Superior and Inferior Gold, the Superior and Inferior Hermetic Gold

of Christian Adolph Balduin, S.R.I.
Academy of Natural Sciences, Cognomen Hermetis.

Translated to English by Mitko Janeski from:
Jo. Jacobi Mangeti ... Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, seu rerum ad alchemiam pertinentium thesaurus instructissimus: quo non tantum artis auriferae ... verum etiam tractatus omnes virorum ... ad quorum omnium illustrationem additae sunt quamplurimae figurae aeneae. Tomus primus [-secundus]


Hermes.
“In the upper sphere there is, in the middle of the spring, a vein (channel), which is the philosophers’ first rule.”

To the most illustrious founders of the Holy Roman Empire’s Academy of the Curious about Nature—distinguished for the most consummate learning, the sharpest judgment, incomparable experience, and practical application of things; to the magnificent President, and to the most excellent gentlemen, the adjuncts and compilers of the Ephemerides, and to the other most distinguished lords, colleagues, patrons, fellows, and most honored supporters: greetings.

Hermes Trismegistus is that man whom the Latins called Mercury, the Phoenicians Taaaut, the Egyptians Thoth, the Alexandrians Thoth, and the Greeks once named Ἑρμῆν (Hermes). Indeed, Hermes was, among all mortals of that age, either of immense genius and capacity of intellect, or, finally, for propagating glory to posterity and benefiting the human race. Whether you consider the desire for acquiring merit, he was the first, as the most learned men of every age have with unanimous voice approved.

See Steuchus Eugubinus, Epist. Kisam. Sedia Apost. Bibliothec. Tom. 3. lib. tit. 4. c. 3. Samuel Bochart, in Geographia Sacra, sive Phaleg, p. 68.

Moreover, just as the madness of those unsound in languages has always been so reckless that they do not even spare the Deity itself, so also, perhaps by chance, has this one whom we proclaim experienced it. For they deny that Hermes ever existed (among them is Georgius Becannus, who claims he was the first to publish this fable among the common people, tracing a family lineage to him); but others assert the contrary (with whom agrees Dr. Hermann Conring, On Hermes the Egyptian Physician, cap. 3), that chemistry was not attributed to Hermes by the first craftsmen, but rather to other inventors. Their judgments we cannot certainly prove; yet recently the most renowned man, Olaus Borrichius, in a remarkable treatise, has vindicated it: showing that Hermes was indeed not only an inventor of letters, but also of the more difficult operations and disciplines of the planets. Plato in the Philebus, Byblius, Tully (Cicero), and likewise Diodorus Siculus, and several other authorities at length bear witness.

Of his family, however, we know the very least; and those things that are mentioned are uncertain. (See P. Scherlog, S.J. On Hebrew Antiquities.) Unless, indeed, in the Asclepius, a book composed by himself, it is related of him, that his grandfather had been the Greater Mercury. But from the monuments of deeds actually performed, and from ancient examples, it is especially proved Wilh. Christoph. Krigsman, in Taauth p. m. 6, strives to prove that he was Noah’s grandson, Cham’s son, Canaan, and the progenitor of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. But we leave these matters rightly to their authors. Yet he was indeed a hearer of Noah, a teacher of Chus, a preceptor of his; of his children Isis and Osiris; prefect and counsellor, as Dn. Oth. Heurnius, Professor at Leyden, in Barbaric Philosophy Antiquities lib. 2 cap. 27, reports. Teofequs (i.e. Theosebes), who, on account of the triple kingdom—mineral, vegetable, animal; indeed on account of the investigation of the threefold subsistence in one created essence, in which power he explored all of vegetable, animal, and mineral nature—was called the Father of the Philosophers, as Aphor. Basil. or Canon I. Herm. Nicol. Nig. Hapet records; or Gelaldinus the Arab, in The Wisdom of Egypt, explains him, who was a prophet, king, and philosopher.

But how insatiable in man is the desire of inventing, how great the industry! For, if we trust Iamblichus (book 1, chapter 6), citing from Seleucus, Hermes composed thirty-six thousand five hundred books on the Mysteries of the Egyptians. (Whom I have named, Bochart p. 68; yet Vertius, interpreting them more cautiously, reduces the number to forty-two.) Of these, Clement of Alexandria, Stromata VI, makes mention; but only two survive today: one called Pymander, the other Asclepius, which I have already cited above. (See Aur. Vell. Guilielm. Mennens, p. m. 12.) It is also reported that his was that Table, called the Smaragdine, whose beginning is: ‘It is true, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is below is like to that which is above,’ &c.

Indeed, there are those who call it into doubt; and Bernardo Canesso, at first among the alchemists, desired to assert it—into whose opinion Athanasius Kircher himself also entered, in Oedipus Aegyptiacus, class. 10, c. 7. For, not to depart even a nail’s breadth from what they say, that inscription (carved in Coptic characters near Memphis, as the Copt Schaeata of Memphis writes) is engraved on stone:

Heaven above, Heaven of the gods above; Stars above, Stars of the gods above: whatever is above, all that is of the gods above. Take this, and you will be blessed.

And afterwards—which even Kircher himself does not deny—this Table is the Theoretical Treasury of all Nature. Therefore, the Egyptians call this Hermetic Art Wisdom. From this at least it will seem possible to conclude, that the same Hermes was he whom they both place as prince and fountain of knowledge, from whom afterwards science flowed to others.

And (to speak frankly), so far as concerns me, I shall never be so ungrateful as to detract from the praise of those who have both illustrated that Table and the men who have adorned it with most wise commentaries. Yet I would judge likewise: not so much that he worked around gold as a metal, as that he labored upon Medicine; which embraces and concludes not only the powers of gold, but of all other bodies, both superior and inferior.

And now it is already some years since I judged that certain things on Aurum Auræ ought to be committed to public light. I call them first fruits, since I had never before attempted this kind of writing. The name I had willingly concealed, unless the anagram contained it, which I then wished to be read on the front.

Thus (above, below) the double Sun abounds in Auris. But that one did not allow it, O Illustrious Academy!—your favor, which I dared more easily to hope for than to seek, was greater than usual, your kindness. For so great indeed is your humanity, that you allowed this small labor to be made for you! which also brought so much honor and name to its author, that by your very gracious words he was invited to join the fellowship of so great a Society. And in your Ephemerides, I believe it worthy to be inserted, if you should wish me to add it, with the hand and style of your interpreter.

Allow it, Most Excellent Sir, HENRICUS FULL OF GRACE, your immortal name, as if it were being profaned by me, and these slight pages were promising themselves some reputation by your authority.

Nor will you be displeased if here I record, eternal in the most noble order, always living by merits,
Magnificent President and Argonaut, JOHANNES MICHAEL FEHR!

For thus it is in me, your merit. Through YOU I have obtained these honors and ornaments! YOU, by a special authority granted to you, have added me as a member of this great Academy! YOU proclaimed it! YOU adorned me with the surname Hermetis, which I could never have dared to assume by myself! Finally, you have done this, as if you judged that I, bound by so many benefits, could not fail to surpass fortune by gratitude. And so, you could not remove from me the memory of so great a favor, which, as long as I live, I shall never set aside, but always retain, as grateful as I am enduring.

Just as I have hitherto contended for this one thing only, that since I despaired of the name of ‘son,’ I might at least prove myself an imitator and disciple of Hermes: so, as I perceived the hours left to me, I judged they ought to be devoted thus, that taking up again in hand the Aurum Auræ—the superior, by the universal attraction of the magnet—this writing on the Aurum inferius, that is, of our most universal matter, I might add the Aurum Auræ. Both of which are to me Hermetic.

But now also concerning the emblem, to me the reasoning seems no less valid. For there you see the circular hieroglyph, and the casket, and the sun, and the moon, and whatever else occurs. Indeed, it signifies the Double World, the Circle of Spirits, the one fluid, or as they call it, the Bird of Hermes; the other coagulated. That which lies hidden within, the Aurum superius, hovering in the air, is drawn—like the little bird—by the Philosopher’s Magnet lying in the casket. By this same magnet our matter is easily directed to the Aurum inferius. Thus the sun with its fiery triangle, and the moon with its watery [sign], the Spirit of the World, and both Aurum Auræ are signified as Parents and progenitors.

Nor did I wish this to be without a counterpart: just as I inscribed Upwards (Sursum), so I took care to subscribe Downwards (Deorsum). For by the Hermetic Tablet itself it is signified: That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, etc. And then also that Egyptian philosophical [doctrine]: The heaven above, the heaven below; the stars above, the stars below. Take these also in reverse: by the power of the universal magnet, from the higher aura, or contrariwise from the lower aura. Blessed is he who knows how to enclose the contents in the two triangles, △ and ▽, joined together.

And so, since to me the name of Hermes has been decreed, and to the honor of our philosopher Mercury, as if it were a sacred law, I ordain this treatise to be sacred.

I establish this Hermam, with the consent of the most serene Elector of Saxony, my most clement lord, to whom also I dedicate as a Hermetic symbol the motto: Sursum Deorsum. That it may be understood more truly and more Christianly. I establish this Hermam itself, in memory of the illustrious Academy of yours:

O Hermetic Lights of Ancient Wisdom, Luminaries and Atlases!

There were statues of Hermes, representing the image of Mercury, which once were sacred to him, and were set up along public roads, whose heads could be exchanged. And such are the crossroads where my own Hermes is placed and dedicated. To whom, since this is a more fitting head—that it be the principle and foundation of our Mercury the Hermetic—let it be free for those who wish to apply it, to do so through me.

To the Herms, stones cast on the spot by passers-by were piled up, and thus heaps were made, sacred to Mercury himself.

Great Men, Incomparable Colleagues!

Build also for my Hermam your own Hermæus. Let each one contribute a stone—that is, let him add, remove, or supply something, but in friendship, with candor, philosophically, as our Academic Law XII commands.

But if, contrary to expectation, there should be those who with divisive hand would detract from it, or who by their touch might defile it—there is a sanctuary for you: the Ephemerides. Whoever is brought in and inserted here will not fear those hands that would disturb or cast down; within this bosom of Wisdom he will be safe and at peace. To it, as I ought, I commend and entrust myself wholly.

Man is a god to man. You are gods, because you are Asclepiuses and Apollos. Permit me hereafter to be your Messenger—or, if you prefer, your Hermes and Mercury.

Written at Hayna, from my Museum, on my birthday, the 29th of June (which, as Curio records in Bellum Melitense, p. 430, was once held sacred by the Maltese as the Month of Hermes). In the year 1674.

The Illustrious Imperial Academy of the Curious about Nature

The most devoted servant and colleague in every duty,
Christian Adolph Balduin, called Hermes.

On the Book of the Aurum Auræ and an Appendix on the Hermetic Philosopher.

C. A. Lib. Bar. à F.

The Muses had lately beheld the labors of our Hermes,
And, marveling, spoke such words as these:
‘Now yours, learned elder, let the jeweled tablet recede,
This little book in small compass teaches nobler things.
Here flows the gold immense, gliding by the thresholds of Olympus,
It displays fruits and flowers, and the day without night.

On the Aurum Auræ

Hermes carried this book up to the gods,
And as he looked upon it, he drew Helicon into varied parts.
Under his presiding care the work proceeded, and he sought a name from Apollo.

At length, meditating variously, he thus spoke:
“Little wand, little book, you shall be called to me a divine thing:
Gold, which by your guidance the earth cannot give, the breath shall bestow.

Flora was present, and mindful of her own dignity she added honors:
Now eternal Spring, unless I am deceived, is with me.
So spoke the joyful goddess, to whom the rest of the gods deferred:
‘Is death, she said, absent even from the flowers?’

Nay rather, to man also I meditate the same, Hebe is added besides.
Sacred hunger for gold, now to me—let it not return.”

On the Hermetic Phosphorus

Cease to marvel at the use of perpetual light:
This book itself will be like perpetual light.

Just as Aurum Auræ so too the Hermetic Phosphorus
—being truly a Hermetic labor and a study worthy of the Curious—
ought to be commended.

Melchior Friebe, Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine,
Physician of Hayna,
Member of the Imperial Academy of the Curious about Nature.

Proemium

The ancient philosophers knew it, and we too gladly acknowledge it: that in the highest things are the lowest, and in the lowest the highest; in heaven indeed are things earthly, according to a heavenly cause and mode; and on earth heavenly things, according to an earthly mode. (See Proclus, On Sacrifice and Magic.) Thus on earth one may behold the sun, moon, and the other stars, but in a terrestrial quality; in heaven, however, plants, stones, metals, minerals, according to a celestial nature.

Thus Hermetic philosophy teaches that all natural things are known by their superiors through their inferiors, and by their inferiors through their superiors. This harmony is that golden chain, in which inferior things are connected with superiors, governed, even mutually attracted. Do you not see how marvelous is the interplay of the elements? How contraries, even though they contend, nevertheless seek each other? How fire is joined with water, water with fire, earth with air, air with earth? And how the world is preserved, as it were, by this discord turned into concord?

Antonius Mizaldus of Monluc, a Frenchman, wrote on this in the last century, showing by rational arguments that the harmony of the superior nature of the world and the inferior, together with the admirable covenant and sympathy of all things, is preserved. This was taught at Paris. And still today there are observers of nature who embrace this chain of the superior with the inferior with no negligence. For, as Agazetius the Arab testifies, the greatest of mysteries is penetrated thereby.

Since the Tablet of our Father Hermes, that which is called the Emerald Tablet, teaches most perfectly, and since I write here concerning the Aurum Auræ, I judged it fitting to prefix as a foundation the same text which Kriegsman, drawn from the Phoenician texture, delineated; and so I insert it here, as if I had it.

1. Truly, not in faith only, but in certainty, I affirm: the lower things are joined with the higher, and thus by mutual union their powers are conjoined, so that they produce one most wonderful and admirable thing.

2. And just as all things have proceeded from one, through the word of God, so all things also are perpetually produced out of this one disposition of Nature.

3. The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother.

4. The wind bore it in its womb, the earth nourished it.

5. This is the father of all perfection throughout the world.

6. Its power is entire if it be turned into earth.

7. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great ingenuity.

8. It ascends from earth to heaven, and again descends to earth, and receives the powers of the superior and the inferior; so you shall have the glory of the whole world, and therefore all obscurity will flee from you.

9. This is the strong power of all strength, for it will overcome every subtle thing and penetrate every solid.

10. Thus the world was created.

11. From this will proceed wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner.

12. For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having three parts of the wisdom of the whole world.

13. What I have said concerning the operation of the Sun is accomplished.

---

On Aura in General

As it were, air or aura is that instrument of the world, and the vehicle of our universal Spirit. Hence Trismegistus says: ‘Venom,’ that is, air, bears it in its womb; so also in this chapter.

By the name of Aura, or of the superior air, is understood that intelligible element, primeval, transparent, as much of life as of weightlessness, devoid of burden, imperishable and perpetual, endowed with a natural coldness, unless it is hindered by position and the mixture of grosser matter.

Yet it is full everywhere of pores, and tolerates extension or compression of itself indefinitely.

Johannes Baptista van Helmont, in Tumultuous Posthumous Works, calls it water existing both above the heavens and beneath them, flowing back and forth, as Scaliger also speaks in On Subtlety, Exercise 27.

Yet, notwithstanding what Isaac Vossius (On the Motion of the Sea and Winds, c. 21, p. 49) objects, in the Macrocosm a fair enumeration of the four elements is given, where air is nothing else than water or moisture extended and spread by the law of equilibrium in every direction.

The seas are principally the fountain of air; and yet air is more subject to the Sun; and the air is moved along with the diverse motions of the sea.

Nor, however, is this elemental air confined to the orbs of the heavens, as Tycho Brahe (Epistolae Astronomicae, p. 100) teaches, but it moves in its three regions—namely the highest, the middle, and the lowest—and runs from the surface of the earth and waters up to the summits of the clouds.

And although those opinions of Scaliger are very remarkable—that our air is mixed with water, which, if it were not so, would perish everywhere—yet that great Albertus concluded wrongly. For not on that account should air be called a kind of water. Rather, P. Lamb. Danaeus (Philosophia Christiana, Tract. 1, c. 9, p. 54) rightly declares air to be a distinct element from water.

