this wisdom is as far removed from the other as heaven, and understands nothing of the Hermetic science: namely, how healing medicines are to be prepared from all bodies and products of the kingdom of Nature, or how from the first matter of all things the Stone of the Wise may be made which is a mineral and metallic body and how the same, through dissolving, reducing, and subliming, can be transformed into a spirit, mist, and vapor.

All common chemists, therefore, by their laboring, chemical working, and experimenting, have never been able to arrive at anything good. Thus nothing remains to them except the choice: either, with a life pleasing to God, to ask this high science from God with their whole heart, or else to cease further laboring, chemical working, and experimenting, and to believe that in any other manner they will not attain to it, nor are they called to it.

Third Section.
Why so few attain the true final purpose of this science.

Count de Marsciano, Gualdino, Guido de Montanor, Elias Artista, and many others maintain that it is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to learn this high science from writings. We have already given the cause of this above for the most part; yet what remains shall be supplied below.

Albertus Magnus says:

To you, my dear friends, I have truly described a great mystery; and although I reveal it openly, the unwise, the fools, and the shepherds of this art cannot comprehend it. Yet I ask and adjure you by the Creator of the world, that you do not let this my book come before such persons come before them, so that they may have no occasion to blaspheme about it.

Abbot Synesius states that the uncomprehending cannot grasp this art. The Apostle Paul writes: The natural man cannot comprehend the things that are of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness and offense to him.

Count Trevisanus and we with him confess that we have often spoken quite openly, before those believed to be among the most learned and most experienced in the art, about the matter, about the Mercurius Philosophorum, and about the reduction of our mineral things; yet they could neither understand nor grasp it, but heard it as dreamers.

The cause of this, as the sages say, is that God holds His holy hand over it and does not will that His sanctified mysteries be profaned. Therefore the sages also treated this high science with the greatest care in their writings, so that, if such writings should fall into the hands of the uncomprehending, the godless, and the unworthy, they might not understand nor grasp them.

Next, also for this reason: that they, the sages, did not wish to anticipate God and hand over something that is not theirs and does not stand within their power, unless they wished to bring the curse upon themselves.

Likewise for this reason, as the philosopher Morienus indicates: If I were to describe all the mysteries clearly, what advantage would the wise man have over the fools?

Therefore the sages wrote in a veiled manner about the mysteries, so that the godless, the fool, and the madman might not understand it, and so that the scoundrel and lout, the idle fellow and hawk, might not be esteemed equal to the wise and industrious man, and enjoy the same advantage.

For this reason it is also said in the Epistle concerning the Knightly War: that it is the most beautiful thing in the world to learn the practice of our Stone from the books of the philosophers.

Yet King Geber, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Dionysius Zacharias, and many others concede that it happens, and may happen, through sharp understanding, much reading, studying, and manipulating. And the aforesaid epistle itself admits: there is no difficulty so great that it cannot be removed through urgent prayer and zealous searching.

For Christ Himself promises: Whatever you shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you. He who seeks, finds; to him who asks, it is given; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened.

Basil Valentine speaks of this thus:

Finally, to speak where you must follow me, learn that through heartfelt asking, through diligent reading, through investigation to fathom Nature, through diligent labor and its manifold separation, you will obtain from the eternal God all that in which the highest wisdom in earthly glory lies hidden, together with the noble health of the human body and the wealth of this temporal life.

Thus souls devoted to God, from conviction and in deepest humility, must bear witness to us, to the honor of God, that God the Lord has not only heard their prayer, but has also given them that for which they prayed to God.

Therefore James also, as mentioned above, admonishes: If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. For all wisdom, all good and perfect gifts, come down from above, from the Father.

For heavenly Wisdom herself calls out to us: “Whoever is simple, let him come here; I will teach you wisdom.”

In Sirach 39 it stands: when God has been appeased for sin through prayer, He gives such a petitioner the spirit of wisdom abundantly.

And Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3: Whoever is without prayer, without faith, and without wisdom cannot please God; consequently, he also cannot become partaker of His gifts.

For wisdom is a light and a treasure of all knowledge of this life and of the future life. It obliges us to love God with our whole heart, and our neighbor as ourselves; for on these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.

Accordingly, we must first of all strive for wisdom, for the light of all things but not for the wisdom of this world, of which more shall be said later, but for the true wisdom which comes down from above, and which no one can give us except God alone.

But God the Lord has not placed these great Arcana and Mysteria in Nature that is, in the kingdom of Nature in vain, as though they were to remain buried there and lie forever hidden. Rather, like all other essential things, He has made them and ordered them for their use, so that through them one may learn to know the wisdom of God, and may honor Him for it and give thanks for it.

For how can one come to know the Creator more deeply than from His works and creatures?

And what use would this great treasure in the earth have, and how could God be glorified through it, if no one had knowledge of it?

But God has, for the sake of man’s welfare and health, God has planted this treasure in the earth and revealed it to man, so that man may dig it out, use it for his welfare, learn from it to know the Creator, thank Him for it, and glorify His majesty.

As Sirach indeed confesses: The Lord causes medicine to grow out of the earth, and a reasonable man does not despise it. He has given such art to men so that He may be praised in His wondrous works; for He gives everything that is good upon earth.

Galen writes: God has given and revealed this medicine for man’s good, and because of the frailty of his body.

And since the welfare of man lies so near to dear God’s heart, just as though it were His own welfare and His honor were bound up with it so say Tauler, Kampei, Albertus Magnus, Johann Arndt, and others therefore, according to His divine qualities, He has created all creatures, created things, and products of the kingdom of Nature good, and has made each of them into a special storehouse of food and treasure of medicine, so that every creature, each according to its kind, may find food and medicine.

For it is certain that even the very least thing, and the thing most despised in the eyes of men, has its particular use and application. Therefore it is incumbent upon man to investigate the products of the kingdom of Nature, to learn to know their usefulness, likewise what properties each of them has, and from this to take occasion to thank his God heartily for such countless and special goods and benefits.

This science is called a wisdom, and it is distinguished into two essential parts: into the knowledge of the outer powers, and into the knowledge of the inner powers.

The first is known under the name of the above-mentioned pharmaceutical chemistry, and is learned through professors, zealous practice, and manipulation. The other, however, as true alchemy, is obtained either mediately or immediately from God.

Now although both kinds of knowledge have only one aim, object, and final purpose namely, to prepare a glorious medicine nevertheless they have no further connection or fellowship with one another except the outward practice of fire. Thus one can be sought and practiced without the other.

Yet not all who say, “Lord, Lord,” will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of the heavenly Father. Matthew 7.

Thus, although all people without exception are called according to grace, nevertheless they are not all chosen. For not all who went out of Egypt with Moses and Aaron passed over the Jordan and entered into the land of Canaan, but only Joshua and Caleb. The greater number among them had made themselves unworthy of it, had missed the right way, and had offended against the true Rock of salvation.

We must not first wish to become rich and delight ourselves in worldly vanities, and then serve God in old age or on the deathbed. Rather, before all things, we must seek, struggle, and strive after the kingdom of God and His righteousness; then the rest will fall to us of itself.

The welfare and blessedness of each person consists in the true knowledge of God and of himself.

From this knowledge and fountain-source flow to us all spiritual and earthly treasures, as gifts of grace from God.

If we make ourselves worthy, as vessels of God, to grasp this great knowledge; if we love God with all our heart and all our soul, so that He may reveal Himself in us and we may learn to understand the things that are of the Spirit of God, then He will either raise up a Habakkuk to bring us food, or lead a Philip to us who must preach the Gospel to us; or else He will give enlightened eyes of understanding, so that we may see and recognize His mysteries in the writings of the sages with unveiled face, as in a mirror.

Human beings have not been given so much power that they can penetrate into another person’s heart, either with bodily eyes or with the eyes of the mind, and see what his inward condition is. And although there are indeed such people who have received from God the power, upon beholding a person, to know what his whole life and being are like, and to declare this to him from a prophetic spirit for the guidance of his conduct, nevertheless this grace is not common.

Therefore, in order not to err or act hastily, they direct and refer the investigators of this wisdom to the primal source: the lovable God and His grace. The example of the prophet Samuel clearly shows us that human beings can act too hastily. For when, in the house of Jesse, he had to anoint David as king over Israel, he first had all David’s brothers pass before him, and he thought of each one, because of his stature and beauty and also his lively spirit, that he was the one whom he had to anoint.

But he was mistaken, for the smallest among them, who kept the sheep, had been chosen by God to be king. Outward appearance has already deceived many thousands; and all the more so, since Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light, and a ravening wolf can clothe himself in a sheepskin, as, alas, enough examples of this lie plainly before us.

It is neither ambition nor envy when true possessors of the art do not show themselves as liberal as some might wish; rather, it is because of the lack of suitable subjecta as Hautnorthon, Paracelsus, the author of the Great Peasant, and others complain which are as rare as the adepts themselves, or as the phoenix bird.

On the other hand, there are many foxes, complimenters, and mouth-friends, of whom Christ says: Truly, you seek me not because you love me or my Father, but because you have eaten bread and been satisfied.

For what would you ask after me, if you had what could satisfy you?

But know that such seeking would indeed be in vain, if I had not been sent to preach the Gospel to you and to proclaim the Gospel, so that the kingdom of God may stand near to everyone, and each person may strive, in the deeper meaning of this Gospel, to work out his salvation and advantage; and for that purpose to seek and search in the writings of the holy prophets and patriarchs, who have testified of it, and whose testimony is truth.

Let no one rely upon the arm of flesh or upon an Egyptian reed-staff, but upon Him who works all in all and knows what is useful and blessed for each person. He will provide help before one expects it.

To obtain help from men is very difficult for three reasons. First, it is difficult to bring them to acquaint to the knowledge that they are possessors of this high science. Secondly, it must then be asked whether they are also found proven in the test. And thirdly, one can oblige them by nothing to frankness, to reveal such a great mystery and make it known to others.

For here it is not a matter of a few good words, since there are people who know how to disguise themselves with an extraordinarily flattering skill, and who also understand how to show every favor and friendship, so that one would think they were the greatest saints. But when one considers them rightly, they are like peacock feathers, which on one side shine brightly and are pleasant to look at, but on the other side are full of filth and uncleanness, so that one is greatly stained by them.

Their honesty is like a hedge or thornbush; before one notices it, one is wounded. Political learning in all estates believes in no God, and consequently laughs at oath and vow, and regards it as a matter of free choice whether one may live according to it or not. Therefore one has good reason to look to God’s call, so as not to be deceived in this matter.

The Apostle Paul says very well of such people that they are of a ruined mind, upon whom God wishes to reveal His justice. Therefore it must also happen that, before their wickedness is hatched, the justice of God sanctifies and legitimates itself, and removes the guilty person from the land of the living. For the sighing of those who contend rises up to God and to His throne, and the justice of God makes them victors, so that the threats of wickedness are put to shame.

Our Savior assures us: “Everything that you ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you.”

For this and many other reasons, the sages are obliged to keep themselves hidden, and to direct the investigators of this science to ask and knock at the primal source, the Father of all good and all perfect gifts, for this great and sanctified gift of grace; there they will surely obtain it.

But there are also the following further reasons why so few attain the true foundation and possession of the Hermetic science.

First, because all chemists and laboratory-workers are stuck in the unconquerable opinion and error that, besides the great Universal, there are also other transformations of metals, which they call Particulars; and according to the statements of the sophists in their writings, these are supposed to be as numerous as the stars in heaven, so that their names could not be listed.

By means of these, however, the seekers of riches consume their time, money, and life in vain, ruin themselves thereby, become a byword to the world, and give the art a bad name; whereas, apart from the great Universal, there is no Particular, whatever name it may have. Count Trevisanus, de Marsciano, Kunrad of Leipzig, Paracelsus, Fictuld, and others bear witness to this for us.

Basil Valentine, p. 733, expresses himself on this matter thus:

This wise spirit namely, the universal spirit is the true Mercury of the Philosophers, of those who have already been before me and who will come after me. Note well: without it, neither the Stone of the Wise nor the great Universal can be made, whether Universal or Particular, much less any metallic transformation.

Baron de Welling, p. 360, likewise says:

The poor, base metals to improve the poor and base metals is wholly and entirely vain, unless one knows how to accomplish this through the true attraction of the Mercurius universalis. Likewise, p. 356: Whoever now has the above-mentioned Mercury has the true salino-mercurial water, which is necessary for the dissolution of true gold, for making the high aurum potabile, and for dissolving metallic gold in it.

Nevertheless, the poor laboratory-workers and artists wish to force Nature to bring forth something that is neither possible for them nor given to them. Through this erroneous opinion and false imagination, many thousands of families, of high and low estate, have fallen into extreme poverty, misery, want, and death.

This, then, is false alchemy, the falsely celebrated and falsely described art, which above we called the innocent kind; through it even the most honest people innocently immerse themselves, but afterward, from lack of sustenance, turn to the deliberate kind. By means of this deliberate kind, the loosest people, rogues, and deceivers commit the most malicious tricks, frauds, and thefts, and in the most pitiful manner mislead, deceive, rob, and deprive of their own goods the most innocent people, who have no conception of the art of gold-making, yet would gladly become rich and make gold.

Those who claim to be possessors of great arts, sciences, and mysteries, and who by tricks and knaveries know how to make proofs of silver and gold, can by their sleight-of-hand in a thousand ways slip silver or gold into the crucibles, in order to make their claims appear proven. But afterward, when these deceivers have made their exit, it goes with these disciples as with those who are told by the gypsies to burn a hole with a light through a bundle of straw.

For this reason, everyone, whatever his estate may be, is highly warned not only to beware of all such gold-makers and laboratory-workers, but also to abandon all seeking and laboring after Particulars, if his honor and credit are dear to him; for no Particular can exist without the Universal, any more than a tree can exist without a root.

Concerning this one may read Count Bernard, Count de Marsciano, Kunrad of Leipzig, Fictuld, Gottfried Meister, Criling, Jungf. Alchymie, etc.

Secondly, all lovers of the Stone of the Wise have a very false conception of the high work, since they both work in the wrong matter and do not treat it with the proper manual operations. For they all take metallic and mineral bodies, which are poisonous and unhealthy, which have passed through the smelting fire, and which are intolerable to human nature, and wish to make medicine from them; whereas all the sages most solemnly warn that no such bodies should be taken for the beginning of the work.

As the Turba says: all metals and marcasites are excluded from the high work.

Likewise Senior, in the Rosary: Our gold is not common gold.

Hollandus and Sendivogius: The gold of the common man is dead, costly, and useless; ours, however, is living.

Count Bernard: Let all metals and minerals go, since they, as Count de Marsciano says, are a fruit and mountain-growth, in which the seed of all things that is, the mercurial spirit, the great world-spirit, the universal spirit, the mine of the mine is no longer universal, no longer a seed, no longer a spirit, no longer the mine of the mine; but a fruit, has become a growth, which has died to its former universal essence and has become specified; which has become corporeal, and has divided itself out of its unity into multiplicity and plurality. One may consult more fully about this in Hermann Fictuld’s Victoria.

The philosophers do not have any such fixed, hard, specified Subjectum, but rather a mine of the mine, in which the seed of the mine and the universal spirit the heavenly essence is still unwed, unspecified, and a virgin. Therefore all those who work with such mountain-fruits, mountain-growths, metallic and mineral bodies, and wish to make the Stone of the Wise from them, are blind and grope in darkness.

Basil Valentine, when he speaks of gold, and at the same time wishes it to be understood of all metals, says:

But how many estates and mighty goods have already in my time been wasted on this path, I will make no mention here; rather, I will only admonish my disciples that, since Nature has left them a nearer way, they should diligently follow it, so that they may not be led with other blind men into the utmost poverty, indeed into irreparable damage, and be miserably overthrown.