In this opinion And. Lisavious, in De Universo et Origine Rerum, Conclus. 1.1., rightly contends.

Air lives in fire, here in air; in earth, water; in water, earth; and finally water in air. Air purifies fire, fire purifies water, water purifies earth. Thus each—fire, water, air, earth—communicates its clarity to the others. Therefore, whoever seeks pure elements in this world will lose his labor and his oil; for it is not permitted that they exist unmixed, but one is always mingled with another.

Thus we say that air is a thin water, and likewise fire a thin aura, in like manner water is a thin earth, and earth again a thickened fire. And conversely: coagulated earth is water, frozen water is air thickened, condensed air is fire. (See Alphonsus Rex, Clavis Sapientiae, in Theatrum Chemicum, Vol. 5, part m., p. 861.)

Here air becomes lymph; from lymph comes earth, and from earth comes water. These particulars are proved by examples in Cornelius Drebbel, On the Nature of the Elements.

Therefore, since aura or ether differs in nothing from air, except that, as Magnus Emanuel Magnus has set down (Philosophia Naturalis Propositio 2, cap. 16), just as the purest water is separated from the impure, so also from subsequent aura and higher ether, nothing is except the most refined and sublimated. These, I think, we everywhere draw in when we breathe: and from this very thing is explained whether air coagulated be water, or water rarefied be air.

By the lower Aura, or coagulated air, as elemented, we understand our catholic subject. (Concerning this, see Chapter 3, more particularly.) Thus Sendivogius most rightly says in the Epilogue to the Treatise on Air: ‘The matter of the ancient philosophers, whose nature is airy, is white in color.’

In this our coagulated Aura, the dry and cold is called Salt or the Body; in the Aura, that which is hot and fiery is called Sulphur or the Soul; but that which is cold and moist is called Mercury or the Spirit.

Yet by continual and perpetual coction these three are turned into one, according to this reasoning: The cold and moist is converted into the hot and moist, and finally into the hot and dry. Thus those things which in our matter are found confused are converted, being separated, into the elements, and become one certain element fiery and dry. Concerning which subject, in the proper order, we shall append some further things in the following chapters.”

Chapter 2.
On Aura, filled with the effluences of various things.

It must first be observed that Aura, the higher and purer, can be considered in two ways: either as a simple body, the purest element (of which we spoke in the preceding chapter); or as filled with various vapors and exhalations, as Daniel Sennert teaches (On Fevers, Book 1, Chapter 4, p. 38), which is the sense to be taken here.

The pores or porosities, with which we said air abounds, are either wholly empty, lacking all bodily substance and remaining in their integrity, or else they are filled with foreign vapors and exhalations; and then, like vessels, they are carried back again into the ultimate simplicity of water, whence they first proceeded, and are stripped of whatever signatures of seeds they had borne. (See Helmont, Posthumous Works, Section Forma.)

For from sublunary things there arises a double spirit or vapor, or exhalation: one from the heat of the sun or stars, and the other from subterranean fires; so that, by the innate heat of the things themselves, it is drawn out and carried upward.” (P. Caspar Schott, Physica Curiosa, Book 9, Chapter 1, §1.)

Such foreign effluvia in Aura are varied by accident, according to the nature of the things from which they are exhaled and mingled. Hence the Virgin Earth, of her own accord, produces herbs—if placed in a suitable vessel and exposed to the free air by night and for a long time, at the proper season.

This is a sure sign that the earth itself has been impregnated by the aura alone, containing the seeds or spirits of such herbs. Thus the earth is always the abiding matrix, but not the mother of bodies—something well worth noting.

In the same way, the spirits of nitre and vitriol fly through the air. For if, after you have extracted the spirit from vitriol or nitre and set its colcothar [the calcined residue] under the open sky, and leave it there for a few days, and then put it back into the retort and apply fire gradually, you will draw out a new and even more effective spirit.

Such experiments are reported by Magnanus (Philosophia Naturalis, cap. 16). And from this he infers the cause why in some places the air is healthful, while elsewhere it is not; why in some places odors are agreeable and in others offensive. For truly the air contains those very spirits—whether wholesome and pleasing, or unwholesome and displeasing.

Indeed, the effluvia in Aura are various by accident, according to the nature of the things from which they exhale. Thus, when roses bloom, from the places of Fontenay and Vaugirard (which are near the city of Paris) an air of wonderful fragrance is carried to the nostrils, as Sir Kenelm Digby reports in Theatrum Sympatheticum, p. 48.

In Mauritania in Spain the air is so thin that, unless it is continually thickened with effluvia of other things, it is less suited for the respiration of men and animals.

In London in England, because in that vast city the inhabitants everywhere use fires made from that kind of coal which they call fossile, the whole air is filled as if with salt and soot; whence beds, curtains, and every other utensil, however clean and shining, are quickly obscured by this vapor.

At Drepanum in Sicily, a maritime city celebrated for its saltworks, the air is so corrosive that it even eats into iron. (P. Caspar Schott, Technica Curiosa, Book 4, Part 1, Preface 1, §44.)

Therefore, for various reasons, the constitution of the air is altered, according to the places where it is situated, whether from the nature of the earth, the sea, or the winds.

And by the proximity of lakes, metallic mines, and the seasons of the year, as is fully described by Daniel Sennert (Institutiones Medicae, Book 4, Part 2, c. 2).

Thus, just as the various effluvia of different things, being continually mixed in the air, whether they are spirits of every kind—earthly, watery, fiery, from earth, water, or fire, from minerals also, from plants and animals, and indeed from the very bodies of men—always produce a great abundance of vapors, whether extrinsic in color or intrinsic, resolved and, by their lightness, raised upward into the air: so too are they attracted to homogeneous bodies by a magnetic force, and are joined to those bodies.

The mineral called Martio-Solar (which is brought from Hesse, and which Lipsius valued at three ducats the pound, though not dearly), yellow within, like golden marcasite, but otherwise entirely insipid. For if you reduce it to powder and boil it for some time in water, it neither changes color nor acquires any taste other than that of the water itself.

I took twelve ounces of this mineral, and for a full fourteen days I exposed it to the cold air, not long ago. By this means it immediately absorbed that peculiar moisture, both sweet and sharp, which belongs to vitriol. What then? It was increased by two ounces in weight.

The salt extracted from it by rainwater, green and purplish in form, is remarkable for how powerfully it resists diseases, especially those which arise from the abundance of tartar, as well as many others. Hanssen’s Terra Minera is of this sort, which potters also use for their glazes, and it contains within it a spirit dissolving all metals. (See D. Johann Tileman’s Experiments, part 3, p. 8.)

This is the same mineral mentioned by D. Johann Hiskias Cardalucius in his Aula Subterranea, and by Lazarus Ercker (Book 1, section 5, p. 227). Vitriolic magnesia, Arnstadt, Aachen, and elsewhere also frequently produce it, as Glauber testifies in Furni Philosophici, Part 1, c. 11.

He calls it the mineral of sweet vitriol, which he found in greatest abundance at Almanroda (a village in Hesse, one stone’s throw from Castellis). If you consider its virtue, by which it attracts, this mineral is endowed with the same property as bismuth; and it is indeed of copper, very green in color, and attracts vitriol.

It is believed by most chemists to be the immature Electrum of Paracelsus, the black Saturn, and the white antimony of the philosophers. Of this opinion—though touched with envy—Joachimus Polemannus, in his Treatise on Philosophical Sulphur (p. 114), preferred to reject the name, though I had good reasons at home to say otherwise.

There is a similar wonder, reported by Sir Kenelm Digby, an experimenter of great authority. For in Arcevitense (as they call it), a soil exposed to the open air, moistened daily by rainwater, after the first month produced vitriol; in the second, sulphur; in the third, lead; in the fourth, tin; in the fifth, iron; and in the sixth month it grew warm, in which there appeared fine particles of silver.

The same experiment was successfully attempted by D. de l’Oborie and D. Locques, spagyricists of the King of France. Whoever wishes to know more about this, let him read Niels Ole Borch (Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of Chemistry, p. 149).

Thus it is taught that even when mines of gold, silver, and iron are exhausted, they may, in this way, grow again like quarries of stones (Athanasius Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus, Book 4, Chapter 8, p. 215).

Marcus Antonius de Castagnia, Supreme Prefect of the Mines of the Venetian Republic and founder of the Pan-Chemical Society, publicly testified before any craftsman, that it is possible for the art, in any house or laboratory, by various methods, to establish a perpetual mine, from which, at fixed times, true metal could be extracted, no differently than from a natural mine.
(Johann Joachim Becher, in Experimenta Chymica Nova, p. 62)

You can see, I think, what aura contributes, and what influence of the heavens there is, so that it is not at all necessary to descend cleverly to the husks. Therefore, it was rightly said by more perceptive philosophers, that there is a certain πανσοφία (pansophia), or universal wisdom of things, the seminary of seeds and the Cornucopia is Aura, or rather air itself.

2. In our lower, coagulated aura, or in the most universal subject (soon to be named), there are also effluvia drawn from the air and earth, but of a different nature; and for this reason the dregs and superfluities, being mixed in, must necessarily be separated by solution, which they call filtration, by distillation, putrefaction, and sublimation.”

Chapter 3.
In Aura also the Hermetic Matter, or Spirit of the World, flies about.

Cartesius (Principia Philosophiae, part IV, proposition 48) and Lipsiusius (Specimen Philosophiae Cartesianae, cap. 2) seem to assert that air is nothing other than an aggregate of earthly particles, so subtle and mutually disjoined, that they obey the slightest motions of the celestial globes.

Although Sir Robert Boyle, in his Experiments on Air, interprets Descartes differently.

Nevertheless, it must be believed that Nature, whose special care it has always been that the perpetual commerce of Heaven and Earth, like the admirable harmony of the entire mundane machine, might endure, from the beginning of the world also diffused some celestial substance or matter throughout the whole universe.

“Especially, indeed, into Aura and into the higher Air, the most unworthy of the elements, as it will soon be said, in which lies the seed and vital spirit, or the dwelling-place of the soul of every creature.”
(Michael Sendivogius, Tractatus de Sulphure, p. 152)

“Hence the Hebrew Doctors exclude air from the number of the elements, regarding it instead as a certain medium and glue, binding diverse things together, and having within it something like the Spirit of the world’s instrument resounding.”
(See Kornmann, Templum Naturae, p. 172; and D. Marcellus Frankheimius in his notes on Archillius, πανσευολόμαχον, p. 3.)

“Experience teaches daily that in this element not only minerals, animals, and plants live, but also that the other elements themselves live.”
(Johann Sperer, Institutiones Physicae, Book 4, ch. 2, ad praec. 1.)

“For if a certain astral spirit flows into these lower regions, it assists metals, stones, and plants, and even secretly inserts itself into their very substance.”
(Gotelen, in Synarthrosis Magnetica, p. 102.)

“It flourishes everywhere, being the author and mover of all generation.”
(Marsilius Ficinus, De Vita, Book 3, ch. 3.)

Helmont calls this aetherial substance the Great Magnum (liber de Magnete, Vuln. cur. §. 111). It is the same one which Kircher, in his Itinerarium Estaticum, attributes to the waters above the heavens. By its nature it spreads everywhere, it is communicated, containing its own light, pellucid, and flowing into the sublunary things, by which, as if by some nourishment, they may live, extending their pores everywhere in the world.

To this opinion assent and credibility are given by Herr Nollius, from the Cabala and more secret philosophy, in Physica, l. 1, c. 2: ‘It is the same,’ he says, ‘as the water, by whose perpetual and continual influx all things below are animated and disposed to receive exaltation. First it communicates itself to the visible stars through the aether, through the aether to the waters and to the earth, etc.’

But I do not make this opinion my own; and I add the well-known saying of Petrus Palmarius (D. Paris. de Lap. philosoph. dogm. p. 64): ‘The heart of the world is the Sun, not the Eye. It pours out vivifying nectar (through the aether) into all things below.’

Therefore there exists some permanent substance, celestial, divine, most alien to any elementary concretion, which, joining itself to each one at its birth, adheres, so to speak, from outside, and accompanies it, through their dissolution, why should it not be drawn out?

It is founded in a tenacious subject, more or less, according to the condition of things. With it, it remains, departs, disperses, returns, recedes, is introduced, is extracted. For indeed it does not exist pure, stripped of every subject. As it is not born naked, so it is not extracted naked.

Then this celestial matter, of which we now speak, is called the spirit and soul of the world, by Avicenna and the Platonists: the dew of the night, the rarefied water of the day; the spirit of the invisible congealed, the seed of all things, the living spirit of all creatures, the celestial life, the universal spirit enclosed in all things and thickened through the air.

(Frid. Hoffmann, Methodus medica, l. 1, c. 19):
“The universal seed, the saline-sulphureo-mercurial spirit of nature, one substance with threefold power distinguished, is the next principle of all things.”

(Athanasius Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus, lib. 12, cap. 5, p. m. 332):
“Light, the balm of life, the vital mummy, natural heat, congealed moisture, the force and vigor of universal nature, the principle of motion, entelechy, the seed of the world, the water of the great ocean, the purest water of life, the universal fire, the chaos of nature and household spirit, from which vital heat and spirit proceed, as if from seed; the quintessence and mercury of life, besides a thousand other names.”

(Petrus Joh. Faber, in Compendium Secretorum Chymicorum, lib. 1, cap. 3; Damianus de Campis in Enucleatus Novus Lumen Chymicum; Michael Sendivogius, Tractatus de Sulphure):
“We may call it the spirituous balm of life and explain it likewise; if not Pansophy, yet certainly a Panphilosophy.”

It is called the Green Lion because of its strength, by which it can move and penetrate all things: which Trismegistus taught, by calling it so, in the Smaragdine Tablet, the strong strength of all strength.

It is called above also the Bird of Hermes, or rather the most universal Mercury, which, renowned under the name of dry water, in the common cemetery of the higher and lower world is encompassed for accomplishing the miracles of the whole world; and, hidden, it is called by Cosmopolita the food of our life.

For here, when duly received by light digestion, it reddens and prepares great restorations; and its virtue appears, if it be converted into earth, by the testimony of Hermes.
(D. Joh. Track in Epist. ad D. Joh. Dan. Majores Christ. insuff. p. m. 5.)

Here I could name several, who have frequently mentioned this radical Moisture of the World in their writings; of whose number surely we could not omit: Bernard G. Penotus; then Gerhard Dorn; Papinius in Dissert. de pulvere Sympathetico; Oswald Crollius in Basilica Chymica; Michael Sendivogius in the twelve treatises; Daniel Pechus; Johann Faber in Palladium Spagyricum; Hydrogrillus Spagyricus; Myrrheus Spagyricus; Hercule Pio-Chymicus in Compendium Secretorum Chymicorum; Cornelius Drebbel in De Natura Elementorum; Robert Fludd in De Fluctibus Coeli; de Vromantia; Caesar Ripa in his De Mundo Magico; Traianus in his Italian treatise; Johann Popp in Hodegus Chymicus; Olaus Borrichius in De Ortu et Progressu Chymiae; Johann Veremundus Rhunel in Basilica Chymica; Johann Rudolph Glauber in Pharmacopeia Spagyrica; Johann Ludwig Gottfried in Archontologia Cosmica, and others.

But a complete commentary on this matter was given by Johann Rohmannus, who wrote On the Soul of the World and the Spirit of the Universe.

There is also the book of Denis Nyssenius, written about the Universal Spirit of the World and the true Secret Salt of the Philosophers. Andreas Niterer likewise wrote on this same Spirit of the World, extracted from the air; as also Trautman in his De Caelo Terrestri; and Lavinus Moravus.

Therefore let the studious of this subject diligently read those volumes.

Lord Petrus Borellus, Cent. 1, Obs. 6, sub tit.: Curat. febr. malign. auro soluto curatæ, teaches the method of preparing a magnet, by which this essence may be drawn from the stars, distilled, and by it gold can be dissolved.