Hermes cries out:

Blessed, therefore, is the artist who not only knows the Stone, but also knows how to transform it into water.

Thirdly, because the seekers and investigators of the Hermetic mysteries clearly see and understand that nothing can be begun with their metallic and mineral bodies in their crudeness and hardness, but that they must first be destroyed and dissolved by a Menstruum or metallic juice for the sages speak very much of a Universal Menstruum, which they must indispensably have it for the beginning of their work; but since they lack sufficient knowledge of what sort of juice it actually is, they take sharp, caustic, corrosive, and poisonous mineral waters, dissolve metals and minerals in them, and wish from this to make a noble and healing medicine, an excellent essence, a precious balsam, the water of life, the universal medicine.

But this is a great error, weakness of mind, and lack of understanding. For how can one make, with a poisonous juice from an equally poisonous body, a healing remedy, a heart-strengthening and life-preserving medicine?

How could a metal or mineral, prepared according to the common manner of the chemists, bring relief to a human being in his pains, since it is not truly dissolved nor extracted, but only destroyed and eaten away? It still remains, as before, a metal and mineral; consequently it is still poisonous, infected by the poisonous juices and made more poisonous, and therefore still a crude body.

Certainly, metals and minerals can be improved by nothing except the Universal Menstruum of the sages, as the sole mineral juice from which a healing medicine may be made, one that can be used with benefit in the human body.

And just as no medicine or healing remedy can be prepared in the aforesaid manner, so also no tincture or powder of transformation can be prepared by means of which metals can be transformed. For the Universal Menstruum is no such poisonous juice or water of death, but an Aqua vitæ, an Azoth, and, as Paracelsus says, a blessed spirit, Argentum vivum animatum that is, the Mercury of the Philosophers; according to Lullius and Protoferus, an animated spirit; according to Hollandus, Paracelsus, Count de Marsciano, Christianus Parisiensis, and Basil Valentine, a vinegar, spiritus vini; and according to Hautnorthon and the Blatt der Natur (Blut der Natur), a mineral vinegar, which is prepared from the Subjectum of the Stone of the Wise and drawn out from the Minera Saturni.

Therefore there is a mighty difference between a water of life and a water of death. The water of life gives life to dead bodies; it awakens them from death into life; it brings a life that is, a soul and spirit into them, so that they become living again, live eternally, and do not die again.

By contrast, the water of death kills all living things; it robs them of life and introduces death into them, so that thereafter they are unfit for all things.

Fourthly, the common chemists also act very foolishly in this matter, and contrary to the teaching of all the sages, in that they roast, calcine, and burn their Subjecta with smelting fire, and thereby drive out and burn away from them the mineral spirit, the humidum radicale, the actual power, the growing power, the greenness.

The sages warn very strongly against this calcination, and say that their calcination is not the common one, in which bodies are burned into a dry powder like ashes or burnt bones.

Rather, as Ripley, Vaterherz, etc. say: In our calcination we increase the natural moisture; and as the foundation, in our calcination we must work cautiously, only through and with Nature, because every nature loves and draws to itself its like.

Whoever does not work thus is blind, says Artephius. One should put the mother into the belly of her child, since she has borne it and it has come forth from her. Turba, Flamel, Artephius, Leona Constans, etc.

Thus also, through the water of life, the moisture and actual power of the metallic essence must be increased and strengthened, since the humidum radicale of philosophical gold and the Aqua vitæ, or Argentum vivum animatum, are one and the same.

For all the sages testify that in our work there is nothing but brother and sister, man and woman, father and mother, sun and moon. Accordingly, the Corpus also, in its calcination, is increased in natural moisture and not diminished.

Fifthly. The greatest and principal stumbling-block is the great multitude of the most worthless writings, which have been smeared out by learned and unlearned people, of both male and female sex, concerning alchemy, the Stone of the Wise, the Particular, and the making of gold and silver. In these writings they have made known to the world their opinion and supposed knowledge, their imagined spider’s web and spider-spirit.

Most of these writings come from true idiots, arch-deceivers, conscienceless and worthless people, who had no other aim in this than to entangle the ignorant and innocent, and deprive them of money, sustenance, and all their possessions.

They have dealt presumptuously in them with things of which they themselves are ignorant, and of which they had no conception, understanding, or reason. They have presented themselves as true possessors of the art, just as if they were the most perfect masters of the whole Hermetic science, and as if, from a godly and loving impulse toward those desirous of the art, they had been obliged to write; whereas their writings clearly and plainly testify and confirm the opposite: that they were idiots, deceivers, liars, false-chemists, arch-sophists, windbags, tricksters, rogues, and other such worthless rabble, who neither knew nor understood the matter or the practice, neither Universal nor Particular much less could they have known their powers and properties.

Therefore all those who read such writings, unless they are true possessors of the art, go astray and become confused by them, and fall into a dreadful labyrinth from which they do not know how to help themselves. For they rely on the impudent pretensions, believe the deceitful show of goodwill, that these writers wish to discover and reveal the truth, and then set aside the writings of the true sages, because in them they do not find such frankness and such great promises.

Yet everyone should hold it as a certain sign of precious truth that when an author says he wishes to uncover this science and make it known, he is a liar and deceiver, who by means of his pretensions seeks to make skillful tricks and booty.

Such writers ought to be ashamed in their heart and soul to write such lying things into the world, as though there were no God in heaven and no justice, and as though there were no one in the world able to see through their worthless writings, lampoons, and fraud.

They do not like to have the name of liars and deceivers; and yet they must endure that Herr Fictuld, in his Probierstein of 1753 and in his first supplement to the Probierstein, and according to them has made them known by their true worth, and has placed them among the number of arch-liars and arch-deceivers, by whom very many people have been lied to, deceived, and led astray, so that they sacrificed property and goods, also honor and life, and by whom alchemy has been given a bad name.

Can these wretched and pitiable deceivers not see that by means of their fraud many sighs are wrung out and many tears are shed, so much so that most people at last break out into terrible curses against them and wish every misfortune upon them?

Do they not think that all this will fall upon their heads, and that God’s judgments will break forth over them?

Would to God that all high authorities had the same disposition as His Serene Highness the Margrave of Baden, who a few years ago had such a deceiver properly seized and brought into the house of correction, so that he might deceive no one further with his art of gold-making. And this very man is the one who had The Chemical Little Air-Garden printed at Ludwigsburg in 1747, in which he was still honest and had not publicly made known such frauds as others have done.

In the Evangelist John it says: The Devil is a liar and the father of lies, and has not remained in the truth. Therefore, if the Devil is the father of lies, then the writings of such people must also be the Devil’s work, and must have been smeared out with his assistance.

Moreover, since this high art is a holy gift from God, which is to be used for the honor of God and the welfare of man, it follows of itself that nothing good can be found in such writings. Territorial rulers therefore ought not to allow that they should be printed; rather, they should take care to suppress them in every way, so that no one may be lied to and deceived by them.

On the other hand, one should also be diligent and earnestly concerned to make the true writings of the Adepts, both old and new, known through printing and more useful to the public. In this way it would soon come about again that this science would regain its former splendor, and false alchemy would come to its end.

Sixthly, it is a great hindrance that many, if not all, seekers of the Stone of the Wise fall into the folly of believing that the Stone of the Wise is not such a subtle and pure work as it truly is, and as it is described by all the sages. Instead, they imagine that it is made only from contemptible ingredients and prepared by a simple composition.

For example, they think that if one unites coarse metals and minerals by melting, or if one mixes together other species as powders just as veterinarians mix their roots and herbs then it is already gold, or at least a gold-making tincture.

Yet if the simple fools would only open their eyes and consider the name of this Stone of the Wise, they would clearly see that the Stone of the Wise, or the Art of the Wise, is a work that depends upon the wisdom and science of wise masters. Therefore it is rightly an art of wise masters, and is so called; consequently it is not a work of the silly, fools, and madmen, who, by means of sophistical scribblings, are botchers and muddle-makers.

For truly, if from such a work gold or a tincture could be prepared, then it would have to follow:

1. that everyone, whoever he may be, is a wise master;
2. that all things have gold in their inward parts, which would reveal itself through the touching of such laboratory-workers and would have to be transformed into an actual lump of gold;

3. that a growing gold exists in all things and is generated through such botched work and becomes gold.

But that this cannot be so is sufficiently seen from this: because all we say deliberately, all such work, whatever name it may have and in whatever manner it may be performed, is vain labor, vain hope, and vain profit; and all who occupy themselves with it become poor, and make miserable days of life for themselves and their own.

For the work of the sages and gold-making is something entirely different. It is an art and science of wisdom, prudence, and careful deliberation, in which, as Aristotle says, one makes metallic and mineral bodies into non-bodies, and non-bodies into bodies; in which one raises bodies into mist and vapor, and then transforms the mist and vapor again into a body by means of a coalescence.

For it is very natural and reasonable that two bodies never unite together, penetrate into one another, and act upon one another in the way that water mixes with water, but only stick together in their outward being and form; therefore they can always be separated from one another again.

By contrast, when, according to the teaching of the sages, solid bodies are made fluid, they mix in their outward and inward parts like water with water, so that they cannot be separated. But such a mixing occurs when the dissolved thing is united with the dissolving thing, for without this union nothing can be done in this science. For the body is dissolved by the Spiritus, and the Spiritus is made thick and stable by the body. The Spiritus is fixed, and the body is made volatile, so that they are inseparable.

This, then, is our true tincture and the first step toward perfection, where the body, by virtue of its spiritual gold-sulphur, is tinctured and becomes black through putrefaction. This is called the Raven’s Head, and the first gate or key of the high work, which deserves more attention than it is given by the sophists. More will be said about this later. Whoever does not understand this key should, in God’s name, leave this work untouched until he has gained greater insight into it.

Fourth Section.
On the Highness and Excellence of this Science.

That alchemy is 1) the noblest, 2) the most beautiful, 3) the most glorious, 4) the most perfect, 5) the most necessary, and 6) the most profitable among all arts and sciences in the whole world, with not a single one excepted or reserved, no one can contradict on the ground of truth; and this for the following reasons:

First, because by means of it such a medicine can be made, through which not only all diseases without exception in the human body can be healed, and its health restored, but also the lesser metals can be transformed into the more perfect ones, such as silver and gold.

This is all the more remarkable because it is done by means of such a thing as is low and contemptible in the eyes of the ignorant, namely because God, according to His holy and wise counsel, has planted it in the kingdom of Nature, and it is to be found throughout the whole world; as King David sings of this in Psalm 104: The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

Rupescissa says that without this, no sacrifice is pleasing to the Lord, because it is a noble balsam and quintessence, from which a sahol and incense are made as a sweet odor to the Lord, through the apothecary’s art that is, through the art of dissolution by which the impure, yeasty, corruptible, and combustible must be removed, while the essential parts are united and made into something perfect, which is fixed and incombustible; then it penetrates into solid bodies, improves them, colors them, and makes them more perfect.

Therefore there is no thing in the world serving temporal blessedness that is so noble and so virtuous as this Subjectum, and which can and must be prepared through alchemy and brought to its perfection.

Secondly, it is the most beautiful, most virtuous, and most pleasant art, which not only common, ignorant, or contemptible persons have pursued, but to which also many emperors, kings, princes, counts, and lords, both of the spiritual and worldly estate, have devoted themselves and desired it, as histories are full of this.

But they have themselves made it their honor and joy to spend their time with it, not in order to acquire riches by it, but to find a medicine by which they might help themselves in cases of need, preserve health, and at the same time show a benefit to others who suffer.

By means of alchemy they also anatomized all bodies of the kingdom of Nature, in order to investigate their power and property, and to praise God for His wisdom and goodness.

Is it not a virtue and a glorious science to learn to know a wise master-builder from his works? How many thousand times more virtuous and more beautiful it would be if one strove to perceive and learn to know God’s wisdom and majesty from His works.

For if each person, according to his duty, learned to know his Creator from His works, then truly greater knowledge and reverence for God would reign in the world; and one would not encounter so many idle street-walkers, earth-slaves, and people given over to all pleasures. Rather, each person would strive to do nothing by which God’s honor, the salvation of his neighbor, and his own welfare were not advanced.

Indeed, there have been very many who possessed this high science, but never carried it out, so that they might not thereby transgress, or offend God and their neighbor.

Thirdly. Solomon, the wisest king in Israel, expresses himself concerning the glory and perfection of this high science thus:

Long life is in her right hand, and in her left hand are riches and honor.

And the Apostle James says:

Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of Lights.

With these agree:

Bonus of Ferrara agrees with this when he calls this science holy and divine, saying that it has no equal and cannot be paid for with any money or gold.

Gloria Mundi, together with many others, regards it as a treasure of all treasures, a wealth of all wealths, which kings and princes are unable to pay for. In Pandora, p. 159, it stands: Therefore mark this well, that this art is more divine than human. Basil Valentine says of it that it belongs more to angels than to men to know it. And Solomon says that it is a tree of life to all who grasp it, and that blessed are all who obtain it; precisely because it is the glorious jewel that has long life at its right hand and riches and honor at its left.

Who can sufficiently marvel at the wisdom and goodness of God, that from such an imperfect being so glorious a thing and perfect being can come forth one which drives away all diseases and transforms the lesser metals into silver and gold, and this from itself, without any other things?

Fourthly. It is also the most necessary, indispensable, and most highly required, both for the preparation of medicine and for advancing all kinds of arts by means of it; for indeed the whole household economy and agriculture depend upon it. This may be read at length in Leonhard von Altenburg’s treatise entitled De larvatione.

Fifthly, it is also the most profitable. For, as has already been cited from the Proverbs of Solomon, chapter 3: Long life is at her right hand, and riches and honor at her left.

But whoever has health, long life, riches, and honor in the world has these things may count himself blessed. Still more so, since it is a gift of God, which comes from God and is given by God; and which, as the sages testify, leads man to a deeper knowledge of God and of himself, instills in him a greater reverence for God and His wisdom, and lets him see all Nature bare and uncovered, as in a mirror: namely, how the wisdom of God has so artfully woven all things together and joined them to one another that one thing must hold and support the other.

Sixthly. Finally, it is also the most truthful, holiest, and most righteous. That this can be said of it with good reason is testified by Hermes. And indeed the numerous examples in ancient, middle, and more recent times the transmutations and projections that have occurred sufficiently confirm this.

Many of them are still fresh in memory, such as those at Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, by Bötticher, Cajetano, Schmolz von Dierbach, and Baron von Seiler, not on a small scale, but in pounds and hundredweights, and indeed before emperors, kings, electors, princes, and lords.

And although the men just mentioned did not themselves make the tincture, this nevertheless takes nothing away from the matter. It is enough that the truth and possibility were thereby proven. Indeed, the matter is thereby made still more certain, since they did not prepare the tincture and yet tinged great sums of gold with it; as may be read more fully in Künckel, Dippel, Criling, Jungf. Alchymie, etc.

Among examples from older times, especially noteworthy are Raimundus Lullius, who gave King Edward in England great sums of gold; and George Ripley, who every year sent to the Knights of Rhodes 100,000 pounds sterling in gold, in order to carry on the war against the Saracens.

The history of Emperor Rudolf II is sufficiently proven by public documents: after his death in 1612, about 30 hundredweight of silver were found at the goldsmiths, and 60 hundredweight of silver and 84 hundredweight of ducat-gold in his chamber, which he had produced by alchemy.

No less deserving of mention here is what is said of Adolf, King of Sweden: namely, that he transformed 100 pounds of lead into gold, and from it had 30,000 ducats struck.

And Emperor Ferdinand III, in 1648, with his own hand, by means of one grain of tincture, transformed 3 pounds of quicksilver into gold.

These are proofs enough that such a science is true not to mention the many miraculous cures performed through this medicine, which were recorded by Paracelsus.

Who, then, will contradict that this science is the most beautiful, most glorious, and most profitable? And who, for the sake of truth, for the honor of God and the benefit of mankind, should not choose, seek, and desire to possess this art and science before all others?

Paracelsus writes of this as follows:

How many a potentate spends many tons of gold on a single fortress, and yet, by contrast, not one kreuzer on a medicine by which he might protect himself from the enemies of his health and his life. Yet the latter would be far wiser than the former, since one sees daily how many a man is sent to the grave before his time.

Fifth Section.
On the Practice of this great and glorious Mystery itself.

The holy Apostle Paul testifies: the whole creature groans under the curse and longs for liberation. Now, since every creature groans and longs for its redemption, it must follow that it lies under a burden from which it cannot free itself.

This burden is the so-called feces terræ the dregs of the earth in which the creature, that is, the quintessence, lies enclosed and imprisoned; and these prevent it from being able to work in its own power. Instead, that power is partly held back, and partly the feces terræ mix in their contrary effect.

One sees this, for example, in wheat: when its husks are removed, it gives beautiful white flour; but when the husks are ground together with it, they produce black flour.

Therefore the creature also the pure part, the quintessence must be drawn out from the curse, from the feces terræ, and made free from the husks in which it lies veiled and hidden.

But these husks, or feces terræ, are those parts which grow together with the pure parts, and are their house and clothing, indeed their protection; without them the pure parts could neither arise, grow, nor subsist.

They are of two kinds: some are earthy, sulphurous, and combustible; others watery, mercurial, and incombustible. The earthy ones are of a dry property and are a dried-out essence; the watery ones are of a moist property and are a vaporous essence; both

Yet both are excrements and binding bands, which are to be regarded as the nurses and nourishers of the pure, as Hermes says.

Whoever wishes to have the pure thing must, as the Epistle concerning the Knights’ War teaches, open the dark prisons, separate off the impure, and soften, dissolve, liquefy, and make mobile the best parts those which have arisen from the hardness of the salt and have therefore become hardened and petrified, that is, have become of a metallic hardness so that the soul, the essential powers, and the properties may go forth, by means of homogeneous parts which penetrate into the innermost, flow in, and fix themselves there.

Without such acting and inflowing homogeneous parts, no softening, melting, and dissolution of the fixed parts is possible; and consequently the soul also cannot be drawn out.

Bonus of Ferrara, Janus Lacinius, and Rhasis write: entrance into the bodies will never stand open to the spirit unless it is pure and cleansed. Aristotle, and with him all the sages, confess that the species of the metals cannot properly be transformed unless they have been dissolved into their first matter and brought back to it. For by means of dissolution they are brought into another form than they were in before.

And this is so, Dastanus maintains, because the death of one thing is the life of another, and the corruption of one is the generation and birth of another, both in artificial and natural things. For art follows nature, and in some things improves and surpasses it; just as a weak nature is improved by medicine.

It is shown by experiments that plants, especially flowers standing in full bloom, when broken off, are separated by the art of separation; their constituent parts are purified and reunited, from which afterwards the former flowers or plants present themselves again in their essential form, though spiritually, as often as is required, etc.

In the same way, the bodies or products of the realm of nature are resolved into their essential constituent parts, out of which they consist, are grown and composed, and are brought back again. It will not be difficult to believe that this dissolution is possible, since we hold far more impossible things to be true, for example, the generation of all things. This is demonstrated to us at length, and nature’s conditions teach us; for one knows well that what the hands of man cannot bring forth is a work of God and depends upon His providence.

We see that water becomes ice, and that by warmth the ice becomes water. We see that all bodies and products consist in salt, that they are made from salt, and that through decay and burning they are resolved into salt.

Finally, one sees how nature brings forth things, that is, all kinds of bodies, animals and plants, sets them at the highest degree of their perfection, yet does not cease to act upon them; rather, by the very operative power through which it brought the products to the degree of perfection, it again consumes them, brings them into decay, and then from the decay of the former body makes a new form, another fruit, another product, and an entirely different body.

Now if nature can do this in and through itself, how much more could art accomplish it by means of nature, or nature through art?

Can it not? Nature works from a chaos toward perfection, and from perfection back into a chaos.

Art works toward bringing bodies into destruction and separation, in order to set apart and separate the excrements, the dregs, the parts which prevent the good and pure from acting; but the good and pure itself is to be drawn out from the impure and brought into the state of perfection by the warmth of fire, so that it may become pourable and fluid like wax, or like a prepared substance, and may flow into the hard metals, or into glass and stones, just as oil flows into paper.

Two things have stood opposed to it, so that it could not reach the perfect degree of its being: first, it was directed by Nature to become a fruit; second, it was held captive by the husks, so that it could become nothing else. Therefore, when the excrements, husks, and impurities as the dark prisons in which it lies captive are opened and removed, so that it can act by itself alone, it must necessarily follow that it reaches a high degree and becomes more than perfect; as the sages also say, that it must become plusquamperfectum, “more than perfect.”

In the Ritterkrieg it says: God has created this ore for us, so that we may take it alone, destroy the coarse body, pick out the good inwardly, and make a medicine from the poison.

The saying of Aristotle has its effect here: that the metals cannot be transformed unless they have first been dissolved and brought back into their beginnings; since without this solution and reduction, neither can the good be taken out, nor the impure separated off.

This same Ritterkrieg describes the dissolution itself to us thus: “Our whole work springs only from one thing and, note well, is accomplished in itself; and it needs nothing more than dissolution and re-hardening, and this must take place of itself, without any foreign things. Just as ice, set in a dry vessel over the fire, becomes water by the warmth, so also our Stone needs nothing more than the help of the artist and the natural fire.”

Ripley, p. 77, says: “Destroy the first form of all your materials.”

Now, if a true Solutio, Separatio, and Reductio is to take place, so that the bodies are destroyed and separated from their unity into their constituent parts, then necessity requires us to know what the constituent parts of bodies are, what is pure and impure, what is good and bad. Of the impure and bad we have already spoken above; therefore it would be superfluous to repeat it here. At present we have to treat only of the pure.

Direct observation gives us the clearest report and forms the true concept of it. We see how all plants present themselves in a threefold being or form. A tree, for example, shows itself a) in its root, trunk, and branches; b) in bark, wood, and pith; and c) in blossoms, leaves, and fruit. Each of all these, through the dissolution of fire, gives forth from itself a moisture, an oiliness/fatness, and a dryness.

The moisture is a mercurial essence, a moist white vapor joined with phlegmatic excrements, that is, with bad poisonous humidities. The oily substance is a sulphurous essence with excrements that are fatty and combustible, poisonous, and inflamed; and the dryness is a salty essence, mixed with excrements, which are the dry, burnt-out, and exhausted feces terræ.

All these excrements and impure parts are so greatly mixed and bound together with the pure and good parts that they are difficult to separate from one another.

Just as this has here been said of plants, so it is also with animals and minerals. They all consist, both in their outer and inner being, of three things: form, matter, and essence. The form is the sensory thing, the shape is the natural thing, and the image is the essential thing.

But these three parts are not mercury, sulphur, and salt, as the ignorant claim, but three essential mineral bodies, as three kinds of ore or fruits of the mountain. Neither the metals nor all other bodies of the realm of nature have their beginning and origin from three mineral bodies, but from a mercurial moisture, a sulphurous fatness, and a saline dryness.

Yet between salt and a saline dryness, between sulphur and a sulphurous fatness, and between mercury and a mercurial moisture, there is a very great difference. These three primal beings, or essential beings, are the true and natural constituent parts of every body, and thus also of metals and minerals: the essential parts, the quintessence, the balsamic power-essence, the so-called operative nature and force, by which everything is brought forth and preserved.

What is outward in these three essences consists of excrements, husks, feces, and phlegmatic, darkened, poisonous things, which contrary to man’s health, very harmful to the philosophical work, and obstructive to the power of the tincture.

Therefore the sages say that these things bring death to the work, and consequently must be removed with the greatest care, so that the essential parts, in their natural purity, may have power to act when they are to unite with one another and become a perfect being. For each among them has received from God the power to penetrate into the others; each is a key to unlock the others, to unite itself with them, and to separate off the impurity.

This is taught by the most worthy-to-be-honored Count de Marsciano, when he says: Therefore, when they can find that subject and anatomize it philosophically, and know how rightly to prepare the volatile and acid spirit, and from it skilfully to draw out the fixed salt by means of fire; and to purify this salt with the greatest diligence from its white, subtle, combustible, and earthly nature, and first to dissolve it thoroughly from the root, and afterwards again to unite it inseparably with its volatile spirit, then they will be a sage.

The same excellent Count says in another place: For this reason it is necessary to purify this body to the utmost from its white, earthly feces, which hinder melting, so that we may obtain the purest starry essence of the salt. For the salt has the power to thicken and fix the Mercury and Sulphur, so that they may not flow from the heat of the fire. The Mercury protects the Sulphur from combustibility, and increases in the salt its natural radical moisture.

The Sulphur unites the Mercury with the Salt together, so that they can no longer be separated; but it also tinges and colors, by means of its tincture, the gold in such a way that, after their true dissolution, they are united into an incombustible oil, having a great effect in the healing art and a great power in transforming the lesser metals into the perfect ones.

There are very many things in nature which the ignorant person does not believe, which are incomprehensible to him, and which he regards as supernatural. Just as Sir Digby’s sympathetic powder, made crudely from vitriol in the sun, has great power and effect in the healing art, so our vitriol, made from the aforementioned subject of the mineral and metallic root, has far greater powers and properties, not only in the healing art, but also in transmutation, since it is composed of heavenly and earthly powers and cleansed from all impurity.

But just as Sir Digby’s powder is opposed, so it also happens to the great Hermetic powder: people either deny it altogether, or ascribe its origin and power to the devil, claiming that nature has not been granted the ability to perform such lofty effects.

But, O miserable people! You do not know what you are saying, for your eyes are full of sleep, and your heart is surrounded by a thick fog of ignorance. You have no foundation concerning God and divine things; you do not know who and what God is, nor who and what the devil is.

How does this fit together: that the Creator, who made everything that has been made, should not have as great power and might as the creatures? In whose power does everything stand, and is preserved?

In God’s power, or in the devil’s? Has the potter the power to smash the vessels, or, conversely, do the vessels have power over the potter?

If we did not abhor the scandal of the world and of wicked men, we could decide this matter plainly; but now we leave it to each person’s own examination.

In docimastic chemistry, or the art of mining and assaying, various remedies have been invented to lessen expenses and to make the ores more productive, especially the amalgamations, in which gold, ore, and mercury are finely ground together and made into a Schlich a prepared ore-slime or concentrated mineral pulp.

These amalgamations were discovered by means of the high work of the sages, since they grind Mercury and gold well together for a long time, so that the Mercury that is, their physical tincture may be joined with their fixed Sulphur, so that it may fill the pores or air-holes and the spaces of the fixed Sulphur, and capture the gold-making spirits; but also at the same time tinge and color the fixed Sulphur with an abundant redness, that is, with the color of gold, so that it may then be powerful enough also to color other metals.

These amalgamations are no small science, and they cause great difficulty among common chemists, since they do not know how one must grind and amalgamate the Mercury and the gold together so that, in their inward parts, they unite with one another indissolubly. This difficulty has overthrown many, because they knew no solution to it: how two essential bodies, one fixed and one volatile, could be joined together; although it is quite reasonable that they without such grinding and amalgamation, they cannot mix with one another even in the smallest parts. Therefore let everyone take these amalgamations as recommended for further reflection.

But to come to our purpose, it must be noted that the masters of our art do not seek to make metals outside metals, but in metals, with metals, and through metals. They work only to raise the lesser metals into the perfect ones, into silver and gold. Among the ignorant, therefore, this can all the more readily be regarded as possible and credible.

But if it were said that the sages sought to make gold outside the metallic kingdom for example, from minerals, which are nevertheless very closely related to metals, or from stones, wood, plants, or animal things then one ought rightly to doubt it, mock it, and regard the matter as false and impossible.

Since, however, it is done with and through metals, as with such things in which there is the gold-nature, the gold-seed, the fixed grain, and the metallic nature toward silver and gold, then in truth we would have no other reason to give why transmutation is denied and opposed than the intention not to believe and not to understand what one wishes to contradict.

If this were not so, it would follow that very great lack of understanding rules among such people. For this is as natural and reasonable as making bread from wheat and wine from grapes; and the whole science of this deeply hidden art consists only in the knowledge of the right matter and the manual operation.

We have noted above that the transformation of metals takes place in, with, and through the metals, because the seed of silver and gold is in the metals. Therefore the beginning of the high work must be made from metals, with metals, and through metals.

Yet not from, not with, and not through the metals of the common man, as Hollandus says; not from the metals of the wild field- and world-mountains, as Gloria mundi says; for all common metals and minerals are excluded from the high work, as Count Trevisan says. Rather, the metals of the sages are entirely different metals.

They are not dug and broken out of the mines and shafts of the mountains, but from the sea, from the bottom of the sea; or, as Gloria mundi expresses it: “In our salt-spring our salt is found.” Since, then, water is the seed of all stones, minerals, and metals; since from water Mercury and Sulphur grow forth, water being their foundation: one should therefore take the water in which our stone is within, and which can be found nowhere else in the world; and one should know that it is to be found in every human being, whether young or old.

Morienus said to King Calid: “This stone is in you and in me.” “It is in all things; it is in all places of the whole inhabited world,” writes the author of the Vaterherz. “It is in fields and forests, in villages and cities, in mountains and valleys; it is as much in the king’s palace as in the stable of a poor man. In short, there is no thing that God has created in which our stone is not to be found. It is found in the streets; the maidservants they throw it onto the dung-heap, and children play with it: so common is it. The great ones of this world despise it and trample it underfoot; but the one who knows it picks it up. For, after the soul of man, it is the most precious and noblest thing in the world.”

Only because of its lowly and unpleasant outward form do people despise it and regard it as the vilest thing. Kings and princes laugh at it and stop up their nose and mouth before it; yet it is a thing without which neither they nor any creature can live. If they knew how noble this stone is, truly it would not be so common; all the more since, because of its excellence, it cannot be paid for with all the goods of the world, and everyone has need of it.

It is the true cornerstone of the sages, as Kunrad de Leipzig writes in his Amphitheatrum and Chaos, upon which the whole structure of Hermetic science rests. It is the true mineral root, from which all minerals and metals have grown, according to the saying of Hollandus, Padua, Count Bernard, and de Marsciano.

Daustanus therefore rightly admonishes: Learn to know the mineral root correctly, if you wish to make your work from it. But this same author teaches in another place that this mineral root is called by all names, because of the excellence of its nature and the hiddenness of its operation. It is found everywhere, because it partakes of all the elements.

From this one mineral root, which is only one single thing, one single subjectum in the whole realm of nature, as all true sages testify, our threefold stone is found: namely the animal, vegetable, and mineral stone, together with the great physical tincture.

Although this is difficult for the ignorant to understand, it is nevertheless a precious truth. For it cannot be otherwise, since there are only two things in the whole realm of nature which effect and bring forth everything: namely, one passive and one active; that is, Sulphur and Mercury, earth and water, Luna and Sol, as Count Bernard says two mercurial substances from one root; for otherwise they could not be united.

Two contrary things do not dwell well together; no more than, according to the comparison of Basil Valentine, a married couple can manage a good household if one harnesses his wagon toward the East and the other toward the West. Only like-natured parts agree together; contrary ones always seek to separate themselves. Therefore they must be of one essence and from one root, so that they may act upon one another, bind themselves together in the best way, and be indestructible.

Although the sages have called this thing, this mineral root, by all names, says Senior, this happens only in order to hide it from the unwise; nevertheless it is only one single thing, and for that reason those names are not contrary to one another.

For, say Dionysius Zacharias, Hoghelandus, Count de Marsciano, the sages who lived 200, 300, 400, even 1000 years ago wrote in whatever language they wished, yet it is just as if they had lived today and spoken with one another.