And, to add something of my own experience, it has now been almost a year, during seven [days], when with the aid of the Philosophical Magnet prepared from fixed Nitre, I was attracting some spirit or mercurial water out of the air, which, as the saying goes, being thickened, left behind phlegm, plainly insipid, like common water, extracted a red tincture out of Coral, and changed the color of it into white; the cause of which others may not rashly ascribe to anything but to the volatile salt of the air, which we assign as the reason.

Therefore, it is placed beyond all doubt that salt is the first body, through which the heavenly matter becomes tangible and visible. For it is indeed the Virgin Earth, which has not yet produced anything, into which the Spirit of the World is first converted through vitrification, that is, by attenuation of moisture. In this sense it was by no means wrongly considered by D. Joel Langelotius (in his Epistle to the Most Excellent of the Curious of Nature, p. 191), when he most rightly indicated the Salt of the air as the one and only true Catholic solvent, at least in my judgment.

Nevertheless, I think with Nollius: this divine treasure, lest it descend in vain and seem to humble itself, has imprinted its perfect image also upon some mineral withdrawn from the world, which the wise call Magnesia, and has so disposed it, that by the singular blessing of God, and through human industry and ingenuity, it can be brought forth with ease.

And indeed, to speak more plainly: the lower Aura coagulated, or Magnesia itself, our Nitre, or the Philosophers’ Salt, in which that aethereal substance most abundantly spreads itself. For there is absolutely no Salt which is more catholic than this; for Nitre is so diffused through the whole nature of things, and so active in the compositions and structures of mixed bodies, that it will be worth the labor of anyone who directs himself with the most careful thought to investigating its character.

Robert Boyle, the noble Englishman, in his Tentamina Physico-Chymica, expressly states: there is not among the number of Salts any which can be called living, save our Virgin Nitre alone; which, though previously destitute of life, has received it from the air itself. This is the most universal subject of the Philosophers, to which not only Mercury belongs, but in which golden Sulphur and the Salt of the World most abundantly reside.

But indeed, what is the value, I ask, of the contradictions of those who oppose? For I hear here: I regret these things from Joh. Rudolph Glauber, who proposes that novel opinion, so alluring in its first appearance, namely: That Nitre of the Philosophers is that very universal Mercury.

And he asserts it to be the universal menstruum. This, which for some time he maintained in his Miracle of the World, he afterwards exploded in his other writings, and began rather to ascribe all things to Antimony. For in his Secret Fire, p. m. 20, he expressly writes: Antimony is the Spirit of the World, and, like Alkahest, brings back the souls of the dead from Orcus; from it Pontanus’ and Artephius’ secret fire can also be made. Compare also his Proserpina, p. m. 49.

To these opinions I reply, that there is nothing in them which could offend, especially since they do not contradict one another. For as to the first, I am not deceived in believing that the metallic Spirit of the World lies hidden in antimony, whence the universal metallic Menstruum can be drawn forth. As to the latter, indeed it is admitted on page 91 of the Miraculum Mundi that Glauber was ignorant of the method of preparing the Philosophers’ Mercury from nitre. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the material ceases to be that from which the most universal Menstruum may be extracted, by whose benefit afterwards a universal metallic Menstruum may be prepared. Besides this, we still steadfastly affirm that common quicksilver, along with antimony, must be excluded from our work, and not without reason: the one on account of its impotence, the other because it has already passed into a metallic body, it is coagulated with its own internal sulphur.

That bodies themselves do not act into bodies is well known. Few, I know, will give credit to my words. But if, equally with philosophers, taught by experience, they knew how that kind of saltpetre is found in everything, and could be extracted from all the same by artifice, then to themselves as much as to ocular witnesses they would assuredly not deny belief. And that most precious salt, which is so lightly despised by the ignorant (being cheap only because it is so called by philosophers), they would not so lightly cast aside with filth, refuse, and dung, but would rather revere it as collected from the innermost parts of the world, most holy.

Although, according to Raimundus Lullius in De Quinta Essentia, Dist. 3, p. 95, objections may be raised, I wish to add this: though it is found in every element, as I have said, yet in some it is found so abundantly that it anticipates the life of man, before the Artist of this art has power to possess it when it has been abstracted, as is expedient. Indeed, it is said to exist in all things as the reason of the prime mover in natural things, which is called the vegetative spirit, by which our matter above all abounds.

Bernardus Penotus, in Apologia in Tract. Arist. p. 92.
Sendivogius in Tractatus de Sulphure, p. m. 185.
And Johannes Tackius in Chrysogei de Quinta Ess. viii, p. m. 32.

In the meantime, we cannot but marvel at that power and virtue, altogether stupendous, which the divine goodness of the world has bestowed, namely the Spirit and Salt of the world, adhering in the air. For in the world it is joined to thousands, and being drawn to subjects existing after the manner of a magnetic crowd, it does not alter them, however, but it brings it about effectively that what did not exist, now exists, and it makes it one with them, so that it acts uniquely. Which indeed is of such great value, that I myself have not yet seen it, nor do I think any who will penetrate it will ever see it.

One therefore, and that Universal one, standing from Hermes, we conclude the matter to be, as:
Thus, from this sea are born, all things are made.

But, lest I seem to amass the authorities of the Ancient Philosophers at this place and for this purpose only to strengthen these things we have said, for indeed it is permitted to believe whomever one wishes, I cannot refrain from bringing forth Basil Valentine, and this one indeed: thus he, in the book On the Things of Nature, last chapter, abundantly displaying the inward root of matter to the eyes, says:
‘This matter,’ he says, ‘is manifest to the eyes of all men. But because its virtue, its power and force, lie very deeply hidden, and are therefore unknown to most, it comes about that this matter is regarded and esteemed as nothing, even as unfit, through ignorance. Its name is called Hermes, who bears the flying serpent as his emblem, and has for his wife her who is called Aphroditia, who knows the hearts of all mortals: and yet all things are one, and one thing alone, and there is one single essence which is common to all mouths and known in all places. Anyone may grasp it with his hands and employ it for vile purposes. It is esteemed worthless and cast aside, though it is most precious and valuable. In sum, nothing else is (he says) besides water and fire; but earth with the addition of the aërial ether arises also, which conserves all things.’

Thus also does the same author, On the Great Philosophers’ Stone, Treatise, where at the end he explains what “All in all” is.

For indeed, you ask me: Who will teach me that by the word Hermes I ought to understand Nitre, as Valentinus indicated? I, however, to whom nothing ever seemed easier to establish, affirm this together with Schroderus. Allow me a little while, Reader, and—lest you weary of so small an effort—consult with me the same Schroderus, in the Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, book 1, chapter 23; and you will find among the names by which the ancients designated nitre, the word Hermes also set forth.

This material is that Virgin, to whom the name Urania, or the Terrifier of Heaven, is attributed; because although it be earth (that is, salt), yet it contains within itself the virtues of the heavens, and it possesses them, bound together by an indissoluble bond, of which it exhibits admirable operations to be seen.

If you still desire the genealogy of this matter, let P. Kircher satisfy you again, Tom. I. Mundi Subterranei Lib. 6. Sect. 2. c. 3. To this you may also add Quercetanus, in Pharmac. Spagyric. p. 578 seq. & L’Histoire de la Société Royale des Londrès, p. 2. post Sect. 39. p. m. 329. Willem Clarkius in Historia Naturali Nitri Lond. 1670. Johann Rudolph Glauber in Mirac. Mundi de Mens. Univ. Of the experiments, however, concerning the various and manifold parts of Nitre, read Tentamina Phys. Chym. of Robert Boyle, Nobilis Anglus, p. m. 181.

And what clearer proof could I adduce? Since in Paracelsus it is written: “To have discovered in Nitre Alchymiam” — most illustrious are surely the rays of the Sun. Nor does Geber err; the Stone, which is not a stone, which is found in the depths, that is the Philosopher’s Stone. Which was later affirmed by Dominicus Gnosus, a Belgian, in Herm. Trismeg. cap. 3. p. m. 167. Our Stone is the Salt of the Stone, by which the hardest metals are turned into the best and most perfect metal, and flint is transformed into the hardest adamant. And Peurius the Silent one says in the Opus Peurii de Silento: “Our Salt of Nitre is the best Mercury, see Theatr. Clem. Vol. 4. p. m. 117.”

Indeed, I know how much some attribute to the Salt of May Dew, to which even the very nativity of the Philosophical Nitre is believed to be owed. (This is held to be coagulated air, expressly called by Brother V. Manno the “Nothing” of the Philosophers.) Such a Salt, prepared with singular art by the English Knight Henshaw, when observed under the Microscope, equaled in the number and figure of its angles those of Nitre; as is reported by the English Ephemerides, and by the French, vol. 11, p. 23. Nay, it has been taught by Johann Baptist van Helmont, in De Imaginibus Fermentorum p. 73, that dew is indeed rich in sweet sugar. And from the Salt of May Dew (nay, even from rainwater itself), Johann Dienheinius prepared his universal medicine; and Borellus, with the same, dissolved gold radically by its spirit. To these we may add Detargus, who, in his treatise On Potable Gold, constantly asserts: that by means of this volatile Salt of May Dew he dissolved gold, just as ice is dissolved in warm water.

But, to confess the truth of the matter, in Germany one obtains it from dew in vain, for it contains less of the fruitful Salt of the World than in other regions, especially in Egypt. This is attested by P. Bellonius in Observations singulares et mémorables, book 2, chapter 77, and also by De la Chambre in his dissertation on the cause of the inundation of the Nile: in the dew, which the Egyptians call Gutta, there lies a fermenting power, which, when the mass is exposed to the air, ferments the Nile itself, or the nitre that is in the Nile. Likewise the Brazilian dew, according to the geographer Varenius, is fatter and much more impregnated with nitre than that of Europe, being also more fertile, more penetrating, and more tenacious, especially in summer. So also in the Faroese Islands, much fertility arises from snow, which carries nitre with it, as reported by Thomas Bartholin in Acta Medica & Philosophica Hafniensia, years 1671 and 1672, p. 87.

I, inserting my own opinion, freely profess this: our nitre, though encountered everywhere, however impure, is nevertheless most rich in celestial matter and is the true Catholic and miraculous subject—Salt; from which not only the universal Philosophic dissolving liquor, or the Spirit of Mercury, but also more closely may the Medicine of the wise ancients be prepared and composed. Meanwhile, it must be noted here:
Although from this water, by a strong fire, its spirit be drawn forth, mingling itself with that water and inhabiting it.

Yet that spirit, being thick and corporeal, or terrestrial, is not yet that most secret and life-giving spirit of heaven (whose Father is the fiery Sun and whose Mother is the moist Moon, according to our Hermes), But rather this is the elementary spirit, the habitation of that celestial one, which is soul and life, it is the life of all creatures and is so called, and here it most nearly bears the image of God.

Therefore, just as God dwells in a fiery essence and is a consuming fire, so also is this Spirit, which, as the soul giving life to all things, secretly dwells in a most ardent and fiery Spirit, and is likewise a fire consuming all earthly things, but purifying unto the highest heavenly things. And thus the water distilled from Nitre has three parts: the Body, which is water; that fiery, coarse, elementary Spirit; and finally the hidden soul, life-giving, which is incorporated into its due subject.

But those ignorant of this method, content themselves with the heavenly matter drawn from the air, and think they know it. However much, according to the testimony of Dom. Nimero and Hoffmann, the same substance, when circulated and distilled into Spirit, greatly comforts the heart, and cures fevers of all kinds and other diseases arising from foul impurities; yet it cannot accomplish what that most secret Spirit, whether drawn from the Aura or also extracted from its own Magnesia, achieves in the healing of diseases, to the wonder of all: unless it be joined to its own body, that is, to purest Salt, or to the Gold of the Aura, or even to metallic Gold itself. Concerning this matter we shall now, in the following, treat further.

Chapter 4.
On Gold in the Air.

It is clear, however, from acquired Philosophy and from the treasure of Nature, and it is agreed among all who have handed down to memory anything concerning Gold, that altogether three distinct kinds of it exist: the first Astral, then Elemental, and finally Metallic. Compare on this matter Johann Tackius, Triphasius, Medical Treatise on Gold, p. 11.

We, setting aside the latter two, will now speak only of the Astral. You will marvel at this, and not without reason, I know; therefore let us inquire, first, whether it is in the Aura — that is, in the higher air — and whence it may be discovered, and what the manner of attracting it may be. On this point, no writer (so far as I know) has yet explained anything by so much as a single word. But there is no need for lengthy digressions: attend closely, and I will instruct you briefly.

(1.) I considered that the most high Creator has especially placed in the Sun, which is as it were the Heart of Heaven, the virtue of manifold power, which is the invisible fire and life-giving heat, permeating all created things, in which all things, both celestial and terrestrial, are nourished and preserved in their being: indeed, that the Sun is the Father of the Spirit of the world, or of the heavenly matter, and even of the Universal Sulphur. For through its rays the Sun acts upon water, which it attenuates and, by attenuation, turns into air. Nor does it stop at this work, but proceeds further, turning aerial vapors into fire, warming them, continually cooking them, and thus transforming them into the most subtle nature, so that if native Sulphur (understand heat) is afterward ignited in water by Sulphur or the heat of the Sun, from the coagulation of this matter various kinds of fire arise. Thus common Sulphur was first water, whose nature was cold, which afterwards, circulating through the heat of the Sun, is turned into air, whose nature is hot and dry, with which the earth later tempers itself; and thus Sulphur is produced.

(2.) I knew that natural Gold is the Son of the Sun, since it is with the aethereal matter of the same nature, or rather nothing else than a celestial Matter, which first in a certain pure place assumed the nature of a body, before it was brought into perfect fixation. Raimundus Lullius, in his Treatise On the Invention of Works, has most elegantly composed its Genealogy. See now D. Johann Christoph Steeb, Elixir of the Sun and of Life, §7, in which nothing more learned is found concerning the Generation of the Sun.

(3.) I had come across in Sir Kenelm Digby’s Demonstration of the Immortality of the Soul, chap. 7, p. 62, the following passage: that by means of glass vessels, made in a peculiar manner and artfully arranged, the rays of the Sun, being collected, were precipitated into a powder of dusky color, or purplish inclining to red. To which he afterwards adds: No fraud could be present in this operation; for nothing was contained in the vessel before they were arranged; and it must also be performed in the hotter season of the year, that this effect may follow. By this operation, in a few days, nearly two ounces could be collected, etc. From all this I began to conjecture; although it seems strange, what the same Digby records in his Theatrum Sympathicum, p. 27: that Light is a material and corporeal substance; (to which opinion in Opere de Medici Ortu et Progressu, § Magnit. n. 7, Helmont not unwillingly agrees, and by luminous example sufficiently proves it. For what shines, certainly receives it from the Sun; and finally he adds: that light is truly a being existing outside of light itself.) If this, I say, is not too far from the truth, still it cannot be, but that some most excellent sulphur is contained therein, and is brought down to us through the air. For indeed Tackius, in his Genealogia Auri, affirms:

Treatise on Gold: That Spirit, which daily we draw in together with the air, to our greatest benefit, is most abundantly contained in that red Tincture. For in the Sun is the most excellent of all Balsams, free from all corruption; and if you shall know how to extract it from the Sun and to apply this Balsam to man, you will obtain the noblest medicine of all. Henricus Nollius, in Prodromus Physicae Hermeticae, book 6, cap. p. 37. With whom I then began to conclude: The heat of the Sun, or its Balsam, by the benefit of its rays, is imparted to inferior bodies. But if by means of a Magnet you can seize it and draw it forth, you will acquire a treasure a thousand times more precious than gold and silver, to whose strength all diseases are compelled to yield. In this opinion Oswaldus and even Crollius in the Preface to his Basel Chemistry Admonitions agree: "To those wishing to bring man’s life to the highest health, it will be necessary to seek not the Elemental Sun, but that celestial heat of the Sun and Moon, dwelling in a more incorruptible substance, discoverable beneath the globe of the Moon; this, being similar to our own heat or spirit, when it has been prepared, becomes both medicine and the sweetest food."