For this reason it is great weakness to believe that they do not understand one another. The sages always understand one another, but the common chemists are contrary to one another opposed; they do not know what the matter is, nor how the operation or manipulation must be carried out. Indeed, among thousands one does not find two who have the same opinion and do not contradict one another.

By contrast, the sages are opposed to one another neither in the matter nor in the operation; nor do they know of any alteration, except only that one is more skilled in the work than the others, and therefore comes to the end of it sooner.

And this very agreement is the touchstone by which the sages must learn to recognize one another, whether they are true possessors of the high art or not. For Nature has brought forth no other matter, no other subjectum, which is suitable for this high work; nor has God given to any thing in the world the power to prepare the high work from it, except to this alone.

Thus in Nature there is also only one single way by which the matter can be dissolved, destroyed, and reduced. The author of the Blood of Nature - Glut der Natur writes: It is clear and manifest that beneath the sphere of the Moon there is found only one single subjectum, in which the powers of the upper and the lower are together at once and gathered in one heap, dwelling concentrated, and from which, through alchemy, they are drawn out and brought to an unheard-of thing.

But that same subjectum is a salt yet not kitchen salt, nor any other of that kind, but a Saturnine salt, which has its seat in its own sphere and is called the heart of Saturn. From this heart, when it is pure and shining and cleansed of all impurity, a wonderful liquor is drawn with little difficulty, which bears the name Mercury.

Count de Marsciano confesses that this salt is our gold, and the true metallic kind, because in truth it is of a metallic nature, which must be dissolved into the first seed-matter. It is called universal, for it is common and present in all things. It is the true being in all things and the operative power.

Yet although it is indeed in all things, says the author of the Women’s Work and Children’s Play, nevertheless it does not serve us from all things, but only from one single thing, because the universal seed that is, the fixed and the volatile, Sol and Luna, Sulphur and Mercury, earth and water is universal only in that same thing. In all other things, however, it is joined with the bodies and has died away from its true being, so that in them it is no longer universal, no longer a seed, but a fruit; as has already been sufficiently touched upon above, and therefore it is unfit for our high work.

Therefore it is to be taken only in the aforementioned single thing, as Count Bernard teaches, and from it drawn out wholly pure and raw; composed purely and clearly from the mine, and administered; cooked steadily by the fire, as the matter requires, until two become one. And in this One, when they are mixed, the body is made spirit, and the spirit body.

The artist must take this subjectum, and, as Arnold de Villanova teaches, add nothing foreign to it and take nothing away from it, but only separate off the superfluous.

Morienus says: Every person knows this thing; and whoever does not know it knows nothing else at all. And I would like to know whether there is a person, even if he were only seven or eight years old, who did not know this thing and have a strong appetite for it.

In the Ritterkrieg - Epistle of the Knightly War it says: By Almighty God and by my soul’s salvation, I declare to you, lovers of this glorious art, from a faithful heart and out of pity for the long search, that our whole work springs from one thing only, and is accomplished in itself, and needs nothing more than, note well, dissolution and re-hardening; and this must happen of itself, without any foreign things.

Just as ice, when placed in a dry vessel over the fire, becomes water through warmth, so it is also with our Stone, which needs nothing more than the help of the artist’s manual labor and of the natural fire. It cannot do this of itself, even if it lay forever in the earth; therefore one must help it. But not in such a way that one would add foreign and contrary things to it. Rather, just as we must first grind and bake the grain which God gives us in the field, so that it becomes bread, so too must we take this ore created by God alone, destroy the coarse body, pick out the good inwardly, remove the superfluous, and make a medicine from the poison.

Beginning of the work: to turn the body into water.

When the subjectum has now been brought to hand, then, after heartfelt prayer to God, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, it is consumed.

Flamel says: If you do not turn a bodily thing so that it becomes incorporeal, then you have made your work in vain and uselessly.

Ritterkrieg - Epistle of the Knightly War: The first effect of the manual labor of the first work is to make the body into water, which is our Stone and the most hidden point of our mysteries. I have shown you that this water must be made living and fruitful by an astral seed and by a heavenly spirit, in which the whole power of the physical tincture has its seat.

Isaac Hollandus expresses himself thus: My child should know that the philosophers have followed Nature and first brought all things into a water, without any feces, before they made use of it in the chemical art. Likewise, the philosophers also sought the earth in the water, just as God Almighty first placed the earth in water; and they found the earth in the water, which they then called their precious and costly stone, since the earth is a beginning of all things.

Therefore one must take one’s earth, prepare it, and make it fruitful before one sows into it; for without preparation it cannot bring forth fruit.

And the Epistle concerning the Knights’ War says: One must know the fire of the sages, which is the sole active thing, which can open the matter, sublime it, purify it, and dispose it so that it may be brought into a water. To this end one must penetrate through to the divine source of the heavenly water, which effects the solution, animation, and putrefaction of the stone.

One must know how to transform our metallic water into an incombustible oil through the complete dissolution of the body from which it has its origin. To this end one must invert the elements, separate them and bring them together again; one must learn to prepare a white and a citron-red Mercury; one must fix this Mercury, nourish it with its own blood, so that it, note well, may transform itself into a fixed Sulphur of the sages.

Gloria mundi says: Dear son, you should know that our Stone is such a thing that one cannot write as much about it as it truly is; for it is a stone and becomes water through a vapor, and yet it is not a stone when, in the work, it has come into the form of water. When we first obtain or fetch it, it is water, fluid and thin like other flowing waters; but by nature there is no water like it in the whole world. For note that the Stone is in the form of water and is then a medicine.

Basil Valentine, finally, expresses himself thus: It is a stone and yet no stone, etc.

Thus the sages maintain that all those who have sought to obtain the Stone had to follow Nature, and first dissolve and reduce all things, that is, all products, by the way of Nature into a water; secondly, they had before them the Book of Creation, where it says that God called forth the earth from the water.

And in this way their search was not in vain; for in the water, as the passive element, they found an earth, the precious and costly Stone. Yet they did not content themselves with this, but investigated further: namely, that earth and water cannot subsist by themselves, but that in these two elements there must be a soul, that is, a third thing.

After they had also found this, they called that which comes from the water Air, and that which comes from the earth Fire. By means of these they disposed the earth so that it became a metallic water, a dry water, a water of life, and becomes an incombustible oil. This, then, is the whole philosophy and the great Hermetic mystery.

But in order to arrive at this, we must first suppose that:

1) the realm of Nature has three different states, which are called the three kingdoms, namely the mineral, vegetable, and animal; and

2) by means of the subjectum, or the mineral root, three different stones or medicines are made.

These, however, are not three separate works, but three connected degrees, which raise our great elixir to its perfection, as King Geber expresses it.

These highly significant operations of the three works are, as the often-mentioned Epistle says, guarded and locked by all the sages with the key of secrecy, so that the sanctified mysteries of our divine philosophy may not be opened to the wicked. Accordingly, there are three different dissolutions and reductions for this.

The first reduction is called the animal one, and by it all things are separated into a moist and a dry part. This reduction takes place through and by means of the secret fire of Nature, which drives the action; in it the bodies that are to be destroyed are altered like food in the stomach, leavened with ferment, fermented by putrefaction, and consumed by digestion. Afterwards, through artificial separation, sublimation, and distillation, the volatile is separated from the fixed, and the moist from the dry.

In this reduction, which is an alteration, the formation of the Mercury and Sulphur takes place; there they form themselves from essence into form, and from actuality into matter. For their subtlety is perfected by the natural fire, fermented by leavening, released by putrefaction, and by sublimation and distillation the heterogeneous parts of our Stone are separated from one another, while the homogeneous parts are brought together and made manifest.

This Mercury and Sulphur, prepared from the bodies in this way, are the true beginnings and principles of the animal stone. But first, in the reduced water although that water has been highly rectified and distilled according to its kind there is the power of an earth that is becoming fixed. Therefore, when the bodies have been transformed into water, the water must again be reduced into earth.

Gloria mundi says of this: “Note that the Stone is a water; thus from the water a stone is made, and from the stone a water, and then a medicine.”

The whole alteration consists in this: that by means of the natural fire, the bodies are changed into Mercury and Sulphur, and the Mercury, or the water, into a stone.

Now although, secondly, the Sulphur reduced from the bodies is prepared through alteration and putrefaction by means of the natural fire, nevertheless only afterwards must the fixed, indestructible gold, the gold of all the sages, the fixed Sulphur which coagulates and hardens the philosophical Mercury, be prepared from it.

For natural Sulphur is burdened with too much crudity and with combustible parts, which must be removed so that the pure thing may become manifest; and this is the first medicine.

Concerning the second reduction or dissolution, which is called the vegetable one, Padua, the Rosary, Blood of Nature, and Gloria mundi write thus: Dear brother, the earth is fixed, the water volatile, as you see. When a thing is burned, the unstable part flies away and the stable part remains lying there, namely the ash. If you pour water into it, a lye is made from it; this happens because the power of the ash passes into the water. If you now clarify the lye and let it evaporate over the fire, the matter that had been in the lye remains at the bottom. This is a salt, and may rightly be called Lapis Philosophorum, the Stone of the Philosophers, because it looks like our Stone.

Yet this does not serve for our art; rather, I have written this only so that you may learn to recognize our Stone. The matter in which our Stone is contained is a lye, but not one made by human hands from ash and water. Rather, according to the order and creation of God, it is composed by Nature, tempered equally according to the four elements, and has within itself everything it ought to have. One must neither give anything to it nor take anything from it, but we take and work it as it is and as is proper.

And because it looks like lye, I have set down the example of lye, so that you may come to the right use.

When you have the matter in which our Stone is, which one can judge with the hand between the wall of the furnace and the glass in which the matter is. Thus they kept it for six weeks, or forty days, night and day; but at the end of the six weeks they strengthened the fire a little, and kept it so in the heat until they saw the perfect blackness.

This, then, is the mineral reduction and the formation of the mineral Mercury, or Stone. For further detail one may consult Artephius, Flamel, Pandora, Wasserstein, Aureum vellus, Gloria mundi, Count de Marsciano, etc.

But this reduction cannot take place except through a contrary liquor. Even gold and silver, which are hidden in our matter and rule powerfully within it, cannot be reduced so that they may be seen unless this occurs through contraries. For these are the menstrua, the most penetrating, opening vapors that contain within themselves 🜂 Fire, 🜁 Air, 🜄 Water, which separate the pure from the impure; these must first be extracted from our subject.

These are the waters for reducing, revealing the tincture, and multiplying it. Therefore they are called the secret fire of Nature, which is a beginner and perfecter of Nature.

The author of the little tract Philosophisches Vaterherz says: Our natural menstruum is nothing other than our living, dry water, by which the Sulphur of the sages is drawn out; our living heavenly water of life, which does not wet, is sweet, good, and without sharpness.

Ripley says: We make a precious water, with which we make all bodies into oil and make our medicine fluid.

We call this Water a quintessence, which heals all defects.

Count de Marsciano calls it a dissolving menstruum; and Artephius calls it a dissolving water, in which there is a great tincture and a great melting power; and indeed for this reason: because when it feels the common fire, it immediately melts and flows.

O how precious and glorious, then, is our water, he continues, for without it our work cannot be made. It is also called the water of Nature, the belly, the mother’s womb, a vessel of the tincture, an earth, a nursing mother, a fountain in which the king and the kings bathe. It is the mother which must be placed and enclosed in the belly of her child, which is the gold that comes from her and which she has borne.

Therefore they also love one another so ardently, like mother and child, and are set together at the same time, because they are from one root and of one substance and nature. This our water is a Pontic water, whose power and nature imitate the rays of the Sun and of the Moon; and through this our solution is accomplished.

For our hard body, which is stained with unclean excrements and, as it were, held by them, must be dissolved and altered by the said water. Meanwhile, and while this happens, our putrefaction and calcination are also completed. For when we calcine, we burn only the contrary parts, and we attenuate the good parts, so that they may be more easily dissolved. But nothing burns and attenuates these parts more than the said spirit, or our Pontic water, which by nature is very fiery; therefore it is also called fire.

When it is so, you take it and put it into a flask with a head and receiver, in a B. M. a Balneum Mariae, or water-bath and distil it. Then the water rises over into the receiver, and the salt, which is reckoned as the earth, remains at the bottom and becomes dry. In this way you have separated the moist from the dry.

After this, grind the body small, set it in the B. M., and let it stand in the warmth so long until it dissolves of itself. Then give it its water again to drink; but only little by little, from time to time, until it becomes beautifully clear. For it dissolves itself, but also coagulates and purifies itself. The distilled water is a spirit, which gives the body its life, since it is its soul, which must be given back to it, etc.

So much concerning the vegetable reduction: namely, how plants are destroyed, dissolved, and brought into their original essence, that is, into a salt and water; from which afterwards the vegetable stone is made. And this represents for us the fixed part of the great universal stone, showing how the salt may be drawn and made from the metals. More may be read in Bacon, Hollandus, Lullius, Flamel, Blood of Nature, Ritterkrieg, Fictuld, etc.

The third reduction or solution is called the mineral one, and Isaac Hollandus, pp. 595–596, writes of it thus: The ancients took fine silver, very well driven off from Saturn in the crucible, filed as finely as possible, 3 lots; fine gold, cemented through the royal cement, likewise filed small, 1 lot; and well-purged Mercury, 8 lots, in an iron mortar with a steel pestle, well amalgamated, and ground strongly for twelve or fourteen hours; afterwards they put it into a stone or glass dish, formed thus,



and set it in a sand-cupel, so hot that one could hardly bear to hold a finger in the sand. Thus they let it stand until the moisture had evaporated. In the morning they found the matter hard; they put it again into the mortar and added to it yet a half part, or 4 lots, of Mercury, so that the intima became equal.

They carried out this manual operation so long until the matter, being thus dry, could pass through a doubled cloth. Afterwards they set it, with the vessel, in sand for eight days, and every day ground the matter in the mortar for eight hours without stopping.

When the eight days were over, they took the matter and put it into a glass shaped in this way,



pressed upon the mouth a ground little glass stopper, which closed well, and a weight upon it, so that it remained lying there; they set it in a tripod and gave it such a heat, which one can endure with the hand between the wall of the furnace and the glass in which the matter is.

Thus they kept it for six weeks, or forty days, night and day; but at the end of the six weeks they strengthened the fire a little, and kept it so in the heat until they saw the perfect blackness.

O how precious and glorious, then, is our water, he continues, for without it our work cannot be made. It is also called the water of Nature, the belly, the mother’s womb, a vessel of the tincture, an earth, a nursing mother, a fountain in which the king and the kings bathe. It is the mother which must be placed and enclosed in the belly of her child, which is the gold that comes from her and which she has borne. Therefore they also love one another so ardently, like mother and child, and are set together at the same time, because they are from one root and of one substance and nature.

This our water is a Pontic water, whose power and nature imitate the rays of the Sun and of the Moon; and through this our solution is accomplished. For our hard body, which is stained with unclean excrements and, as it were, held by them, must be dissolved and altered by the said water. Meanwhile, and while this happens, our putrefaction and calcination are also completed. For when we calcine, we burn only the contrary parts, and attenuate the good parts, so that they may be more easily dissolved. But nothing burns and attenuates these parts more than the said spirit, or our Pontic water, which by nature is very fiery; therefore it is also called fire.

When the sages speak in their books of this fire, they understand by it this water, but not common water. For example, the Turba Philosophorum writes: Burn our ore with the warmest fire, which burning is accomplished by an external gentle fire; for by strong fire it is destroyed, because our subtle and fire-filled spirit cannot endure strong fire. Otherwise it flees from our thick body, which has not been attenuated, and consequently the body remains undissolved.

But if that body is dissolved, then it rises together with its spirit in the form of a clear, heavy water. Therefore two operations take place in this work: the calcination of the spirit, or fiery volatile substance, into a viscous mineral water; and the dissolution and inversion of the body into that very same water. The sages testify to this when they maintain that the spirit cannot be coagulated unless the body is dissolved; and the body cannot be dissolved without the coagulation of the spirit.

Count de Marsciano expresses himself thus: Perfect dissolution cannot happen without our vinegar. Therefore it is called the first water, so that it may be united with the volatile spirit, or the other water; otherwise it would be impossible.

Artephius states it this way: Therefore make your work with this same water, and you will obtain what you seek; for it is the spirit and soul of gold and silver, the dissolving water, a fountain, the bath of Mary, the fire against nature, the moist fire, and the sharpest vinegar.

Concerning this, a very ancient philosopher says: I prayed to the Lord, and he gave me a bright water, which I recognized to be a pure vinegar that transforms, penetrates, and generates.

I say that it is a vinegar which penetrates and generates the work, which moves toward putrefaction and dissolution, and brings gold and silver into their first matter. And in this art it is the only thing in the whole world which dissolves and again hardens the metallic bodies while preserving their form.

Raymond Lull speaks thus in his Apertorium: Therefore I earnestly ask that, in the operation, you take care of the fire, so that it is not destroyed by excessive heat. For if the soul departed from it, then the spirit would not have power to make its bodies living, because it cannot give what it does not have.

Note also that the preparation of this spirit proceeds thus: Take the best lunar sap that you can find, and two or three pounds of the strongest oil of vitriol; put it into a vessel with a head, but seal and smear the joints well; set it in a small furnace; make beneath it a fire from one lamp, and distil the aforementioned spirits gently with subtle fire, until it begins to make veins. Then by this you can separate the thick part of the airy soul.

Afterwards, when the phlegm begins to come over and to make veins, this is a sign that the spirit has distilled, which has all perfection within itself. Then attach another receiver and take the other water, for it still contains something of the sublimed spirit within itself. From the first distilled water, distil until all the phlegm has risen, etc.

Now you have the earth, which lies at the bottom of the vessel, entirely black, in the form of sealed pitch. Then calcine the earth. But this calcination cannot be done by a strong fire, as the sophists suppose; rather, it is done by its own spirit. For its spirit draws its soul from its body, drives away its remaining phlegm, brings the earth to death, and afterwards makes it eternally living again, etc.

Nor should it be unknown to you that in the distillation you must mix the two spirits with the earth until the earth and the spirit have the aforementioned signs: namely, that the earth is calcined and the spirit has no phlegm. Thus far Lullius.

But why must one take the sap of Lunaria, that is, the essence of the vine, and of vitriol? Answer: because wine and tartar, by means of the vine, have a great relation and communion with the mineral kingdom, since they flow together with metals and minerals in the deepest hidden place and enter into fellowship with one another.

Therefore the spirit of the vine also draws out, purifies, and corrects Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt; and the sulphurs are also used in medicine for humans as a lymph and vehicle.

Concerning the spirit of wine and the spirit of vinegar.

For this same thing has two spirits: the spirit of wine and the spirit of vinegar. Although they have their origin from one root, nevertheless in their operation they are widely different from one another. The spirit of wine has the property that it washes and purifies fixed mineral bodies from their impurity, and can make them volatile, so that they rise over the alembic head.

rise over. But the spirit of vinegar makes the mineral bodies fixed. By means of its acidity, which it has taken on and transformed through lack of a suitable tartarian, it can also thereby come nearer to the oil of vitriol, so that their concordance has great power to penetrate into mineral bodies, to fix them or make them fixed something which, of course, the inexperienced person can neither grasp nor believe.

For vitriol likewise has two spirits, as Basil Valentine says: You should know, and be truly informed, that vitriol has two spirits, a white one and a red one. The white spirit is the white sulphur upon white; the red spirit is the red sulphur upon red. The white spirit is sour, makes things agreeable to eat, and gives the stomach good digestion. The red is still more sour, and also heavier in weight than the white; therefore in its distillation a longer heat must be used.

Vitriol is such a noble mineral that its equal is not to be found in the whole mineral kingdom. And although it is only a mineral salt, nevertheless it is the third pillar in the healing art; for all its constituents the white spirit, the red oil, and the salt from the caput mortuum whether each by itself or when mixed together, have great power to act upon the spirit of man.

For the same, not only in its raw state, according to the teaching of Lord Count Digby, is a sympathetic powder; but also its white spirit, or the white oil of vitriol, can stop the blood of wounds, of the nose, of women’s monthly cleansing, etc., and in red injury can thus stop it and heal the wound, without the very slightest pain and soreness of the wound.

Likewise also in old foul ulcers, fistula, cancer, lupus, scurvy, the French disease, and purification of the blood; about which a large book could be written. For its lunar and solar Sulphur, which have their origin from the sidereal bodies and are kindled in this earth-salt and joined with its subterranean elements, have a close connection with the blood of man and of all animals, because the blood of animals is an animal sulphur, and likewise receives its life and power from the heavenly bodies; and they bear such a great sympathy together that they could well act upon one another over a distance of a thousand miles, etc.

But the red oil is the true Sulphur of Sol, from which the proper Aurum potabile is prepared not, however, that of the common chemists, which is prepared from all kinds of worthless things, even from the metals themselves, and brings people death instead of life; but the Aurum potabile which is prepared from the aforesaid mineral, our vitriol, and by means of the true menstruum, which is as sweet as honey-syrup and as pleasant-tasting as ambergris, indeed which proves its power instantly with the greatest astonishment, just as the tincture performs its action upon the metals.

Therefore the lunar sap and the vitriolum are also very necessary in this operation and have much power, when their spirit is driven into a fixed salt; but this is not to be treated further here.

Count de Marsciano, in his epistle to his chosen disciple, expresses himself thus: Your Excellency has already heard that we from our common chaos we have the spirit of wine, the spirit of vinegar, the ensouled salt, and all that is necessary, and add nothing foreign at all; since all the sages agree unanimously in this: that everything in this work is accomplished from our water, with our water, and through our water namely, through the spirit and with the universal world-spirit, as the spirit of the philosophical vinegar and of our wine.

The English bishop Dastin says in his Rosary: Now it is manifest that our ore has a body, a spirit, and a soul, just as man does. The spirit is the water, the soul is the tincture, and the body is the earth. The spirit brings or carries the soul over into the body, just as dyers carry the color onto the cloth by means of water. But the soul is the bond of the spirit; just as the body is the bond of the soul. Thus the spirit penetrates the body and makes it fixed, and the soul binds spirit and body together, tinctures, and makes white. Avicenna, Guido de Montano, and Arnold de Villanova speak in the same way.

The great Rosarium contains the following: There is a difference between the tincture of water and of oil; for water washes off and cleanses, but oil tinctures and colors. An example of this is what was brought forward earlier concerning the dyeing of cloth. The water is a spirit that draws the soul out of the body. When the soul has been drawn out of the body, it remains in the spirit and is thus carried in the water onto the cloth; and the tincture remains in the cloth because of its subtlety, while the water withdraws.

Nor does the soul, that is, the color, remain in the body without the spirit, since it must carry the same over and fasten it therein, etc. Therefore drown the earth much and often, and imbibe it every eight days; for by moistening, the burning is taken away and the thing is brought back into the first matter.

For this reason Avicenna admonishes: You shall not cease from threshing, nor withhold your hand from the threshing and breaking; for this makes the earth white. Yet you must take care in this, that you do not moisten the earth except gradually and little by little, with long threshing, after the earth has dried.

Democritus says: No threshing should take place except with water.

And the Rosarium says: Therefore you should moisten the earth gently and not hastily, every eight days. And since after the moistening it must be buried for seven days, repeat the work with many alternations, even though it is lengthy.

For you will have no tincture nor useful progress until everything is fulfilled. Whoever cannot have patience should not even begin the work; three things are absolutely necessary here: patience, delay, and time.

Arnold de Villanova teaches: You who wish to undertake the work need, before all things, to work first in the solution and sublimation of two lights. For the very first degree of the work is that from them a living mercury may be made. Therefore pay attention to the words and verses, and carefully to the mystery; for in this work it is declared what the Stone is. Since the beginning of its work and action is its dissolution, one must sublime, fix, and calcine it, so that at last it may be dissolved and resolved into a living mercury may be dissolved.

For this reason the philosophers say: Unless the bodies become incorporeal or volatile, so that they are no longer bodies, and, on the other hand, the spirits become bodily and fixed, you will accomplish nothing in your work. And therefore the true beginning of our work is the dissolution and dissolving of the Stone; for when the bodies are dissolved, they have been brought into the nature of spirits.

The solution of the body takes place through the coagulation of the spirits, when the body at this time mixes with the spirits, and by means of cooking as Ullmann states in his Pandora Mercury and Sulphur are brought into one.

Clangor Buccinae maintains: The spirit, that is, Mercury, is the place and seat of the soul; that is, of the body of Mercury. And the spirit is the dry water of the philosophers, namely the middle substance, Mercury, which lives; this spirit draws the soul out from the perfect bodies. But the soul is the tincture in the spirit, that is, the water of the philosophers.

For just as common dye is carried in its water and dyes the cloths, and the colored water runs into the cloths, but then withdraws through drying while the dye remains in the cloth, so it is also with the water of the sages, in which the tincture is. It carries it over into the white, blessed, thirsty earth; and the water of the philosophers runs into the earth, is bodily extended within it, and tinctures the earth. Afterwards the spiritual water withdraws, and the soul remains in the body, as that which is a tincture, a subtle vapor which no one can see, and whose effect and operation does not appear except in the bodies.

In short, our whole, the parts are separated and divided, and also well purified, before they are joined together.

Further, d’Espagnet says: Through dissolution or melting, the bodies flow back into their first matter; that which is ripe and cooked is made raw again; man and woman mix with one another, from whom the raven is born; finally the Stone is separated into the four mixed elements. This happens when the two great lights go back again, etc.

The first digestion causes the dissolution of the body, by which the first conjunction of man and woman takes place, when the seed of both is mixed together, putrefied, and the elements are dissolved into their homogeneous, or like-natured, water. Also the Sun and Moon are darkened by the head of the dragon, and finally the whole world returns into its old mixed chaos and dark abyss.

Protoster writes: If the matter is not purified through sublimation, its grossness prevents it from becoming a medicine for tincturing.

And Menabdus in the Turba says: The impure and thick part does not tincture, but only the pure and subtle part of Nature; that which is in it, that is, the spirit, tinctures and colors permanently.

Another philosopher says: Purify the spirit, so that you may incorporate it again. Likewise: first, you must know how to open the body by the philosophical metallic keys; and second, you must be able to take the soul and the spirit from them, as the philosophers have done. They called the body earth, the soul Mercury, and the spirit Sulphur.

The body is the very best and purest gold and silver; the anima is the living soul, which has been drawn from the body; and the spiritus is the mineral spirit, which has been drawn from the anima. Thus you have the body, which stands there; the soul, which makes alive; and also the spirit, which tinctures. From these three, then, the fourth is compounded and brought forth, namely the noble medicine; and this happens through a wholly secret, yet also wholly simple work.

Plato in the Turba warns: O masters of the work, take care that, when you dissolve the bodies, you do not burn them; for you must wash them by cooking in sea-water, until all their salt is changed into sweetness and becomes clear. When the spirit has been separated and set apart from the body, and hidden in the other spirit, then both have become volatile. This the philosophers have explained in these words: “The volatile opens the door to that which is not volatile.” For when it brings the body into a sweating spirit, then both become volatile.

Baccaser in the Turba says: Cook it gently, using much time, and do not let the cooking and moistening weary you or make you repent, until you see the elixir changed into purple color and adorned with a precious garment.

Finally Cadmon also speaks thus: Therefore one must take one part of our vinegar, then three parts of the remaining water, which is also called ore; mix it with vinegar and cook it so long until both become thick, and both together become one stone. Then cook continuously and moisten it, until it becomes earth and a dust of purple color.

And Thomas Aquinas in the Aurora says: You should know that the first power, of which the sages have spoken, is a vinegar, and the other is lead. Cook the tin until it is deprived of its moisture and has become dry, and until what remains of it quickly drinks up the moisture; this is because the lead has been burned. This is the red lead of which the sages have said: Behold, this lead, which we call red, is the beginning of our work, without which nothing happens. But understand and mark what you read here. This art deceives fools. O how many have been led astray by the names of spirits and bodies, who have imagined that the tincture is drawn out of dry, withered, and combustible things!

From what has been said thus far, we have proved both the practice, or manual operation, and the truth of this science by authentic authors as irrefutable witnesses. For we have seen how they all agree in this: that the three medicines, as true beginnings of the great ancient Stone, must by unavoidable necessity be prepared; and that the matter, that is, the gold of the sages, must be disposed by alteration, solution, reduction, and separation so that it is dissolved into its first substance, that is, into Mercury and Sulphur. Without these it is never possible that the most deeply hidden mystery, the Stone of the Sages, can be made.

Furthermore, the composed parts must agree with one another in their essence, bind together, and become incorporated, so that from then on they can never again be separated, neither by gentle means, nor by force, nor by fire or water.

The alteration must take place through the universal menstruum, the philosophical water, which is otherwise called fire. Count Trevisan and de Marsciano maintain that it is made from the dissolving spirit and the dissolved body. But the Psalmist speaks of it thus: “They gave him gall and vinegar to drink.” Or, as is said of the merciful Samaritan: when he found a poor traveler wounded on the road and lying in his blood, he poured wine and oil into his wounds, by which his almost-extinguished spirit of life was brought back again.

As for the solution, without it no purification can take place. The author of Lusus puerorum explains himself on this point as follows: The beginning of our work is to dissolve, or loosen, our Stone. The reason is this: first, so that the dissolved bodies may be purified; and second, so that by this they may be brought into the nature of spirits all the more because they are inclined toward fixity. For the solution is a coagulation.

Hear what Plato says: The artists of our work must first dissolve the Stone and afterwards coagulate it; for our work is nothing other than a perfect solution and coagulation. The Book of the Three Words has the following: When this moist and cold spirit is changed into a body, and that same body into a spirit, then a friendship has been made.

Espagnet says: Our whole process of the philosophical Stone is nothing other than dissolving and hardening again: namely, dissolving the body and making the spirit hard; but both happen in one operation.

The fixed and the volatile are perfectly [joined] with one another in the spirit, mixed, and united; yet this cannot happen until the fixed body has been made volatile. Arnold de Villanova agrees with this: First we make from a coarse thing a pliable thing, that is, from a body a water; and afterwards from the moist a dry thing, that is, from the water an earth.

And in this way we transform the natures, and make from the bodily thing a spirit, and from the spirit a bodily thing. Likewise we make the uppermost to be like the lowermost, and the lowermost like the uppermost, that is, the spirit into a body and the body into a spirit. Hermes, the great philosopher and great forefather of all philosophers, treats of this very subtly, since this must happen at the beginning of the work.

But Dastin explains himself in the following manner: We properly dissolve the gold so that it may be brought into its first matter, that is, so that it may truly become Sulphur and Mercury, because these two things, according to the opinion of the sages, are the first matter of all metals. And indeed our solution is nothing other than this: that the body becomes moist, that the property of Mercury occurs in it, and that the salty taste of its sulphur diminishes, etc.

Therefore burn our ore with the gentlest fire, as eggs are hatched, until the body is torn open and the tincture is drawn out. It is not drawn out all at once, but every day a little, and then again a little, comes forth, until after a long time it reaches its completion, etc. Therefore govern it continually in moist fire; do not hurry and do not cease from the work, until the bodies are fallen apart and become a spiritual powder.