When I had thus prescribed these things to myself and gone over them beforehand in my mind, I then began further to descend into this consideration: namely, whether not,

(4.) The Magnetism, which I spoke of, especially in the air during the times of the equinox (when the air seems to overflow with ethereal and balsamic atoms), attracts that celestial matter in a moist form; does it not also, through the aura, attract from the solar rays the golden Sulphur in a dry form?

Therefore, supposing this fire, of which we have already spoken many times, to be the Magnet, and that under a clear sky, in the freest air, immediately it began to act and to operate with what it had drawn in. By so many experiments and labors was that Gold of the Aura sought out and established.

This, therefore, I call the Solar Balsam, or the Vivifying Sulphur, drawn by the power of the universal magnet from the air, preserving health above all, wonderfully protecting and defending both the parts and the humors of our body from corruption and putrefaction.

For this sulphur, without doubt, emanates and flows forth from the heavenly Sun (that golden fountain of light and vital vigor), and then one dared to call it Gold, with the torch borne by Horeulanus, the Philosopher; who wrote commentaries on the Tabula Hermetis and through the Sun [understood] Gold.

Philosophical gold is meant: which is indeed called the father of the Stone, and truly so.

Nor, in this lower coagulated aura, i.e. in our nitre, will your attempt to seek Hermetic gold succeed. For this Universal subject rejoices in its internal redness (which you may call its life) drawn from the air. Indeed, the salt of nitre is spiritual and philosophical gold, and it is the King himself, from whom the strength, fortune, and health of vulgar gold depend, as Basil the philosopher argues. This gold of the aura, or the Sulphur of the Philosopher, is the innate heat of Mercury, never separable from it; by this Mercury alone it acquires maturity and perfection. But these two are embodied in the purest salt itself, in which they have been enclosed and imprisoned, and are signed into the true Hermetic Sulphur, i.e. red and permanent Sulphur; which at last, being perfected and brought to its due number, is an absolute work for all.

Chapter 5.
On the Universal Magnet, drawing Gold from the Air.

Many have devised many ways by which the Spirit, or (as we recalled in Chapter 3) the Salt of the World,

1. might be obtained from the upper air. Some, as far as I can judge, pursued this superstitiously and too diligently; yet for others who walk the middle path, it may be safer to follow.

There is in my possession an old manuscript, once communicated to me by a certain German, Ludovicus Gohifridus Othmarus. In it, the author — whoever he was — asserts among other things, that if it were a game, this celestial matter could be gathered through a boy of most excellent beauty, of twelve, or at most sixteen years of age, in open places filled with the sweetness of odors and facing the rising Sun; and by drawing in the air with the mouth, and then exhaling it into some ample glass vessel, the soul or spirit might thus be collected, which Basil Valentine very aptly hinted at in his Image of the Key 5.

How wondrous and rare indeed is that instrument, which, in the likeness of a cucurbit, is made from the porous bone of a whale (the method of preparing it is described in Phoenice Philosophica, written by J. R. H. Johan. Ris­tius, from the communication of D. Joach. Morsii Bibliothec.). It will without doubt attract spirit by magnetic force, if filings of steel, reduced to powder with flints, and extract from river crabs with their juice, are first properly macerated.

But there are also the observations of another Anonymous, which must now likewise be produced. He orders it to be enclosed in glass, into which sometimes crystalline drops of summer fall, mixed with ammoniac salt, large in size; for in the future, as if by magnetism, these draw out the salt from the air, adhering outwardly to the glass placed near it. If here liquefied silver is injected, and from it, impregnated with the same metal, a globe with a stopper is made, then if you already extract air from the enclosed globe with the mouth, you will have, he says, a suitable instrument, by which, in the form of water, you may draw forth the Spirit of the World.

Now we must also call in Ortelius, who, in Michael Sendivogius’ Lumen Chymicum p. 43, says that he saw hydraulic globes of various sizes made from gold, silver, brass, or orichalcum, by which, without delay, in a heated hypocaust, the coldest water of nature, very rare in power and quality, could be drawn in, and returned with the mark of its tendency.

Let Barnerus succeed, whose method here is: Glass pear-shaped, closed at the tip, but at the base open with a not-large hole, filled with finely compressed ice or snow, exposed to the solar rays, especially under the Dog Star (Canicula), when the heat of the Sun is more intense, thus the nitrous salt clings to the sides through sympathy, as reported by D. I. D. Porz in Analom. Chym. Vin. Rhen. p. m. 5. That wild thing (fera), by some called the Bird of Hermes, being exposed in a parabolic mirror to the rays of the Sun, is captured and itself tamed. Some also smear the edge of a concave mirror with a certain magnetic substance. Moreover, when air is committed to the free and dry night, the Salt of Nature could in the morning be scraped off with a feather without difficulty.

Also peculiar is the making of a bronze vessel, in the form of a flame, by which, especially if you place within it a sponge with marble, it is thought possible, as Stæricius believes, to draw and capture even the air itself. These matters are too lengthy to be repeated here. Therefore, one must consult that treasury of heroes, as he himself calls it, and the authors to be consulted therein.

Most well-known through Germany is Burrus, a knightly man, who is said to have caught water from the air in the following manner: He took a glass vessel, open at the top like a dish, and below gradually narrowing to a point and closed. Into this glass he placed a large quantity of quicksilver, or ice, as D. Frid. Hoffmann reports in his Opus de Methodo Medica, book 1, chapter 19. Then, putting another vessel beneath the lower point as a receiver, he placed the whole in the height of summer within a deep cavern of the earth; and by this action, from the coldness of the quicksilver (or ice), the warm air, dissolved into water, flowed down through the sides of the glass and began to drip into the vessel set beneath.

But what further? If you take blackened, calcined flints while still hot, and expose them to the air, they will draw in moisture most abundantly once barriers are removed. This moisture, distilled through a retort and again exposed to the air for renewed attraction, when saltpeter is dissolved and coagulated in it, acquires such great strength in its coagulated form that it will thunder (detonate) twice or even three times more powerfully than before impregnation — though the process must often be repeated. (D. Friedrich Hoffmann, Dissertation on the Method of Healing, p. 267).

We have learned of two men in London in the year 1658, and also Kißler, who, by means of a burning mirror, calcined flints with the rays of the Sun; these flints, placed in a funnel exposed to free air on a height, either mountain or tower, attracted, by magnetic virtue, a most abundant water from the air — red before the rising of the Sun, but when the Sun had risen, white. This experiment was communicated in writing by Dr. Friedrich Clodius to Johann Morian of Arnheim, on April 20, 1658, from which we received a principal excerpted account.

Fabricius Bartholetti invented the Pneumatolabium (of which I also have a depiction). The lower glass tube of this instrument must be buried in a heap of snow. Then, the breath of a healthy and well-nourished man, taken in through one nostril and not exhaled, but introduced either through a glass artery or by simple contraction of the chest, is to be drawn into it. Thus, having been introduced through glass circuits, the breath, by a cold artifice, is distilled into water.

This water, when placed in an open glass vessel and left under the open sky, evaporates slowly and condenses into whitish crystals, like scattered hairs. See the said Bartoletti, Book on Dyspnoea.

Concerning the Martial Chamber attracting fire, consult the law cited by Joh. Christoph. Steeb, Elixir of the Sun and of Life, §42.

Another method is reported by Eglingius. He placed a huge glass retort on hot ashes, carefully tending it with bile. After some time, there appeared within something like a dense drop. But when the vessel was kept tightly closed, and for many days and nights in a bath of Mary, it yielded a tenuous liquid of quicksilver throughout an entire week.

It is reported, and even within our own memory, that there was someone, as Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsman relates in Taaut. p. 71, who with an animated machine sought to compare Mercury to himself.

You will not be offended, Reader, if I here briefly note something concerning the globe (sulphurous), which I myself last year prepared according to the prescription of the learned Otto von Guericke, Father and Consul of Magdeburg.

This globe is endowed not with one virtue alone: for besides the fact that it possesses impulsive and conservative force, and also expulsive, sonorous, and calefactive, and moreover luminous power, it has also this peculiar property: that when, in a cold sky, a moist breeze is drawn to it, if seized with both hands, it emits the greatest crash, as though about to burst.

From these methods, which we have already mentioned more than once, let the fair-minded reader judge which of them ought to be preferred. For they are not so set forth individually that they commend themselves equally to all. But as for myself, if I must now freely declare what I think, and without prejudice, I would say this much: as far as concerns the true Universal Magnet, I should not object if some noble Pole, Sendivogius, be given the first place. Or perhaps more truly, Sethonius, who seems entirely to affirm it in the New Light of the Chemists. To him also I do not deny credit, when he writes in his riddle, appending these words: Air is the matter of the ancient Philosophers. This is the water of our dew, from which is extracted the Philosophers’ saltpetre, by which all things grow and are nourished. And this is our Magnet, which in the preceding I have said is steel. Note well: Air generates the Magnet. But the Magnet generates, or makes manifest, our air.

For we know by chemical doctrine that Salt is produced in all parts of the world by the natural heat of the world itself, which, while it acts upon its own moisture, consuming it so that it may be nourished thereby, dries up the moisture itself; and what is dried up in the natural moisture itself is Salt, the natural and essential principle of any thing whatsoever, since nothing cannot be resolved into it. By this method and reasoning I have learned that in Salt, as though in a universal spirit made earthly, there is a certain incombustible element, or the hidden element of fire, which has the same operations as the primal fire.

Hence, the transmutation of Vegetables into Minerals is by no means impossible; just as indeed both Vegetables and Minerals are produced from one and the same fermental principle, only according to different dispositions. This was shown and confirmed by necessary experiments by Mr. Philip Taldacci of the House, General Prefect of Military Architecture for the Kingdom of Bohemia, in his Physico-Metallurgical Observation, as reported by Mr. Philip Sachs of Lewenheim in the Schola ad Observationes III, Miscellanea Curiosa, Year 2. For Vegetables do not differ from Minerals, except that the former are more volatile, while the latter are more fixed and most fixed, like the Sun and the Moon. (Georg Horn, Arca Mosis, p. 29).

From all these things I now conclude: if the outward form of any body whatsoever be mortified, and then reduced to that universal form which is saline, it becomes a Magnet, which is nothing else but fixed Salt, or Alkali, purified to the highest degree.
Moreover, just as all salts may be converted, by fire and air, into ardent Nitre: indeed, even Nitre itself, its ardent life being taken away by fire, perpetually regains it again from the air. Thus also, as it were, being the royal offspring of the Sun, if it also be the Egyptian Bird of the Sun, it is the best of all. If it were my choice, I would judge that matter to be the subject, from which, by the help of powdered charcoal, or even by itself, it may most perfectly be obtained. Yet although I do not esteem calcined ashes as preferable, neither do I think them altogether inferior, whose power is manifest, and which I even judge to be already a fire in themselves, above all.

It is certain, therefore, that after fusion and purification, these can be converted into the purest and most shining Salt. Indeed, I myself can testify to this, having experienced it not once, that in no long time it is naturally changed, by the benefit of air, into Nitre. For all Alkalis seem in a certain manner to represent the type of the Philosophers’ Chaos, in which, they say, their Mercury is revived; concerning which Tachenius, ad Hippocratem Chymicum, p. 60, has written regarding Tartaric Alkali.

And such magnetic salts as these, reduced to a universal form, draw not only from the air the most pleasant-tasting water, in which are the Spirit and Salt of the world, but also from that mineral which I mentioned above from Hesse, and from Piemontese Magnesia, Antimony, common Sulphur, carbons both ordinary and bituminous, etc. They yield the purest tincture, and not alien from that very thing which we especially intend, namely Gold, or Sulphur, which is daily brought to us through the benefit of the rays of the Sun.

Neither is the inferior Aura, that is, Nitre, one that only brings forth Gold; but our universal and most perfect Magnet is likewise this, which, from the air with the (1) superior and the (2) inferior — that is, from itself — attracts the hidden Hermetic Gold. For this reason the same Magnet is called “Golden” by Basil, because (3) to it alone, of all metals, must be ascribed dissolution, coagulation, and fixation, and not to any other.

Indeed, the commentary of most, so far as we know, is veiled in their coverings and is little accessible on this matter. We shall strive for clarity, as far as is permitted, and delay the reader with nothing unworthy; for what is unworthy, we shall scarcely concern ourselves with. For God, who is the avenger, we firmly trust, will either cause that he who reads shall not understand, or if he shall understand, and then wish to apply what he has learned, he will use it with less happiness.

Therefore, (first) in Nitre in general there exists a notable and remarkable force, which makes it so that it is not merely Magnesia alone, as Sendivogius says in his Fourth Treatise, but even a Magnet, and already Steel itself is called by the same name, with no distinction being made [Tract. 6. & in the Epilogue]. For it arises originally from a certain stony or fossil Salt, which itself is a Magnet, that is, an attractor. It is also born from an aerial and fiery salt, which, in comparison, is like iron and steel to it, and it draws them to itself.

The witnesses are not only the mines from which Nitre is dug, but also certain rocky places where it is likewise generated. I too can give my own testimony, if it is necessary to add credibility. For not long ago, when from a certain martial stone, which Hayne himself had dug up, I extracted a certain fiery Nitre, and that in great abundance, which when dissolved and coagulated flowed in the air, not unlike yellow oil. This kind, spontaneously efflorescing in certain rocks and stones, is called Aphronitrum; as Encelius notes (De re metallica, book 2, chap. 1), nor has Andreas, nor Cesalpinus in De metallis (book 1, chap. 20), passed it over in silence.

There was also found from the Spirit of Nitre, in the form of a non-corrosive Salt, a volatile Magnet for me, in the making of which a peculiar earth was employed. In attracting from the air the spirit of the World, nothing gave a clearer testimony. Nor was it permitted at other times that the same phenomenon should be displayed internally. This occurred in the year of our Lord 1673, on the 15th of September, at the eleventh hour of the night, at full moon.

When my Magnet, which had been poured forth, as I said, after midday that day, was exposed to the air, after precisely three hours it completely effused itself, and in exact correspondence with a Circle, with a margin and a notable white orbicular form, it assumed a shape [see Plate XI, Fig. 1].

A very hard body, of yellow color, resembling a star, was distinguished within by rays. Shortly after, three others accompanied it, having the same character, form, color, all the same, except that they were smaller. Two others also, unequal to these in size, were observed after nearly so many hours had passed. At length the smallest one followed.

It was, compared with the former ones, very similar in form. The difference among these objects was that they were soft and yielding in substance. By night, these seven bodies like stars, joining together into one vast mass, had hardened, yet in such a way that the figures of four of them, larger ones indeed, with their own rays, could be discerned, as if you were looking upon circles.

After this, the Magnet began to draw in the Spirit of the World. In nearly two days, it was entirely converted into a yellowish Oil. What you see here was indeed the phenomenon. There appears also a double circle (worthy in both respects, to which Basil Valentine, in his Tractatus de Magno Lapide, prefixed to his schema, took care to insert with equal right the inscription: “THE WONDERS OF NATURE!”).

Thus there exists, I say, this double Circle of Salt, which in ancient times was noted only by a simple signature.

But now let us also consider the other point which we proposed to ourselves: namely, this most universal Magnet attracts, both from itself and within itself, hidden, the Hermetic Gold, and is made together with the red Sulphur, permanent.

For in it, inseparably joined, are three: the 🜔 Salt, 🜍 Sulphur, and Mercury (☿), united by the Philosophers’ covenant. These alone, through perpetual coction, are fixed and coagulated. Indeed, the 🜔 Salt is the central principle, while 🜍 Sulphur and Mercury (☿) are the attracting forces, by which perfection is achieved.

Thirdly: This most universal Magnet and matter is called that from which the Liquor Alkahest of Paracelsus and Helmont may be prepared; which is the pure fire of Nature, not elementary, but wholly celestial and central and incorruptible, reducing all things, without diminishing its own power, into the first matter of things, and truly dissolving, with scarcely any dregs left behind.