For whatever has become a spiritual powder rises up in the vessel; but whatever is thick and coarse remains below in the vessel. Therefore, where you have not made everything into a spiritual powder, you have not yet ground rightly and well. Therefore cook it further, until it is transformed and everything becomes powder. But this grinding is done with cooking, and not with the hands, because it must be accomplished by gentle moist cooking, putrefaction, and continual grinding.

Pandora says this same thing: Cook, grind, ferment, and do not let it weary you to ferment again; although the whole work is far-reaching and long. For it happens and proceeds through long cooking; therefore time and patience are necessary for you.

Thus the whole work of the sages is nothing other than a dissolution and reduction, wherein the gold of the philosophers, through long-continuing cooking, through grinding, dissolving, and coagulating, is made soft that is, fusible and fluid the body is brought into a spirit, and is dissolved into its first matter.

Therefore grinding is very necessary in our art, since the ferment, the dry part, by means of the virgin’s milk of Azoth, the water, spirit, and soul, is glued together through amalgamation and coagulation, made firm and hard, so that it congeals together. Hence, through grinding and amalgamating, the bodies must again be broken apart and made pure, if the tincture of our Mercury is to penetrate and color them.

Diomedes says for this reason: The body does not tincture unless it has first been tinctured; and the tincture, the coloring spirit, is able to [act upon] the bodies with its coloring power, not yet to work through them, but for the time being it still only clings to them outwardly, until it is multiplied by means of repeated fermentation. Therefore the grinding and amalgamating with Mercury must be done often and many times, that is, for a long time, and repeated as those who have a foundation in this will well understand me.

The Lilium says: It must be known that the spirit and the soul cannot be united with the body except in the white color; for then all the colors of the world are seen, which come together in the white color; and from then on you cannot err in the cooking.

But this cannot happen otherwise unless the philosophical gold is freed from its impurity and excrements, and both substances that is, spirit and body, volatile and fixed, water and earth, Mercury and Sulphur, silver and gold, Moon and Sun, woman and man are purified; for they are burdened with much impurity. For the sulphurous body is united with coarse earthly feces, combustible sweaty parts, with unripe and untimely parts, that is, with fixed parts only just coming into being, called arsenical and vitriolic spirits; these must be removed and separated from the pure parts, since they are not to be dissolved, but rather separated.

Count de Marsciano indicates that such things are to be separated by long and repeated dissolving, filtering, and coagulating, and indeed so long until no white feces remain in the filtering, and only the purest starry essence of the salt is obtained. Likewise the spiritual substance, as the author of The Blood of Nature maintains, there are also many excrements and phlegmatic impurities, which by means of the dissolution of the matter are also dissolved along with it, and are mixed and joined with the noble parts. Therefore these must be separated by putrefaction, distillation, and sublimation.

For, as Geber teaches, sublimation was invented only for this purpose: that the pure parts might be separated from the impure. Through continual cooking, the pure, fluid, and volatile substance is changed into the perfect essence; but the gross and impure part is separated off as excrements and transformed by the material fire.

Therefore Morienus expresses himself thus: If you do not perfectly cleanse the impure body, divide it, make it beautifully white, add its soul to it, and remove all stench from it, until at last, after its purification, it receives the tincture inwardly, then you have still done nothing at all and brought nothing to light.

But when that same body, according to the words of Joh. Auster and Guido de Montanor, has been brought into the very smallest parts, then it can become the most perfect essence. According to Lullius, the dry thing gladly drinks its moisture and transforms it into a Sulphur, which afterwards has the power to coagulate the whole living Mercury; since, according to the Pandora, nothing enters into the body except that which has come out of it.

Therefore first kill the body, before you do anything else, and afterwards gradually bring life back into it, until by this means it attains vitality and spirituality. Hermes follows this: Whoever does not know how to kill and bring forth birth again, to make the spirits living, knows nothing, and will accomplish nothing. The spirits desire to enter again into their washed body. And after they have put it on again, they make it living and dwell in it permanently.

But this work is not a work of one day, as the ignorant suppose; for when we pay attention to Nature, she brings no plant, much less a metal, to completion in one day. Rather, much time is required for it. It is wholly impossible to complete so high a work as this without time, since it must be prepared here above on the earth from the same beginnings from which Nature forms it in the mountains and veins of the earth.

Before the spirits unite with the body, insert themselves and impregnate it, so that they coagulate with it into a fusible and fluid stone, time is necessary. Nor is it everyone’s work, and it cannot be accomplished with nothing, although many authors with flattering words wish to persuade the ignorant of this.

It is true that the matter is lowly and can be had for nothing; nevertheless, it requires more than many are able to bear in expense. For to draw the soul out of its golden body, and to bring the spirit into the body, is costly in a double sense. Yet the same can also be prepared through length of time without special expense.

Count de Marsciano here resumes the word. The spirit, he says, the heavenly Azoth, the animated Mercury, that is, the impregnated spirit, after the imbibitions, in the very slight eight-day evaporation, leaves only its subtler part in the back in the body, and within it is made fixed with it, and lets everything else pass from itself by evaporation at lukewarm warmth, like tasteless spring-water.

For the body, the fixed gold, the salt, must be well dissolved, opened, and saturated by the mercurial spirit; that is, through the imbibitions, fixations, and evaporations it must be opened up, before the soul, the tincture, the noble life, the spirit, can come forth from it. For only the noblest parts of the mercurial water that is, the tincture, or citrine-coloring redness, or the parts becoming fixed are made fixed in the body; but the insipid water evaporates away from it as a superfluous moisture.

The body, the dry part, which is reckoned as the earth, which exists as an element in external nature, and is a constituent part of the great world, is a thick and fixed-becoming part of the water, drawn out of the water and formed into a mass and lump. It has retained in and upon itself the property of desire for the water from which it was nevertheless separated, so that it reunites with it again yet not at all with the phlegmatic moist parts, but with the alkaline noble parts, in order to feed upon them and incorporate itself with them.

Therefore, although it is a dry, hard, and heavy body, it nevertheless draws the water to itself with great desire; it washes and cleanses itself by it; it retains the parts that become fixed within itself and transforms them into its own nature, or dryness. But the thin parts, the moist and fluid parts that is, the non-fixing, deadened parts, discharged of their powers.

Nature casts the parts away from itself like an emptied vessel.

For this reason Aristotle says: The dryness of the earth causes the spirits that is, the noble parts of the water to be suffocated, and their properties to be destroyed; that is, they transform themselves into earth.

And Gualdino, in his epistle, says: The earth, as the dry part, must always retain dominion over the water, so that it may harden that water. Therefore, every eight or fourteen days one should remove and take away the superfluous moisture, the urinal humidum, because that raw part does not unite with the earth. For the earth draws to itself only the most thoroughly cooked and viscous part that it finds in the water; and, on the other hand, it rejects the raw part from itself. For more on this, consult Aristotle, in the Turba, Lullius, Arnold de Villanova, Ripley, the Rosarium, Ritterkrieg, Vaterherz, etc.

Now when the bodies have thus been brought back through dissolution and transformed into their first matter, then the first foundation-stone of peace has been laid. For the mighty lion of the North and the eagle of the South have been brought to reconciliation; the king and the queen conduct themselves accordingly, and Resbina that is, the thing united together from two substances have made an indestructible friendship.

Therefore an everlasting peace and universal rest must follow, and the high feast of the high knighthood of the Silver Fleece can be celebrated with great solemnity, like the former solemnities of the high knighthood of the Golden Fleece at Dijon in Burgundy, under Duke Philip III and Charles the Bold, where on the first day the feast of remembrance of the dead was held, at which the high knighthood had to assemble in mourning, in black garments, and to take as their theme the great work of this deeply hidden science: namely, how the great universal world-spirit, which is the life of all life, must die in its object.

To this belongs what Faustus says: The grain of wheat bears no fruit unless it dies. Such dying should remind us of our own death, since we must all die and through death pass over into a new life. Through this dying of the great universal world-spirit in its counterpart, the Rebis, the Resbina, appears in its black garment, and the raven, or raven’s head, is born.

On the second day, this high knighthood had to assemble in a white satin garment, in order to remember the resurrection of the dead; and at the same time also how man must first pass through much cross and tribulation before he is raised to the glory of God; or how, according to Christ’s saying, he does not come out of the prison-house until he has also paid the last farthing.

Thus the Resbina must first pass through all the colors of the world, that is, passions, before she can appear in the white satin garment of Queen Luna and the goddess Diana. For no one is crowned unless he has first conquered in battle.

Finally, on the third day, on which the feast is most glorious of all, this high knighthood had to come together in a purple-red robe, in order to rejoice with the newly admitted knights; yet also to remember the end of the high work: how the Resbina, through the blessed blood of Nature, as with a purple mantle, so that she may now reign as a mighty and unconquerable king from one end of the earth to the other. Thus only after the universal peace and never without it can this high feast be celebrated.

Every seed of plants can attain its growth and multiplication only if it falls into the earth and dies. For in the earth it is seized and impregnated by a nitrous-saline moisture, because the moisture acts upon the dryness and the warmth upon the moisture, whereby the husks of the seed swell, burst, and die. But the seed, through the growing power, frees itself from the husks, germinates, and grows.

This dying is a becoming, where the seed putrefies, becomes black, and stinks; without this dying, the seed cannot receive a new form.

As people say: the death of one is the life of another, and the dying of one is the becoming of another.

The black color is the color of death, when everything of earthly life has died away; and the white color is the color of new life and of resurrection in God. Therefore, when the body in our vessels shows itself black, we should believe that we are on a path blessed by God, so as to pass through the gate of the first entrance toward the royal palace.

In Albertus Magnus it is said of this: Thus, by the grace of God, you have the second element in the philosophical work, which is the black earth, the raven’s head, the mother, the heart, and the root of the others. For upon this earth, as upon a trunk, all the others are founded, the earthy dry element is called by many names in the books of the sages.

Just as necessity requires one to know how much seed a sower must sow upon a piece of land, so also the science of the sages requires one to understand how much of the astral seed they should scatter and sow into their earth. Gualdino writes: One person wants ten parts of water to be taken; another speaks of nine; still another of seven parts. Pontanus requires three parts; and so there are many others of differing opinion. But we let them all go, and consider, together with the possibility of Nature, what is incumbent upon us and necessary to do.

If you wish to make water from earth, take three parts water and one part earth. But if you wish to make earth from water, take three parts earth and one part water; for this is the correct rule. When, then, three parts of the woman are joined to one part of the man, it must be united together through solution and coagulation, so that Mercury transforms itself into Sulphur, and Sulphur into Mercury; the seed is changed into earth, and the earth into seed.

This seed is moved by the natural fire, that is, the heavenly saltpeter, so that it penetrates into the bodies and works within them, opens the bodies from within, settles itself there and fixes itself, and casts out the central flowing impurities as excrements. It then clothes and reveals itself in a black color, which is produced from moist and warm when these act upon the dry. For Mercury and Sulphur are of one fatty substance, which dissolve together into a fatty oil.

Therefore King Geber teaches: Rub the earth with the Sulphur, and it will become black. Imbibe it, and set it for two, three, up to four days in warm ashes to dry, and it will become white.

And Guido de Montanor says: Wash the Laton, that is, the black earth, with Azoth, that is, with mercurial water and with fire, and do not let the grinding and breaking weary you; for this is the natural action. For the more you dissolve and coagulate, the more penetrating the work will be. But there must always be more earth than of the other element; otherwise the spirit cannot be fixed through the earth.

Likewise Aristotle says: Putrefaction is nothing other than a corruption and destruction of bodies. Through putrefaction a thing is destroyed, corrupted, and brought to nothing; yet thereby it is changed from one form into another, as the pure peels away from the impure and frees itself. For the moistening and drying of the coarse earthly parts gives birth to putrefaction and blackness; and through dissolution, according to the testimony of Avicenna, the spiritual part always rises upward in the vessel, while what is thick and coarse remains below in the vessel.

Therefore whoever does not wish to make a thing black in this way and destroy it, until the waters mix with the earth, or the water is received by the earth, will obtain nothing. The earth must entirely be changed into a spiritual dust, which remains lying below in the vessel; likewise the spirit too must transform itself into a fixed dust. If this does not appear, it is a sign that the earth has not been well ground.

Mercury must enter again into the womb of his mother, so that he may die therein; otherwise he cannot be born anew. Thus speaks the author of The Blood of Nature.

And Amor proximi says: Man must let himself be thoroughly melted anew by the fire of the cross, and the rays of the two great lights must penetrate him; otherwise he truly cannot become a wise man.

In the Turba Philosophorum it says: Our ore must be burned with the warmest fire. But this burning, according to The Blood of Nature, takes place with an external gentle fire; for by a strong fire it is destroyed, because this subtle, fiery spirit cannot endure strong fire otherwise it flees from our thick body.

Calid minor says: Putrefaction is nothing other than roasting, grinding, and moistening, until they mix together and become one single thing, so that there is no difference between making volatile and making fixed, any more than there is between water mixed with water.

In the Rosarium we read the following: Through dissolution we make the non-bodily bodies into bodies, and the bodies into non-bodily bodies, namely through a gentle decoction, in which one must take the greatest care that the spirit is not changed into smoke and flies away.

And Mary the Prophetess says the same: Increase it, and take care that nothing flies away in smoke. The measure of the fire should be like the warmth of the sun in July, until the water thereby becomes thick and black through long decoction.

Likewise Johannes de Rupescissa says: I swear to you by the God of heaven that the art is nothing other than to dissolve the Stone and always to coagulate it, until the matter becomes black; or, according to the Turba, to putrefy it. For blackness is nothing other than our putrefaction, where our raven is born and the seeds are perfectly mixed together.

Count de Marsciano expresses himself on this matter as follows: After the Stone namely the salt, or the perfect body, or our astral gold has first been well dissolved by our vinegar, or our eagle, or by our fire against Nature, and brought to perfection, or purified from the feces, until after seventy or more dissolutions and coagulations it no longer wishes to congeal, but remains behind as a red-black thick oil.

This is then our red Laton, which has so often been described by the sages when they say that we must make the red Laton white and afterwards burn the books, because then we need no other work. This can be recognized when the water disappearing in the evaporations is no longer tasteless, but sour as before. Then it is a sign that the salt has been sufficiently saturated, filled, opened, well dissolved, and made fit to receive the volatile spirit.

After this, one must begin new imbibitions with the second water, or volatile spirit, as was done above with the spirit of vinegar, and repeat the dissolutions and coagulations many times and often, until over the red oil of the salt one perceives a floating white, very porous little skin, which is called the white-leaved earth and the first whitening of the Laton.

But when, at the end of the raven, you perceive a peacock’s tail, or Noah’s rainbow in the clouds, then it is a sign that whiteness is very near. The noble Count de Marsciano is so instructive and meaningful concerning the whole philosophical work that scarcely anyone is his equal. Therefore, beside his epistle, one has hardly any need of others’ writings, unless one wished willingly to make oneself err and become confused.

A further explanation in this work is therefore superfluous, all the more since Elbo Intersector testifies: When you have made the Laton red, then make it white, and then tear up the books, so that your hearts may not be torn apart; for no further instruction is needed, but only attention must be given to Nature. Compare Morienus, Hermes, and others. We therefore refer our readers, for the rest, to the above-praised epistle of Count de Marsciano.

Yet, to give the reader satisfaction, we will follow our guiding thread further, and now also treat of the raven’s head, the first blackness. The red oil, which may be as heavy as gold, thick like blood, and of a burning and fiery property, has been driven together by Nature from the three beginnings of Nature, as Basil Valentine and Count de Marsciano testify.

Now, when our gold has first been well dissolved by the vinegar, purified from the feces, and brought to perfection, so that after seventy and more solutions and coagulations it no longer congeals together, but remains behind as a red-black thick oil, then one has the red Laton of the sages, which, according to the lord Count’s teaching, must be made white and with the second water, or volatile spirit, it must be imbibed anew.