Those who prepare the Alkahest institute a different path from ours, seeking aid from the mineral, animal, and also the vegetable kingdom; with the fixed and volatile salts of these (Tartar, Sal armoniac etc.) combined with our mineral acid 🜔 Salt and distilled into liquor. But what need is there of infinite wanderings, when you can proceed rightly? Why weary yourself with labors which you may set aside? You have, if you desire, a subject catholic—that is, universal—dominating broadly in the mineral, vegetable, and even the animal realms, and in all these kingdoms.

Although, if we wish to credit the ancients, it is not such, but rather the matter of meteors, and indeed of minerals, and in a certain sense the nourishment of all vegetables and animals alike. This is the reason why, when preparing our Menstruum, we embrace, as it is said, τῶν ἀμφῶν ("of both"), the same thing. This is that one thing, or the Hermetic Monad; the Spirit of Wine of Arnold; the Lunaria, The Spirit of Lullius; the immortal Liquor, the Universal Solvent; the Arcanum of Fire, the Fire-Water of Helmont; the Mercurial Fire-Water of Rovoltascius; the Blood of Albert’s Dragon; the Saturnine Water and Mercurial Spirit of Basil; the most sharp Vinegar; the Milk of the Virgin; Pontic Water; the dry Water of Sendivogius; the Water of Paradise of Isaac Hollandus; the Alkahest of Martin Ruland, Michael Toxites, and Paracelsus; the Aetherial Stone (that is, in gasified water) of Conrad Khunrath; the Water of Life, not of the vine, of Dom. de Nuysement; the First Being of Flamellus from Abraham the Jew; and without doubt the Mercurial Oil of Salt putrefied and distilled in the Alembic, and sealed Hermetically in the Tomb of Semiramis.

The author, whoever he was, preferred that his book remain hidden until this very day. Yet wishing this sacred matter to belong to the renowned Academy of the Curious of Nature, he has bound to himself, together with all his colleagues, the most celebrated men, and me myself, with great devotion. For which reason, and in this name, I publicly confess my greatest gratitude to him. And I shall seem to myself to have obtained the highest fulfillment of my wish, if—as I foresee it will happen—this grace, together with my name, shall attain to honor and remembrance.

Indeed, he rejects (in chapter 1) the intermediate minerals, and especially Nitre; yet it could have been, if one were more fair, that he understood it as crude and common. Moreover, since they themselves confess (in chapter 9) that it was our Water, in mineral potency, it can be nothing other than the first Ens of salts.

For the Salt of Nature, from which mineral Nitre, as a universal or catholic Salt, has its origin, is to me the Nitre which, above, has been called Virgin’s Salt. Nor do I disagree with Helmont, to whom even the Alkahest first consisted in the Ens salium (Tractatus de Medicina, p. 322). Likewise, the highest and most blessed of salts: the power of the Spirit. Moreover, an Anonymous author calls his liquor the Philosophical Fire; in chapter 6, and in chapter 7 he calls the Menstruum fiery, and in my opinion rightly so. For Helmont himself also, who (loc. cit. p. 481) says that Geber’s fire is needed. But Salt, according to Alphidius, is nothing other than Fire, and Fire is nothing other than Sulphur, and Sulphur is nothing other than Mercury. And especially in our Nitre there is the greatest heat, that is, an infernal Spirit, than which nothing hotter is given in the whole of nature — as Basil testifies.

But if indeed the most noble Author, whom we have so often praised, should intend something different, beyond expectation, and perhaps Tartar (which many call the Mercurial Salt), then truly I would not alter anything concerning this subject, which I have undertaken to defend. Nevertheless (with due respect to so great a man), I wish to know whether he himself elaborated from that matter of his the Alkahest, and by its power accomplished those things of which he speaks regarding its virtues — for he preferred to pass over all these in silence.

If this be so, I rightly congratulate such boldness, counting myself fortunate in some part, that I may follow here such a Teacher. If not, I shall still deem myself to have obtained no small praise, if I shall understand that some fruit from our work in this matter has flowed back to him.

But what especially amazes me is that he kept complete silence on the manner by which that most noble juice ought to be prepared. In this respect it will appear to some that he did not even tread in the footsteps of the Ancients. For to his disciples (whom he exhorted constantly) he gave indeed the akríton (τὸ ἀκρίτον — “the unrefined” or “the undistinguished”), a certain seasoning, but not too much. Among those, at present, occurs Basil Valentine, whom alone we cannot deny to have followed up these most evident matters.

I cannot, nor indeed ought I, deny that one has pursued these matters most clearly. For thus, as I said, in the Fifth Key: “The first matter, in the beginning of our work, must be most excellently and perfectly purified; then, without any addition or mixture, it must be dissolved, destroyed, and reduced into ashes and powder; from which afterwards the volatile Spirit must be expelled — white as snow; and yet another volatile Spirit, red like blood, which contains in itself a certain third, and they are together but one Spirit, which bestows strength and life, etc.”

To this I shall add the companion Sendivogius, who likewise in his Tractatus de Sulphure says: “The alchemist saw a fountain full of water, around which the 🜔 Salt and 🜍 Sulphur were walking, contending with one another, until at last they began to fight; and the Salt inflicted upon the Sulphur an incurable wound, from which wound, in place of blood, there flowed water like the purest milk,” etc.

Why I should be wearied with such examples, there is no reason. Therefore, I shall annex some matters relevant to this subject in the following chapter.

Chapter 6.
On the Method of Attracting Gold from the Aura

The philosophers were pleased to call the King of Metals, Gold, the Sun, because the visible rays of the Sun, infinitely dispersed, were invisibly gathered together in the one body of Gold. This effluence of the Sun, Sacred Scripture seems to call “the fatness” or “the flower distilling of the Sun” (Deuteronomy 33:14).

Indeed, there are extant various writings of the authors concerning the Sulphur of the terrestrial Sun; but those who write of the method of attracting it from the first source, namely from the Aura filled with the rays of the Sun.

I do not remember anyone having uttered a single word on this matter — whether perhaps from ignorance, or, as one may suspect, from envy. And although some, at various times, have devised and taught peculiar methods for acquiring Magnet from the air, we deny this to none; yet we have not yet seen anyone who has treated by reason of the universal Sulphur, from which nothing can be dispensed with, or who has communicated anything about it to the learned world. Except for one: D. Fabre of Montpellier, whose words we wish to read here, from his Hydrographia Spagyrica, chapter XIV. In these, he clearly declares his opinion, when he says: “In the fountain of the chemists there is a fixed part, red and white, in a twofold difference; the red, which is the Philosophers’ Gold, and the white, which is their Silver.”

However, he seems here to wish to derive his fountain from two substances having the nature of Salt, though sprung from one and the same root. (See chapter XIII.) In this respect, we cannot agree with him, and rightly reject the opinion which he cherished. For we lack nothing in Nollichius, since Heat and the Balsam of the Sun can be comprehended by the created Magnet. (in Prodromus Physicae Hermeticae).

For what could have been said more openly, without any obscurity? Yet either he was entirely ignorant of the Magnet and the manner of attracting it, or, as is the case with most who are most retentive of their secrets, he did not wish to reveal it to the common crowd.

I myself too might have done the same, and kept this discovery shut up within my papers, and entirely suppressed it. But this was not my way, since it is proper and customary for me to serve others; moreover, zeal and an earnest desire of stirring others up to the same pursuit, together with a not inconsiderable striving, have compelled me to impart it. For often did I revolve in my mind the clever remark of Gallianus: “He who wishes to speak what no one can understand, achieves a great thing—if he keeps silent.”

Therefore, in order to attract the Gold of the Hermetic Aura from the higher aura, prepare for yourself that white and most pure Magnet, of which the preceding chapter, if you wish, will speak. Then let there be four bricks well-baked, within which the Crucible is placed that contains it; let it be restrained with fire applied, under a clear sky, lest it collapse.

When this is done, that Magnet, which I mentioned, will in a very short time revive, as it were, and begin to move, and within the space of about a hundred minutes you will see it attracting from the Aura the golden Sulphur, which I call the Gold of the Aura. Within and without the Magnet it will show a vivid heat, and at its height; but afterwards, when it has cooled, it assumes a blue color, such as is often seen in rainbows. This is wont to happen not without the greatest astonishment of those who behold it.

Moreover, for those willing to experiment, it will not be useless to make use of certain aids, both in properly disposing the Magnet and especially in managing the fire suitably. These matters, indeed, are described with more labor than they are exhibited. Yet if you yourself apply your hand, following as it were a guide, with the instructions we have given you thus far, you will certainly discover the means and arrive there by a much easier path than we ourselves, when we penetrated into the very fortress of the Method.

As to the attraction from the lower Aura, namely our Nitre, the lower Hermetic Gold: we have already noted above that the Magnet is not only a subject in itself, but also contains within itself Hermetic Gold. Since this is the case, the Magnet, that is, the body of the purest Salt, is no longer lacking its Spirit, in which the Hermetic Gold lies hidden, having the power to attract and retain it. By repeated conjunction and attraction with these volatile things, at last the true Liquor Alkahest will be distilled, and there is no reason for uneasiness.

This very thing, which we are about to set forth, Trismegistus teaches in these words: “In this the lower ascends to heaven, and the higher again descends to the earth, and so it has the power to penetrate and subdue all that is subtle and all that is gross.”

Here again Basil must be called to our aid. For what else is that volatile and whitish Spirit, like snow itself, mentioned in the Fifth Key, if not a certain sublimated Salt? And what is the red volatile Spirit, if not the very Spirit of Nitre itself, which, when it is distilled, passes over resembling a crimson vapor?

Nor does Lullius contradict this in his Experiments, where, under the veil of volatile Salt of Tartar, he most fully handed down this operation. In a single word: “In our magistery we first make the coarse subtle, that is, from body Spirit, from moist dry, from water earth, and thus we convert the natures and make the higher things lower and the lower higher, and that happens when Spirit is made body, and conversely body is made Spirit.”

Thus, I conclude and firmly believe that the Liquor Alkahest is prepared most richly if Nitre (or that matter of ours, purified with the greatest diligence), being regenerated in a peculiar manner, and again and again rectified with its spirit, be united in a definite quantity, purified, and distilled in a Bath; then cohobated and sublimed; then with a new Spirit again cohobated, and by repeated cohobations, until, like butter, it becomes coagulable when cold, and a milky water is produced, and at last distilled and rectified.

But these things are by no means easy to perform, and they require a skilled and most distinguished Philosopher. On this matter the words of Johannes Baptista van Helmont, in his Tractatus de Ortu Medicinae (p. 5), must be held closely: “Since the Liquor Alkahest is of the most tedious preparation, no one, even if skilled in the art, will arrive at its completion, unless the Most High has led him to it by a special gift.”

Moreover, and especially for this reason, our Menstruum may be called the most universal Magnet, because, along with the Sun (☉), it attracts all other metals, dissolves them radically without violence, and above all desires union with the perfected metals alone.

Chapter 7.
On the Time of Attracting the Gold of the Aura

The author, in his books On the Threefold Life, Marsilius Ficinus, Canon of Florence (who kept in his chamber only an image of Plato, and before it continually suspended a burning lamp day and night — as Hatting reports in Dryas Ecclesiastica, ch. 12, p. 75), insists very strongly on this point: in conciliating the celestial influences, whether for the matter of metals, or of herbs, etc., above all the Moon must be considered: whether it is in its proper mansion, suitable to the desired work, and in a sign and aspect favorable to that grace which you are striving and hoping to obtain.

Then, that the Sun be joined in a benign aspect with the Moon, and in the house of that Planet, and in a favorable aspect of that grace whose influence you seek to procure. And so forth.

Moreover, P. Schott (in Technica Curiosa, book 9, prop. 26) intends to apply chronometric instruments to a Spagyric Index, in order to determine the times suitable for choosing Hermetic matter.

Nor should I pass over in silence this also, which not long ago, I was secretly communicated as an Enigma, containing this sentence: Question: What kind of Animal?

In the northern region of the sky, there is seen an Animal marked by seven bright stars among others, which has correspondence with a terrestrial being of the same nature. Let it be taken, when Mars is in the house of the Sun, and its daughter be nourished with the blood of her brothers; each being in its proper domicile, that it may grow: and this when the Sun is in the house of Mars. This maiden is then submerged by her sister dwelling in her own mansion, according to the maternal celestial signature by number.

But we hold it a matter of reverence not to expose this scruple alike to the ears of both the worthy and the unworthy, and so profane it, but rather to keep it veiled; for whoever the author was, he certainly wished to conceal a secret of no common kind, and of the greatest importance.

Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from saying, along with Galileo Galilei, noble Florentine, in his Novantiquae Sanctorum Patrum (p. 56): “I do not believe it will be far from sound philosophy to say that the Sun, as the greatest minister of Nature, and in a certain way the soul and heart of the world, infuses into the other bodies which surround it not only Light, but also Motion.”

For Alexander Vincentius, in De Coeli influxu in sublunaria (ch. V), has proved with many arguments that the heavens exert influence not only through light but also through motion. And above all, Dionysius the Areopagite, in the book On the Divine Names, has more fully described the wonderful power and energy of the Sun.

Therefore the Sphere of the Sun excites a vivifying heat in two ways: first indeed, and principally, by the Sun itself, the greatest of the stars, illuminating all things with its rays; then also by its perpetual and continuous motion, by which it disperses and separates enclosed bodies.

Nevertheless, although the upper Aura or Air is daily kindled by the Sun, from which the Light that makes the day takes its rise, it is far more subtle than that which is kindled from the water of life (Petrus Borellus, Observationes Medico-Physicae, 3). Yet the heat of the season does not always prevail in the same way (for in Autumn and Winter it almost languishes and is extinguished; but in Spring and Summer it grows and is intensified). Still, the cause of heat is believed today to lie not so much in the celestial sign, as in the nearness and vertical position of the Sun above our heads.

Then, the solar Sulphur — or Gold of the Aura — is drawn most abundantly when the Sun enters Cancer, or Virgo, or, best of all, Leo, at whatever time, whether morning, midday, or any other.

That this is so, I can prove again by my own example, if the matter so requires. On the 10th of March in the year 1673, when the Sun entered Aries, I placed my Magnet as usual, and I scarcely found so much as a trace, as they say, or vestige of the Green Lion, and it scarcely changed at all from its original color, which had been white at the beginning. Yet, though it had been tamed by fire for nearly two hours. On the 29th of the same month I repeated the same experiment and obtained a greater force of the Gold of the Aura.

From this, who would not perceive how much importance for this matter is brought both by the brightness of the day and the warmer part of the year.

2. But concerning the Time of attracting the Gold of the lower Aura, this must be noted: it is of great importance when the purest saline body attracts the Spirit of Nitre. Yet, lest anything should hinder their union, the dregs must be separated. This you will obtain more correctly if the work of putrefaction and sublimation is undertaken in Springtime, that is, in moderate heat. For the Spring season is suitable for sublimation: Plato, Commentary on the Timaeus, book 3, § nunc erit. To this operation a minimum of two months, or even more time, must be devoted.

But at what time of the cooking of the Liquor or of our Magnet should Gold or Silver be added to it? It is thought fitting, and is considered to contribute not a little, to be the beginning of the concoction. For in these perfected metals there are rays touching both the red and the white 🜍 Sulphur, which are also found in our Mercury (☿). For one is always the Magnet of the other, and remains dissolving with the dissolved, on account of the likeness of their substance.

And just as the most ancient of the Philosophers, both in the beginning and in the middle, always had regard to universality, but only in the end determined the Universal to a particular purpose destined: so, from the sole liquor Alkahest, we constantly affirm that the Philosopher’s Stone can be made, which shall cure diseases; and at last it is connected and mingled with vulgar Gold, not that it may be perfected, but that it may be directed to its final purpose from Gold, but so that Gold may be perfected by our Stone itself, made fruitful and rendered as an egg, in order that it may generate its like and propagate its progeny into infinity.

On this matter, the treatise of Petrus Johannes Fabri, Counselor and Physician to the King of France, may not unprofitably be read (which he dedicated, as a gift to Frederick, Duke of Holstein, on the 15th of May, in the year of Our Lord 1653), especially chapters 12 and 30. Yet I remain doubtful whether this writing, of which perhaps no other copy exists, and therefore most rare, has ever seen the light.