But although this is described very clearly, it would without doubt not be made so easily and quickly as it appears here; for Hoghelandus, Baesem, and others state that the philosophers have named the work with various names and commanded that one should mix, cook, sublime, whiten, grind, roast, coagulate, redden, and tincture. Yet these names indicate only one regimen. If the philosophers had known that one cooking, grinding, and roasting would be sufficient, they would not have repeated their command so often.

Therefore they did this so that the composite might be ground and cooked all the more often, and so that one should not allow any toil or labor to become wearisome. Arnold de Villanova, Lullius, and de Marsciano themselves confess that eight or nine operations of the art are always performed and completed in one single vessel, though under changed names, so that the science may be all the more obscure.

Richard the Englishman says: When our Stone has been brought into the form of the first medicine, which is called Rebis, that is, two things and these two things are one thing, namely the water united with the earth, or the volatile spirit united with its fixed body; by which spirit the body also is dissolved into a spirit, into a mercurial water, from which gold was made in the beginning under the earth then from the fixed body and the volatile spirit a water is made, which is called mineral water, the double Mercury, and the Elixir, etc.

Count Bernard to Bononia writes: When the spirit is united with its body in the first decoction, it is called Rebis, because it is composed of a twofold essence, namely from the male and female seed that is, from the dissolving and the thing to be dissolved, body and spirit, Sulphur and Mercury.

Following him, Kunrad of Leipzig says: Rebis, that is, Resbina, is a two-in-one thing, as 🜍 Sulphur and ☿ Mercury; the secret philosophical lead and that which is most similar to lead; that is, man and woman, a red servant and a spiritual ensouled blood, which is no white woman; the crystalline 🜔 Salt; two in one thing; the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth.

The Rosarium and Ripley say: Take the Stone Rebis, and draw from it by the Balneum a thick water, until a good quantity of it is in the receiver. Then pour from this water two parts against one part of the earth upon the prepared cerussa, or white lead, of the Stone, and place them together into putrefaction, until everything is like a thin milk. After this, coagulate, fix, and calcine it; dissolve it again with a fresh quantity of the former water, and when afterwards you have coagulated and fixed it, then it is right.

Gratianus says: Make the Laton white, that is, the ore with the Mercury; for Laton is a composite body, like the Rebis, from Sun and Moon and imperfect citrine. When you have made it white, and by continual cooking brought it to the former citrinity, then you again have a Laton, which you can likewise draw to a greater work, as it pleases you.

Clangor Buccinae says: Then calcine, distill, dissolve, and insert. When you have awakened it and made it penetrating, then you have come to the end.

And Rhazes, Morienus, Assidius say: When the earth has been made white, it will become fixed because of the fixity of the man.

Aristotle, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas express themselves on this matter thus: Others make a certain water composed of two waters, namely from the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth; they let it coagulate into a stone and call it Lac virginis, or Virgin’s Milk.

Gloria mundi says: One must take or, when you have made our Stone into water within itself then you must add the water of the man singly to the water of the woman, so that they may be joined in wedlock. Then the body drinks its own water from time to time and becomes ever purer; indeed, it drinks so long until it becomes white beyond all measure. This happens as often and as much as it colors itself and becomes most white. Then it is prepared for the white stage and has drunk its own moisture.

Likewise: When the earth takes into itself the radiance of the Sun and of the Moon, then a new body is born, just like a fruit in the mother’s womb. For the earth takes the radiance of the Sun and Moon into itself, digests them, and gives the fruit food more and more from day to day, until it becomes strong and mighty.

Then they cast off stench and blackness and change themselves from one color into another; and the Sun and Moon, as fire and air that are in the water, shall nourish the fruit. But if the spirit is to come to it, then one must deal with it as the baker deals with bread. For one takes a little of the spirit and gives it to the body; then it behaves as when the baker adds leaven to the flour, and the leaven transforms the whole substance into leaven.

Laurentius Ventura gives this instruction: One must also consider that the water dissolves the body and changes its nature and color. For since the body is dissolved with it and in it, it becomes thick like honey or like rich soup. It is made white, as has been said; but when the citrine-red mixes with the white, then from it comes a saffron-yellow, or almost a green color. Therefore the whole softened body is also called a green bird.

And Lullius, in his Experiments, p. 183: The king takes his own soul, and the soul of his parents, back to himself, and keeps it fully with himself.

Isaac Hollandus says: The Stone draws only its own spirits into itself; for everything seeks its like, and all like things rejoice with their like. Therefore, when the Mercury is dead, increase your fire a little, until the matter becomes white.

Irenaeus says: If you wish to prepare the Stone, it must be made meltable like wax, which is done with Paradise-water; for with this you can make all things in the world pliable and meltable, if one sublimes it with them and dries it in, so that it remains there. This is then called Creation, and is nothing other than the power to make an unmeltable thing fluid, so that it may have ingress.

Aquinas therefore says: The common man melts by means of fire; but the philosophers melt, or rather, make things melting through the water.

So also Albertus Magnus says: Therefore take the previously fixed earth, which is called the raven’s head; crush it very small in a red marble mortar, two parts, and add to it one part of the preserved philosophical water. Imbibe this little by little into the dry earth, until it drinks what it had previously poured out, and by strong grinding mix it well together.

After this, it is again made firm in its cucurbit, so that it may not draw breath; it is set in moderate warmth and kept there, so that what has been drunk may be dried out in its inward parts, over a period of eight days. And this must often be repeated. In this way, under God’s blessing, through this degree of decoction, grinding, imbibition, drying, and calcination of the raven’s head, you will bring the black stinking earth to whiteness.

Laurentius de Ventura, the Venetian, agrees with this: When the vessel is strong, leave it closed until the Stone has drunk up the moisture; but even then leave it still in the vessel at a constant warmth until it becomes white. The whiteness comes from the citrine-colored body and the white liquor, by means of a gentle warmth; for then the philosophical bird is born.

Rhazes commands: Keep your vessel and its joints firmly sealed, so that you may preserve the spirit. And Bacon says: Seal your vessel well. And just as you should not cease from the work, so also, on the other hand, you must by no means hurry, neither by excessive heat nor by opening the vessels too early. For haste is from the devil, says Morienus.

But Socrates says: Grind your matter with the sharpest vinegar until it becomes thick, and take care that the vinegar does not turn into smoke.

Sinesius says: The vessel must be well sealed.

And besides many others, Alanus, Alphidius, Flamel, Padua, the Turba, etc., say: The mouth of the vessel must be well sealed.

Ripley speaks of this as follows: Every spirit is fixed by the calx of its own kind. Take one part of the fixed body, grind it small, put it into a long glass vessel, and pour the 🝞 Sublimation upon it. Seal the vessel well, so that nothing may escape; set it in a gentle warmth, and the volatile will dissolve and open the fixed. The volatile serpent will devour the fixed one, and from both there will come to be a fiery creeping dragon. Here you now have the quintessence and the blessing of God, which He has placed in this earth, the life of all things that have been created.

Nimcement says: Nothing can be fixed unless it happens in an equal and identical nature. Therefore the artist must strive to find that very thing which can be fixed, and to bring it to perfect fixation, namely by the same kind of way and by the union of like parts, through a long and artful digestion of the united things.

Norton says: Therefore observe that the intention of this work is that its spirit be fixed. But this cannot happen except with the spirit of a fixed body, which is homogeneous with the body, of the same kind or same measure, and of its nature indeed, which desires to be reunited with its body.

In the Anonymous Tract, found at the end of the first volume of the Turba, it says: The philosophers say that the Stone is made from the body, spirit, and soul. For the water is the spirit; likewise also the air, the middle fire, if I may speak so, is the spirit. We do not call the earth a spirit, but a body; for it is the land, and holds the other elements in their matter and seat.

Marsilio Ficino says: Do you also think that it is possible for a living understanding to bring the soul back into a spirit, and the spirit into a soul, and after this to bring both into the body? In this body of ours one must know how much of the spirit, how much of the soul, and how much of the body there is; further also, how much of the soul’s middle nature is in the spirit, and how much in the body, so that you may join together two natures, which are related to one another, in equal and proper proportion.

Thus we must and should compose together two waters, namely the Sulphur of gold and the Mercury of silver that is, soul and spirit, Sun and Moon, man and woman, heaven and earth, the volatile and fixed dragon as two seeds, two living Mercuries; and from these two there comes a third, namely a living Mercury.

The Blood of Nature says: In the center of our body lies a very white 🜔 Salt like crystal, easily flowing like butter, which has the growing and multiplying power, so mighty that it can neither be burned by the force of fire, nor extinguished by the cold of our dissolving water, nor overturned by the winds.

You must from the earth make a nothing, that is, a fire and water, vapor and smoke; and from this again an earth and chaos; and this so often until the spirit appears in its figure and paradisiacal color. For the bodies become drunk with the spirit, and the rocks give water. When, then, you have found the Nothing which has become something, you have what you seek.

Plato says: When the body is dissolved, it rises up together with its spirit in the form of a heavy water. Therefore two kinds of operation take place in this work: partly the coagulation of the spirit, or fiery volatile substance, into a viscous mineral water; and partly also a dissolution and turning-back of the body into that very same water. Mundus in the Turba, Lullius, etc., say: The quintessence must gradually be mixed with the lymphated Mercury.

Corallus says: The body, which is black-brown, must be washed with distilled salt-water; afterwards it must be dried in the sun, as often as necessary, until it shines like a marble stone.

Moses in the Turba says: You must mix the thick thing with the fiery poison, putrefy it, and diligently grind it, until they together become one spirit in the other and are hidden.

Morfolcus says: Blessed be he who has inspired the sages to transform a body into a spirit, which has an unchangeable and incomparable power and color, so that what was previously a volatile Sulphur has now become a lasting and incombustible Sulphur.

Aristotle says: The earth should be rectified moderately and by measure, so that as often as it is moistened, so often it should also be made dry. Therefore there are three parts of water to one part of earth, and sometimes more than enough, and as much as it requires for the sake of the perfect dissolution. For the perfect dissolution in this work is its complete quintessence, which has within itself all medicinal power and a wonderfully beautiful odor of every sweetness.

Alexander Magnus says: Nature makes the subtle thing suitable to the fixed thing by melting; and the water which has been called by the sages the water of wisdom, which is the tempered moisture and the secret, must be consumed and diminished by the conjunction, so that it becomes like common water. Therefore you shall make the body wet with the watery moisture, and you shall coagulate it with the same.

Concerning this, the Count of Reggio writes that our Mercury, namely the fiery universal spirit, is present in great quantity in our work because of the many prescribed imbibitions and the evaporations following upon them, which must be performed weekly for a long time.

Therefore, in the first dissolution of the body and in the very slight eight-day evaporation, which is to be repeated with our vinegar, only the subtler part of the spirit of vinegar is fixed in the body; and the remainder disappears completely through evaporation and distillation, like tasteless spring-water. This the sages have written truthfully.

Avicenna says: You shall not withhold your hand from threshing and roasting until the earth is dry and white; this condition is produced and brought about by repeated threshing and roasting. But you must also take care that you always imbibe the earth gradually, and with long grinding according to the drying of the earth.

Therefore in all this one must everywhere observe the weight, so that great dryness and superfluous moisture do not spoil the work. Cook as much by roasting as the dissolution requires by imbibing; note this well, with every alternation after the calcination of the earth. Pour over it the water of the tempered earth namely, not too little and not too much.

On this matter, among others, Ezekiel chapter 36 has written very beautifully in the person of the Spirit of God: I will sprinkle clean water upon you, so that you shall be clean; and I will give you a new spirit in your hearts, and I will put my spirit within you. And in chapter 37 it says: Thus says the Lord concerning these dried bones: Behold, I will bring breath into you, so that you shall live. Truly, truly, I say to you: unless someone is born again of water and spirit, he cannot enter into heaven.

Thus also the blessed-in-God Kunrad of Leipzig, with good intent, compared Scripture to this when he says: You heavens, drop down from above, and you clouds, rain down the Righteous One; let the earth open and bring forth the Savior of the world.

And Mary the Wise says: Our king descends from heaven, and the earth has received him with his moisture, and the water of heaven is united and retained with the water of earth.

So also Artephius says: Dissolve the bodies in the glassy water, and cook them until the whole tincture comes forth by means of the water into a white color or into a white oil; and when you shall see it white above the water, then you should know that thus then the bodies have dissolved or melted. Therefore continue with the cooking until they make a mist which looks very dark, black, and white. Place the perfect bodies in our water, in a vessel closed in the hermetic manner, over a gentle fire, and cook them steadily until they are completely dissolved into a precious oil.

Cook them, says Adfar, with gentle fire, as eggs are hatched, until the bodies are dissolved and note well their firmly adhering tincture is extracted. Likewise: this work is not hard labor for the one who knows and understands it; for this reason it is called “the work of women” and “the play of children.”

Therefore be diligent, my son; pray to God; always read the books of the sages, for one book opens another. Think deeply upon the matter. Avoid the things that disappear in the fire, for your intention is not directed toward such combustible things, but only toward the decoction of your water, drawn from the two great lights, that is, from gold and silver. For from this same water the color and weight are brought to the highest degree.

And this water is the white smoke which flows into the perfect bodies as a soul, removes from them their blackness and impurity, makes the bodies hard, and increases their water, etc. Therefore I say finally: Cook it in our white water, that is, in Mercury, until it is dissolved into a black color. Afterward, through continual cooking, it will be freed from its black color; and the body thus dissolved will at last rise up with its white soul. But even then, one will be mixed with the other, etc.

In the tract entitled Vaterherz there stand the following words: Believe me truly, that all the diligence and intention of the sages has gone solely and only toward this: that they might imbibe and dry. Therefore the sages also calcine their earth, into which they wish to cast the seed, so that they may warm it and make it thirsty in such a way that it is eager to drink and to become abundantly impregnated with the juicy and natural moisture which it draws to itself from our Water of Life, since this is its mother, its sister, and its nurse.

For when the earth, in the natural calcination, has lost its watery moisture through the imbibition of the sages, then we cause it to receive another radical moisture, which is much more suitable and beneficial to its nature.

I say: just as our natural calx is exceedingly dry and freed from all foreign superfluous moisture, so it is exceedingly thirsty. Therefore it also drinks so eagerly, in order to refresh itself again with that thing which it has lost. Thus, when it has often been imbibed, divided, and mixed into very small parts through repeated cooking and imbibing indeed, when this cooking is done gently, so that the watery vapor is resolved and dissolved, and its root-moisture is dried out, inspired, and thickened then the natural heat increases and grows, etc.

When, then, you have completed your natural imbibitions and philosophical washings, and recognize that your matter has become white and gummy, then take your philosophical matters and join the gum together, as Mary the Prophetess says.

Lullius: Take good care that the spirit does not depart from the smoke of the lees, for in it is the Sulphur, which has the power to coagulate our water into a crystalline plate, or into the form of the whitest powder, which is like the most beautiful snow.

Rosarium: When the sages saw that the blackness or yellowish color, together with the stench, had diminished after a long time and had appeared in a whiteness or ash-color, they called it inceration or whitening.

Therefore Morienus says: The whole masterpiece is nothing other than an extraction of the water from the earth and an introduction of the water over the earth.

And Geber says: All the operations of the masterpiece are these: to make volatile, to pour, to incerate, and to make white like a marble stone, by means of dissolving and coagulating.

Calid: To make volatile is to take away the blackness from the spirit and the soul. To pour and melt is to make the body fluid. Incerating, subliming, or whitening is to congeal, or to prepare the body with the soul, to make it fixed, to dissolve it, and to make it volatile with the spirit.

Semita semita: For the more the Stone is nourished, the more it is increased. But it is nourished with its milk, that is, the seed from which it was in the beginning. But the living silver is also imbibed repeatedly, until it drinks two parts, or as much as is sufficient for it.