Chapter 8.
On the Cohorts of the Gold of the Aura

Among other things, they have called the Philosopher’s Green Lion their most universal Matter. Moved by this, many of the Chemists seized upon the subject which, from its outward color and greenness itself, they sought. Some, with eager eyes and hands, seized upon that green foam, appearing in early Spring when the waters do not flow. This little Bird (so called by Basil Boaz) and the Adamic Earth they chose to name. From it they prepared the volatile Spirit, the volatile 🜔 Salt, or the foul oil of the sister — that is, the Matter of the Philosopher’s Stone.

Dr. Christoph Bauzmann, Physician in Ordinary to his government at Bremen, communicated to me the image of a certain vessel, covered at the top and filled with rainwater. By means of two bellows, which were entirely fitted to it, at noon, in the hottest part of the day, when the Sun had entered Leo, a certain most pure and fatty substance, and of a green color (which Bauzmann himself considers to be the Gold of the Aura, and in which he believes the greatest importance lies), was attracted from the air.

But since I have not yet made trial of it, I do not dare to insert here my own judgment. Meanwhile I preserve it as an experiment of that work, together with the process which, though not given to me entirely as a gift by that most eminent man, was nevertheless entrusted to me in part.

If we are to believe Heinrich Khunrath, he reported in the Theatrum Aeternae Sapientiae (p. 147) that he encountered the Green Lion, which is universal, and its blood — that is, not vulgar Gold. He declared that he had seen it with his own eyes, handled it with his hands, even tasted it with his tongue, and finally perceived the Gold of the Wise by its odor.

I also affirm, and claim by my right, the same concerning the Gold of the higher Aura, or the Green Lion. O blessed Greenness, circling through the whole universe, whose center is everywhere, but whose circumference is diffused through all the abysses of nature!

Nor will Johannes Agricola deny this either, I think, for in his Commentary on Popper (p. 15) he wrote thus: “This Viridity is most sharply converted into our Gold.” Yet it seems to me that he did not know by what method it ought to be prepared. Still, these words, when tested by experiment, agree most fittingly with our matter.

For at first it takes on greenness, then afterward a blue color, and at last it puts on a purple. Here I would have you note: if we apply to the Green Lion in the Magnet a somewhat stronger fire, it repeats the same chaos and leaves its nest — that is, the Magnet entirely void, and as it was before, which will greatly surprise you, white.

Therefore, while it is still hot, take the Magnet imbued with the Green Lion, pour it into a mortar, and pound it. If you allow this to be dissolved in spring water, it will become green; yet in such a way that soon the Purple Lion is precipitated into powder, which is then to be washed. In like manner, if you pour Spirit of Wine upon the Magnet reduced to powder, and allow this to be digested gently, you will obtain the green [substance] of the Lion, which we have already several times named.

Here the blood of the Lion, or golden Sulphur in red form, is to be extracted, to be carefully preserved for the preparation of the Aura’s potable Gold; of which discourse shall be made by us in the following.

2. The lower Gold of the Aura, that is, our Nitre, also has its own color. Indeed, among the Ancients and in Dioscorides it was said that in Egypt it was found white and rosy, though most often red, according to Prosper Alpinus (De Medicina Aegyptiorum, book 4, p. 148a). In our own use, what is found commends itself as white, yet with a purple soul within (the Hermetic Gold of the Aura lying hidden there); but it can be driven out by Vulcan’s art, nor is there anything else so changeable in the fire, except the very Blood of the Golden Dragon, which in the Salamander is transformed by the living flame. Whatever Robert Boyle may say against this in his Tentamina Physiologica (p. 199).

And what need is there of words? Is not the name “Salt of Nitre” (see William Johnson’s Lexicon Chemicum, London, 1652, in print) itself enough? And do we not rely on the authority of Johann Joachim Becher, who in his Physica Subterranea (book 1, section 5, chapter 2, n. 109) attributes Sulphur dyed with Nitre? Let us not even summon the goldsmiths: for nothing is more certain to them than this, that even crude Nitre contains a Tincture, most familiar and most pleasing to Gold, since, when smeared upon pale Gold with water and placed in a small fire, it can impart to it a friendly tincture and a blood-red hue.

So also, when our Alkaest is cooked by itself, then it acquires perfect colors, among which are the whiteness and at last the redness; as is most clear through all the Authors who have known our Stone, and have perfected its confection, being guided by reason and the art of Chemistry.

Chapter 9.
On the Potable Gold of the Aura

Hornius (Dedication in Bernhard. innov.) establishes a twofold Medicine of the Philosophers: the one truly and simply universal, commonly called the Great Catholic Stone, the most universal of all; the other almost, and in a certain sense universal, under another name the Lesser Catholic Stone and Metallic Tincture. Of these, the materials from which each is prepared are diverse: the inventor of the former is celebrated as Hermes the Egyptian; of the latter, Geber the Arab. The material of the former is the celestial Sun; of the latter, the terrestrial Gold. Yet both rejoice in their own Magnet, by whose aid their potency, as they say, is reduced into act and multiplied in power.

These things do not suit the taste of Johann Resch in Experiments of Osander on the Sun, p. 119, and thus he rejected that opinion. But truly, I do not see how it could lack foundation in any respect. For between our Mercury and Gold there is so close a kinship, that a philosopher of great name left written: Gold is nothing else but Mercury itself made ethereal, coagulated in a certain pure place, and brought to perfect fixation. See the preface of Joël Langelot in Joh. Tilmann’s Experimenta.

And if you, excellent reader, have not yet forgotten these things, it is credible that what has hitherto been revealed concerning attraction, you could not yet have conceived in your mind.

1. The Sulphur of the Sun and the Gold of the higher Aura spontaneously follow the Magnet. Therefore, if you wish to prepare potable Gold, applying precipitated Golden Sulphur, wash it, and associate it with the Spirit of the World, fixing it according to the prescription of the art. Or, if one is inexperienced and ignorant of all this, distill the tinctured Spirit of Vitrum Auratum of the Aura, so that at least you may have retained its fourth part, you will have the residue, namely potable Gold, most delightful in appearance because of its redness.

Although at first it may carry with it some salinity, which anyone who tastes it can easily perceive with the tongue, yet after a few days it settles clear like limpid water. The Magnet, when the tincture is steeped in it and then replenished, should be well protected from the rays of the Sun in glass. For this Gold, when exposed to the Sun, within a few days becomes discolored. From this it is clearer than the midday Sun, that the Sun draws this Gold back into the Aura.

And just as in Chapter 3, where I established that the distilled Spirit from Nitre is a vivifying soul, which is incorporated into its proper subject: so also with this Gold of the Aura, which I spoke of, it can be joined and fixed together, and from both, something more excellent and more effective may be made—namely potable Gold.

2. In like manner, Gold may be made potable from the lower Aura, that is, from our Nitre: if, namely, you fix the Alkahest into its highest redness by itself, or, from the very beginning, join it with purified metallic Gold, and so perfect the Stone: which, for medicinal use, is believed to be dissolvable in all Liquors—not only in our own age. For the Alkahest, in which (as was said above) the soul of Nitre lies hidden, which is also called the hidden Spiritual Sun and Moon, the invisible Sulphur of nature, and the living Gold of the Philosophers, dissolves powerfully the bodily metallic Gold; and then Gold, when mingled with Gold, in the nature of the subject, this spiritual Gold vivifies the corporeal; and this corporeal Gold thickens that spiritual. And thus the Spirit becomes Body, and the Body becomes Spirit, and both together become one spiritual and inseparable whole, etc.

But if these things should seem absent: can it be that, by the aid of purified crude Nitre (or rather regenerated in a peculiar way), the Sulphurs may be extracted from metallic Gold in scarcely the space of one hour, and almost without difficulty? Would you, Reader, consider this as well? Far more, I think. Nevertheless, as I said, so it stands. For not only today or yesterday have I made this trial, but I have tested it many times. And scarcely does a week or two pass without my demonstrating in the presence of some of my friends, that I thus examine the metals one by one in order, and prove that, by extracting from any one of them, and casting separately into an open Crucible, with their own Sulphurs, after the lapse of some hours they were already potable. Among these, moreover, I also display the purple Sulphur of the Moon, as perfectly as ever that of the Sun, or even of Venus, or finally that of Mars itself, can be apprehended. Thus has he rightly written who wished to commend himself to the literary world under the name Phthalethes: that in all the common metals our Sun is contained, as in Gold and Silver it is held most nearly.

Therefore, O happy, thrice happy is that Artist, who by the most merciful blessing of the Most High Jehovah attains the art of preparing and perfecting that almost divine SALT, by whose efficacious operation the metallic or mineral body is corrupted, destroyed, and brought to death: yet its soul meanwhile is revived and rises again unto the glorious resurrection of the philosophical body! As exclaims Johann Friedrich Helvetius in Vitulus Aureus, p. 15.

Chapter 10.
On the Virtues of the Gold of the Aura in the Animal Kingdom

To preserve in youths the vital Spirit (which is the radical moisture and innate warmth, the inborn mummy, and which has its seat in the middle of man’s heart, as the support of all our life), and in the aged, when it languishes, to restore it and to bring them back, as it were, to youth, to restore, as far as powers go, nor is it possible for those who wish to bring man’s life to the highest health, unless they seek not the Elemental heat, but rather that celestial heat of the Sun and Moon, dwelling in a more incorruptible substance, discoverable beneath the globe of the Moon; and to render this similar to our own heat or spirit, which happens when it has been prepared into a most delightful medicine and food.

Thus, when taken by the mouth, it immediately penetrates the human body, preserves all things, especially the flesh united to it, uncorrupted, nourishes, increases, and restores the strength and the spirit of life, digests all that is crude, removes every excess of whatever quality, causes the natural moisture to abound, and procures for the natural fire—weak in itself—comfort, kindling, and augmentation. See Oswald Croll, in the Preface of his Basilica Chymica, p. 101.

Such a medicine, Petrus Poterius mentions, Consil. & Medic. Regis Christian. in Pharm. Spagyr. l.3. Append. p.m. 602. He says: If you desire this universal remedy, let it be illuminated by the splendor of the sun, so that by its influence not only are its shadows removed, but by its benefit the compacted matter is attenuated by heat and truly fermented.

Thus, just as my Aurum Auræ must owe its origin to the heat of the sun as to its birth, so too, if it must be joined with the Spirit or Salt of the World—not only from its own Magnesia, but also derived from the rays of the Moon, and for this reason named Lunar by the Philosophers—it should indeed be united. Who then can doubt that, among all things, it will be one of the most excellent remedies for the world of medicine, and that it may truly be promised? Consider Robertus de Fluctibus, cap. 5, lib. 1, de Vromantia, and Minschitium in description of Unicornu minerali’s preparation, where especially the Sal aërium nitrosum is applied.

A year has now passed, no more than one, since, with the aid of a certain preserving salt of sweetest taste, I prepared from my own blood a thermometer. In which, even to this day, that blood of mine has undergone no change, whether in its nature or even in its color and appearance, and it is destined to last until the final breath of my life. But what does this seem to you? To me indeed there is no doubt here, that if blood can be preserved so long outside the body, it can much more be maintained within the body itself, especially when joined with the first principle, with Salt, as we said above, the Universal World, with the Auric Aura, or with golden sulphur.

Now let us contemplate with the mind’s eye, first, the virtues of the higher Aura Auræ in the Animal Kingdom, and in what ways it may chiefly aid in driving away diseases. For I have found not only potable Auræ Aurum, but also the Spirit of the World; and, together with the first principles of the World, at last the Balsam prepared by a known method. Since I myself was engaged publicly in the medical profession, it seemed alien to me to neglect this. It came readily to my mind the most excellent man, Dr. Melchior Friebe, Prefect of the Electorate of Saxony, sworn physician (appointed to me), my most honored colleague, to whom I could more properly entrust the remedies I had prepared. He reported them, in the most desperate diseases, and chiefly knew the benefit of them. This, since within the space of a year he performed with the greatest diligence and care, he also recorded not a few instances. Some of these, without order or discrimination, Reader, you will not take it amiss if I here set down in the very words of the physician himself:

The wife of the Electoral Prefect of Zabeltitz, Mr. Christian Polingius, in the month of April, on the sixth day after childbirth, was seized with an acute fever, her lochial discharges flowing improperly, accompanied by a remarkable chill. After this followed an intense heat, thirst, fainting, headache, and palpitations of the heart, anguish, inflammation of the breasts, stabbing pain in both shins, and vomiting.

The danger of the disease, both from the heap of symptoms and from the geomantic theme, being at its height, when I discerned this, I immediately ordered the right saphenous vein to be opened, and on the following day that of the left ankle, because of the suppressed lochia and the resulting symptoms. The stabbing pain of the sides, once blood was drawn, subsided at once; the remaining afflictions persisted. All the malady flared up again in the afternoon, even to delirium.

Bezoardics, juleps, and various remedies pertaining to the case were administered; at length even the Spirit of the World was given, by which, I know not how, the tightness of the chest, the difficulty of breathing, and the remaining symptoms appeared much milder, so that she now enjoyed excellent health.

In the month of June I gave this Spirit to a pregnant woman who suffered difficulty of breathing from an unnatural rising of the womb; once taken, her breathing became easier and the heat lessened.

In hectic fever joined with consumption, when there was difficulty of breathing, the Spirit of the World relieved the breathing. In the month of July the widow of this poor town still testifies to the benefit.

The three-year-old daughter of Matthaeus Hermann, a citizen of this town, who had suffered from a long-lasting cough, four times a day, and at each occasion eight drops of the tincture of Aurum Auræ, we gave in a little beer, since she rejected other medicines. That very night, freed from the violent torment of her monstrous cough, she slept. Nor in the following days did we omit the use of this tincture, with even better success.

In tertian fever, in some patients, when the chill was finished and the heat was already invading, I gave half a spoonful of the Spirit of the World, in order to test by experiment what effect it would have. Soon after taking it, the intense heat abated, lasting for many hours.

The most noble and valiant Lord of Milkau, heir in Merzdorff, had a daughter of sixteen years. In the month of August, while traveling, she fell into an acute fever, with most violent thirst, swelling of the tongue, burning of the throat intolerable, difficulty of breathing, delirium, and loss of all strength. Six times the Spirit of the World was administered together with the tincture of Aurum Auræ, not neglecting moreover juleps and bezoardic powders; all the most dangerous symptoms abated. And after her restoration, the most noble maiden declared that the Spirit of the World had been the best medicine for overcoming the disease.

An illustrious Baroness, troubled with scurvy and the symptoms of this evil — excessive headache, pain and redness of the eyes, palpitation of the heart, hypochondriac tension and the resulting anxiety, with frequent sweating of the hands and feet — was often distressed. Whenever she took half a spoonful of the Spirit of the World, even when pregnant, she found relief: not only did the said symptoms and phantastic visions cease, but also the restless nights, which otherwise tormented her, were passed in peace.

For another woman, three days after childbirth, when the lochia were suppressed, there followed fever with great heat and thirst, intensified; night-watchings and recurring faintings with loss of strength afflicted her, after childbirth the lochia were suppressed; hence fever with great heat and thirst increased, together with nightly vigils and frequent faintings, which weakened the strength.

Since the other remedies brought little help, we finally resorted to the Spirit of the World, and we perceived great relief of the aforesaid symptoms, so that on the seventh day the lochia flowed again as they should.

In serpiginous ulcers, in impetigo, or in lichen, the Spirit of the World when applied externally performs its office by anointing; for it dries, removes the present heat, soothes the itching, and by this operation fully accomplishes the cure. This was truly discovered by Doctor Gahlerus, apothecary and senator of Hayn, upon his finger.

An honest widow afflicted with serpiginous sores upon her lips experienced, from frequent applications of this ointment, the effect, but here, when other remedies were applied in vain, she saw something marvelous.

And what it accomplished in these cases, the same it could do in scabies, as I myself experienced. For as often as I anointed my scabious hand several times, both by day and by night, I found the pustules dried up in the following days, so that I could scrape them away without harm.