Rosinus: Increase the fire until the body is entirely torn apart and is spiritual. Cook it for several days until it becomes dry and the moisture is consumed; afterward imbibe it with the same vinegar, then it will become feces; moisten it again, and guard the mouth of the vessel, so that the vinegar is not consumed. Cook it for 150 days, and it will be completed.

Eudoxus, on the Hermetic Triumph: The dissolution of the body happens in no other way than with its own blood. Therefore you must take note that in our art, at three different times, three different dissolutions take place, in which the body is dissolved in nothing other than its own blood. You would try in vain to undertake the true dissolution in the first operation if you did not give it the woman in marriage. You would attempt the perfect dissolution in vain if you did not repeat the pouring of its own blood over it; this blood is its natural menstruum, its wife, its spirit, and its all at once, with which it is inwardly united in such a way that together they make up only one single substance.

Sinesius: Add to it its aforesaid water, and as you have begun, so continue your cooking until the earth is entirely white, purified, and clear, and has drunk all its water into itself. Take care that in this way you wash the earth from its blackness through cooking, and make it pure and white.

Guido de Montanor in the Scala: The sign of the first whitening of the whole matter is the revelation or generation of an eminent capillary circle, for it stands around the sides of the citrine vessel, when first, after the deepest blackness, a white circle appears. Therefore you should not lightly esteem the colors that appear before the true whiteness.

Flamel: The woman has a white circle like a strip or scroll around her body, to show that Rebis begins to whiten itself in that same way, and at the outermost end of the circle begins to become white.

Women’s Work and Child’s Play: In the white color the spirits are united, so that they cannot flee. Therefore it is commanded to make the Laton white; for the earth becomes putrid with the water and is purified. But when it is purified, the blackness departs and it becomes white, so that accordingly the dark thing must perish, etc.

Flamel: Azoth washes and purifies the Laton and makes the ore white; for there is nothing that can remove the shadow from the ore except Azoth, when it is cooked with it for a long time, so that it colors and makes white like fish-eyes. Aristotle and Ripley also speak so.

But Morienus says thus: The Azoth and the fire are sufficient for you in this disposition for the whitening of the Laton and for its perfect completion.

Dastanus: All the colors of the world will appear before whiteness, when the black moisture dries up. Yet you should not concern yourself with the colors, since they are not true colors; for it often becomes red and often yellow before it comes to perfect whiteness.

Albertus Magnus and Pythagoras: Know that the matter which the sages have described in many ways is nevertheless always one and the very same thing, and that it is brought to the highest perfection only through moistening and drying, through grinding and roasting. There, where, according to the testimony of Alphidius, the pursuing thing meets the flowing thing, flowing is taken away from both of them, and there follows the truth of the work: for one nature receives the other as its companion captive; they have seized one another as enemies and hold one another, because the soul has entered into its body.

On Distillation and Sublimation. Before we conclude, we must still mention something about distillation and sublimation, as the most necessary instrument and tool by which the subject, the mineral root, the lead, the Stone, must be torn from its unity, scattered, and separated into the constituent parts of the so-called elements; since without this, nothing can be done in this high art, nor can the high work be accomplished.

Since the medicine must be of great subtlety before it can act, this also requires that both the constituent parts and the medicine itself be purified, and freed through sublimation from their impurity that is, from the leaven-like parts which cling to them down into their innermost parts and, as excrements, have infected them. For one sees that both the dry and the moist parts, which are thereby made impure and covered as with lees, are liberated.

But one errs if, according to the common saying, one assumes that these have their ground in the fall of Lucifer and Adam. Rather, these leaven-like parts are the most necessary instruments of Nature, through which she brings forth the pure thing, that is, the essential essences of the products. They are the mothers that generate the pure; they are the magnets which draw to themselves the life and power-substance from the air, feed themselves from it, nourish their fruit, and bring it to perfection.

For how, for example, could a plant or flower grow if it had no leaves that could protect and foster it in its increase?

Likewise, how could a grain of wheat grow, if it had no stalk and husks, since it must grow precisely through the driving forth of a root, stalk, and husks.

Thus these things are not impure feces or accursed earth, as foolishness would make us believe, but necessary instruments of Nature, foreseen by the wisdom of God and appointed for beauty and usefulness. For from all such things, when they are destroyed by fire, a power-substance and essence can be obtained.

But since only the pure belongs to the high work, and the aforesaid necessary instruments, feces, and mountain-mineral have no occupation there, they must be removed through putrefaction and burning, that is, through distillation and sublimation; and in their place the proper parts must be taken and made airy, that is, the thick parts must be changed into a spirit, vapor, and mist.

Therefore Hermes writes in his glorious Emerald Tablet: Separate the subtle from the thick gently and with great understanding, when it ascends from the earth into heaven and again descends from heaven into the earth. Consequently, the subtle and the thick must be made into vapor and mist; without this our medicine has no power to effect what it is meant to effect.

Pythagoras: It is to be known that in the work there is no other science of this art than the elevation of the vapor and of the water.

Albertus Magnus: When the foreign moisture has been purified and removed from the essence by the manner and virtue of Nature, then they cannot purify better through art; for the properties of Nature are more certain and subtler than art.

Artephius: Know that this cutting-off, division, and sublimation are, beyond all doubt, the key of the whole work. Therefore, after the putrefaction and dissolution of the body, our body rises upward above the dissolving water in a white color; and this whiteness is life. For in the same manner the animal and mercurial soul is poured in with the spirits of the Sun and the Moon, according to the will of Nature, which separates the subtle from the thick and the pure from the impure, by gradually raising the subtle part of the body away from its impure part, until the pure is wholly separated and driven upward.

Alchimides: Take the matter from its mine and sublime it into its highest place, and send it down again from the height of the mountains to its roots. Thus elevation is nothing other than making a thick thing subtle.

Rosarium: When the earth has drawn out from the water its fiftieth part, then sublime it soon with as strong a fire as you can, until it rises upward like a white dust. But when you see the earth like white snow or dead dust, and the alludel clinging to its sides, then repeat the sublimation.

Wasserstein, or Aureum Vellus: When a greater fire is given to the work, then the soul and the spirit, with their body, will be united into an inseparable, indissoluble, and eternal being.

Eirenaeus Philalethes: Separate the man from his wife; afterward separate each one again from its earth, yet according to Nature and without violence, and set them together again in due, harmonious, and life-filled proportion. Immediately the one from its fire-formed sphere, the soul descending from its fiery sphere will refresh and renew, with a wonderful embrace, the dead body it had left behind.

Dastanus: We have learned from experience that when something is mixed with water, and the quantity of the volatile exceeds the quantity of the fixed, then the fixed is carried away with it. But where the volatile does not exceed the fixed, it is fixed together with it.

Sinesius: Take this white earth and place it, as said above, in its vessel upon ashes with a sublimation fire, which should be so strong that all the coagulated water contained therein comes into the alembic, while the earth remains well calcined at the bottom. Then you will have earth, water, and air.

Count Marsciano: For then we pour three parts of the volatile spirit over the re-ensouled bodies, so that the greater part of the volatile may exceed the smaller fixed part and carry it upward with itself, and so that the body, mixed with soul and spirit, may be raised into the air. And this is our sublimation, where the sages say: Take three parts of the woman and one part of the man, or unite three parts of Mercury with one part of gold, etc. Whoever is not sufficiently satisfied with this should consult Geber in his Necessities of Sublimation, and there he will find more.

Now when this great work has been brought so far that it has attained the degree of perfect whiteness, then, according to the instruction which Isaac Hollandus gives us, projection can be made with it upon Mercury, but only in a very low degree. Therefore this work must be multiplied, exalted, and elevated; which, according to Nicolas Flamel, happens thus Dissolve, bind up; open, close. For as often as you dissolve and fix, so often you will multiply this nature in quantity and size, in form and virtue.

But in order that we may say something about the perfection of the work, namely how it is brought to redness, the sages speak of it thus: When you have attained the highest degree of whiteness, then strengthen the fire and give it the final degree of that fire, so that it may become red; for fire is cooked with fire and drawn out. For when the flames of the fire strike into the fixed sulphur, it is made red, because Mercury is red in its inward part, and Sulphur in its essence is nothing but a blood of Nature, a red essence, a gold of the stars, a gold gathered together from the elements. Therefore, in its first appearances, it is citrine-colored, and at last it runs together black and thick like cobbler’s pitch.

Thus it must be made red through cooking, although this is expressed by the authors in other and hidden words; as Flamel says: the reddening should be begun by the addition of a yellow-red Mercury. But, he continues, you must pour only a little upon it, and only once or twice, according as you see that it is necessary.

In another place: They took the king and dissolved him, and then he became like blood. This blood they called the red lion; they fixed him, and thus came to the blessed end.

Count de Marsciano: When the soul of the salt is dissolved and from its white-leaved earth, or separated from the unensouled body, then, while grinding, in that same vessel, we pour over that soulless body, or whitened Laton, the dissolved soul of the salt, or the reddish oil, drop by drop.

In this way we give the soul back to its body; and this is called: sowing the gold into the white-leaved earth. Further on this may be consulted in Ripley, in his writings on the attainment of the red soul, the red-fiery spirit.

But we do not need to say more about it, since, when this work has received the degree of the highest redness, it is then the best medicine against all infirmities and diseases. And if, according to the teaching of Basil Valentine and other authors, namely the white is fermented with silver and the red with gold, it becomes the highest tincture for transforming the lesser metals into the more perfect ones.

But so that we may disclose everything clearly, it is necessary that we also mention something about the time: namely, how much of it is required, and how long it takes before the great work is brought to its end. No exact time can be determined here, because two special circumstances are involved. First, those who work the work are commonly beginners and inexperienced in the practice. Second, one person always shows more skill in the work than another; and therefore, as a beginner, not as a master, as a slow man, not as an awakened one, he cannot bring the work to completion.

Therefore a certain time is always set for an uncertain one, and an uncertain one for a certain one, so that whoever calculates or believes in a fixed time in this believes that such a glorious work can be made in some days, weeks, or months is very greatly deceived.

But the most certain measure is found in the history of the patriarch Noah and the Flood, if one wishes to take it as such, where it says: And the waters stood upon the earth for 150 days. After these days had passed, the waters withdrew from the earth and diminished, so that after 17 days the ark settled firmly upon Mount Ararat. But it continued until the tenth month before they saw the tops of the mountains.

After 40 days, Noah opened the window and let a black raven fly; afterward, a white dove, but they returned without hope. Then after seven days he let another white dove fly, which on its return brought a branch of good hope, namely an olive leaf. In Revelation 11:3 it stands: My two witnesses shall prophesy 1260 days, that is, 180 weeks or 42 months, or 3½ years.

The Turba practice says: Then put that same water together into its vessel, and cook it for 42 months in putrefaction in the first degree of fire, until the lead melts.

Socrates: The juice of the vine-stock of the sages is extracted in 42 days, and its wine at the end of 50 days.

Hali: The cooking of the work is completed in three times fifty days.

Clangor Buccinae: Set the Stone in putrefaction for 40 days.

Dastanus: When the colors just mentioned occur, one must cook each of them for 40 days; and when the whole work is consumed and made finely and gently dry, the whiteness will come forth.

Hollandus, p. 593: Our elders required 3 to 4 years before they perfected their Stone.

But as to how much of the water is required for the decoction of the whole work, the opinions of the sages differ greatly. As Friedrich Gualdus says in his letter of 22 May 1678: To know the proportion of water and earth in their reduction may easily bring about despair, if one first sets aside and completely abandons all the assertions of the philosophers, since they are not in agreement with one another in this matter. For one wants it that ten parts of water should be taken; others speak of nine, and again others of seven parts. Pontanus requires three parts; and many others are of still other opinions.

Sinesius teaches: Observe that seven imbibitions are enough. Flamel seeks to prove this by the example of the Syrian Naaman, who, for his cleansing from leprosy, had to wash himself seven times in the Jordan; likewise by the bandage on the sword which he had painted in Paris.

Count de Marsciano: The sages have hidden the vinegar not only under so many names, as they have also done with the salt and the volatile spirit, but they have called it the Eagle; something which surely none of the clever speculators has ever understood or heard of until now. Therefore one reads on this point in Consilium conjugii de massa solis & lunae, Tom. II. B., p. 243, col. 1: Nine eagles are nine parts of the vinegar, because nothing can dissolve our Sun except our Eagle, etc.

These are the eagles drawn on the table in Senior, Tom. II. B., p. 217, Fig. 12; there, in truth, they are ten, because for the dissolution and preparation of the body, before it is fundamentally brought into a reducible oil, often nine Eagles, or nine parts of the vinegar, are not sufficient; and often not less than ten are needed, because I myself have used more than ten parts for such a dissolution. Yet, as was said above, this is to be done gradually and weekly, namely by imbibing, and by an evaporation lasting eight days with gentle heat, in which only the watery part or, as Gualdus says, the water-laden part disappears, while the subtler airy and spiritual part is fixed in the body. For if the fire were too strong, then the subtler spirit would also rise up in the smoke together with the phlegm, and the salt would never be dissolved.

Wasserstein and Aureum vellus: Take twelve parts of the aforementioned prepared water-matter; from it again make three parts. Of these, carefully preserve and keep two parts. The remaining third part you must then, first of all, again add to another metallic matter reckoning one part against twelve parts for the first fermentation, and unite it with it, so that afterward this aforesaid water-matter may be perfectly prepared and brought forth into a bodily tincture of the imperfect metals.

Now when, he continues, these two unequal parts, water and gold, which to outward appearance are of great inequality, have been put together in a golden dish and made, as it were, into a dry liquor or amalgam, then first let them stand six or seven days in a very gentle warmth, so that it is felt only lukewarm.

After this take again one part from the two parts of water kept back earlier, put it into a round, unbreakable glass vessel, like a phial or egg, set Place the tempered liquor in the middle of it, but let it stand thus for six or seven days; then the body of gold will gradually be dissolved and loosened by the water, for it is again reduced and brought back into its first matter, from which it originally took its origin, so that it must, as it were, be born anew again. Then the conjunction of these two begins, and one is mixed in the other so pleasantly and finely, like ice in warm water, which the philosophers have interpreted in many ways. Then take at last the reserved third part to it, etc.

Pandora, p. 149: Take one part of the plate of Sol or Luna, or the calx of Sol or Luna, and nine parts of sublimed Mercury; make it into a paste and amalgamate it together, etc.

Isaac Hollandus, p. 720: When you have now come this far, then you have a secret by which one is able to bring all metals into oil, etc. Therefore we need a great quantity of the spirit of vinegar in order to bring the Stone to its perfection. Since the spirit of our vinegar is not entirely fixed in the body, as shown above, but only the driest part, therefore twenty-nine parts evaporate from it and disappear as a tasteless water. So much concerning this.

On the Furnace. Finally, we will add a little about the furnace, as the most necessary instrument for the high work. Yet here it may be enough for us to use the description which Pandora, p. 214, gives of it: Make the walls of the round furnace to the height of half a foot; upon the walls arrange an iron plate, but in such a way that it touches the wall nowhere, so that the heat which rises from below may rise only on both sides and around the circumference of the plate and of the furnace.

The little door through which the coals are put in shall be made at the very bottom, upon the hearth. After this, continue building upward upon the walls of the plate in a circle, one hand high; then have a potter make for you a round cover, with which you cover your furnace. Also make for yourself, on one side above the plate, a hole, and close it with an earthen little door, through which you put in your vessel with the matter.

Thus you have the furnace. This is certain and infallible, provided you have the understanding to heat and warm it evenly in all places and around the whole circumference of its round form, so that the heat may rise without hindrance from the plate. But when we wish to arrange the vessel in the furnace, in the middle of the plate, we make a stand with three prongs, about two fingers long and equally distant from one another, and set upon it a little dish, so that it may be raised up, etc.

Thus far our promise extends, and we therefore herewith make the

END.