A citizen of Haynau, once a soldier in the Hungarian war, suffered from the Hungarian fever. When the war ended he returned to his homeland not yet fully restored. Though outwardly sound after the use of remedies, he soon began, after entering into marriage, to suffer from podagra and chiragra (gout of the hands). For several years he tried various medicines in vain.

At last, by our counsel, he resorted to the Spirit of the World (Spiritus Mundi) and the Tincture of the Auric Breeze (Aurum Auræ). His daily use of it not only restrained immense pain, but also, during paroxysms, eased the heat which at other times grew more intense. Moreover, it expelled through urine little sandy granules, reddish at first, later larger stones of chalky hardness, along with white tartareous matter and viscous concretions — frequently, and in greater abundance than had ever before occurred.

From then on, I have regarded this Spirit, combined with the Tincture, as no small or contemptible lithontriptic diuretic. And from the time he began to use it, the most grievous disease, although it would flare up monthly, as was its habit, only knocked gently at the doors, never again able to exert its intolerable violence.

I will relate a marvel: they say that the Spirit of the World induces sweating. On one occasion, when advised to bathe in hot water, he took beforehand the same quantity of the Spirit already mentioned, Spirit of the World together with the Tincture of the Auri Aurae. After leaving the bath, white pustules the size of millet grains, filled with clear fluid, appeared all over the surface of his body, and these could easily be scratched open.

From these signs, taken together, great hope of recovery shines forth. We shall continue the daily use of the Spirit of the World, that we may see what it can accomplish. And, God willing, we shall candidly communicate to our own age and to posterity all observations worthy of note, faithfully inserting them among curious records.

A widow of our city, through excessive grief, on the 5th of February fell into a fever resembling hectic fever, with chills and recurring inflammations (phlogosis) returning several times a day. Sleepless nights and days so wore her out for five days that she was entirely without inclination to sleep, much less to evacuations. Her appetite was completely cast down, and she was constantly thirsty.

On the sixth day of illness, her condition grew worse, especially toward evening, due to a very distressing piece of news. The greatest decline of strength and faintness of heart followed. She refused medicines, desiring death.

On the eighth day of illness, around ten in the morning, she suffered a swoon, dimness of sight, diminished hearing, reasoning, and speech, along with the most bitter headache. Convulsive movements, uterine constriction, and pain of the hands and feet displayed her as being near death.

When she revived a little, by means of bezoardic powders with castoreum and other medicines necessary to combat the disease, she took a uterine clyster. The following night she began to feel somewhat better, up to the ninth day. On the tenth day, around the tenth hour, an attack, they returned again with renewed force. To root out these symptoms I first employed Spirit of C. C. with Essence of Castoreum in a little wine; it alleviated somewhat, but soon the whole malady returned with greater violence.

I then tried what the Spirit of the World together with the Balsam of the World could accomplish in so desperate a case. I gave for a dose one spoonful of the Spirit, with six drops of the aforesaid Balsam, and the symptoms ceased.

I repeated the said dose every hour, with the greatest relief to the patient and to the admiration of the attendants. Around the tenth to the eleventh day, the enemy again assailed the walls of health with greater fury; but the Spirit and the Balsam, as defenders stronger than the foe, immediately repelled it, except for a weakness of the heart.

On the 12th day, around the third hour in the afternoon, it returned, but after the administration of this medicine it soon departed. On the 13th day the morning fever pattern was observed, and likewise during the following four days; but it was at last vanquished, as said before, and withdrew.

The efficacy of the Spirit and Balm of the World is recommended by the following case. A woman in childbed, the wife of a most worthy deacon of this place, on the ninth day after childbirth fell into an acute fever, with remarkable shivering and subsequent most intense heat, headache, difficulty of breathing, and other symptoms. I gave her one ounce of this Spirit with thirty drops of the Balm of the World, divided into four doses to be taken over the space of two hours. Soon after, by God’s praise, we saw her restored.

A maid in the village of Waldà (who, rumor said, was pregnant) was struck down with an acute fever on March 6, and confined to bed. Nothing but one drachm of the Balsam of the World was given, divided into four scruples, to be taken every hour in the measure of twelve drops in a spoonful of warm beer. To secure greater credibility of the effect, I have added the very words of the Prefect of the Electress of Saxony, Mr. Johann Martin Richter: “Our maid was at first seized by the illness with chills and the subsequent violent heat; the symptoms were headache, heartburn, difficulty of breathing, and stabbing pains in the hypochondria. After the use of the Balsam of the World, all these gradually abated, so that on the third day she was able to return to her usual duties.”

The Spirit of the World, especially when joined with its Balsam, in desperate diseases, acute fevers, or others of such kind that hinder breathing and induce unnatural heat, if the body has first been cleansed and freed from all superfluous dregs and thickness, when taken in the dose given below, brings relief, eases breathing, mitigates the flame or burning, and in some way restores lost strength; yet when death is near at hand, I judge it cannot be long delayed, as I have often experienced. But where there is hope of recovery, it helps immediately; as I saw yesterday at the ninth hour in the evening: the wife of Mr. Johann David Fischer was seized with sudden constriction of the chest, troubled with difficult and suffocating respiration, her feet and especially the left side of her arms were rigid and cold, so that she was thought to be apoplectic. I gave six drachms of the Spirit of the World with thirty drops of the Balsam of the World, divided into four doses. After the first dose she felt relief and freer breathing, and shortly after she took the second; sweat followed, then sleep, and in the morning I found her restored.

On the 28th of August 1674. Thus far the experiments of the much-praised Lord Doctor Fribius.

The same did also, at my admonition, and included in writing, the most illustrious Lord Johann Engelhardus, Candidate of Medicine, a friend to me for many most proven years, what he had observed. And these things also I judged that I should not be doing a useless thing, if I noted them here:

On the 2nd of September, year 1673, in the afternoon hours, Master Emanuel Centarach, of the Haynian Prefecture of Accounts, was suddenly afflicted with intolerable abdominal pains, for 3 whole hours, not without horror, also with suppression of urine and vomiting. I administered to him in Spirit of the World, six drops of the Tincture of the Gold of the Aura; from this a very pleasant inclination to sleep seized him, and while he enjoyed quiet for about half an hour, waking he felt a remission of the pains, he took food, and was very well. Rising in the morning to inspect his urine, he found it very diluted and turbid, but the sediments poured off separately bore a blood-red color, and also bear witness to the efficacy of this anti-nephritic medicine.

On the 22nd of August of the current year, he was suddenly overcome by a feverish chill and shivering, which was immediately followed by extreme exhaustion of the limbs and a failure of strength, so that he was compelled to take to his bed. He earnestly requested from the most noble Mr. C. A. Balduinus, my greatest Patron and Benefactor, that he might obtain some of his medicines. With his consent readily given, I administered to him two doses of the Spirit of the World, with a few drops of the Golden Aura and the Balsam of the World instilled. Of these, after taking one dose, he fell asleep immediately, and for three whole hours rested peacefully. After this had passed, upon waking he felt enormous headaches, and this was undoubtedly from the operation of the very medicine, which was particularly at work about the stomach, with which the body had been most fully loaded, causing disturbance and evacuation, as the outcome bore witness; for he evacuated the bowels twenty times and more. Whereby his strength, not a little broken, was evidently restored by the sleep, so that on the following day the patient almost completely recovered himself, with a result far from unfavorable: for after one or two days had passed, he returned safe and sound to the former function of his office.

Out of fear, lest, as before, the bowels being provoked should weaken him, he resolved to defer the taking of another dose for up to the fourth day; but nothing of what he feared occurred, rather he began from that time to grow better daily.

The same gentleman’s father, miserably afflicted with a stone in the bladder in the very month of March, anxiously implored the help of the praised Author. He, pitying his case, granted him the Spirit of the World, with the Balsam of the same being omitted. After a single dose had been given, within two or three hours he expelled a stone somewhat exceeding the size of a bean, and afterwards within a few days several smaller ones, which being discharged, he was restored by the grace of God to his former health.

In the same month of March, a poor widow, nearly seventy years of age, Ursula, was suffering from an unnatural hemorrhage of the nose, which, as she was already exhausted by decrepit old age, so weakened her strength that even the noblest medicines being applied were in vain, and her life was despaired of. On the third day and beyond, while this flux continued, it so happened that the Noble Mr. Balduinus was met by Master Andreas Uschnerus of Hayn, secretary for acts and letters, who among other things, in speaking of her desperate state, asserted that nothing but immediate death remained and was now impending. I, who was then present at this conversation, hearing this, said: ‘What, I ask, if some of the Balsam of the World were given her? It would bring little harm, and perhaps some relief.’ Mr. Balduinus assenting, ordered that several doses be administered to her. These, being given by me at intervals, began to bring the hemorrhage to remission, and although the evil returned more than once, yet the strength which she had been utterly unable to exert before, she at last recovered. The disease, forced entirely to yield, left the victory to this most noble medicine; and she, safe and sound, with God graciously blessing her, was restored beyond all expectation, the aforesaid woman still surviving.

Finally, how remarkable, and never to be praised enough for its virtue, the Balsam of the World is in toothache, the most noble Mr. Bald. wished to test on himself. For when last winter he was suffering most severely from his teeth, he happened by chance upon the Balsam of the World, and, intending to make a trial whether it might be of any use in this ailment, he prepared from it a gargle for himself, which, applying to the affected part, he felt immediate relief, for the pains, though at first most violent, after the lapse of one hour, beyond all hope, completely vanished, nor have they returned until now. End of Engelhard’s Observations.

Here I would have you observe that both the origin of the Golden Aura and of the Balsam of the World are, as it were, the cradle of the Spirit of the World. Therefore, as prepared for medicine, this Spirit of the World is nothing else than the simple quintessence, separated from the body as from gross and thick matter, or from the superfluities of the four Elements. Thus, what hinders, why should it not, as in the Treatise on the True Secret Salt of the Philosopher Lord Nuysement, cap. 4, be called the General Physical Stone and Elixir, composed by nature, by means of which it performs all its miracles; and is indeed far more worthy of admiration than the Stone of the Chemists, to which only through this very Spirit is it granted to introduce into its like what is lacking, so as to make it the same.

This Spirit of the World, so often mentioned by me, is an essence entirely penetrative and volatile, bearing with it the most pleasant odor and a taste sweeter than almonds. A few drops, if you should take them, can scarcely be described for how they refresh the heart and open the passages of breathing. You may rightly esteem it as the nourishment and food of the lungs. And a quantity as small as a spoonful may be taken, without any vehicle, or, if the disease be more obstinate, mixed with potable Gold or, if you prefer, with the Balsam of the World, for the preservation, conservation, and indeed even the full restoration of health. And if with these three crude medicines, so to speak, not yet having attained that perfection which, with God propitious, has been aspired to, so much is already possible: truly, there is nothing at all…

(2.) To the most perfect Hermetic Gold of the lower Aura, that is, the very Medicinal Stone itself, prepared from the Alkahest (in the manner we have mentioned), Human Nature shall promise itself that it will be imposed upon her! For all this labor tends to this end, that she may be refreshed and preserved through many years, and, as far as possible, be protected from diseases. But since this matter lies in the hand of Him who governs the business above us, He must be earnestly entreated by our most fervent prayers: and meanwhile we must rest content with the medicines of our most universal Matter. For which, may it never be, that we should be found ungrateful to the Most Glorious Divine Majesty Himself!

Chapter 11.
On the Virtues of the Golden Aura, in the Mineral Kingdom.

The duties of life must not be disturbed, nor burdens imposed upon the weak age of children, which belong rather to adults, to those whom mature age has already made into men, as the chief of poets grants me to say here. Of this precept I am mindful.

1. To the Golden Aura of the higher kind, as though it were my own offspring, I do not attribute those powers which belong to the robust, and are fitting for those who can accomplish more than children. For indeed it has not yet, as it were, passed beyond the years of infancy. But if it should advance further in strength, then at last it may be hoped for and most rightly considered. Since, however, that Sulphur is Solar; and since all tinctures are acknowledged among the Philosophers to be sulphurs, it seems to me evident that, being fixed and united with other metals, there is no doubt that this Golden Aura will accomplish more with respect to other, imperfect metals, after it has attained perfection and undergone fermentation with Metallic Gold established in its own constitution as much as the vegetable and mineral sulphurs can. Yet it must be held again and again, that in this wondrous work the first place must altogether be given and deferred to the most universal volatile salt. For this you may most easily obtain from nitre, if you recall what has been explained above.

Thus also, as an example of how tartar is rendered volatile, I especially wish you to observe the method of preparation. Many have indeed wearied not a few in this matter: among them Johann Baptist Helmont, in his book De Febribus; Ludovicus de Comitibus, in Disputation 6, p. m. 38; Daniel Ludovici, in Dissertation on Volatile Tartar, Disputation 9, p. m. 66. On the other hand, there have been those who judged almost nothing at all worth laboring here. See, I pray you, Joël Langelot in his Epistle to the Illustrious Curiosi of Nature, p. m. 10; and David von der Becke in an Epistle to Langelot; Georg Wolfgang Wedel in Specimen Experimentorum Chymicorum, p. m. 55, and others. The same von der Becke in Experiments and Meditations on the Principles of Natural Things, p. m. 130 and following.

But a few weeks ago I discovered a much easier way, by which not only tartar, vitriol, common salt, and such things, but even nitre itself, within only a few hours, may be distilled by the help of a glass alembic into the Spirit of the World, or water of most agreeable taste, and then further transformed into volatile white salt. From this comes the true Alkahest (by the aid of the concentrated Spirit [Salt/Alkali], of which above). Moreover, this in itself may also be like a most present remedy, for driving away burning fevers. But of this only in passing here.

Thus, secondly, we are confident that the Hermetic gold of the lower Aura can achieve more in the mineral kingdom. For not only did Peter John Faber, in his Panchymicus, book 4, chapter 40, write hardly to be believed things about nitre: namely, that in the innermost bowels of nature there is contained a fire of life shut up, which, if anyone can coagulate and make fixed, and give it a golden or silver tincture, he will possess the Arcanum; but also Gassendus began his work with nitre and likewise happily set the finishing hand upon it.

Just as therefore we doubt not at all that the Stone is prepared from the nitrous Liquor Alkahest (either by itself or joined with common gold): so also, when you wish to transform imperfect metals, it will be necessary for you to cast the Elixir upon gold melted in the crucible; and thus that Salt, having entered ⊙ Sol, is changed into a brittle and friable Salt, yet soluble and fusible with the lightest heat. Which indeed (as I think), while it is impregnated with gold, when cast upon imperfect metals, transmutes them into Gold itself.

Indeed, for a long time that transmutation of metals into gold has been suspected, and not without cause; since some have shown coins, and these half-turned into gold, needles also, and even hairs turned golden. A method of this is handed down by Glauber (in Philosophia Purgativa, p. m. 38.), which, if you wish, you may consult. Hence also Bartholin relates (Physicae Specimen, part 4, chap. 2.) that at Florence he saw among the precious things of the Duke of Etruria a nail of continuous metal, of which one half was gold, the other half iron; and the gold, as far as it had been dipped in the tincture, was transmuted; such as formerly was said by Thurneusfer. Yet, on the other hand, there are others who, accounting it adulterated, afterwards entirely reject and overturn the report.

The most noble Mr. Augustus Henland visited me not long ago. We had much varied conversation. Nor was it only that he had casually observed these lands, but he also spoke of French, Italian, and English affairs, and of other matters as well. At length, as he is curious in every work of Nature, we conveniently fell into a discussion of chemistry; when Ensiculus, by whom I am wont to trim my writing pen, was also mentioned to him: he said that he kept as a gift from a chemist of great renown, while he was at Venice. The rest, my attention and the core was of iron; but the tip was of gold; to those who saw it, it seemed that by the power and efficacy of some tincture it had been changed into gold. Immediately, I confess, the desire to see so rare a gift seized me, and I began so strongly to ask him, that he did not refuse to send it. He consented, however, on this condition, that I should signify to him by letter what I thought of it, if I returned it. This I also promised to do.

Therefore, as soon as it was given to me, I could not marvel at it enough. The point was about half the length of a finger joint: gold, such as that of a golden crown usually is. And when tested upon the Lydian stone, it answered perfectly. At last, not the least trace of solder could be detected, so that it could not plainly be affirmed to be a tincture, nor could one judge with certainty of the art or combination, though there was good reason to incline most strongly in that direction. Without delay, I had the piece cut and broken, and from the gold itself I took care to have another joined. When I had gone with the file to the goldsmith (for I had entrusted that matter to him), either I am greatly mistaken, or the bright and shining appearance showed not a little of the work, to that Venetian it seemed no great matter; for him the whole work took five hours.

Do not think that I am inventing anything here. For iron or steel, when heated, eagerly attracts gold. (By which experiment is refuted the opinion of Otto Tachenius in Clavis antiquae Hippocratis Medicinae, cap. 8: that gold cannot be joined to iron before it has assumed the nature of copper.) Thus art is ever overcome by art. Nor was the fraud so ingenious, for if he labored, it revealed skill no less than trickery.

Meanwhile, this remains certain: that steel, as we have said, and other imperfect metals, by the benefit of the Philosopher’s Stone (if only it can be obtained), may most truly be transmuted into gold.

But those who, with Mr. Thomas Moresin, the Scot of Aberdeen, in De Metallorum Causis et Transsubstantiatione, and with Mr. Nicolas Guibert of Lorraine, and also Father Athanasius Kircher in Mundus Subterraneus (Vol. II, Book 11, Sect. II, Chap. XI), roundly deny that it is possible by purely natural art to prepare the Tincture of the Philosophers, which should substantially tinge all metals into gold and silver, and multiply itself infinitely by its projection — let them read the Peripatetic Lance of Valerian Bonvicinus, Professor at Padua, and briefly the Salomon of Blauenstein; but especially the Manifesto of the Spagyric Pharmacy of the Kingdom by Mr. Johann Zwelfer, Part I, Chap. 1, and what is there brought against Kircher in defense of the truth and possibility of Chrysopoeia. Nor should Albertus be overlooked in his 30th book On Minerals; or the treatise of Master Petrus Bonus of Lombardy of Ferrara, composed in the year 1330; Heinrich Salmuth, Book 2, Letter 2, p. 340; Giovanni Francesco Mirandola, On Gold, Book 3, Chapter 2; Marsilius Ficinus, Book 2, On the Way of Heaven, Compendium, Chap. 3; Dr. Adam of Bodenstein, Isagoge to the Rosarium of Arnold of Villanova, the epistle prefixed to the Fuggers from Basel, p. m. 46; Bernard Penot of Port, Preface to the Apology against Guibert in the Tractatus Aristiae de Lapis Philosophorum, p. m. 91; who in his time saw, at Prague in the house of Mr. Thaddaeus, Edward Kelley convert a whole pound of quicksilver into the purest gold with a single drop of a most red liquor. Fernelius, De abditis rerum causis, Book 2, Chap. 18. Johann Wolfgang Dienheim, De Medicina Universali, Chapters 24 and 25. Mauth. Unzer, Anatomia Mercurii Spagyrici, Book 1, Chap. 18. Georg Froberg, Historia de Alchymia, p. 78. Michael Mayer, Symbola Aureae Mensae, pp. 219, 471, 480, 523, and 557. Johann Baptist van Helmont, who in his writings three times publicly confesses that he made a projection, pp. 743, 793, and 671. Miscellanea Curiosa, Medical-Physical Academy, Notitia Curiosa, Ann. 1, Observation 16. Johann Tackius, Chrysogonia Animalis et Mineralis, p. m. 3. Daniel Georg Morhof, De Metallorum Transmutatione, to Mr. Langelot, Epistle, p. m. 87 and following. Which Tincture, though very few obtain it, etc ... yet it is by no means fitting that nature should be altogether proscribed. For it too, like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of our first parents, has its own guardian spirit from heaven, who with a double-edged sword protects it, and drives away the curious and unworthy; since there are but few who know how to unite virtue with abounding riches.

Of this Medicine, in an ancient French Author, Nature herself, in her Complaint, is thus introduced:

That which heals every disease,
And he who has it never begs:
Who has but one ounce and a single grain,
Is always rich and always sound:
At last the creature dies,
Content with God and with Nature.

Chapter 12.
On the Virtues of the Golden Aura, in the Vegetable Kingdom.

The author is Sendivogius, in the Epilogue of his Treatise: “Wherever the rays of the sun strike more abundantly, there the quantity of nitre salt is greater, and consequently the supply of grain increases.” Most true, if anything else is. For the nourishment of plants comes not only from earth or from water, but from a certain nitrous salt mixed therein. Let us appeal to experience, by which alone we are best instructed. Do we not use for the most fertile fields those which contain more salt? For example, since in the excrements of animals there is much nitre, the soil is made fruitful and rich thereby. Indeed, even human urine is nothing else than mere nitre (though not animated), as Theophrastus Paracelsus teaches, Tractatus 1 de Pestilitate, p. m. 376. Thus from the soil where cattle urinate, saltpetre arises and is extracted, Idem in Fragmenta Tractatus, p. m. 449. And truly, for the multiplication of crops, by peculiar lixivium from nitre, we are easily induced to believe that therein lies the secret of some men. See Recueils, Mémoires et Conférences sur les Arts et les Sciences, presented to Monseigneur the Dauphin in the year 1672, by Jean Baptiste Denis, Counselor and Ordinary Physician to the King. Première Conférence touchant la Végétation des Plantes, p. m. 216.

Moreover, the common opinion of the Philosophers holds that by means of their most universal matter, barren trees can be made fruitful, herbs, flowers, and roots can be produced even in the midst of winter, any tree can bear ripe fruits four times or more in a year, a tender shoot can be established from a dried stock, and fruits however bitter can all be made sweet. As reported by Jo. Walchius in his Philosophical and Chemical Treatise of the Germans, p. m. 252.

From this Albertus Magnus obtained his great name, because in the coldest depths of winter he could, by the help of this ethereal Balsam, bring all kinds of fruits to full and perfect ripeness, as Sir Kenelm Digby records in his Dissertation on Vegetable Plants, p. m. 72.

Indeed, we do not overthrow our faith in these words, nor is it easy for anyone to doubt: for the universal Mercury bestows some increase and fragrance upon every flower and plant. Yet that an ounce of it, when combined with our higher Golden Aura and fixed into a stone, acquires still greater powers for itself — this too, to me, cannot be doubted.

But what of the second and most perfect gold of the lower Aura, that is, the Philosopher’s Stone itself, prepared from the nitrous Alkahest? Shall we not admit that, even before the fermentation of gold, it can accomplish more in the Vegetable Kingdom? Who can deny it? For if we again listen to Walchius (p. 253): a tincture from this Stone, if as much as a millet grain be dissolved in water, then afterwards in it the vine, as though its heart or being infused into the medium, it will not immediately produce only a shoot with leaves and flowers, contrary to the common course of nature; but — which may appear admirable to all — it will also bring forth ripe and noble fruits. See Paracelsus, in the Hermetic Apocalypse on the Elixir of Life.

This recalls to my mind that Arcanum of the resuscitation of plants, by which plants already reduced to ashes and dead are said to be revived into life by heat, as though by the divine rod of Mercury, and clothed in a new form. The first, as far as I know, to bring this Secret upon the public stage was Quercetanus, having learned it from a Polish physician, though he did not communicate it.

Afterwards several made mention of it; but none gave a public description except Rosenbergius in his Rhodologia, who, however, veiled all in obscure words; and Spononus, a certain Italian, in a Treatise on the Viper, but in a manner even more obscure than Rosenbergius — I do not recall him. I would indeed believe that he never made the experiment, but either from his own fancy, or from untrustworthy communications of others, he reported what they wrote. Hence Billichius and Georgius Kirstenius were drawn in; the latter, in his German Adversaria, the former in his Thessalus, both denied all faith and assent to the whole business. Yet, Petrus Servius, Roman physician, saw a rose, cultivated by skillful and ingenious art, raised out of burnt ashes, and in the space of twenty-four hours grown, matured, and perfected. Tractatus de Natura et Arte Mirabili.

From the discourse of Lord Digby, the Englishman, on the Vegetation of Plants, we have that Father Athanasius Kircher performed the miracle of restitution, and communicated the manner of the operation to the same Digby. But Kircher seems not to have begun this resuscitation from the ashes themselves, but from the seed of plants, for we learn that he described his process of Regermination of Plants as arising from any seed. See the same in Mundus Subterraneus, Book 12, Sect. 4, Chap. 5, p. m. 414. And also what Father Gaspar Schott records in his Mechanica Hydraulico-Pneumatica, Part 2, Class 1, Machine 8.

Yet Peter Borellus, in his History and Medicophysical Observations, Observation 62, writes: ‘I would believe this could be done, if plants were calcined in a closed vessel, so that the volatile salt, in which the resuscitative power lies hidden, might not evaporate; then, I judge, that this should be collected and mixed with fixed salt, by the aid of the best aqua vitae or of May dew, and that in a sealed vessel, with moderate heat, this circulation should be carried on for some time, until the scattered principles are well united.’ These things, however, I confess, I have never myself attempted. Nevertheless, instead of May dew, I have said above that the purer Spirit of the World, more suitable and more efficacious for this work, is to be preferred.

Worthy of observation also are the words of Mr. Peter John Faber, in the Spagyric Palladium, ch. 2. Through the radical moisture of the world, impregnated with light in glass phials, it is possible for flowers, for plants to be planted and nourished, to grow and sprout; also for trees and plants to be carried safely and without corruption from the most distant regions of the earth; also for them to germinate, bloom, and bear fruit four times in a year, provided that the external mildew of the surrounding air does not hinder and delay the fruit; also for half-dead plants to be revived, or rather renewed. Yet there are some who distrust the Author’s experience here, indeed who utterly reject it.

I, however, undertook the experiment in the year just past, nor did I refuse that labor, while at the same time I withhold not the just praise and due credit to Borellus, who, where it was fitting, pointed the way, as it were, with his finger, in his Medical-Physical History and Observations. For thus he says, Observation 37: “That plants can be nourished and increased by water alone, I would hardly have believed, unless, for six months, in a phial full of water I had seen and preserved a shoot of basil and sweet basil, where it put forth many roots, indeed innumerable, shoots and flowers; but the water must often be renewed.

It is also observed that trees, large enough, indeed equaling the thickness of a flute, in an earthen part to have grown in the pot by watering alone, the weight of the soil remaining the same. Therefore it must be believed that plants draw their nourishment from air and water.

The same was observed by Peter Poter, together with the most noble Boyle, while residing at the Academy of the English at Oxford; the tops of mint, pennyroyal, and melissa, being properly immersed in glass phials filled with spring water, which was never changed, spread themselves out into numerous roots and luxuriant leaves. See the same author, Preface to the Medical and Chemical Works, p. m. 9. Which experiment the cited authors undoubtedly borrowed from Theophrastus Paracelsus, Metamorphosis, Book 3, On the Preserve, p. m. 17.

The story of a plant germinating under water in a glass vessel, on the testimony of another physician, is recorded by Libavius in the Synopsis of Chemical Secrets, Book 1, Chapter 22, where he also provides a figure of it. The same is related by Rosenbergius in his Rhodologia through D. Frey, who likewise adds that he saw the same in a tulip; and also by Jacob Dobrzenskj of Nigropont, in his Pleasanter Philosophy, on Fountains, Part 1, Proem 1. But far more marvelous is the account given by Gallus, in his French treatise La petite Chirurgie, Chapter 22, who presents the whole world — adorned with trees, plants, flowers, meadows, rivers, mountains, waters, animals, etc. — as visible within a small glass. Yet I believe this to be merely a phenomenon of the kind which the most excellent Tackius at one time reported himself to have represented, in his Mystery of the Resurrection of Things, p. m. 6 seq.

I also observed the same vegetable phenomenon in my Magnet, which this very year I had declared to be Universal. For on the nineteenth day of March, when it showed itself with round coverings, the air being drier on account of the midday solar rays, this my Magnet was seen to be partly transformed into oil; but because it was very thick, it soon coagulated, and (see Table XI, figure 2) began to assume the shapes of little trees and shrubs — a most delightful spectacle to behold with the eyes.

Since I well knew, therefore, that not only is Spirit abundant in the element of air and likewise in water, but even stronger than in the other elements, and since I had also abundantly learned from mechanics that fixed and volatile crystal salt is contained in air and water, indeed that flowers — for example, tulips, anemones, lilies, etc. — from the same, if they have blossomed, being burned into ash, with their stalks and stems reduced, when their lye is poured upon the roots of their corresponding plants, sprout forth again with wonderful fecundity and brightness: reflecting more deeply on the matter itself, I concluded that if it could be done, that the water which C. Philipp. Sachs of Lewenheimb (in Oceanus Macro-microcosmi, p. m. 26) calls the menstruum of the world, being augmented with the Catholic Salt, or terrified Spirit of the World, its power of preservation would be far greater. For indeed, universally, Salt is the balsam of water. And if water is not imbued with its own fire, it renders plants not very fruitful; therefore something must necessarily be contained within, for which water only serves as a vehicle, and it is nothing other than Salt, which bestows fecundity upon all things.

Sir Kenelm Digby, in On Vegetables (p. m. 62), teaches that not only all minerals owe their origin to this Salt (rightly known or understood). Indeed, Panovolus, in Arcana, fascicle II, p. 218, strives to show that all things arise from water and fire, just as from sulphur and mercury, and that therefore the seed is that vivifying power, composed of fire and water, residing in the sperm.

Relying on these foundations, I myself have happily undertaken the matter; and by means of the universal fixed 🜍 Sulphur balsam of nature, joined with the benefit of the vegetable, I have been able to preserve flowers and herbs. And lest you think I boast more arrogantly than truthfully, behold before you glass globes of various sizes, and these mingled with colors, which, whenever you please, are filled with a manifold variety of flowers, which I, in the past year, prepared — a spectacle not without great delight both for the eyes and for the soul, as you may see with me.

But if God the Best and Greatest grant strength and life, the coming year will establish in our Museum a Glass Greenhouse, which will also exhibit to the students of these matters violets, roses, daffodils, tulips, carnations, and other herbs of that kind, both of the rarest use and of a brilliance of colors surpassed by none. And this at whatever season of the year. Such things, equaled by none, I have not yet seen; indeed, I shall scarcely or hardly ever see them surpassed by anyone. Unless perhaps our Flora, which, at the request of several friends of no obscure name, is soon to see the public light under the title SEMPER-VIVA.

Truly, I perceive that certain hindrances are thrown in my way; but although these things may be disputed, they cannot thereby remove what has been promised.

But you, whoever you are, kind Reader, if anything in this Treatise of mine has not at first glance seemed clear or intelligible, I beg you, withhold your judgment on these points; and in those matters which seem sufficiently clear to you, do not pronounce rashly. Do not, in this most secret matter, cast a stone of calumny, lest it be laid upon your reputation by an honorable man.

Meanwhile, he has not yet worshipped the Majesty of Nature the Creatress, nor has he reverenced Nature as Nature deserves, who does not believe in the possibility of the divine Hermetic work, or who ignores or despises its reality. Hurin, from Parna, Paris.

For most truly was it once said by Seneca: “Much have they accomplished who came before us, but they have not completed the work; much still remains to be done, and much will remain; nor will the opportunity of adding something further ever be denied to any man, even after many ages.

Desire, in hidden places, seeks gold, and whether sooner or later, gathers only grains.
Let the lowest crowd be wise: the wise man knows what abounds in gold, and rightly calls it by the name of gold.
Behold, as though with a double lamp, we show you the suns, the path which others tread, not without burden and struggle!
That by wondrous virtue the Celestial Magnet may draw.
The Salts conspire, and the Sulphurs with Sulphurs.
Thus now the Magnet loves not iron, but feeds on air.
Jupiter rained down into Danaë’s bosom in fire.
Now too you might say that the golden age is joined with the iron.
Man himself, for a great price, comes at a great price.
Nothing better could one safely pray for by his vows — than to touch and ward off the unjust Hunger of King Ascadicus.

The End.